Musikaffären är inte enbart en marknadsplats, utan fungerar som en levande mötesplats för musikentusiaster. Studien visar på hur gitarrer och gitarr-relaterade föremål i en musikaffär bildar ett nätverk av både mänskliga och icke-mänskliga aktörer, där gitarren, i synnerhet, som bärare av betydelser, berättelser och symboler framträder som en central aktör. Syftet med denna studie är att visa på vilket sätt gitarren påverkar interaktioner och relationer i musikaffärsmiljön. Mitt empiriska material består av fem observationer och sju kvalitativa samtalsintervjuer med medarbetare och kunder jag träffat i en musikaffär i Stockholm. Som grund för min analys, där jag argumenterar att gitarren i musikaffärsmiljön kan betraktas som en central aktör i ett omfattande nätverk som omger gitarrer i egenskap av köpare, säljare, tillverkare och andra musikinstrument, använder jag det aktör-nätverksteoretiska ramverket (ANT), som betonar att icke- mänsklig materia också kan inneha sociala egenskaper och på så vis har makt att påverka och förändra sin omgivning. För att få en djupare förståelse för hur gitarrer – och andra materialiteter i musikaffärsmiljön – inverkar på interaktioner och relationer, kompletteras analysen med begreppet affordance, som betonar hur objekt och miljöer möjliggör specifika handlingar och interaktioner. / The music store is not just a marketplace but functions as a vibrant meeting place for music enthusiasts. This study illustrates how guitars and guitar-related items in a music store form a network of both human and non-human actors, with the guitar, in particular, emerging as a central actor bearing meanings, stories, and symbols. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate how the guitar influences interactions and relationships within the music store environment. My empirical material consists of five observations and seven qualitative interviews with employees and customers I met in a music store in Stockholm. As the basis for my analysis, where I argue that the guitar in the music store environment can be considered a central actor in an extensive network surrounding guitars as buyers, sellers, manufacturers, and other musical instruments, I use the actor-network theory (ANT) framework, which emphasizes that non-human actors can also possess social properties and thus have the power to influence and change their surroundings. To gain a deeper understanding of how guitars—and other materialities in the music store environment—affect interactions and relationships, the analysis is supplemented with the concept of affordance, which emphasizes how objects and environments enable specific actions and interactions.

Gestalt psychologists Kurt Koffka and Wolfgang Köhler argue that human perception relies on a form, or gestalt, into which perceptions are assimilated. Gestalt theory has been applied to the visual arts by Rudolf Arnheim and to literature by Wolfgang Iser. My original contribution to knowledge is to use gestalt theory to perform literary criticism, an approach that highlights the importance of perception in William Gibson's novels and the impact of this emphasis on posthumanism and science fiction studies. Science fiction addresses the problem of difference and the relationship between self and other. Gestalt literary criticism takes perception as the interface between the self and the other, the human and the inhuman. Gibson's work is of particular interest as his early novels are representative of 1980s cyberpunk while his later novels push the boundaries of science fiction through their contemporary settings. By engaging with Gibson the thesis makes its contribution to contemporary science fiction criticism explicit. In Gibson's Sprawl trilogy autopoiesis defines life and consciousness, elevating the importance of perception (Chapter I). The Bridge trilogy uses the metaphor of chaos theory to examine dialectic tensions, such as the tension between space and cyberspace (Chapter II). Faulty pattern recognition is a key theme in Gibson's post-9/11 work as gestalt perception allows and limits knowledge (Chapter III). Chapter IV explains how the gestalt in psychoanalysis creates a fragmented subject in Spook Country (2007). Finally, the gestalt appears as a parallax view, a view that oscillates between the world we experience and the world as represented in the text (Chapter V). I conclude that gestalt literary criticism offers an exciting new reading of Gibson's work that recognises its engagement with visual culture and cyberpunk as a whole.

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Informe de Seminario para optar al grado de Licenciado en Lengua y Literatura Hispánica mención Literatura

Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

The thesis is about life and personality of John Gibson Lockhart (1794-1854), who was a notable Scottish literary critic and biographer. The first part of the thesis is a brief narrative of his life. The second part is dedicated to the history and manners of Lockhart's family, which was closely related to Sir Walter Scott. This family is compared with a typical family of the period. The third part is tracing Lockhart's influence over the Scottish national movement.

Cyberpunk som litterär genre tar ofta upp teman som berör kroppen och dess förhållande till teknik på olika sätt. I denna uppsats studeras mäns och kvinnors förhållande till sin egen kropp och synen på manliga och kvinnliga kroppar i cyberpunk-romanen Neuromancer av William Gibson, utifrån Yvonne Hirdmans teorier om genus. I analysen av romanen kan man se två huvudsakliga spår utifrån Hirdmans tre formler för förhållandet mellan könen, varav det tydligaste är det som Hirdman kallar jämförelsens formel. Kvinnor ses som impulsstyrda och kroppsliga medan män står för intellektet och en längtan efter att lämna kroppen bakom sig. Eftersom kvinnor ses som kroppsliga, blir det kroppsliga också något kvinnligt och därmed något oönskat för de manliga karaktärerna. I cyberpunken modifierar kvinnor sina kroppar för att kunna stanna kvar i dem, medan män modifierar sina kroppar för att kunna lämna dem.

The poems that form this collection titled, Pretend the Ball is Named Jim Crow, are written in the persona of Negro League Baseball’s Josh Gibson (1911-1947) and those closest to him. Gibson is credited with hitting over 800 home runs in his career and was the first Negro League Baseball Player to be inducted into Major League Baseball’s Hall of Fame without ever playing an inning of Major League Baseball.

I argue that literary texts after 1980 use the fluid relationship between the physical world and the world of writing in order to present alternate versions of the body’s relationship to the mind. Examining works by Toni Morrison, William Gibson, Kathy Acker, Sarah Kane, and Shelley Jackson, I demonstrate the ways in which these texts reinterpret the relationship between mind and body by offering bodily metaphors for their character’s interior emotional lives; they compare this inner life to a pregnant mother, a sexual couple, and more. I emphasize the political implications of the kinds of bodies employed in these metaphors, setting this against the background of late twentieth century feminism. I read my primary texts alongside the work of Julia Kristeva, Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigary, and others, in order to chart the parallel projects of literature and theory in articulating the relationship between the body—especially, the female body—and our understandings of subjectivity and representation. Starting with the 1980s, when the second wave feminist movement suffered conservative backlash, and continuing through the development of the third wave, I examine literary theorizations of feminist concerns during a period of transition in the feminist movement itself.

Ce mémoire porte sur la figure de l'intelligence artificielle, en ce qu'elle permet d'incarner les craintes et les angoisses mises au jour par la critique sociale véhiculée dans les fictions dystopiques. Il analyse les manifestations d'êtres-machines et de structures de contrôle social créés par l'humanité, et dont la conduite témoigne d'une forme d'intelligence; il montre ainsi en quoi certaines structures sociales se calquent sur les machines pensantes imaginées. S'appuyant sur une approche pluridisciplinaire qui fait notamment appel aux domaines de la cybernétique, de la biologie et de la science politique, cette étude de la dystopie se concentre plus particulièrement sur le corpus littéraire suivant: Nineteen Eighty-Four, de George Orwell, Le Dépeupleur, de Samuel Beckett, et Neuromancer, de William Gibson. Prenant ses racines dans l'utopie, la dystopie a été façonnée au XIXe siècle à partir des craintes et des désillusions liées à une industrialisation qui modifiait radicalement le mode de vie humain. Dans ce type de fictions, les rapports de force entre l'humanité et ses outils -ses créations -basculent, car la technique y permet la transmission d'un ascendant sur l'être humain. Cette emprise se voit exacerbée par la machine pensante, dont l'accession à la vie autorise un niveau d'indépendance et d'initiative inaccessible à ses prédécesseurs. Ce faisant, l'intelligence artificielle permet d'imager le déplacement de point focal qui s'opère quand l'outil devient une fin en soi, de même qu'elle illustre les potentialités asservissantes d'une utilisation inconsidérée de la technique. À l'image de l'être artificiel, les structures machiniques de la dystopie acquièrent suffisamment d'autonomie pour pouvoir, elles aussi, attenter à la souveraineté de l'individu. L'humain, noyé au sein de ces structures qui le submergent, n'est alors plus qu'une composante insignifiante dont la spécificité se fait systématiquement gommer par la machine sociale. En définitive, qu'il s'agisse d'un être ou d'un système, la figure de l'intelligence artificielle apparaît comme un sujet agissant, qui incarne la propension de la dystopie à réduire l'individu à l'état de pion. ______________________________________________________________________________ MOTS-CLÉS DE L’AUTEUR : Dystopie, Intelligence artificielle, Cybernétique, George Orwell, Samuel Beckett, William Gibson.