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This is an investigation on writing, through writing, with writing, on and in thinking with Julia Kristeva’s theory on abjection. This paper aims to research the subject of abjection as writing and does so by reading the meaning of solitude in the writings of Maurice Blanchot, Marguerite Duras and primarily the work Aqua Viva by Clarice Lispector. This paper wishes to establish a philosophical framework for future research within writing as an artistic practice.

This academic paper examines the menstrual art that is seen as provocative in the contemporary art debate in Sweden. The paper problematizes menstrual art as a concept. Moreover, it critically examines how the concept of menstrual art has been received by politicians, art theorists and journalists. The ideas and artistic expressions in menstrual art have been analyzed using Kristeva’s psychoanalytic theory on abjection and Wasshedes verbalized form abjectification. As well as how the distinction between purity and dirt can be examined by using the ideas found in menstrual art. How do artists challenge prevailing societal structures and norms by creating menstrual art? Which ideas does the concept of menstrual art include? How did the concept of menstrual art become a controversial word in the contemporary debate in Sweden?

Uppsatsens problemställning rör frågan om det är möjligt att utröna hur tystnaden framställs i Nelly Sachs sena lyrik och vad den säger, och huruvida det är möjligt att relatera denna tystnad till en medveten kontra omedveten uttrycksform. Min avsikt är alltså att undersöka de strukturer eller mönster – medvetna som omedvetna – som står att finna i Sachs lyrik som kan kopplas samman med denna tystnad, inte för att fastställa en dikts betydelse utan för att undersöka hur tystnadens närvaro tar sig uttryck och låter sig urskiljas i hennes dikter. Jag gör detta dels genom att i uppsatsens del ett redogöra för hur tystnaden som tema och problem uppfattas i den tidigare forskningen. I del två försöker jag fördjupa dessa rön genom en vidare koppling till Sachs modernistiska formspråk, och med hjälp av bland annat psykoanalytisk teori görs ett antal närläsningar av hennes senare dikter. Den teoretiska ramen för diskussionen hämtar jag alltså främst från psykoanalysen som på olika vis uppmärksammar lakuner, trauman och omedvetna dimensioner i språket, vilket jag menar kan öka förståelsen för tystnadens problematik hos Sachs. Undersökningen genomförs närmare bestämt i linje med Julia Kristevas teoribildning. Kristeva är psykoanalytiker och även professor i lingvistik och har formulerat teorier om det poetiska språket som visat sig fruktbara i min läsning av det ”ordlösa språket” hos Sachs. Kathrin M. Bower refererar träffande till Kristevas arbete som ”Kristeva’s distinctive brand of psychoanalytic semiotics”.

This paper deconstructs twelve contemporary political speeches from leaders of the Swedish parliament, using Julia Kristeva’s interpretation of the abject. Focusing mainly on Annie Lööf (C) and Jimmie Åkesson (SD), it examines speeches made at Almedalsveckan, spanning the years 2014–2019. In addition to these speakers, but to a lesser extent, it references Ebba Busch Thor (KD) and Jonas Sjöstedt (V) from the same time period and event. Rather than looking at these narratives from a rhetoric point-of-view, this paper analyses the reader’s/listener’s affective relationship to the text. Are the speakers attempting to arouse feelings of horror, disgust, repulsion, or anxiety in their audience with their choices of words and images? When, how… and why? To answer these questions some sociological and political theories are utilised alongside Kristeva’s, namely those of Randall Collins and Murray Edelman. In applying Collins explanation for how group solidarity is generated – by extension, how group identity is created – this paper suggests that abjection serves a vital role in these speeches as part of the political strategy to gain and maintain support. Through separation and exclusion, delineating what the speaker and their sympathisers are and are not, as well as designating enemies on whom they can project their fears and frustrations, the speaker effectively forges group cohesion. This process can provide members of said group (i.e. readers and listeners) with a release of tension, or feelings of reassurance or excitement. The result of these political narratives, whether intended or not, is an imagined, idealised Swedish subject, who affirms the “necessity” of the political leader that imagines them.

Renegotiations: Body, Line, Ethics departs from questions concerning authorship and agency for actors in institutionalised settings and moves towards a discussion on ethics, responsibility and possibilities in the body – text relationship. The question of how bodies can be renegotiated in and by the theatrical line is central to the work. Against a backdrop of previous and other stage productions in theatre institutions and independent constellations the staging of three texts by Elfriede Jelinek: Rosamunde, The Wall and Winterreise becomes the method for investigating and articulating the authorship of the actor. An investigation of the possible renegotiation of the (female) body from social objectivity to existential subjectivity has unfolded through the three works, partly in dialogue with the thematic content of the texts but mainly through the process of reflection and action spurred by the actor's translation of the dramatic line into bodily and oral specificity, in the labour of making poetry concrete. The ethics of ambivalence proposed by Simone de Beauvoir has emerged as an important artistic method in these processes, as her ethics not only suggests a conceptual and political framing of the work and authorship of the actor as inherently ambivalent and transcendent, but also offers a range of methodological approaches to agency coupled with rather than opposed to doubt and self-criticism, for a simultaneous construction and questioning of subjectivity. Photos and videos from the three performances are part of the final presentation of the dissertation, as are three freely articulated responses from Christina Ouzounidis, Annika Nyman and Hanna Hallgren, who each expose critical, methodological and thematic aspects in one of the works. Part of the presentation is also an essay in four chapters. Departures and conflicts in the project is discussed, in a topology extending from institutional critique to methodology and feminist theory. The work and position of the actor is articulated in relation to thinkers as Hannah Arendt and Virginia Woolf, together with a feminist reading of a dialectical theatre tradition and the historical and philosophical understanding of "the woman" as proposed by Simone de Beauvoir. With Beauvoir the essay moves into a discussion of the theatrical situation as constituted by body and time rather than by social circumstances. This discussion is further deepened by the psychoanalytical approach offered by Julia Kristeva's understanding of the relationship between language and the speaking subject, and then moves into a description of the methods used, using the staging of Rosamunde as example. Finally, an attempt at articulating the actor's work as an ethical practice is presented, as a consequence of the previous discussion but also informed by the postcolonial analysis of feminism and translation of Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Sara Ahmed's queer phenomenology and Judith Butler's approach to what constitutes "the possible." Rather than understanding the practice of the performing actor as a work aiming at communicating themes or ideas and bringing narratives to life, this dissertation suggests understanding it as a social and political becoming, where the performing body can create the possibility of observing itself and the possibility of renegotiating the creation of subjectivity; all in the moment of the performance. Thus the work concludes with an insisting on the body – text relationship as performative and potentially radically transformative: a becoming with the other and others where the body is exposed to the risk and possibility of change, a change in which desire, grief and insecurity are embraced as ethical resources.

This dissertation explores the intimate relationship between irony and romantic subjectivity, by drawing on feminist psychoanalytical theory, via an examination of the shiftings of irony, and humor, in the works of the Swedish romanticist P. D. A. Atterbom (1790–1855). It looks at the critical role played by irony in the formation of Romantic subjectivity, and explores irony’s potential to undermine dualistically gendered notions of subject-object relations. For Atterbom, irony is an aesthetic concept closely related to drama, informed not only by German Romantic-ironic theorists such as Friedrich Schlegel and Jean Paul, but also by the works of Shakespeare, Ludwig Tieck, and E. T. A. Hoffmann. The thesis follows the shiftings of Romantic irony in Atterbom’s major literary texts: the cycle of poems Blommorna [The Flowers] (1811), where the Ovidian transformations are used metafictively to play with the relation between poet, poem, and reader; and the literary satire Rimmarbandet [The Rhyme Band] (1810), which, inspired by Tieck’s Der Gestiefelte Kater (1797), uses the metafictive theatre-in-the-theatre motif, as well as carnivalesque and grotesque motifs to expose contrived theatricality and homosocial misogyny in the prevailing culture. The dynamic between the satirist’s subject and the attacked object is a polarized power struggle, where revolt is followed by submission. In this respect, Romantic satire is here conservative. In the fairy tale play Lycksalighetens ö [Island of Felicity] (1824–27), tragedy’s irony is a dialectic between the ideal and the real that strives to create both inner and outer renewal. The play reaches out metafictively to the reader and turns her/him into the poet of a new version of the fairy tale. The reading/writing process inscribed in the work thus becomes a form of renewal and liberation from grief, and old, patriarchal gender roles. Finally, the humorous, unfinished idyll Fågel Blå [Blue Bird] (1814, 1818, 1858) is a work in many pieces, a fragment, a sketch and a non finito that together stages a restorative creative process, where the reader is asked to take part in joining together the scattered parts of Blue Bird itself. To conclude, irony is a feature of Romanticism, which makes the Romantic, literary subject relational and dialogical, open to its Other, and herein lies a form of ethics and an escape from a conventional, patriarchal notion of the self. I discuss this with Julia Kristeva’s theories on how subjectivity changes when it becomes poetic and Jessica Benjamin’s Winnicott-influenced theory of how play can offer a way out from patriarchy’s strict gender roles. The shiftings of irony in Atterbom’s work show a development from the satirical subject, where an aggressive form of self-assertion conceals a lack of individuality – via tragedy’s painstaking efforts to integrate repressed aspects of the self – to the idyll’s more harmonious subject, who has the capacity to laugh at him/herself and see both the grotesque in the holy, and the holy in the grotesque.

Uppsatsens syfte är att visa hur litteratur kan läsas och skrivas autistiskt. Att läsa en text innebär att vi avkodar och tolkar diskursen med hjälp av våra personliga referensramar. Med hjälp av olika litteraturteoretikers begrepp belyser denna uppsats att det finns skillnader i avkodningen baserat på kognitiva färdigheter och här främst svårigheter påverkade av autismspektrumsstörningar. Genom en kvalitativ textanalys av Jeanette Wintersons verk Lighthousekeeping visar uppsatsen hur dessa autistiska perspektiv kan upptäckas och även användas i språket. Julia Kristevas begreppsdefinition gällande semiotisk tolkning är en stöttepelare i analysen vilket även Victor Sklovskijs begrepp främmandegöring och Roman Jakobsons teorier kring litterär afasi är. Analysens slutsats är att det autistiska kan nyttjas för att berika tolkningsvariationerna och estetiskt förändra språket från prosaiskt till mer poetiskt. De autistiska språkgreppen som kan utläsas i Jeanette Wintersons roman Lighthousekeeping gör att språket utmanar läsarens automatiska avkodning och agerar därmed förfrämligande.

Denna uppsats diskuterar Julia Kristevas begrepp det semiotiska i Pipilotti Rists audiovideoinstallation Tyngdkraft, var min vän, som visades på Magasin 3, Stockholm konsthall, 2007. Verket består av ett rum med upphöjda mattskulpturer där betraktaren kan ta av sig skorna och lägga sig ned för att ta del av två filmer som visas i taket ovanför matthögarna. Största delen av filmerna utspelar sig under vattenytan där en kvinna och en androgyn man utforskar ett universum fyllt av sinlighet, närvaro, lekfullhet, kropp, drifter och lugn -ett paradis fyllt av växtlighet och där tyngkraften ibland minskat. Bilder i starka färger och ljus, kaleidoskopiska formationer och ett till viss del uppbrutet bildspråk, möter åskådaren. Det semiotiska beskrivs av Kristeva som den driftsmässiga dimensionen av språket som är kopplat till ett förspråkligt stadium hos det preoidipala barnet innan det hunnit utvecklats till ett eget subjekt. Med detta menar hon den värld nära moderskroppen som barnet befinner sig i och där en icke-språklig kommunikation sker mellan mor och barn. Dock står denna värld inte helt utan lag och ordning eftersom modern (och barnet) alltid befinner sig under en viss språklig och kulturell lagbundenhet, kallad den symboliska ordningen, vilken kommer in även i det semiotiska. Det semiotiska och det symboliska är därför nära kopplade till varandra och kan inte existera utan varandra. Det semiotiska lever kvar även efter att det lilla barnet utvecklats till ett subjekt och trätt in i den språkliga, symboliska ordningen. Detta visar sig som semiotiska spår i bland annat konsten, och när det kommer till språket ser vi det främst i poesin, som är ett mindre lagbundet språk som rör sig i gränslandet mellan det semiotiska och det symboliska. Eftersom Tyngdkraft, var min vän inte innehåller något talat eller skrivet språk görs i uppsatsen en koppling mellan detta verk och det semiotiska genom utforskandet av olika element i verket. Dessa element är tyngdkraften, jorden, vattnet, bildspråket, upprepningen, rytmen, moderskroppen, paradiset, affekterna och drifterna samt gränslandet natur och kultur.

Studien undersöker hur kvinnliga karaktärer representeras i relation till skräcktematiken i tv-serien Penny Dreadful (2014-). Syftet har varit att studera huruvida det som är typiska kännetecken för skräck kan kopplas till kvinnlighet, femininitet och feminism (det senare då man kan uppfatta ett genuskritiskt samtal i serien). Med hjälp av psykoanalytiska teorier kring abjektion visar analysen hur det som är skrämmande med kvinnor, är skrämmande på andra sätt än vad som är skrämmande med män. Det som är abjekt med kvinnan definieras ofta utifrån hennes sexualitet och biologiska egenskaper, och skapar därmed en feminin monstrositet och således är helt olik den manliga. Detta har till stor del växt fram genom historiska myter, religioner och konst, som har bidragit till könsspecifika monster utifrån stereotyp femininitet, så som häxor, sirener eller Medusa. Genom att utforska tv-seriens karaktärer med hjälp av semiotiska och psykoanalytiska verktyg avslöjas möjliga tolkningar som visar hur nämnda feminina monster tycks grunda sig i manlig rädsla och kvinnan som hot. Kastrationskomplexet som bidragande faktor och den manliga blicken tycks därför kväsa uttryck för kvinnlig frigörelse i serien, genom att sexualisera, plåga och göra kvinnan abjekt och monstruös i direkt genmäle till dessa. Serien tycks därför trots sin genuskritiska diskurs kontrolleras av en manlig blick och ett skoptofiliskt seende, något som möjligtvis bidrar till att kvinnlighet och femininitet kodas som abjekt, och i värsta fall stigmatiserar den feministiska kvinnan. Reviderad upplaga

Autobiographies and documentaries usually aim to elicit a discussion about social issues by shocking and horrifying readers and viewers, often through graphic imagery. This study's ambition is to examine how literary documentary borrows from the gothic tradition to depict real societal issues. My aim is to show how the gothic style transcends the borders of the genre and that literary documentary about self-harm tends to work through the same thematic and narrative structures as the literary gothic. With a focus on contemporary depictions of self-harm and mental illness in young women and girls in Sweden, this analysis explore how the function of sexuality, gender and self-harm in gothic horror can be applied on these texts. At the same time this study explores how selfharming women tend to use gothic imagery to portray the horrors of their own reality that is saturated with extreme and negative emotions. For comparison, two famous depictions of girls going through puberty from the literary horror genre; Carrie and The Exorcist, are examined to further anchor the connection between femininity, blood and puberty in the gothic theoretical field.

I denna uppsats kommer jag analysera flickskildringen i två ungdomsromaner, Freaky green eyes och Two or three things I forgot to tell you av Joyce Carol Oates. Romanernas flickor bär på pendlande känslor av begär och avsky både inför sig själva och sina föräldrar. Därför har Julia Kristevas teorier kring abjektion som förklarar dessa motstridiga känslor som en del av subjektets tillblivelse varit fruktsamma för min analys. Flickorna söker tillgång till språket och makten genom en identifikation med sina pappor och manliga värden samt ett bortstötande av sina mammor och allt som representerar det kvinnliga. Men för att må bra och kunna uttrycka sin egen sanning krävs ett omfamnande av mammorna och den egna kvinnligheten vilket när de tillslut fullbordas får flickorna att hitta inre harmoni och sin egen röst.

Autobiographies and documentaries usually aim to elicit a discussion about social issues by shocking and horrifying readers and viewers, often through graphic imagery. This study's ambition is to examine how literary documentary borrows from the gothic tradition to depict real societal issues. My aim is to show how the gothic style transcends the borders of the genre and that literary documentary about self-harm tends to work through the same thematic and narrative structures as the literary gothic. With a focus on contemporary depictions of self-harm and mental illness in young women and girls in Sweden, this analysis explore how the function of sexuality, gender and self-harm in gothic horror can be applied on these texts. At the same time this study explores how selfharming women tend to use gothic imagery to portray the horrors of their own reality that is saturated with extreme and negative emotions. For comparison, two famous depictions of girls going through puberty from the literary horror genre; Carrie and The Exorcist, are examined to further anchor the connection between femininity, blood and puberty in the gothic theoretical field.

Uppsatsen undersöker och jämför den tematiska och språkliga gestaltningen av den instabila identiteten i Johannes Anyurus roman En storm kom från paradiset och Sami Saids roman Väldigt sällan fin. De frågeställningar som behandlas är: Hur gestaltas den postkoloniala identitetens problematik i de båda romanerna? Hur tematiseras den instabila identiteten? Hur kan språket synliggöra en instabil identitet? För att undersöka den tematiska gestaltningen av det instabila subjektet utgår analysen från postkoloniala teorier vars grund finns i den poststrukturalistiska synen på verkligheten som en konstruktion styrd av makt och språk. Flera postkoloniala teoretiker utgår också från psykoanalytikern Jacques Lacans spegelteori i analysen av hur identiteten skapas i ett postkolonialt sammanhang. I diskussionen av det instabila subjektets språkliga gestaltning utgår uppsatsen från psykoanalytikern och litteraturvetaren Julia Kristevas teori om utanförskap som det poetiska språkets grund samt dess uttryck i vår tids skönlitteratur.

This article-based dissertation is an investigation of the early poetry of Agneta Enckell and Ann Jäderlund. The guiding hypothesis is that Enckell and Jäderlund enact and probe some of the central post-modern ideas about language and the subject dominating the intellectual context of the time. In particular, both poets are heavily influenced by Julia Kristeva s theories. The basic figure of thought functioning as a backdrop for their poetry is that we live in a male-dominated language, which determines our possibilities of expression. Hence, it becomes a crucial poetic task to resist the power of tradition and to carve out a free space in which new forms of personal female expression become possible. The five articles of the thesis investigate, through detailed close readings, how this constellation manifests itself in Enckell s and Jäderlund s poems. In the first article I read Jäderlund s poetry book Som en gång varit äng (1988) as centrally occupied with metapoetical issues that are played in a Narcissus scenario. The second article focuses on Jäderlund s poetry book Snart går jag i sommaren ut (1990). I employ Mikhail Bakhtin s theory of the carnival to shed light on Jäderlund s poetic effort to unsettle and transform traditional symbolic and linguistic structures. Moreover, I use of Kristeva s concept of the chora to elucidate Jäderlund s frequent use of words signifying empty spaces and hollow objects. The third article offers an analysis of the first three poetry books by Enckell: Förvandlingar mot morgonen (1983), rum; berättelser (1987), and Falla (Eurydike) (1991). Arguing that Enckell is guided by a vision of the emancipatory possibilities of poetry similar to that of Kristeva, I focus on Enckell s consistent use of spacings and caesuras in the text as signs of the privations of language that poetry hopes to articulate. The fourth article is an extended reading of Enckell s forth poetry book åter (1994). Here I employ Kristeva s theory of the abject to clarify the book s continuous effort to articulate experiences both appalling and sublime of the unsayable void, which simultaneously transcends and constitutes our language. The fifth article focuses on Jäderlund s first poetry book Vimpelstaden (1985). Drawing on Kristeva and Slavoj i ek, I analyze the disgust and horror that the I expresses in relation to language in general and especially in relation to its own voice. Min avhandling är en sammanläggningsavhandling som består av fem artiklar och en inledande sammanfattning. Hypotesen i avhandlingen är att Jäderlund och Enckell i sin tidiga poesi iscensätter, lever ut och därför också prövar centrala teoretiska frågeställningar som var i omlopp när diktsamlingarna skrevs. Båda poeterna är starkt präglade av ett visst post-modernt filosofiskt paradigm, särskilt så som det kommer till uttryck i Julia Kristevas teorier. Grundtanken är att vi lever i en manligt kodad språk-tradition som helt bestämmer våra möjligheter att uttrycka och tillägna oss det vi erfar. Det är mot bakgrund av det här som det blir så viktigt att bekämpa traditionens och språkets makt, att tillkämpa sig en frizon där i bästa fall ett eget kvinnligt uttryck kan bli till. I min avhandling tar jag fasta på och analyserar olika aspekter av Ann Jäderlunds och Agneta Enckells poesi med fokus på det som talet stannar inför: pauserna, brotten, sprickorna, de blanka raderna, de metaforiska tomrummen och döden. Slitningen mellan språk och språkbrist, mellan uttryck och språkets och kulturens makt över det som alls kan sägas analyseras med hjälp av framförallt Julia Kristevas men också Michail Bachtins språkteorier.

I uppsatsen undersöker jag hur huvudkaraktären Mimmi, under vägen att etablera sig som författare och i mötet med Hugo, söker nå balans mellan intellekt och kropp. Utifrån Julia Kristevas teori om abjektionen utforskar jag på vilka sätt Mimmi förhåller sig ambivalent till viljan att vara å ena sidan innesluten, å andra sidan avgränsad, och hur i sin tur synen på kroppen, dess samverkan med själen samt synen på andra kroppar präglas av begär och äckel. Som metodisk språngbräda använder jag paradoxen utifrån Kristina Fjelkestams definition. Med hjälp av den jag fokuserar på motsättningar och dubbeltydigheter hos karaktären och i texten utifrån frågeställningen: hur ser spelet ut mellan Mimmis förhållande till kroppen (Kvinnan) respektive själen (Konstnären), och är det möjligt för henne att förena kropp och själ i något som skulle kunna bli en fullbordad Människa?

Within the field of cinema studies, the question of visual representation is a fundamental pillar. An immense volume of theoretical work has been written on the subject, with various academic approaches such as feministic, postcolonial and gay/lesbian. Yet there is a large social group that seems to have been overlooked within the representational discourse: the elderly. This group of people appears to be a blind spot on the multicultural retina, too often neglected within the area of cultural studies. But as the baby boomer generation, who has always redefined the different stages of life (youth, adulthood, middle age), is entering old age, things are slowly changing. Utilizing a post-structural framework, this essay investigates the visual representation of elderly within the cinematic landscape of the western world. Since the subject is somewhat uncharted territory, a broad interdisciplinary approach is necessary where modern social gerontology meets the field of cinema studies. In a cultural context, social grouping based on age implies a distinct position versus the normative, compare to other types of minorities. Changes of sex, skin colour or sexual preference are uncommon, whereas changing age is the fate of every human being. The elderly as the “the Other” is thus every man’s future destiny. This rather unique position carries an immanent paradox since the only way to avoid the periphery in question is death. As a philosophical counterpoint to this rather dystopian outlook, Gilles Deleuze’s theory of becoming is brought into the discussion. The theoretical part of the essay ends with the ontology of age, a historical review of the field of gerontology and the concept of ageism. After a descriptive section, where contemporary examples of film and other media with old age as a main theme are identified, the analytical part of the essay ensues. With the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu as a theoretical frame of reference, a close reading of the films Avalon (Axel Petersén, 2011), About Schmidt (Alexander Payne, 2002) and RED (Robert Schwentke, 2010) are performed, emphasising aging identity and imposed age-normative behaviour. The semiotics of the aged body is discussed through Jacques Lacans mirror stage and Julia Kristevas abject theory, exemplified by the works of Donigan Cumming. The final part of the essay concerns the great eternal questions within film philosophy: life, death, time and memory, which for the elderly are not merely philosophical concerns but rather notable existential realities. Using Deleuze as a philosophical toolbox, these grand topics are illuminated with examples from The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (David Fincher, 2008), Amour (Michael Haneke, 2012) and Ingmar Bergmans classical works, such as Smultronstället (1957), Saraband (2003) and Gycklarnas afton (1953).

This essay examines the role of repetition in the two novels Älskaren (The Lover) by Marguerite Duras and Den amerikanska flickan (The American Girl) by Monika Fagerholm, through a thematic and comparative reading. The study mainly uses Bruce F. Kawin’s analysis of repetition in literature and language as well as it refers to Cathy Jellenik and her analysis of rewriting in the works of Duras. The study also takes into Julia Kristeva’s idea of Duras as a writer lacking of catharsis. Furthermore, the essay analyses both novels by applying Sigmund Freud’s term “repetition compulsion”. The essay shows how Fagerholm and Duras both use permissive writing, which means that the authors boldly write clichéd replications in their texts. Both writers practice what Kristeva calls “an aesthetics of awkwardness”. Aswell, the authors both question whether a story at all is able to be told: they work with what Jellenik calls “an aesthetics of doubt”, but in different ways. Moreover, by using the work of Kawin, the essay shows how the authors have different ways of handling time. The study shows indications of repetition compulsion in the characters and also exemplifies instances of what Kristeva calls “reduplication”. Through this a fragmentary and Nietzschean perspective of the self is displayed in the novels. The study review how Duras can be said to be a writer lacking of catharsis, while Fagerholm on the other hand liberates one of her protagonists from repetition compulsion by allowing the character to undergo a catharsis. Finally, the essay conclusion points out that Duras and Fagerholm are postmodern writers who know how to challenge the concept of truth. Even if they are different writers in many aspects, they both use repetition as a method to express something unspeakable. They can be said to write also by an aesthetics of search for the truth; a search for an origin tale which they both argue as biased and is therefore impossible to capture.

This is a study of the novel Mes mauvaises pensées (2005) by the French writer Nina Bouraoui. I use an intertextual comparative method, where I read the novel against three intertexts: Marie Cardinal Les mots pour le dire (1975), the David Lynch movie Mulholland Drive (2001) and novels and photographies by Hervé Guibert. Main focus is on the relation between body and language. Using the psychoanalytic theories by Julia Kristeva I examine the melancholy of the narrator in Mes mauvaises pensées. The melancholic subject mourns a Thing which is the unrepresentable archaic mother. Melancholy is connected to the notion of exile; the subject belongs to a lost place in the past which it is still holding on to. The narrator of Mes mauvaises pensées is still living in her childhood, even though she is a grown up woman. I show how the place from where she speaks is the child. The female body and the female sexuality are not represented in the text, there is a missing link between the female body and it’s representation in language – in the symbolic order. According to Kristeva the melancholic denies the loss of the Thing – in the end the mother – and clings to the unrepresentable void. By realizing and acknowledging the loss one can reconstruct the bond to the archaic mother in language. Bouraoui’s failure in writing the feminine into the text is interesting because it puts lights on the conditions of writing the body for women. The theory of l’écriture féminine is an inspiration for the analyses and I contrast it to Judith Butler’s idea of gender performativity. There is a conflict in what constitutes gender and sex between psychoanalysis and queer theory, which is also found in the narrator in Bouraoui’s novel – trying to create herself through pure performativity she never succeeds to act independently of the mother and the female body.

Gränsland is a poetry collection by the poet Eva Sjödin. One distinct theme among others in Gränsland is repulsion and attraction, disgust and fascination in interaction. There is also a direction inwards and towards something. This essay is an attempt to analyse this theme. I will apply Julia Kristevas theory on abjection, a theory that explains these contradictory feelings and movements of the subject. The first part of the analysis is about how abjection is expressed through the ego in situations concerning eating, sickness and hunger and the colour red. The last part shows how the text itself expresses abjection, and becomes abject, through its explicitness and repetitive form.

The purpose of this essay is to investigate the melancholic, poetic language in Bübins unge (Bübin´s brat) by Mare Kandre (1962 – 2005). In my opinion the novel, which is about a teenage ritual, also gives an imaginary arena for archaic and unmentionable experiences of the libido. It is therefore a witness to the truth of the subjects complex mind. To my assistance I have Julia Kristeva´s theory on the abjection, the successful melancholia and her concepts of the outsider and the catharsis. The method I use in my investigation is an interpretation, which is both an analytic and a hermeneutic process, i.e. a deconstructive, analytic operation based on a theory on the language and the subject and a construing, hermeneutic movement. In my pursuit I investigate structures, which make the intermittent fragmented language readable and coherent. From this point of view I study words and effects (sensations) that relate to the contrast semiotic-symbolic in Bübins unge, and disentangle energy of the affect. Mare Kandre, Bübins unge (1987). Julia Kristeva, Pouvoirs de l´horreur (1980) and Soleil noir (1987).