Browsing by Subject "jälkistrukturalismi"
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(2019)In this study, I approach happiness as a discursive practice and foucault’dian governance instead of empirical and objective phenomena. The basic assumption is that current western understanding of happiness is based on positive psychology that equates happiness as mental state. In this discourse, happy mind becomes the symbol of a good person and being happy a moral demand for self. In this happiness imperative, one must constantly labor on their personality, thoughts and feelings in the name of better self and life. The context of the study is postfeminist self-help-culture, which is understood as neoliberal and gendered governance. Thus, the demand of happiness is directed especially to young women. Besides the construct of happiness, the interest of the study also is the ideal happy subject which is constructed in the hegemonic happiness discourse. Thus the study explores how happiness, good life and ideal happy figure are constructed in the postfeminist self-help-culture. The data consist of seven wellness blogs. These are analyzed using discourse analytical method and feminist media study readings. Discourse is understood as a regime of knowledge and practice which orders human’s thoughts and actions in the world. Hereby the blogs are not understood as personal writings by the blogger but wider material performatives of the postfeminist self-help-culture. In the study results happiness showed as taken for granted goal of the life, but happiness imperative could also be read as cruel optimism when one becomes exhausted continuously working on themselves. Anyhow, the self-governance was justified by the promise of happiness. According to self-help ethos, positive thinking, cultivating one’s authenticity and continuous work on the self showed to be fundamental objects of happiness. The ideal happy subject also followed this individualistic logic. It showed to be a postfeminist figure, which have a masculine mind but feminine body. Although the hegemonic discourse of happiness claims to be based on the rhetoric of freedom and equality, I propose that its ideal subject follows gendered and heteronormative ideals. Hence many subjects and different ways to be and live are classified as unhappy and abnormal.
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(2016)In this thesis I examined meanings of gender articulated by children, on the basis of video art pieces. I am interested in the meanings of gender the children would bring up and how this would be related to the wider thematic of gender. Based on earlier research, children have been noted to express normative interpretations of feminist fairy tales which challenge traditional gender positions. This has been seen as a wish to localize in a gender position that is perceived as correct. Children have been noted to challenge the norms in addition to maintaining them. In my thesis I reflect on how the children I interviewed position themselves and the video art pieces related to my research based on gender. My research was supported by post-structural feminist thought and feminist film theory. The essential concepts were gender, discourse, subjectivity and subject position. For my research I interviewed ten children between the ages of 7 and 10. I examined their views on gender thematic on the basis of the video art pieces Punahilkka ja susi (2012), Lasso (2000) and Masa (1999). I applied discourse analysis as a research method. I read material with my focus on gender thematic and, for instance, searched for gender related distinctions and different gender related positions mentioned by the interviewees. I aimed for gender sensitivity while doing research. In my research, gender appeared as a complex discourse. The children expressed many dualistic and normative views on gender. On the other hand, gender related dualisms and norms were also subverted. The children could be seen to simultaneously describe normative discourses and still position themselves or others outside of these discourses. They can be noted to both repeat and resist gender related cultural ways of thinking. The meanings of gender were shown to be persistent but also something containing possibilities for change. Views on gender could be subverted and the concept of gender could be deconstructed during the research process. On the basis of my research, I propose that critical examination of gender with children can contribute to, for example, the deconstruction of normative views on gender. This kind of examination is important because it contributes to the actualization of gender sensitivity, equality and diverse possibilities for being human. Video art pieces can offer a rich conversational basis for thinking about gender.
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