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- Goedecke, Klara, 1985-
(författare)
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"Other Guys Don't Hang Out Like This" : Gendered Friendship Politics Among Swedish, Middle-Class Men
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The overarching aim of this thesis is to deepen the understanding of men’s friendships, in relation to gender, sexuality, power, masculine positions, feminisms and gender equality. The thesis draws upon in-depth interviews conducted individually and with pairs of men, between 25 and 49 years old, predominantly well-educated, white, straight and working white-collar or cultural jobs, twenty in total. Through analysis from feminist perspectives, the thesis approaches men’s friendships as ambivalent, as both holding radical promises and potentially reproducing and normalising existing discourses, gender figurations and power relations.In the thesis, friendship is discussed in relation to research about queer temporalities, showing that friendship is expected to be deprioritised in relation to familial and romantic relationships, associated with constructions of “adult life”. Research about therapeutic discourses and disclosure dominating contemporary views of intimacy are used to analyse the role of conversations. Conversations are central to the stories about friendship and closely associated to authenticity and courage to be open about feelings, and are also relevant to how the interviewees talk about themselves as gendered. It is shown that friendship is connected to gender politics and to the production of masculine positions, where allegedly stoic, competitive and homophobic friendships between “laddish” men function as contrast to the interviewees’ friendships. It is also shown how the interview is an important arena for performing masculine positions as well as certain kinds of friendships. In-depth scrutinising of the interview situation shows complex negotiations about what the interview is and should be, as well as gendered emotion work between interviewer and interviewee(s).Using feminist and poststructuralist approaches, which have thus far been uncommon in studies of friendship, the thesis shows how meaning-makings around friendships are interrelated with the production of masculine positions, discourses around sexuality and class, as well as Swedish ideologies of gender equality. Friendships are explicitly politicised and seen as a tool of social change, negotiations which form a gendered friendship politics. The gendered friendship politics contribute to reproducing, normalising and disrupting gender relations and expectations on men. This complicates and deepens discussions about men’s friendships and men’s relationships to processes of social change.
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| 3. |
- Jakobsson, Hilda, 1984-
(författare)
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Jag var kvinna : Flickor, kärlek och sexualitet i Agnes von Krusenstjernas tidiga romaner
- 2018
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The Swedish author Agnes von Krusenstjerna is known for her depictions of girls becoming women, a motif that she returns to again and again throughout her works. Previous academic literature on Krusenstjerna highlights that she writes about girls, maturation, and eroticism, but does not explore what ‘becoming a woman’ means. While the terms ‘girl’ and ‘woman’ are commonly regarded as signifiers of age and sex only, they are in fact laden with a number of assumptions, which I explore in Krusenstjerna’s novels. This thesis analyses the depictions of girls coming of age through their encounter with love and sexuality in Krusenstjerna’s early novels Ninas dagbok (The Diary of Nina, 1917), Helenas första kärlek (Helena’s First Love, 1918), and the Tony trilogy Tony växer upp (Tony Grows Up, 1922), Tonys läroår (Tony’s Apprenticeship, 1924), and Tonys sista läroår (Tony’s Last Apprenticeship, 1926). I explore how the idea of girls becoming women relates to love and sexuality, and I pose the following questions: How is the term ‘girl’ constructed in Krusenstjerna’s early novels? How does a girl become a woman and what implications does womanhood have? Which characters and phenomena in the girl’s surroundings constitute the conditions for her becoming a woman, and which ones risk delaying or even preventing this transition? Furthermore, I seek to connect the depiction of girls, love, and sexuality with Krusenstjerna’s contemporary literary critics’ view of her early novels as girls’ books, i.e. novels for young women, or associated with that literary tradition, even though they were not published as such. I use a combination of feminist and queer theory focussing on temporality. Throughout the thesis, I connect Krusenstjerna’s writings to those of other authors. The following novels are connected to the tradition of books for girls and are used as the starting point for my hermeneutical readings of Krusenstjerna’s works: The Girls at His Billet (1916) by Berta Ruck, Little Lord Fauntleroy (1886) by Frances Hodgson Burnett, Daddy-Long-Legs (1912) and Dear Enemy (1915) by Jean Webster, as well as Anne of Green Gables (1908), The Blue Castle (1926), and Emily’s Quest (1927) by L. M. Montgomery. Examining these novels, I focus on the motif of girls becoming women as well as a selection of other related topics. The thesis addresses two different ways of coming of age depicted in Krusenstjerna’s early novels. The protagonists of the first two novels, Nina and Helena, are portrayed as ‘girls’ who become ‘women’ through their encounter with men and their choice in love, whereas the protagonist of the Tony trilogy is described as a ‘girl’ who only temporarily becomes a ‘woman’ but then turns into a ‘girl’ again. Accordingly, the act of becoming a woman in Krusenstjerna’s first two novels, which is typical for the girls’ book tradition, follows normative expectations of the life trajectory, whereas the queer act of becoming – or rather un-becoming – a woman in the later Tony trilogy does not adhere to the same assumptions. I argue that the fact that the second part of the Tony trilogy has the same plot as Ninas dagbok, and the third instalment the same story as Helenas första kärlek, amplifies the impression that the Tony trilogy queers the normative life trajectory that is found in those two novels and is typical for the girls’ book tradition. Thus, as this thesis proposes, the girls’ book as seen in Krusenstjerna’s work, is queered.
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