Dans le malaise contemporain, où l’affichage d’une belle image de soi occupe une place prépondérante, la beauté est devenue plus qu’un droit, elle est un devoir. Si l’esthétisation et la technologisation du corps sont des productions sociales du discours hygiéniste, il semble que la laideur se signifierait comme une exclusion de ce qui n’est pas intégrable dans les canons esthétiques. Comment naît le jugement esthétique chez l’être humain ? Nous constatons que les représentations esthétiques, dans la dynamique inconsciente, présentent toujours une connotation phallique. En outre, la psychanalyse nous montre que si nous discriminons le laid, c’est parce que sa vue éveille en nous des angoisses de castration, de dégénérescence et de mort, en faisant travailler notre image corporelle. Nous nous demanderons donc si la médicalisation, le besoin de s’entretenir et de s’embellir font partie des solutions proposées par le social pour maîtriser son corps, le sentiment d’inquiétante étrangeté et la dysmorphophobie.En effet, de plus en plus de patients viennent consulter parce qu’ils se sentent laids et pas à la hauteur d’un tel idéal. Qu’est-ce qui fait qu’un sujet ne s’estime pas beau ? Y a-t-il des sujets qui sont plus susceptibles de se sentir laids que d’autres ? Le sentiment de laideur apparaît quand on ne se sent plus à la hauteur d’un idéal esthétique ; il dévoile au sujet son manque-à-être et à-avoir. La clinique contemporaine nous montre aussi que le rejet social de la laideur se présente comme un cercle vicieux, puisqu’en étant discriminé par le regard de l’autre, le sujet a tendance à fuir ce regard qui le met mal à l’aise. La représentation laide de soi naît alors comme production subjective d’un regard de l’autre projeté et d’un regard de l’Autre introjecté. En conséquence, le tissage psycho-somato-social que les figures cliniques de la laideur désignent, nous permet de soulever d’importants enjeux thérapeutiques et sociaux. Si le sentiment de sa propre laideur peut être le seul moyen que le sujet a trouvé pour parler de ce qu’il ne peut pas dire, alors éradiquer ce symptôme, comme le proposent les prises en charge dans certains champs thérapeutiques, ne présente-t-il pas le risque de faire péricliter unmécanisme de défense et de causer un effondrement psychique ? Se sentir laid peut alors constituer un moment passager dans l’appropriation psychique d’une image de soi, vécue comme châtrée, abîmée et métamorphosée. / Within contemporary discontent, in which good looks play an important role, beauty has become more than a right, it is a duty. If the aestheticization and technologization of the body are social products of the hygienist discourse, ugliness can be defined as an exclusion of what cannot be integrated in aesthetic standards. We are also questioning the construction of aesthetic judgment. We note that in the unconscious dynamic, aesthetic representations contain a phallic connotation. Furthermore, psychoanalysis shows that if we discriminate what is ugly, it’s because its view awakens in us degeneration, castration and death anxiety, having an impact on our body image. So, we are wondering if medicalization, the need to take care and embellish ourselves, are solutions that the social construct proposes in order to control our body, the uncanny, and dysmorphophobia.In fact, patients are increasingly consulting because they are feeling ugly and not measuring up to such ideals. What makes a subject feel not beautiful? Are there individuals that are more sensitive to feeling ugly than others? The feeling of ugliness appears when we are feeling like not measuring up to un aesthetic ideal; it reveals to the subject his/her lack-of-being and his/her lack-of-having. The contemporary clinical field shows that the social rejection of ugliness operates like a vicious ciercle, since the subject that is being discriminated by the look of the other, has the tendency to avoid the latter. The self-representation of ugliness is thus constructed as a subjective production of the projection of the other’s glance and the introjection of the Other’s glance.Consequently, analyzing the psycho-somato-social weaving that the clinical figures of ugliness are designating, raises important therapeutic and social questions. If the feeling of one’s own ugliness is the only way that the subject could find in order to speak about what he/she can’t say, then eradicating this symptom, as other therapeutic fields are suggesting, may constitute a risk of undoing a defense mechanism and causing psychic collapse. Feeling ugly can be considered as a transitional moment towards psychological appropriation of a self-image that is felt as castrated, damaged and metamorphosed.

The aim of this licentiate thesis is to examine the means of self-presentation on the websites of 18 upper secondary schools in Sweden. This empirical material may be referred to as a kind of marketing since they render a highly idealized image of schools. To some extent they exaggerate what school is about, as a way for schools to promote themselves as well as to maintain their hold on the market. Self-presentations thus play an important role in the struggle to attract prospective students and keep these enrolled. The fact that self-presentations refer to schools and not companies in general—although several schools certainly strive to define themselves as such—indicates that self-presentations are not like any other marketing practice. They can also be read as a kind of imaginative documents. In this capacity, self-presentations do not only express what school is or may be interpreted as, but foremost how it envisions itself in the future. The material underlying the study consists of a selection of excerpts that were collected from the schools' webpages at different points of time during the years 2011/2012 and 2016/2017. This allowed me to study both continuities and change in the way schools are presented online. In this study, schools' self-presentations are analyzed thematically in combination with Jason Glynos and David Howarth's so called logics approach, which has been developed out of poststructuralist discourse theory and its ontological assumptions. A logic may be understood in this case as a rule or pattern governing the way a phenomenon like school is constituted. As a research strategy, logics have helped me explore, step by step, the conditions of possibility as well as impossibility of identity-formation processes. I mainly deal with four logics that comprise the overarching principles that structure what it means to be a school: business adaptation, academization, individualization and social responsibility. The empirical study thus consisted in setting out the social, political and fantasmatic aspects of these logics—which consequently served to thematically analyze the contemporary identity-formation on schools' websites. Social aspects have been a descriptive tool to study what characterizes school as presented in the empirical material, whereas political and fantasmatic aspects refer to analytical and critical perspectives. The aim has been to illuminate not only the way schools' identities are organized but also how and why this happens – in other words, what logics do to the identity-formation of schools. Importantly, the logics in question are interrelated and work together at the same time as they 'struggle' over the significance of being a school. As I argue, the identity-formation of upper secondary schools can hence be perceived as crisscrossed by competing and complementary logics that all make certain claims as to what a school is supposed to be (or not). The main task of a traditional Swedish school has been to foster democratic members of society. The findings of my study, however, question such a general understanding. In my empirical material a self-referential meaning of school rather emerges with the purpose to produce good employees; that is, a competent work-force willing to submit to the norms and values of the corporate sector. Subsequently, the boundaries between school and the surrounding world are also increasingly loosened, as business is brought into the classroom and made a premise of learning and development in accordance with the needs and interests of the labor market. However, this replacement of a traditional school is only partial. Since schools are equally dependent on the societal tradition to appear as legitimate and credible alternatives on the educational arena they cannot wholeheartedly commit themselves to a corporate identity. Hence, self-presentations often indicate a struggle to be different enough to stand out from the host of other schools, but also to be similar enough to be considered a 'proper' school. This licentiate thesis has in common with previous studies that statements about qualification and employability measures have indeed increased. A corresponding decline of statements about active citizenship and critical thinking could not be detected – but then again, educational-political aspects confirm that a traditional school may be understood as a background against which an alternative school is formed. This is a conclusion which is consistent with the findings of previous studies on school and education policy.