Thesis advisor: Andrea Vicini / This dissertation aims, first, to retrieve a thicker notion of kinship; second, to explore whether such a notion might counter the political exclusion of the most vulnerable; and third, to propose that kinship has potential to promote the social integration of the most vulnerable. Over the past few decades, the term kinship has often been understood in a very reductionist sense, only referring to genetic connections or family ties, and a particular type of kinship, i.e., spiritual kinship, has lost its social implications. Such a narrow understanding of kinship contributes to marginalizing and excluding frail elderly women and men from the social fabric. In particular, the frail elderly are subjected to two kinds of exclusion: personal (individual) and institutionalized (systematic). While the vices that lead to personal exclusion include anthropodenial and an aversion to human limitations, the vices responsible for the institutionalized exclusion of the frail elderly include greed and individualism, both fostered by neo-liberalism. To promote the inclusion of the frail elderly, I propose, first, the practice of solidaristic kinship as a response to personal exclusion, because this practice re-educates the emotions through habits. Second, to address institutionalized exclusion, I recommend structures of kinship, such as solidarity and fraternity, because they promote kinship within society. Finally, practices of solidaristic kinship and structures of kinship together characterize communities of solidaristic kinship with frail elderly persons. By engaging in such communities, moral agents cultivate the civic virtues needed to contribute to shaping a society that promotes the political inclusion of its vulnerable members. / Thesis (STD) — Boston College, 2020. / Submitted to: Boston College. School of Theology and Ministry. / Discipline: Sacred Theology.

This thesis examines classification in relation to colonialism and cultural imbalances. The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is a facility located in Longyearbyen in Norway and houses seeds from most of the countries in the world. The Seed Vault is used in this study as a focal point around which questions of classification and global hierarchies are posed. The thesis entails a section that examines classification and colonialism from a historical point of view. The concept of documentality is also problematised in relation to The Seed Vault and its contents, and some examples of libraries that house similar entities are juxtaposed with the Seed Vault. The thesis uses discourse analysis as derived from Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben in order to examine the contents of the official website of the Seed Vault, which is issued by the Norwegian Government. An initial examination of the texts in relation to concepts developed by Foucault and Agamben led to three overriding themes which divides the analytical part of the thesis into three sections: Governmentality Through Security and Facilitation, The Other and Biopolitics and Safeguarding Seeds. The Seed Portal, which is the cataloguing system for the Vault, is examined in relation to a few of the crops stored (as seeds), but mainly the Linnaean classification system is discussed in regards to the themes of the study. The concepts of zoe and bios, which is bare and politicised life respectively, is applied as a possible method of understanding the seeds or plants in relation to classification.

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The aim of this thesis is to analyze the reactions and expressions towards the governmental regulations amongst  Swedes in Spain during the Covid-19 pandemic. This is a qualitative online ethnographic case study where a online forum is analysed through a content analysis. The data has been understood through intersectionality theory, biopolitics as outlined by Michel Foucault and Sara Ahmed’s work on the cultural politics of emotions. The analysis identified various themes and as well as emotions circulating around these. Swedes in Spain are expressing their frustration and critique towards illogical and counterproductive regulations as well as showing irritation directed to their freedom of movement being taken away. Frustration and uncertainty are circulating in the discussions. Sociocultural categories such as class, nationality, gender and age as well as how they intensifie each other appear. The Covid-19 pandemic is affecting people in various ways, and the intersectional lens makes it possible to analyse how people depending on their privileges (or lack of) are able to cope with the regulations. This research shows on the importance of an feminist intersectional lens when evaluating the effects of the regulations during the Covid-19 pandemic in each country.

This interdisciplinary dissertation, The Rhetoric of Wolves, attempts to answer a simple, yet broad question: What do we talk about when we talk about wolves? While even the “we” here is contentious, as there are many perspectives and positions through which the wolf is figured, there are also many kinds of wolves, but no “real” wolf. That is, this dissertation takes seriously the contention that has recently arisen in the environmental humanities and animal studies through the late work of Jacques Derrida and others that figurations of “the animal” matter, not only for multi-species relations and coexistence, but for how the subject and polity are constructed and normalized. As these discourses put “the animal” into question, that is, how the animal functions as a discursive resource in socio-political issues, so too does this dissertation question how “the wolf” functions discursively in contemporary socio-political issues in North America. To address these questions, this dissertation utilizes a Foucaultian-inspired genealogical analysis of the discourse around “the wolf” understand how rhetoric about wolves coalesces into what I call “rhetorical assemblages” that vie to become regimes of truth that are used to attempt to settle the identity of the wolf and human-“animal” relations through the productive capacity of various power/knowledges that are historically and materially grounded. To do so, this dissertation examines and analyzes the rhetoric of a series of case studies in North America where figurations of wolves produce “the wolf” variously as man-hunting machines, outlaws that disrupt the natural order, illegal immigrants threatening family and tradition, and always already potential terrorists who must be productively managed through a biopolitics that attempts to make good the expectations of the dominant neoliberal frame of contemporary social and political life. / Graduate / 2023-08-15

In my dissertation, I bring together the fields of comics theory, biopolitics, and queer theory in order to read contemporary coming-of-age graphic novels that represent characters (and sometimes lives) at the margins. Coming-of-age graphic novels in this category often depict complex engagements with trauma and history, and couple those depictions with the loss of attachments: the subjects represented in these texts usually do not belong. I make a case for productive spaces inside of the unbelonging represented in my chosen texts. In Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, Alison finds multiple nodes of attachment with her deceased father through the process of writing his history. Importantly, none of those attachments require that she forgive him for past violences, or that she overwrite his life in order to shift focus onto the positive. Jillian and Mariko Tamaki’s Skim features a protagonist, Skim, who is rendered an outcast because of her body, her hobbies, and eventually her process of mourning. Skim carves out a life that is survivable for her, and resists the compulsion to perform happiness while she does it. Charles Burns’s Black Hole depicts a group of teens who are excommunicated from their suburb after contracting a disfiguring, sexually transmitted disease, and who take to the woods in order to build a miniature, ad-hoc society for themselves. I concentrate on the question of precarity, and notice that safety and stability have a strong correlation with gender and sexuality: women and queers are overrepresented at the margins. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / In my dissertation, I bring together the fields of comics theory, biopolitics, and queer theory in order to read contemporary coming-of-age graphic novels that represent characters (and sometimes lives) at the margins. I focus, especially, on the way that people who are marginalized come to be that way, and I come to the conclusion that marginalized people suffer losses are that tied to different kinds of trauma. Sometimes those traumas are historical: like slavery, or internment. Sometimes they are personal, like ostracization from one’s community. And, finally, sometimes trauma comes from social systems: some subjects are pushed to the margins of society by the same forces that bring others into it. In the case of all of those types of trauma, I find a possibility for community: if people are sometimes marginalized, they are often resilient. The bulk of my dissertation tries to find where exclusions end, and make-shift communities begin.

Accredited US zoos aim to support wildlife conservation and educate and influence the public and create a conservation-minded community by curating immersive multispecies experiences. In this case study, I examine how zoos may practice conservation through the frameworks of biopolitics, spectacle, affect, and mainstream conservation paradigms. To conduct this research, I interviewed 10 zoo staff from the animal, education, development, and retail departments of a Midwestern zoo. Their rhetoric about zoos and how they practice conservation suggests that zoo staff aim to generate affective responses from guests by displaying animals in managed care. These affective responses that staff hope to generate have the potential to elicit behavioral changes in the public, such as making responsible consumer choices and donating to the zoo or to other conservation organizations. I conclude that these practices are examples of mainstream (neoliberalized) modes of conservation, which is conservation that is compatible with larger capitalist structures.

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