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"The healing link in an errant chain of thought". Modernism, avant-garde, and the critically affirmative irony of bob hund bob hund could be called a «post-rock band» that investigates what it really means to be a rock band – or, as they call themselves: a pop orchestra. How do you put together the given components drum, bass, guitar and keyboard in constellations that make something new appear? In trying to respond to this question, this article points to bob hund’s roots in modernist avant-garde aesthetics, and examines what such winding connections between different traditions might mean. Aesthetic practices such as decontextualization, irony, anacoluthon wordplay, and lists change when they are used in new and different historical contexts. If high modernism was reduced to form, and Duchampian neodadaism to lifestyle choices, then bob hund opens new possibilities for aesthetic practices in today's anthropocenic hypercapitalism.

Introduction: Aesthetics and Pedagogy

Introduction: Aesthetics and Pedagogy

Introduktion: Estetik och pedagogik

Introduktion: Estetik och pedagogik

Review/Recension

Review/Recension

ReviewRecension

From Literary Comprehension to Literacy: The Expansion of a Concept and its Consequences for the Teaching of Literature During the last few decades, the concept of ”literacy” has had a growing impact on the vast fields of education. Although the uses of the concept are multifaceted and diverse, the hegemonic policy discourse as supported by the OECD treats literacy as an individual competence closely tied to the development of explicit reading strategies. This article examines what the concept of literacy means for literary studies in general and literature education in particular. We argue that there are reasons to critically reflect upon the effects of invoking the concept of literacy in the field of literature education. With the aid of theorists like Rita Felski and Toril Moi, our main focus is to examine the risks of centering attention on the ”subject” (the student and his/her abilities) instead of the ”object” (in our case, the works of fiction). By turning to Gert Biesta and Emmanuel Lévinas, we argue that there is an educational value in acknowledging and appreciating what lies beyond the scope of the student’s immediate understanding.

Title: A Red Balloon: On Sexuality as a Boundary-Crossing Experience in Terms of Age in Kerstin Thorvall's Children's Novels This article discusses how feelings about and experiences of sexuality and pleasure are depicted in children’s books by Swedish author Kerstin Thorvall. It is well known that Thorvall wrote about sexuality in an outspoken and unconventional way for adults in the 1970s. Less known is that she already had touched upon these topics in her novels for young children in the 1960s and early 70s. This article analyses four of those children’s novels and argues that one has to use a broad definition of sexuality in order to capture the way children´s literature articulate erotic experiences. Hélène Cixous’ concept of “feminine jouissance” is therefore used to analyse the way Thorvall writes about lust and pleasure. This “feminine jouissance” is not directed towards a specific person or centered on specific parts of the body (as is the “masculine monosexual jouissance” according to Cixous) but is instead directed towards a variety of objects and centred on the whole body, involving all senses. The article also investigates how the relation between adult (hetero)sexuality and children’s imagined innocence is challenged in Thorvall’s writings, drawing on Tison Pugh’s queer theoretical study from 2010 on heterosexuality in children’s literature. Thorvall’s depiction of sexuality crosses boundaries between adults and children – and between adult literature and children’s literature – since the language used to express pleasure is the same whether Thorvall writes for young people or adults.

The article explore the operations of emotions of insecurity, shame, vulnerability and ambivalence in the context of the neoliberal academia of today and it’s focus on excellence, competition and constant self-evaluations. Maria Jönsson and Anna Rådström investigate what these “negative” emotions do (Ahmed 2004) in relation to a concept such as “excellence”. They discuss how these “doings” can be understood and how they relate to questions of power and hierarchy. Jönsson and Rådström suggest that emotions of vulnerability and inadequacy in research should not be seen as something to be overcome, but rather as something to engage with and pay attention to. These emotions provide us with a sensitivity to research as an open process, open to the unexpected and the “not-yet” (Sedgwick 2003) instead of producing “knowingness” (Scheman 2011) and sovereign research subjects. Jönsson and Rådström utilize the theoretical work of Hélène Cixous and of Judith Butler (2003) in order to discuss how vulnerability and ambivalence can be used in self-reflexive and critical work in academia.

The Home as Boyhood Territory. Relational Subject Formation in Kerstin Thorvall’s Children’s Literature This article explores novels from the 1960’s and 70’s, targeted primarily towards children in the so-called intermediate age (age 9–12), by Swedish author Kerstin Thorvall. Thorvall was both a part of, and a forerunner to, the rejuvenation of children’s literature that took place in the 1960’s in Sweden – a time when books written for young boys and girls became known as ”youth literature”. This article argues that one of Thorvall’s contributions to this rejuvenation concerned her portrayal of boys and their relation to the mother, the family and the home. Boys have traditionally been depicted in outdoor environments associated with adventure: for instance, the woods, the water or in city neighbourhoods. Magnus Öhrn has classified such locations as ”boyhood territory”. Thorvall effectively re-situated this territory indoors – in the apartment or in the house. In Thorvall’s books, the boy’s subjectivity is shaped in relation to his mother and other intimate relations within the home. Whereas the individuation process for boys traditionally entails dissociation from the mother, in Thorvalls novels, the boy’s identity formation is relational, dependent and intertwined with relations within the home. Utilising the Bakhtinian chronotope as an analytical tool, the article explores how the plot constructs this identity formation both spatially and emotionally. Thorvall makes use of the home in a very concrete manner – through the boy’s movements between kitchen, hall and bedroom. The article argues that by placing boys in what has traditionally been regarded as ”girlhood territory” Thorvall effectively revises the ”boy book” genre. Instead of introducing girl characters into the adventures of the boy book, she exposes boy characters to the realism of traditionally ”female” domestic settings.

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