This study investigates the possibilities of human life in outer space and the implications ofremoving the numinous dimension from creation, using Olga Ravn's novel The Employees.The main question is: How is human life portrayed in Olga Ravn's novel The Employees?What happens when the numinous is removed from creation, and what can this, throughliterature's defamiliarizing potential, reveal about human life? Using Ravn's novel,Stevensson's theory of human nature and Rudolf Otto's concept of the numinous, three keythemes are detected: relationships and emotional life, the dissolution of boundaries, andseparation. The theme of relationships and emotional life presents a technocratic societyvaluing efficiency over emotions, where contact with artifacts from the planet “NewDiscovery” transforms and increases humanity both born (humans) and unborn (cyborgs). Thedissolution of boundaries blurs lines between beings, suggesting human identity and life-deathdistinctions are fluid and interconnected. Separation highlights the loss of belonging, usingthe allegory of mother-child separation to emphasize attachment needs between human andearth. The study concludes that human life requires a society valuing emotions, relationships,and a sense of belonging to a greater whole, challenging the idea of human supremacy

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In the course of this thesis, decisive problematizations, in the Foucauldian sense, around Viktor Šklovskij’s early Russian Formalism shall be the object of re-problematizations. More precisely, a careful look will be taken at re-problematizations around theoretical aspects regarding Šklovskij’s paradigmatic reductionist model, primarily as it is introduced in his article Art as device (1917), described most notably by Aage Hansen-Löve and Wolf Schmid in Der Russische Formalismus (1978) and Slavische Erzähltheorie (2010), Elemente der Narratologie (2014) as well as Grundthemen der Literaturwissenschaft: Erzählen (2018) respectively. The thesis will distinguish four main problematizations divided into two parts, taking the Marxist-Leninist debate on Formalism stirred by People’s Commissar Trotsky and the Nietzschean Dionysian-Apollonian dichotomy characteristic of Russian Modernism as its starting points, encompassing the problematizations as a whole. The initial part of the thesis will address re-problematizations around Šklovskij’s formalist polemics with and misinterpretation of Alexandr Potebnja’s Humboldtian theories, as they appear chiefly in the monograph Thought and Language (1862), in order to illustrate how Šklovskij’s frames a continuum with Potebnja descending from the teachings of Wilhelm von Humboldt. The re-problematizations shall be underpinned by Victor Erlich in Russian Formalism. History – Doctrine (1980), Jacqueline Fontaine in La « innere Form » : de Potebnja aux formalistes (2006) and Serge Tchougounnikov in The formal method in Germany and Russia: the beginnings of European psycholinguistics (2018). The second part of the thesis will foreground the (French) (post)structuralist discourse which, according to this thesis, shapes the formation of problematizations around Šklovskij’s immanent reductionism against the backdrop of Boris Tomaševskij’s interpretation of Formalism in Teorija literatury. Poetika (1925) and also the ideological exchange of the 1920s, assuming this backdrop as part of a definitive understanding and materialist critique of Šklovskij’s reductionist terminology, the homogeneity of its outcome, and what Wolf Schmid calls its anti-substantialism particularly in regards to the binary concept fabula and sjužet. The re-problematizations evolve around what is taken as a materialist solution to these problematizations, which annulls the Aristotelian significance of sjužet as energeia by replacing it with ergon. The discussion will take its point of departure in Göran Sonesson’s article Semiotics of art, life, and thought: Three scenarios for (post)modernity (2011) and search the basis for Sonesson’s argument in Roland Barthes’ article Ecrivains et écrivants (1960). By highlighting Šklovskij’s early Formalism as a mode of experiencing Art on its own terms, this thesis aims to revive its aesthetic principle and the question whether it can enlighten modern literary science.

Given the global climate crisis and the ubiquitous use of literature in Swedish upper secondary schools to raise various values-based issues, this essay examines the didactic potential of Jefferson and how to utilize the novel's aforementioned potential in relation to value-based work in a classroom context. Special emphasis has been invested on the environmental aspect of the value-based work, more precisely: how the relationship between humans and animals affects the environment and how this relationship can be problematized by using Jefferson in the Swedish subject classroom. Malin Alkestrand’s concept of didactic potential has been used in combination with a critical anthropocentric perspective to investigate the didactic potential of Jefferson in relation to the value-based work, and how this potential can be converted into didactic gains for students. Moreover, in addition to the concept of didactic potential, Alkestrand’s theory of alienation and Martha Nussbaum’s theory of narrative imagination have been applied to sections, themes, and literary devices in the book; furthermore, the results of the analysis indicate how Jefferson possesses the didactic potential to address numerous aspects included in the value-based work. The results also show that Jefferson, because of its content and literary devices, provides an especially favorable springboard to address the relationship between humans and animals from an environmental perspective.