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Abort/Motstånd är en diskursanalytisk studie av text och bild hämtade från den internetbaserade verksamheten hos de svenska abortkritiska organisationerna Ja till livet och Människorätt för ofödda. Uppsatsens övergripande syfte är att urskilja hur kvinnan och hennes kropp konstrueras inom antiabortrörelsens internetbaserade verksamhet – det vill säga den diskursordning som behandlas. Det teoretiska ramverket utgår från kvinnligt subjektskap och kroppslighet, abort analyseras även i relation till graviditet och/eller moderskap. Analysen tar avstamp i kvinnans situation och behandlar body/mind-distinktionen, samt problematiserar denna i relation till den medicinska västerländska diskurs som ofta fråntar den gravida kvinnan subjektsstatus. Av analysen framgår det att huvuddragen i motståndsdiskurserna, i relation till kvinnlig autonomi, karaktäriseras av tre drag: att fostret tilldelas super-subjektstatus, att den gravida kvinnan berövas sitt subjektskap och att kvinnor som vill göra abort närmast porträtteras som monster. Detta innebär i förlängningen att gravida kvinnor avhumaniseras – eller att de riskerar att betraktas som levande kuvöser.

Marie Laberge began her career as a playwright at the end of the 1970's. Presently, with 15 plays to her name, she holds an important place in women's theatre in Quebec and in Quebecois theatre in general. Not only is Marie Laberge a successful playwright, she is also a novelist. / This work examines the feminist ideas and the female experience as presented in Marie Laberge's plays and novels. / Initially, the important themes of women's theatre in Quebec and Marie Laberge's position and role within this movement will be explored. The dominant themes of the feminist movement in Quebec since 1970 will be highlighted. The concept chronotope, defined by the Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtine, will be employed in the thesis to assist with the evaluation of the female experience. / Three periods of Marie Laberge's work will be defined as feminist action, moderated feminism and absence of feminism. To properly study these three phases, one text from each, which best represents the ideas of that period, will be analyzed in detail. Once the ideas relevant to this study are exposed, they will be explored in relation to the other works in each phase and to the feminist movement in Quebec during the same period. / In conclusion, the growth of the feminism in Marie Laberge's work will be summarized and compared to the feminist movement in Quebec and its evolution.

The increasing importance of pornography since its commercialization at the end of the seventies modified the artistic landscape of sexual representation. What has occurred is a transformation of the horizon of expectations of pornographic images, the definition of eroticism and the relationship between the two notions. In this perspective, the thesis concentrates on the analysis of the appropriation of certain distinct traits of hard core pornography in feminist art. Specifically, it is a qualitative analysis of the interrelations between eroticism and pornography in feminist art during the 1980s. The thesis proceeds to an in-depth analysis of several works by Pipilotti Rist, Annie Sprinkle, and Marlene Dumas as well as adding three earlier works of sexually explicit representation by Carolee Schneemann. The analysis of these works aims to redefine notions of pornography and eroticism, drawing on the work of Linda Williams for the first definition and Georges Bataille for the second. The theoretical context of the thesis, which also turns out to be the historical context of the works, is made up of disciplinary approaches that have most contributed to the debate around eroticism and pornography: art history, philosophy, feminist studies, queer theory, semiology and psychoanalysis. / The thesis makes several conclusions. First, the dynamic between eroticism and pornography does not have to be considered oppositional; the two methods of expression are frequently both represented in the same work. Also, women are no longer uniquely victims of pornography (they are increasingly in the role of pornographic auteure) and the analysis of these works confirms that feminists have appropriated the genre to explore a diversity of female eroticisms and propose a form of feminist, intersubjective pornography. Finally, the use by female artists of syntaxes and features typical of pornography helps to bring about a demand for a more complete and complex female subjectivity which is no longer only political, but also sexual.

Grounded in the methodologies of New Historicism, New Criticism, Subaltern Studies, and Colonial Discourse Analysis, this dissertation explores Englishwomen’s fictions of the nautch girl (or Indian dancing girl) at the turn of the century. Writing between 1880 to 1920, and within the context of the women’s movement, a cluster of British female writers—such as Flora Annie Steel, Bithia Mary Croker, Alice Perrin, Fanny Emily Penny and Ida Alexa Ross Wylie—communicate both a fear of and an attraction towards two interconnected, long-enduring communities of Indian female performers: the tawaifs (Muslim courtesans of Northern India) and the devadasis (Hindu temple dancers of Southern India). More specifically, the authors grapple with the recognition that these anomalous Indian women have liberties (political, financial, social, and sexual) that British women do not. This recognition significantly undermines the imperial feminist rhetoric circulating at the time that positioned British women as the most emancipated females in the world and as the natural leaders of the international women’s movement. The body chapters explore the various ways in which these fictional devadasis or tawaifs test imperial feminism, starting with their threat to the Memsahib’s imperial role in the Anglo-Indian home in the first chapter, their seduction of burdened Anglo-Indian domestic women in the second chapter, their terrorization of the British female adventuress in the third chapter, and ending with their appeal to fin-de-siècle dancers searching for a modern femininity in the final chapter. My project is urgent at a time when imperial feminism is becoming the dominant narrative by which we are being trained to read encounters between British and Indian women, at the expense of uncovering alternative readings. I conclude the dissertation by suggesting that the recovery of these alternative readings can be the starting point for rethinking the hierarchies and the boundaries separating First World from Third World feminisms today. / English

Research Doctorate - Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / The thesis involves a re-examination of feminist views of the childbearing body from a post-structuralist perspective and applies these theoretical ideas to an empirical investigation into contemporary childbirth and midwifery. Critiques of medicalised childbirth developed in Australia, Britain and the USA in the 1970s are related to debates within feminism about appropriate ways to theorise motherhood and the female body as well as to understand the role played by midwives and doctors in childbirth. It is argued these critiques were the product of three strands of feminism that differed in their analysis of gender politics, their philosophy of knowledge and their understanding of power. The three critiques are also related to differences between the USA, Britain and Australia in respect of their medical system, ways in which the history of childbirth practices are viewed and differences between the professional roles of midwives. It is argued that these critiques need to be modified by more recent post-structuralist feminist approaches, particularly the way in which bodies are shaped by language and power is related to the distribution of knowledge The empirical study concentrates on a maternity unit in a regional town in New South Wales. The unit was studied through repeat interviews with mothers attending the hospital for the birth of their second or a later child, interviews with the midwives and doctors working in the unit and observations over several months. Childbirth is re-imagined as a drama and found to be an intense embodied experience shaped in turn by the practices of the hospital and the changing boundaries between medicine and midwifery, relationships of the women with the staff and the women’s own diversity. This approach to the analysis of the interview data demonstrates the limitations of the liberal feminist critique that there is insufficient rational and ‘scientific’ evaluation of childbirth practices, the radical feminist critique that the key issue is men’s domination of women’s bodies and the materialist feminist critique of the lack of fairness and support given to childbearing women, while showing how these discourses continue to circulate in debates over the management of childbirth.