This thesis problematizes early cyberfeminist claims that heralded the Internet as a liberating space for women. Cyberfeminism emerged in the early 1990s, at the dawn of the “Internet Age,” and is heavily influenced by Donna Haraway’s 1985 “A Cyborg Manifesto.” Haraway theorized a new way of looking at the nature of female identity, using the figure of the cyborg found in science fiction literature and films. Traditionally, women have been explained in terms of sexual difference and have been forced to uphold a gender binary that privileges men. By contrast, Haraway argues that the cyborg, a hybrid of human and machine, escapes binary logic, thereby resisting categories and hierarchies, and embraces a more fluid understanding of identity. This model contains powerful ramifications for women. Every day, we become more like Haraway’s cyborgs as our physical bodies become increasingly intertwined with modern technologies, specifically in our ever-growing relationship with the Internet. In online interactions, users are no longer confined to their physical bodies and are free to play with identity. Early cyberfeminists believe that this leads to a more fluid understanding of identity and, more importantly, allows for the deconstruction of gender. These claims, however, do not apply in practice as well as they do in theory. From the anonymous text-based spaces that early cyberfeminists describe to social networking sites like Facebook, Internet spaces tend to polarize the gender binary rather than blur it, and women are now colonized on a new front. This becomes increasingly dangerous as the boundaries between our virtual and real lives continue to blur.

La tesi ricostruisce il ruolo della figura femminile nel salotto settecentesco in area lombardo-veneta per quanto concerne il rapporto fra teatro musica e letteratura. Lo studio si concentra su quattro figure femminili in particolare: Francesca Manzoni, Luisa Bergalli, Maria Teresa Agnesi e Paolina Secco Suardo. / The thesis reconstructs the role of the female figure in the XVIII century salon in the lombardo-veneto area regarding the relationship between music, theatre and literature. The study focuses on four female figures: Francesca Manzoni, Luisa Bergalli, Maria Teresa Agnesi e Paolina Secco Suardo

The purpose of this thesis has been to explore in what ways Franz Kafka’s ”The Metamorphosis” can be read as a story of gender. By bringing together Judith Butler’s theory of materialization and Lennard J. Davis’s crip theory I have spoken of Dismodernity as the domain of abject bodies that have been repudiated by (post)modern societies as untintelligible and dysfunctional. From this vantage point ”The Metamorphosis” can be seen as an allegory of Dismodernity and the protagonist, Gregor Samsa, can be seen as a political figure of Dismodernity. Therefore, I have tried to draw a feminist insect politics out of his metamorphosis from (hu)man into insect. By doing a close reading, through the theoretical lenses of Judith Butler, Lennard J. Davis and Donna Haraway, Gregor Samsa can be read as an abject non-masculinity which is both produced and made impossible by a heterosexual matrix’s need of intelligible genders and a capitalist system’s need of functional workers. As an abject non-masculinity Gregor Samsa works as a queer (unintelligible) and dismodern (dysfunctional) trickster that both disturbs and makes visible the established gendered norms of (un)intelligibility and (dis)ability through a blurring of the boundaries between human/animal, public/private and masculinity/femininity. As an involuntary trickster he also challenges gender studies and its seeking for ultimate representations for oppositional consciousness pure in their radical potential.

In this thesis I aim to examine the ways in which cultural beliefs and norms about gender and sexuality are shaped by discourses on animals and nature. I have done a participatory observation on two different guided tours of animals and analyze some information about the animals at a Swedish zoo. With a discourse analytical approach, I analyzed transcribed material from the guided tours of animals and information about animals from a gender and queer theoretical perspective, based on Judith Butler's understanding of the heterosexual matrix and her performativity theory. In my analysis, based on my chosen theoretical framework and with support of previous research, I have seen that the way people talk about animals is characterized by human notions of gender and sexuality. In addition to human notions of gender and sexuality, I have seen human notions of ethnocentrism and the division of labor between male and female. Furthermore, I have seen that some of these texts about animals challenge ideas about the division of labor in the home between male and female.

Benjamin Gastineau, dont l’oeuvre se situe entre 1845 et 1880 a été à la fois auteur de théâtre, de romans et de contes, d’articles de journaux et de traités d’histoire et d’analyse et de critique sociale. Héritier de la philosophie des Lumières et lié à des groupes socialistes et républicains, Gastineau considère son écriture comme un moyen pour atteindre le peuple et pour l’élever en suivant les principes de la morale bourgeoise. Seulement grâce à cette éducation le peuple, selon Gastineau, pourra un jour refaire la Révolution et rétablir des conditions favorables pour toute la société, où la justice, la liberté et le bonheur soient garantis. Cette étude permet alors d’une part de mener une enquête sur la diffusion du savoir par des articles de journaux et par des œuvres visant à toucher un public populaire ; d’autre part elle permet de considérer l’engagement politique de cet écrivain à partir de son opposition au coup d’Etat de Napoléon III, en passant par la Commune de Paris et jusqu’à son activité incessante pour la cause des communards, lors de son exil bruxellois. De plus Gastineau prend position contre les privilèges et les abus de l’Eglise de Rome et montre comment les femmes en sont les victimes privilégiées. Le rôle de la femme est à insérer dans un discours beaucoup plus vaste de critique sociale touchant au diable, aux croyances remontant au Moyen Age et à la dégradation des mœurs. C’est en ayant acquis une liberté intellectuelle et matérielle et en se libérant des contraintes dues à la religion que les hommes pourront s’acheminer vers l’avenir : un avenir matériel, symbolisé par le chemin de fer qui mène les hommes au delà du monde contingent, vers l’acquisition de nouveaux espaces, réels et imaginaires et d’une nouvelle réalité à édifier sur des principes de paix, justice et liberté. / Benjamin Gastineau’s work was written between 1845 and 1880. Gastineau wrote some theatre pieces, long and short novels, historical and social essays, and newspaper articles. He was influenced by Enlightenment philosophy and connected with Socialist and Republican thinkers. Gastineau considers his writing as a way to join people, and to give him an education, on following the principals of bourgeois moralism. Only in this way, people – he says – will have the possibility one day to make French Revolution again, and establish favourable conditions for the whole society, where justice, freedom and happiness could be guaranteed for everybody. Our work permits, thus, on the one hand, to investigate on diffusion of knowledge though newspaper articles and works written for popular readers. On the other hand, it permits to consider the political engagement of this writer, since the coup by Napoleon the 3th, passing through the Commune of Paris, and until his defence of the Communards when he was exiled in Brussels. In addition, Gastineau express his position against the abuses and the corruption of Roman Church and shows how women are its main victims. The rule of woman in XIX society takes part of a larger speech concerning social critics and including hell, medieval faith and the degradation of habits. As men have obtained intellectual and material freedom against the obligations impositions caused by religion that men could keep on walk together towards future; a material future represented by railway journey that takes men all over the acquisition of new spaces, real as well as imaginary ones, and of a new reality to build on following principals of peace, justice and freedom.

Wangechi Mutu is an internationally recognized Kenyan-born artist who lives and works in Brooklyn. She creates collaged female figures composed of human, animal, object, and machine parts. Mutu’s constructions of the female body provide a transcultural critique on the female persona in Western culture. This paper contextualizes Mutu’s work and artistic strategies within feminist, postmodern, and postcolonial narratives on collage, while exploring whether collage strategies are particularly useful for feminist artists. In their fusion of machine and organism, Mutu’s characters are visual metaphors for feminist cyborgs, particularly those outlined by Donna Haraway. In this paper, I examine parallels between collage as an aesthetic strategy and the figure of the cyborg to suggest meaningful ways of approaching differences between women and how they experience life in contemporary Western culture.

Within the field of Disability Studies, research on cognitive and developmental disabilities is relatively rare in comparison to other types of disabilities. Using Clifford Geertz's anthropological approach, "thick description," autism can be better understood by placing both fiction and non-fiction accounts of the disorder into a larger theoretical context. Applying concepts from existing works in Disability Studies to the major writings of Jacques Derrida, Julia Kristeva, Jacques Lacan, and Donna Haraway also proves to be mutually enlightening. This ethnographic approach within the context of analysis of literary texts provides a model by which representations of individuals who are cognitively or developmentally disabled can be included in the academy.

Using postmodern, feminist and queer notions of utopia/dystopia and narrative theory, this thesis contains an analysis of The Handmaid’s Tale (novel 1985; film 1990; TV series S01 2017) based on theoretical and methodological understandings of utopia/dystopia and narrative as deeply connected with notions of temporality and relationality, and of violence and resistance as the modes of expression of utopia and dystopia in the source texts. The analysis is carried out in an explorative manner (Czarniawska 2004) and utilises the notion of “disidentification” (Butler 1993; Muñoz 1999) and the concepts of “diffraction” (Haraway 1992, 1997; Barad 2007, 2010), and “entanglement” (Barad 2007). The conclusion becomes that utopia and dystopia in The Handmaid’s Tale are, to a great extent, imagined within the same system of understanding, but that utopian hope can be found in the relationality and temporality of resistance, and that the radically different utopian place is the queer horizon.

SILVA, Eliana Carlos da. Atualizações e Ressignificações do Mito da Donzela Guerreira: Uma análise Comparada dos romances Papisa Joana (Donna Wolfolk Cross) e Memorial de Maria Moura (Rachel de Queiroz). 2013. 156f. – Dissertação (Mestrado) – Universidade Federal do Ceará, Programa de Pós-graduação em Letras, Fortaleza (CE), 2013. / Submitted by Márcia Araújo (marcia_m_bezerra@yahoo.com.br) on 2014-10-21T16:34:19Z No. of bitstreams: 1 2013_dis_ecsilva.pdf: 503693 bytes, checksum: 17e34cb3479de66b4edbd664768b6aaf (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Márcia Araújo(marcia_m_bezerra@yahoo.com.br) on 2014-10-22T13:15:00Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 2013_dis_ecsilva.pdf: 503693 bytes, checksum: 17e34cb3479de66b4edbd664768b6aaf (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2014-10-22T13:15:00Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 2013_dis_ecsilva.pdf: 503693 bytes, checksum: 17e34cb3479de66b4edbd664768b6aaf (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013 / Este trabalho tem como objetivo central analisar os pontos de contato e distanciamento entre as representações do Mito Tradicional da Donzela Guerreira nos romances Papisa Joana, de Donna Woolfolk Cross, e Memorial de Maria Moura, de Rachel de Queiroz. A seleção dos romances citados como corpus desta pesquisa deveu-se às várias semelhanças entre as duas narrativas, mesmo levando em conta o fato de seus enredos estarem inseridos em contextos sócio-históricos bastante diferentes. Partindo dessas premissas, o presente trabalho verifica como as características do Mito da Donzela Guerreira Tradicional se apresentam nas obras Papisa Joana e Memorial de Maria Moura, detectando-se até que ponto elas conseguem contemplar as marcas do referido mito. Para a consecução dos resultados desta pesquisa, alguns construtos teóricos importantes tiveram que ser discutidos e transformados em ferramentas analíticas que permitissem uma melhor apreciação dos romances em foco. Além, logicamente, do Mito da Donzela Guerreira Tradicional, merecem destaque, entre as ideias consideradas como chave para o desenvolvimento desta pesquisa, os conceitos de violência simbólica, corpo disciplinado e/ou dócil e empoderamento. Após a análise das duas obras, confirmou-se a hipótese inicial que norteou o trabalho, ou seja, que as diferenças na forma como o Mito da Donzela Guerreira é representado em Papisa Joana e Memorial de Maria Moura estampam, na verdade, apenas etapas distintas de um mesmo processo: a trajetória das mulheres com vistas ao seu empoderamento.

This thesis investigates the figure of the cyborg as conceptualised by Donna Haraway in The Cyborg Manifesto (1991). The figure of the cyborg, as a transgressive figure in the late twentieth century within socialist feminist discourse, is problematized with regard to its efficacy as a creature that challenges the constructed nature of gender and contests the boundary between human and machine through its ambiguous nature. Haraway’s notions of the cyborg, which she bases partly on cyborg characters from Science Fiction literature, deny the ocularcentric traditions that have structured gender and the body. Similarly, Haraway does not engage adequately with the figure of the cyborg with regard to situating it historically. This thesis unpacks both the visual and the historical aspects that have structured the cyborg body. By engaging with these concepts, the cyborg emerges as a figure that is identified through visual signifiers of female deviance and pathology. By reading female deviance and pathology on the body of the nineteenth-century hysteric, similarities can be drawn between the hysteric and the cyborg. Through a reading of Alien (1979); Blade Runner (1982); and Star Trek: First Contact (1996) key cyborg texts of the late twentieth century, the figure of the cyborg, and its relation to the deviant pathologised female can be understood when read against the body of the hysteric and how it was visually coded and communicated