Pillow's aim is to demonstrate how representations of Sacajawea have shifted in writings about the Lewis and Clark expedition in ways that support manifest destiny and white colonial projects. This essay begins with a general account of Sacajawea. The next section uses two novels to make the case that shifts in the representation of this important historical figure serve similar purposes. There is some attention to white suffragist representations, but the central contrast is between manifest destiny and multiculturalism. The final (...) section addresses the important question of whether it is possible for feminists to theorize Sacajawea in ways that are not co-opted by colonial projects. (shrink)

Pillow's aim is to demonstrate how representations of Sacajawea have shifted in writings about the Lewis and Clark expedition in ways that support manifest destiny and white colonial projects. This essay begins with a general account of Sacajawea. The next section uses two novels to make the case that shifts in the representation of this important historical figure serve similar purposes. There is some attention to white suffragist representations, but the central contrast is between manifest destiny and multiculturalism. The final (...) section addresses the important question of whether it is possible for feminists to theorize Sacajawea in ways that are not co-opted by colonial projects. (shrink)

A distinctive characteristic of Laclau and Mouffe’s theory of hegemony is its insistence on the denial of an essence or ground of the subject. This element of their theory is derived from their notion of antagonism, in which a relation with a ground is brought into question by revealing its contingency. This article argues that the political dimension of this argument makes sense only in the context of Laclau and Mouffe’s notion of modernity. However, the universalizing of modernity as the (...) form of hegemony reduces the ontological notion of antagonism to a dialectical or empirical notion of contradiction. This article examines two key moves in this process: first, the reduction of the subject to Lacan’s account of the subject; and second, the reduction of modernity to an ontotheologicalpolitical structure derived from Lefort as the support of the hegemonic subject. From this the article examines Laclau’s response to the exhaustion of political modernity in the figure of complexity, from which antagonism is evacuated through the hegemony of the category of myth. Finally, the article discusses a nonhegemonic approach to antagonism derived from the work of Foucault, Wolin and Rancière. (shrink)

,is article addresses the relationship between sovereignty, biopolitics and governmentality in the work of Giorgio Agamben, Judith Butler, and Michel Foucault. By unpacking Foucault’s genealogy of modern governmentality, it responds to a criticism leveled against Foucauldian accounts of power for their alleged abandonment of the traditional model of power in juridico-institutional terms in favor of an understanding of power as purely productive. ,is claim has most signi-cantly been developed by Agamben in “Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life”. I argue (...) that Judith Butler’s analysis of power, in particular in her essay “Inde-nite Detention”, presents a more di.erentiated account of power that registers the signi-cance of practices of sovereignty and resonates with Foucault’s lectures on “Security, Territory, Population”. (shrink)

Drawing from de Certeau, in this thesis I investigate graffiti and street art as part of the everyday visual landscapes. The city of Stockholm has gone from zero tolerance towards all forms of street art to now including the art form as a strategy for creating a so-called attractive city. In this thesis, I aim to examine street art and graffiti in relation to Stockholm´s mobile landscapes. The theoretical framework builds on mobility and landscape theory. I argue that if we (...) are to better understand the world we live in, the concepts of mobility must be understood both in terms of its physical and social implications. Using a qualitative approach, interviews, document analysis, and ethnographic methods have been used to gather data. By analysing discourses and statements by artists, officials, and housing companies, I demonstrate how graffiti and street art moves between different expressions in Stockholm. Furthermore, I discuss the perspectives of artists who are engaged with their bodies to produce the visual landscape we live in, and how their bodily mobilities affect the outcome of the landscape of Stockholm. I argue that there is a paradox between mobility and immobility in the use of street art to create safe environments. The positioning of these concepts as opposites reveals how Stockholm stad and housing companies use the mobile in graffiti and street art, to create something static, attachment to place. This thesis thereby contributes to the societal and academic debate concerning mobility and the understanding of how the visual landscape is created. (shrink)