Happiness is often considered our ultimate goal in life. This essay explores the political im- plications of this view, through the critique of happiness found in the works of Simone de Beauvoir and Sara Ahmed. Ahmed and Beauvoir consider happiness to be harmful as a po- litical goal, since it tends to diminish dimensions of power and conflict in favor of harmony, and is not compatible with a political philosophy based on freedom or liberation. Happiness is often confused with the ethical Good, but this essay argues that happiness does not ne- cessarily entail good things. Indeed, happiness can be used to justify oppression and unjust political systems.

A paranoid and shameful reading of Inger Christensens novel Azorno.The contagious feelings of paranoia and shame played a vital part in my first reading of the novel Azorno, written by the Danish poet Inger Christensen. In this essay, I’m letting those emotions direct the ‘understanding’ and analysis of the novel. In earlier research the focus has been to comprehend what the novel ‘really is about’, and even though it has been mentioned that the form probably is a way to make the reader a visible constructer of  the novel’s ‘meaning’ the understanding has never been created by the affects that occurs during the reading. In doing so, I mean, a new and more subversive ‘understanding’  of Azorno is possible. Azornos is a quite peculiar novel which form builds upon an ambivalence, where the reader never can distinguish true from false, fiction from reality. This ambivalence is caused through the change of narrator that takes place in each chapter. The Chapters are first shaped as letters, where four women discuss who is the one that really knows Azorno, and then as notes, that seem to come from a diary and concerns the writing of a novel. The uncertainty increases when the earlier narrator is accused by the next one of being a liar, something that happens in every letter. In the notes the first narrator is told to be the pseudonym of the next one and so it continues. Thus the reader get the feeling of not knowing who the true narrator is – or if there is one. The accusations of lying and the paranoid attitude are contagious to the reader who gets the feeling that the text and its narrators are not to be trusted. Another affect shaping the text is shame, caused by the text’s seductiveness. The reader is held in the violence of the text by constantly searching for the truth but also repeatedly being deprived the delightful taste of it. At the same time, the reader is also starting to shamefully enjoy the feeling of being fooled by the text. In the article, I will use the theory of paranoia offered by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. Sedgwick understands paranoia as nothing different from knowledge per se and as a feeling that, when it’s shared, can be a useful in theories aiming to understand and deconstruct power. The positive consequences of acknowledging paranoia while reading is according to Sedgwick understood as something that, if it is taken seriously,  also can be a way to move towards possibilities and reparation. By embracing the strong and negative feeling of paranoia, the reader, I argue, has the opportunity to, together with the text, construct another narrative about the seducer Azorno – which is the name of the main character of the novel– and, the perhaps five, women who might be his mistresses.  When adding the acknowledgment of shame and using the theory of shame as a emotional power of keeping ’things in it’s ”right” place’, but also a feeling that – if it is shared – can work in opposite direction, since shame seen as a important experience also can make normative ideas visible. By admitting and sharing the shame sensed during the reading of Azorno, normative ideas regarding the relationship between the reader and the text, as well as standard ideas about mistresses and seducers, becomes visible and therefore also brought to a possible change. Thus, in the ending of the novel a new affect – more exultant – is achieved in the relationship between the reader and Azorno.

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This essay aims to explain the attraction toward the main character Stavrogin that the other characters experience in Dostoevsky's The Possessed, his great novel from 1871. I will mainly employ the terms “orientation” and “disorientation” in my analysis of Stavrogin's power of attraction. The theory used for this reading is principally inspired by Sara Ahmed's Queer Phenomenology – Orientation, Objects, Others (2006), and the meaning I attach to the terms “orientation” and “disorientation” is derived from Ahmed's use of them. Ahmed's queer phenomenology helps us to reflect upon how Stavrogin functions as a point of orientation in the novel. This makes him a demonic influence on the other characters, in the sense that he disorientates them. The Possessed asks us what happens when we “lose our way”, and confusion as well as disorientation is a general theme of the novel. This topic has been raised before, but few have connected the demonic disorientation with the underlying unconventional desires, such as Peter Verchovensky's desire for Stavrogin. In this essay I attempt to show how Stavrogin can be thought of as a “new” orientation for the other characters, and how their following him causes them to follow lines that lead to destruction.

In this thesis the aim is to examine how objects matter with regards to orientation in the work To Pieces written by the Finnish author Henry Parland. The question posed by Sara Ahmed in Queer Phenomenology becomes the starting point of this work. The aim of returning to this question is to accentuate the role of objects in the process of orientation. More specifically how the things themselves make up the life-world, which can be described as a “coherency of things”. When the lifeworld and the subject is aligned the world is familiar and open. It becomes a world that lets the subject in question extend itself and act as it intends. When the orientation fails, the subject becomes disorientated, the world falls apart. The things are used as tools to extend the subject in its world. But things are not mere tools for the subject to extend itself with. The things can be seen as having agency, something that is examined through the theory of agential realism by Karen Barad. Here the agency of matter is examined in such a way that the binary opposition of subject-object is questioned. Instead Barad suggest that we return to the matter itself and examine how it intra-acts in such a way that the boundaries and entities are formed within the so-called phenomena. Together these two theories are put to work in the novel To Pieces which becomes a place for them to join together by showing how orientation is formed reciprocally in the subject-object discourse. The novel is full of human intra-action with things, be it mirrors, photografies, cigarettes, hats, or other humans who are reduced to objects. From here the things themselves set in motion a kind of revolution, which questions the anthropocentric order.

The purpose of this essay is to explore how one goes from theory to practice ina gender equality work in preschool by examining how preschool teachers havereceived and worked with a support- and inspiration material that a groupwithin the education administration in Umeå township has developed. I haveconducted qualitative interviews with four preschool teachers with a focus onan equal conversation in order to advocate that research is created ininteraction with others. With the analytical method InterpretivePhenomenological Analysis (IPA), the preschool teachers' experiences andfeelings have been analyzed and then interpreted with the help of institutionaltheory and Sara Ahmed's (2012) phenomenological theories about diversitywork within institutions.The results show that preschool teachers believe that it is important to work forgender equality in preschool. They also believe that there are benefits toworking more broadly and including more social categories than gender, andalso critically examining norms in preschool. Furthermore, the results showthat there are difficulties and obstacles within the organization that affect howthe support- and inspiration material has been received and worked with. Theseinclude challenges in going from theory to practice, fear of conflict withcolleagues, uncertainty about, and different interpretations of the concept ofgender equality and lack of leadership. In summary, it can be said that it takesmore than just distributing a gender equality material to create change in thedirection of increased gender equality in preschool. / <p>2022-06-02</p>

Uppsatsen utgår ifrån Sara Ahmeds bok “Queer Phenomenology – Orientations, Objects, Others”. I uppsatsen diskuteras  hur vi människor upplever världen genom föremålen som omger oss och hur detta orienterar oss på olika sätt. På samma sätt som vissa förmål orienterar oss och gör att vi följer normativa linjer så kan andra föremål, eller föremål i andra situationer bryta dessa linjer och desorintera oss. Konst skulle kunna ses som sådana desorienteringsföremål som låter oss se världen på nya sätt. Uppsatsen innehåller också en diskusion kring induktiva resonemang i realtion till att förstå och navigera sig i välden och hur dessa år både nödvändiga och otillräckliga.

This essay examines the body in Stina Aronsons Den fjärde vägen, and is based on theories from Sara Ahmed who writes about how the body is orientated toward and away from objects and others. The essay also intend to examine the way the character inhabit the room from a bodily experience and how this affect the way they feel and act against each other and themselves.  My method is close reading, in which I approach parts of the book that refers to the body from different angles. In that way I read the book from a gender oriented perspective as well as a social perspective— in which the characters are related to different norms that causes expectations of how they should act in a certain kind of way.

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This thesis explores young people’s transgenderings through negotiations of language, bodies and experiences of different peer and community-based support spaces in Aotearoa New Zealand. It critically examines what ‘support’ means for young people in relation to developing subjectivities and embodiments shaped by being both young and transgender/ gender non-conforming. While these perspectives are varied, I argue that the production of community and peer-based support for those who are both young and transgender or gender non-conforming has been undergoing a period of significant change, reflecting queer and postmodern shifts which have worked to re-conceptualise the ways queer and transgender communities and peers are imagined, incorporating a greater inclusive focus on diversity. Utilising Sara Ahmed’s concept of queer phenomenology and post-structuralist theory, the thesis thinks beyond binary approaches to gender and support, to consider support and gender non-conformity through the process of ‘disorientation’. Throughout this project both ‘gender’ and ‘support’ are positioned as being subjective, embodied and discursive knowledges and actions, represented in multiple and contradictory ideas, identities and expressions of the different participants. The study utilises in-depth qualitative interviews with participants who are young people (aged 16-30 years) and support providers and developers of transgender/queer based support in Aotearoa New Zealand. Working with young people and support providers, this research provides an analysis of support development for transgender and gender non-conforming young people in Aotearoa New Zealand, arguing that all participants in support (both providers and recipients) are shaping its provision.