Our ability to perceive our environment through prejudge mental attitudes is a necessary capacity in order to survive in a social environment. However, how we utilize this capacity, and whether it promotes equality or inequality, is to a large extent dependant on our perception of ourselves in relation to our surroundings. Through critical social theory, this thesis aims to explore and compare attitudes exhibited by the Swedish educational system, towards the socially constructed phenomenon of adolescent students in upper secondary school, speaking their voice. The production of knowledge is problematized regarding the relationship between theoretical regulatory texts of norms, ideals and requirements, versus active implementation in practice. Through metaphysical questioning of reason and norms, discrepancies of intention, lack of consideration for power relations and pernicious ignorance, is problematized and reflected upon, as possible factors reinforcing attitudes of negative stereotyping, identity prejudice and inequality, evoking questions concerning human and children’s rights. Enactment of fear and silencing through reference to status and authority, rather than data actually sustaining a stand through scientific reason and justified knowledge, positions the adolescent student as the subaltern, and perpetuates adultism through imbalance within the dyadic power relation. Through three case studies, chosen due to their compatibility to the frames of a pre- case study initiating attention to the subject at hand, this study exemplifies identity prejudice and institutionalized hegemony through epistemic violence, marginalizing the student to the status of the subaltern. Thereby suffocating both the development of the student, as well as the institutional system´s own purpose and legitimacy, by jeopardizing the confession to scientific reason and justifiable knowledge. It is thus aspects of our ethical and political epistemic conduct this study addresses, by problematizing the cross-boundary interface of research, politics and practice. Findings indicate negative prejudice credibility deficit administered towards students, through social injustice of epistemic violence, fortified by the educational institutions and their regulatory authorities through obscurantism, by neglect of scientific reason and justified knowledge, when constructivist stands implemented as ontological realities, are questioned through critical thinking.

This essay investigates the role of non-governmental organizations in Turkey that work with minority rights. The purpose of this study is to get a better understanding on how domestic NGOs understand and prioritize human rights and how different social structures are restricting NGOs from engaging in human rights of the Kurdish minority. To answer this question this study utilizes a qualitative content analyses of the published research on human rights and NGOs. The analysis has been conducted from a postcolonial perspective. The finding has shown that even if Turkish human right defenders are restricted on how they can work with human rights violations in the society there still is an engagement in trying to work with these social problems. This essay concludes that Kurds have been restricted from working with human rights by means of the Turkish anti-terror law, which may have negatively affected the visibility of Kurdish activist, but not stopped them from engaging in social issues. However, there is still a need for development in the Turkish NGO regime, but the westerniza- tion project may not be the answer for Turkish human right development. This essay argues that the human rights education projects in Turkey should be conducted by domestic NGOs own understanding of human rights and only then there will be potential for real human rights development.

The genre of Magical Realism is normally explored on the sole basis of its identification with and fantastic expression of Latin-American cultural identity. However, the genre, when employed by non-American immigrant women, takes on new characteristics. It not only highlights the mystical underpinnings of everyday life but instructs in a subliminally didactic manner by opening the reader to new possibilities through delightful imagery and a plot woven around transposed myth and folklore. In examining how two female Magical Realists translate their narratives of immigrant life in twentieth-century United States, the instructive nature of the genre is laid bare. Both use a coupling between the genre of Magical Realism and Culinary Fiction to entice the reader into following the lives of each novel’s protagonist, lives communicative of how cultural oppression can persecute immigrant women in a foreign land unless a certain level of assimilation is attained.

Nathaniel Hawthorne's The House of the Seven Gables continuously plays with the idea of narrative authority to explore concepts of class and power within the novel. Since these concepts of class and power are also a central focus of Subaltern Studies, applying some of this body of scholarship to the novel brings into focus these concepts and sheds light on the motivations and types of resistance in the novel. The upper class characters, including the Pyncheons, construct and maintain a narrative based on the declarations of professionals and officials of the state and church. It discusses only the most noble characteristics and events of the upper classes and relies solely on rational, empirical thought. They create this narrative to maintain their authority and dominance. The lower classes, including the Maules, construct an alternate narrative to resist the upper class that is collected and passed down through rumor. Supernatural elements like ghosts and curses figure prominently in this narrative. It is only when the Pyncheon and Maule families begin to listen to and validate multiple narratives that class and power become less important and the reconciliation between families happens.

This thesis examines the relationship between art and fashion in order to first, justify fashion as an art form, and second, demonstrate the applicability of critical theory to the study of fashion through an examination of Alexander McQueen's Spring/Summer 2006 menswear collection, titled “Killa,” presented in Milan, Italy, in 2005. “Killa,” loosely based on William Golding's 1954 novel Lord of the Flies and its 1963 film adaptation, opens with crisp, white, tailored suits worn by neatly groomed models. Steadily throughout the collection, these tailored suits are exchanged for wide-legged, cropped shorts, and tanks in browns and beiges. By the end, models appear on the runway with painted faces, wild hair, and highly patterned, dark-colored body suits and billowing capes. While “Killa” appears to demonstrate the narrative regression from civilized to savage demonstrated in Golding's novel, this thesis argues that McQueen's collection actually strives to promote a more positive ennobling of the Other. A careful study of his life and career suggests that McQueen perceived himself as the Other within the community in which he worked and lived. Frustrated by frequent misinterpretations of his work and false accusations of his character, “Killa” becomes McQueen's ultimate confrontation with Otherness. Positioning the Other at the climax of an elite fashion show, represented by Mesoamerican designs depicted through the highest quality tailoring, McQueen's Other is respected and revered, rather than looked down upon. In this way, McQueen challenges the perception of his own character within the fashion community. Ultimately this thesis seeks to demonstrate the necessity of the application of critical theory to objects of fashion. As demonstrated through the case study of McQueen's 2006 menswear collection, this academic consideration has the potential to reveal important overlooked meanings within the art of fashion. This suggests that McQueen's work, as well as the work of other contemporary fashion designers, merits more thoughtful and careful interpretation in the study of postmodern art history.

Through the life story narratives of Ethiopian women activists, this research explores the journey of Ethiopian women activists during three political and historical periods (1955–1974; 1974–1991; 1991–2015). Thus, the study proposes a new perspective on the forms of Ethiopian women’s activism and subsequently the different types of feminism emerging from their narratives. Through examination of how the activists reflect on, reconstruct and give meaning to their life stories, this research unravels that their activism is informed by feminist principles. It also exposes that it is shaped by a long history of resistance to patriarchy, which enabled women in traditional Ethiopia to negotiate a certain level of “autonomy and liberty”. Contrary to the general expectation, the research demonstrates that the process of modernization (read: westernization) came with its own structure based on western patriarchy, and reinforced local patriarchy. In this new, formalized patriarchy, the rights that women had negotiated through their resistance in earlier times were diminished. This study on women activists, categorized for the purpose of this research as pioneers, revolutionaries and negotiators, suggests that Ethiopian women activists have since adopted different forms of engagement that tend to improve the social, cultural, economic and political conditions of Ethiopian women. Consequently, I argue that, while Ethiopian women’s activism and feminism is firmly embedded in the history of resistance of previous generations of Ethiopian women, the form of activism varies according to the political and historical context in which the activists negotiate and adapt the way they act.

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AbstractIn 2011, the Swedish government created a new curriculum for the compulsory school. This curriculum included stricter guidelines about what was to be taught in a variety of subjects taught in public and many private schools. This policy, entitled Lgr 11, has potential to influence a generation or more of Swedes regarding their understanding of the postcolonial world and future dealings with that part of the world and its peoples. In this paper, elements of postmodern and postcolonial historiography is employed when analyzing Lgr 11’s history syllabus. How the postcolonial world and its histories are represented in Lgr 11‘s narrative(s) is investigated. The importance of this document to Swedes is that, with a significant proportion of the Swedish population recent immigrants from the postcolonial world, the perspectives of that region are important in the development of identity for recent immigrants, Swedes themselves and in understandings of a large portion of the world for less recent immigrant Swedes. Swedish identity now includes postcolonial histories.

This dissertation critically evaluates the issue of the `silencing' of the subaltern woman in the 1988 version of Gayatri Spivak's essay `Can the Subaltern Speak?' The conclusions reached are then related to the novel The Purple Violet of Oshaantu by the Namibian woman writer Neshani Andreas. Chapter 1 deals with the essay `Can the Subaltern Speak?' and the `silenced' subaltern woman, examining both Spivak's theory on this issue as well as criticism of this theory by different postcolonial theorists. Chapter 2 presents aspects of both the creative and political practice of women, specifically the woman writer, in certain countries in Africa. Chapter 3 deals with the novel The Purple Violet of Oshaantu by Neshani Andreas and explores issues like the `silencing' of the subaltern women in the novel, opposition to patriarchal oppression and the engendering of agency by both the writer and the characters in the novel. / English Studies / M. A. (English)

The U.S. Southwest is a semi-arid region affected by numerous environmental problems. Chicana/o communities have been directly affected by such problems, especially ever since the region was annexed from Mexico by the United States in the mid-nineteenth century. From this moment onwards they lost their environmental sovereignty, mostly through their dispossession of the natural resources.   This environmental humanities dissertation focuses on the ethics, politics, and practices around water (management), for water is a key natural resource and a central element of Chicana/o cultural identity. It explores the ways in which Chicana/o culture is interconnected with environmental practices and sites in subaltern literary works about the Chicana/o experience. It investigates how the hegemonic Anglo-American environmental, political, and economic practices have challenged and undermined Chicana/o culture, identity, and wellbeing, and how this has been addressed in fiction; and it questions whether establishing such a connection adds any useful insights to the larger discussion on the global socio-environmental crisis. This dissertation also analyzes the writer activist character of the subaltern narratives of the corpus, with attention to the relevance of rhetoric in subverting and constructing environmental discourses and ethics.   By examining regional and border narratives, as well as fiction and non-fiction narratives about the socio-environmental struggles of other ethnic minorities in the Southwest and in other parts of the world, this dissertation puts literature about the Chicana/o experience in a regional, national, and transnational context. It moreover explores the pivotal role of literature in reclaiming environmental sovereignty, in asserting cultural identities, and in countering the environmental crisis by imagining alternative managerial practices and socio-environmental relations, as much as in challenging cultural hegemonies. / <p>QC 20170508</p>