| 1. |
- Bertilsson, Fredrik, 1978-
(författare)
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Source Criticism as a Technology of Government in the Swedish Psychological Defence : The Impact of Humanistic Knowledge on Contemporary Security Policy
- 2021
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Ingår i: Humanities. - : MDPI AG. - 2076-0787. ; 10:1, s. 13-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- “Source criticism” (källkritik) has become an essential part of the Swedish government’s activities against false information, deception campaigns, and propaganda, which are viewed as fundamentally destabilising forces that can potentially undermine the democratic system, the public debate, and political decision-making. The purpose of this article is to explore source criticism as a technology of government focusing on the Swedish Psychological Defence. I analyse the way in which source criticism is brought to bear on Swedish national security policy in the light of Foucauldian theories about modern governmentality and technologies of the self. Source criticism is seen as an example of a contemporary form of government that entails a redistribution of responsibility from the state to the individual, who is provided with certain “technologies of self” to master an unpredictable political environment. With this case study as empirical example, the aim of the article is to contribute to the research on the influence of humanistic knowledge in security and defence policy domains. This prompts further discussion about what happens with the democratic and critical potential of humanistic knowledge as it is enrolled in government operations.
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| 2. |
- Molander Danielsson, Karin, 1958-
(författare)
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"And in that moment I leapt upon his shoulder." : Non-human Intradiegetic Narrators in The Wind on The Moon
- 2017
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Ingår i: Humanities. - Basel : MDPI. - 2076-0787. ; 6:(2) 13, s. 1-14
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Non-human narrators, by definition anthropomorphized, fill different functions in literature, and have different effects, not always positive for the species that is utilized, for example to voice a human political concern. However, many animal studies scholars agree that anthropomorphism, while inadequate, may be the best way we have to get to know another species. Animal characters who tell their own, autobiographical, stories are particularly interesting in this regard. Eric Linklater’s children’s novel The Wind on the Moon (1944), raises posthumanist questions about human–animal differences, similarities and language, especially through its engagement of several non-human intradiegetic narrators. In a novel with surprisingly few other forms of characterization of the non-human characters, their own detailed narratives become a highly significant means of access to their species characteristics, their consciousness, and their needs. In an analysis of these embedded narratives using Genette’s theory of narrative levels and functions, as well as intersections of speech act theory and cognitive narratology, this article exposes an otherwise inaccessible dimension of characterization in Linklater’s novel. It argues that the embedded narratives, in contrast to crude anthropomorphism, are in fact what enables both a verbalization of the character narrators’ otherness, and a connection and comprehension between species. In other words, these non-human narratives constitute what might be called (with Garrard) examples of critical anthropomorphism.
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| 3. |
- Wickberg, Adam, 1985-, et al.
(författare)
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Where Humans and the Planetary Conflate—An Introduction to Environing Media
- 2020
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Ingår i: Humanities. - Zürich : MDPI. - 2076-0787. ; 9:3
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this essay, we provide an outline of historical and contemporary examples to illustrate the theoretical concept of environing media. We first discuss how humans have environed their surroundings long before the advent of scientific modernity and the rapid evolution of media technologies that helped in making the planet governable. Against this background, we argue that a fundamental shift in the human–Earth relation happened after 1500 and that this shift is attributable to the development of environing media employed in the process of terrestrial globalisation. We see the present profound renegotiation of the human–Earth relation as a continuity, albeit with a different intensity as exemplified by the work in Earth system science. Finally, we invert Mike Hulme’s call for scientists to meet the humanities into an appeal to humanists to embrace the environmental sciences and pursue more integrative research. Recent developments in environmental history have seen an increased interest in the shaping of environments by means of technology. To this end, scholars have developed theoretical concepts like “environing technologies”, which are based on the premise that the environment is a historical formation by people and societies who form their surroundings as well as their sense of place. In the same vein, historical ecology has shown that premodern peoples also shaped the natural world to their purposes far more than what has generally been understood. The central premise is that what is understood as the environment is the result of human intervention and that environing technologies structure the way that it is used, perceived, and understood. These insights resonate with core notions in media theory, but they have never before been brought together. Given that all of our understanding of the environment today is the product of several processes of mediation, the theory of environing technology would benefit from stronger theorisation of the role of media. While the scale and intensity of information storage, processing, and transmission by media today are unprecedented, the logic of mediated data processing essentially remains the same as five centuries ago when agents of the Spanish Empire took part in shaping the understanding of the environment of the Americas and the globe. For these purposes, we propose the concept of environing media, as a means of both joining intellectual forces and pushing theoretical analysis of both branches further. The paper outlines the theory of environing media using examples from the Global South, in particular the shaping and sensing of landscapes in and around the Philippines. From early modern to late modern times, this region of the world has been influenced by environing media, most importantly circumnavigating ships and orbiting sensing satellites. The result is landscapes made and remade according to colonial and later capitalist priorities operating on a global, and eventually a planetary, scale.
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| 4. |
- Ahlin, Lena
(författare)
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Nostalgia, motherhood and adoption : two contemporary Swedish examples
- 2019
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Ingår i: Humanities. - 2076-0787. ; 8:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper explores the notion of nostalgia in two recent Swedish narratives of transnational adoption: Christina Rickardsson’s Sluta aldrig gå, 2016, (published in English as Never Stop Walking in 2017), and Cilla Naumann’s Bära barnet hem (“Carrying the Child Home”, 2015). The two narratives deal with adoption from South America to Sweden, include autobiographical content, and enable a comparison between an adoptee memoir (Rickardsson) and a parent-authored text (Naumann). Both texts center on maternal images, but the analysis suggests that Rickardsson’s narrative echoes the borderland nostalgia characteristic of adoptee writing. The adoptee memoirs, being reflective in mode and restorative in purpose, occupy a borderland between the two forms of nostalgia described by Boym (2001), while interrogating the temporal, spatial and affiliative boundaries of transnational adoption. Naumann’s nostalgic enterprise incorporates the mirrors, doubles and ghosts of reflective nostalgia. These representations are a fruitful means to represent the “other” family, and the alternative lives that were left behind in the process of adoption. Ultimately, her text suggests the limitations of the autobiographical mode and illustrates the capacity of fiction to provide a symbolic register in which to articulate the unspeakable aspects of adoption.
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| 5. |
- Freij, Maria, Universitetslektor i engelska
(författare)
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Into the Texan sunset : metanostalgia, retro-, and introspection in Lars Gustafsson’s “Where the alphabet has two hundred etters”
- 2018
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Ingår i: Humanities. - 2076-0787. ; 7:103
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- If restorative nostalgia concentrates on national past and future and reflective nostalgia on individual memory (Boym 2001), Lars Gustafsson’s “Where the Alphabet Has Two Hundred Letters” does neither. This article argues that Gustafsson’s treatment of the past landscape is metanostalgic, in the sense that nostalgia is a theme and a means, rather than a sentiment, and that the way his tropic reinvention deals with nostalgia differs from other uses. Though the poem partakes in the pastoral tradition, it is less concerned with this mode and more concerned with the notion of ‘effect’, of which Gustafsson has written extensively. Gustafsson has also elaborated on the aspects of ‘centre’ and ‘periphery’, notions that are used to define and extend the poetic landscape and the speaker’s position in, and relation to, it. His poetic landscape encompasses the extremes of continents near and far, but also landscapes temporally removed, which may hold a different status in terms of their impact on ‘effect’, a status that is then not hinging on the obvious hierarchies of traditional nostalgia.
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| 6. |
- Johansson, Sven Anders, 1968-
(författare)
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Narrating the End of the World : The Pandemic, the Climate and The Death of Virgil
- 2022
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Ingår i: Humanities. - : MDPI. - 2076-0787. ; 11:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- There is a widespread narrative today that, due to climate change, we are living in the end of times. What does this apocalyptic narrative tell us about our relation to death? A peculiarity with the climate discourse is that “we”, i.e., mankind, are given a position that is both external and internal to the problems described. On the one hand, there is an all-encompassing apocalyptic mood, on the other hand, death appears as a scandal, something we had abolished. In order to capture this peculiarity, the article adopts the narratological concept of the “focalizer”. After comparing the way climate change is addressed by the philosophers Martin Hägglund and Roy Scranton, respectively, the article turns to Hermann Broch’s novel The Death of Virgil (1945). Here, another perspective on dying and the end of civilization may be found. In that way, Broch’s novel provides a much needed perspective on today’s apocalyptic narratives. With Broch, one may argue that the end of the world takes place all the time.
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| 7. |
- Ahlin, Lena
(författare)
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Nostalgia, motherhood and adoption : two contemporary Swedish examples
- 2019
-
Ingår i: Humanities. - : MDPI AG. - 2076-0787. ; 8:1
-
Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper explores the notion of nostalgia in two recent Swedish narratives of transnational adoption: Christina Rickardsson’s Sluta aldrig gå, 2016, (published in English as Never Stop Walking in 2017), and Cilla Naumann’s Bära barnet hem (“Carrying the Child Home”, 2015). The two narratives deal with adoption from South America to Sweden, include autobiographical content, and enable a comparison between an adoptee memoir (Rickardsson) and a parent-authored text (Naumann). Both texts center on maternal images, but the analysis suggests that Rickardsson’s narrative echoes the borderland nostalgia characteristic of adoptee writing. The adoptee memoirs, being reflective in mode and restorative in purpose, occupy a borderland between the two forms of nostalgia described by Boym (2001), while interrogating the temporal, spatial and affiliative boundaries of transnational adoption. Naumann’s nostalgic enterprise incorporates the mirrors, doubles and ghosts of reflective nostalgia. These representations are a fruitful means to represent the “other” family, and the alternative lives that were left behind in the process of adoption. Ultimately, her text suggests the limitations of the autobiographical mode and illustrates the capacity of fiction to provide a symbolic register in which to articulate the unspeakable aspects of adoption.
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| 8. |
- Bjork, Marten
(författare)
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A World with Many Ends : Eschatology and Perspectivism
- 2022
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Ingår i: Humanities. - : MDPI AG. - 2076-0787. ; 11:2
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- In this article, the relation between crisis, dying, and apocalypse is examined from the vantage point of Franz Rosenzweig's philosophy of revelation. Following Rosenzweig's suggestion that truth-for finite and temporal beings like us-can only be found in time, the article suggests that there exists an intrinsic relation between truth and death. Truth is not only or even primarily logical or mathematical truth according to Rosenzweig. Truth is the reality of our finite lives and implies an eschatological understanding of death as that which gives life unity by eternalising it as that which it forever was in the past. Life, Rosenzweig argues, is polytheistic by entailing manifold perspectives and possibilities, while death is monotheistic by endowing living beings with the unity and completion they lack in life. All death, even the most horrid death, is, if not a completion, at least an end, which gives the living the possibility to judge and verify the meaning of the past once and for all. Yet, if we believe Rosenzweig, the dead are not gone in the past but rather the eternal ground that makes present and future time possible. The dead, by literally being the past, reveal that all time exists after itself, as something that already was, and that the world is nothing but a world with many ends by dying away into the "life outside life" that Rosenzweig called God.
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| 9. |
- Bladh, Elisabeth, 1975
(författare)
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The Reception of the Swedish Retranslation of James Joyce’s Ulysses(2012)
- 2019
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Ingår i: Humanities. - : MDPI AG. - 2076-0787. ; 8:3, s. 1-16
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article focuses on how the second Swedish translation of James Joyce’s novel Ulysses (2012) was received by Swedish critics. The discussion of the translation is limited to a number of paratextual features that are present in the translation, including a lengthy postscript, and to the translation’s reviews in the daily press. The release of the second Swedish translation was a major literary event and was widely covered in national and local press. Literary critics unanimously welcomed the retranslation; praising the translator’s raw, vulgar and physical language, his humour, and the musicality of his expression. Regarding its layout, title, and style, the new translation is closer to the original than the first translation from 1946 (revised in 1993). The postscript above all emphasizes the humanistic value of Joyce’s novel and its praise of the ordinary. It also addresses postcolonial perspectives and stresses the novel’s treatment of love and pacifism. These aspects were also positively received by the reviewers. For many reviewers, the main merit of the novel is found in its tribute to sensuality and the author’s joyful play with words. Negative comments tended to relate to the novel’s well-known reputation of being difficult to read. One reviewer, however, strongly questioned the current value of the experimental nature of the novel. Opinions also diverged on whether the retranslation replaces or merely supplements the first Swedish translation.
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| 10. |
- Eklöf Amirell, Stefan, 1968-
(författare)
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The making of the “Malay pirate” in early modern European thought
- 2020
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Ingår i: Humanities. - : MDPI. - 2076-0787. ; 9:3, s. 1-14
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This article traces the long historical background of the nineteenth-century European notion of the Malay as a human “race” with an inherent addiction to piracy. For most of the early modern period, European observers of the Malay Archipelago associated the Malays with the people and diaspora of the Sultanate of Melaka, who were seen as commercially and culturally accomplished. This image changed in the course of the eighteenth century. First, the European understanding of the Malay was expanded to encompass most of the indigenous population of maritime Southeast Asia. Second, more negative assessments gained influence after the mid-eighteenth century, and the Malays were increasingly associated with piracy, treachery, and rapaciousness. In part, the change was due to the rise in maritime raiding on the part of certain indigenous seafaring peoples of Southeast Asia combined with increasing European commercial interests in Southeast Asia, but it was also part of a generally more negative view in Europe of non-settled and non-agricultural populations. This development preceded the notion of the Malays as one of humanity’s principle races, which emerged toward the end of the eighteenth century. The idea that Malays were natural pirates also paved the way for several brutal colonial anti-piracy campaigns in the Malay Archipelago during the nineteenth century.
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