I den svenska retorikdiskussionen har retorikens delar, rhetorices partes, fått en framträdande roll. Men hur många delar har egentligen retoriken? Quintilianus säger fem, men vissa svenska handböcker, samt läroplanen för gymnasieskolan 2011, räknar i stället med sex. De har lagt till intellectio före inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria och actio.

Här undersöks vilken status intellectio har i den retoriska traditionen. Det är en fråga både om historien – och om historiebruk. Hur var den antika teorin egentligen utformad? Och hur kan en modern praktiskt orienterad retorikundervisning förhålla sig till sina antika rötter?

Boken består av tre bidrag. Erik Bengtson studerar svensk-språkiga handböcker och spårar intellectio tillbaka till tysk retorikhistorisk forskning. Annika Ström studerar förekomsten samt avsaknaden av intellectio i klassiska och senantika latinska texter. David Westberg går i stället till den grekiska textvärlden och kastar nytt ljus på frågan om hur vi kan förstå detta omtvistade begrepp.

Caves, images, and symbols are recurring topics in the work of Mats Rosengren, from his reading of Plato in his dissertation Psychagōgia – Konsten att leda själar, to his investigation of the world of paleolithic cave art in Cave Art, Perception and Knowledge.

While other philosophers might have descended into the cave with the aim of guiding visitors back up into the blinding light of eternal truths, Rosengren seems to be at home in the underworld. Instead of dismissing the paintings that adorn its walls as merely shadowy copies or distorted images, or claiming that the truth of these pictures is readily available to us, Mats Rosengren invites any traveler joining him to understand them as different forms of sensemaking, forms which at first might appear foreign, but that, upon closer inspection, reveal themselves in all their complexity.

In this volume, the contributors take on some of the key themes found in Rosengren’s work, mirroring the stylistic, generic, and topical range that characterizes it. The volume is titled “Shadows in the Cave”, signaling a focus not on eternal truth, but – alluding to Plato – on the shadowplay of our human caves.

Reviewer Frederik Appel Olsen takes issue with the approach we present in The Virtues of Green Marketing: A Constructive Take on Corporate Rhetoric (Palgrave Macmillan). In this response, we point out three aspects where Appel Olsen paints a misleading picture of our book. They concern a) the role of history in contemporary thinking, b) the role of Aristotle in our argumentation, and c) the legitimate place of rhetorical criticism. Thus, our response treats fundamental questions for the field of rhetoric.

"Here are lots of opportunities" and "Welcome to Paradise". Two municipalities' place marketing from an identification perspective. 

This book explores narrative imagination and emotion as resources for learning critical meta-reflection. The author examines the learning trajectories of several students as they engage in learning to think critically through a new approach to creative writing, and details how learning through writing is linked to new discoursal identities which are trialled in the writing process. In doing so, she analyses the processes of expansion and change that result from the negotiations involved in learning through writing. This volume offers a completely new approach to creative writing, including useful practical advice as well as a solid theoretical base. It is sure to appeal to students of creative writing and discourse analysis as well as applied linguistics and language as identity.

This study’s research problem has its starting point in teaching and learning in higher education. The focus is onlearning through writing, particularlythe use of creative writing for critical thinking purposes. Learning is viewed asbeinglinked to identity and to new possibilities for selfhood as writers, thus opening up new ways of thinking from the expansion and changethat result from the identification processes involved in learning. In a writing context, identity is defined as discoursal identity, and it originates and develops in an interplay between the writer and the writing environment, where the writer may reflect upon their own learning and that of others through their writing. The activities of writing and learning by writing are thus viewed as deeply embedded in the social context in which they are situated. My main hypothesis is that creative writing can enhance critical thinking, and the study at handaims totestthishypothesis by means of a writing assignment that I have developed. There are two more specific aims of the study. One is empirical, that of testingthe link between critical thinking and creative writing, to examinedifferent types of reflective writing and the discoursal identities that result from the writingassignment. Another aim is theoretical. I look for an understanding of how texts constitute sites where learning and identity are negotiated by writers in their writing environment. For thisI have constructed a model for analyzing context in text, applying categories fromactivity theory (Engeström 1987) onto various types of textual analyses, mainly thematic and discourse analysis. In this study, the model has been empirically tested in a case study. The results confirm the hypothesis that creative writing can be used to traincritical thinking, but the learning outcomesvaryamongst the writers and areclosely linked to thediscoursal identities they wish to ascribe to themselves. The empirical test of the model shows that it can be used to map texts as “sites of struggle” (Ivanič1998:331f.) revealing where conflicts lie between the learnerand the learning environment.

Högskoleläraren befinner sig i ett spänningsfält som rymmer många perspektiv. För läraren står oftast pedagogiken i centrum. Samtidigt är läraren examinator och därmed en myndighetsutövare med skyldighet att examinera på ett rättssäkert sätt. Hur ska bedömningen gå till? Hur kan den utformas för att ge bästa grunden för lärande? Hur görs examinationen rättssäker? Detta är några centrala frågor som avhandlas i denna rapport.

Fokus i rapporten är högskolepedagogisk utveckling och arbete med kvalitet. Just kvalitetsarbete har blivit alltmer betonat inom den högre utbildningen, men trots det saknas kunskaper om vad kvalitet i högskoleutbildning innebär i praxis. Det finns inte tillnärmelsevis lika mycket skrivet om högskolepedagogisk utveckling som det finns texter om kontrollerande ansatser.

Boken vill bidra med ny kunskap om kvalitetsarbete med examination och rättssäkerhet i fokus, och dessutom tillföra ny kunskap om praxisorientrat kvalitetsarbete i sig. Komplexiteten i sådan verksamhet beskrivs genom ett högskoleövergripande projekt baserat på workshoppar och på vad detta projekt har gett för resultat. Arbetet, som har involverat ett par hundra högskolelärare, har gett insikter om hur examinationens praktik ter sig för högskolans olika aktörer och om hur denna praktik kan utvecklas. Dessutom ger boken perspektiv på hur internt kvalitetsarbete kan fungera – eller inte fungera.

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the perception of Sweden as a counterpart to the Israelite people in the Old Testament played an important part in the construction of Swedish nationhood. The widespread use of biblical parallels in the political discourse of the period has been recognized for a long time, but in recent research the significance of the parallels has been questioned by scholars who have described them as merely a kind of commonplace religious phraseology, with no further implications. In this chapter however, I will argue that the parallels must be taken seriously and that the Jerusalem code provided a cornerstone of the rhetorical construction of early Swedish nationhood. Central to my argument is that the identification with the Israelites should be understood as figural in character, rather than genealogical or translational, and that the Jerusalem code offered a rhetorically flexible mode of representation that united past, present, and future as well as the individual and the society.

Political parties use different strategies to convince voters to vote for them, and with the technological evolution of our time short movie clips are used, now more than ever before, to accomplish these kinds of tasks. However, a political movie clip that separates itself from other political movie clips is Jimmie Åkesson – Snart är det val. This clip is not trying to persuade the voter to vote for the Sweden democrats because of their political plans, instead it tries to convince the voter of a threat that can destroy Sweden in the nearby future if the voter doesn’t vote for the Sweden democrats in the coming election.

This essay seeks to investigate how Jimmie Åkesson – Snart är det val constructs this threat, how the threat becomes realistic and in what ways the threat is used in the movie clip to convince the Swedish voter to vote for the Sweden democrats. To investigate this the essay uses a semiotic analysis to dissemble the movie clip in order to understand how the threat is constructed. Furthermore, rhetorical perspectives such as identification, visualizing rhetoric, ethos, pathos, logos and figures of style are used to discuss how the threat becomes realistic and how it is used to win votes.

The conclusion of the essay is that the movie clip constructs two different threats in two different realities by using semiotic resources such as fast shifting scenes, documenting images, music, sounds, environments, characters and a narrating voice in a projecting narrative. More specifically these resources create a true dark reality and a happy delusional reality. In these two realities, the two different threats are found. The first threat is the immigrants that are illustrated as an enemy that destroys Sweden and thus creates the true dark reality where the voters and the Sweden democrats also are illustrated. The other threat is other political parties in Sweden and the Swedish media because they are illustrated in the happy delusional reality and therefore can’t help the voter that is portrayed in the true dark reality. In that sense, the two threats are used to convince the voter to vote for the Sweden democrats because they are the only political party that is located in the true dark reality and therefore are the only ones that understand and can solve the problem that causes the true dark reality. Furthermore, these threats become more realistic by enforcing an emotion of fear for the true dark reality with semiotic resources and also by concretizing this reality with documenting images, characters and sounds. These threats also become more realistic because the semiotic resources create imagistic arguments that allows the mind to take shortcuts when conclusions are made.

Understanding how scholars reason about their own flying habits is important when dealing with the problems of large emissions from academic air travel. This study is based on a travel habits survey with scholars at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm. KTH has relatively high emissions from air travel, but at the same time, it has a high profile in matters of sustainability and a lot of research related to this theme. One can therefore assume a high degree of knowledge about the climate crisis and the climate impact of various actions. It is also plausible that KTH scholars meet special expectations to be role models and that practices in conflict with their teaching can have consequences for the public confidence in the university. In this study, we look at how scholars reason about how emissions from their flying could be reduced. Their responses display a spectrum of varying attitudes, from climate scepticism to a commitment to radical transformation, with the majority in between, either suggesting different types of concrete changes or invoking arguments to justify the status quo. The proposed interventions, several of which are ingenious and wise, can guide university managements to strategies that have support from employees. The more reluctant arguments point to cultural and discursive habits that must be understood and met in an empathetic way.

Video games have become the highest grossing entertainment industry in the world, earning more than double that of the music and film industry combined. Many of these games contain political messages, intentional or not. Some game developers explicitly claim that the games they make are apolitical, and this thesis examines whether Call of Duty: Modern Warfare is as apolitical as its developers claim. The research is conducted with the aid of Barthes’ work on mythologies and semiology to analyse the various signs present in the game in relation to construction of myths and ideological messaging. This is aided by Bogost’s procedural rhetoric to enable the analysis of gameplay choices as a semiological sign. The main theories are supported by Murray’s writing on immersion and the first-person perspective. The analysis shows that Modern Warfare consistently uses signs and myths that construct an ideological message that coalesce into a mythical image of the special forces soldier as a sort of human but superhuman character that must be given free rein to perform their mission, while also displaying western politicians as incompetent, the threat of terrorism as omnipresent, and Russia as a dangerous threat. Regardless of intent, such a message is undeniably political.

Tor Andræ’s I myrtenträdgården is the only comprehensive work on sufism written in Swedish language. The concept ”sufism” is interesting when it comes to conceptual shifts and according to Carl W. Ernst, ”sufism” is a westernised construction of an eastern phenomenon. This study examines Andræ's text in the light of Ernst's theory. The aim is to investigate if rhetoric with its theories on topos, fallacies and identification can help us gain insight into this construction and the discussion of sufism in general, and how conceptual shifts takes place in a specific material. The study tells us that Tor Andræ’s I Myrtenträdgården, despite his good intention, shows a hegemonic picture of a sufism with its roots in christianity, a picture that helps to maintain the confusion surrounding the concept. The study also shows that it is mainly through argumentation and identification that this construction takes place. Rhetorical criticism, with its theories, is therefore a fine instrument for highlighting this construction at work. 

This study critically examines the intense scholarly interest in violence of recent decades. Consequently, the thesis' main objective is to is to answer two questions in particular: why violence? and why now? 

First and foremost, this objective is pursued through three separate but interrelated studies. Prior to these, the thesis sets out to affirm the importance of Marquis de Sade and Michel Foucault in thinking violence. First, it is in the literary works of the Marquis de Sade, rather than in Machiavelli or Hobbes, that we find the first traces of a conceptual understanding of violence. Second, drawing on de Sade, it is Foucault who provides the fertile ground from which the field of contemporary violence studies basically springs – in spite of the fact that he himself never devoted any special studies to violence, nor actually developed a specific concept of violence. 

Part 1, “Literature”, provides a brief overview of the contemporary study of violence as well as a discussion of two thoroughly influential texts in the field: Hannah Arendt’s On Violence (1970) and Giorgio Agamben’s “On the Limits of Violence” (1970). This part surveys the questions of violence specifically posed within the field, with the further purpose of identifying and dissecting common tropes and recurring arguments important to its formation. I make the claim that two notions in particular are utilized to construct violence as a new field of knowledge: the notion of technology and the notion of history. 

Part 2, “Experience”, consists of a historical interlude in which one of the objectives is to put the hypothesis of the presumably transhistorical and immutable nature of human violence to the test. This is achieved by a close reading of the philosophical texts of Plato as well as the histories of Herodotus and Thucydides. In this part I argue that, in a strict sense, there is no true concept of violence as such in classical Greek antiquity. Instead, we find a multiplicity of embryonic “pre-concepts” that, unlike the various concepts of today, are thought entirely on the basis of relations, rather than on the basis of the objects of violence. The question of violence in classical Greece is, in short, approached in terms of who? rather than what? – pointing toward a promising possibility still open for exploration today. 

Part 3, “Concepts”, returns to the European discussions of the 1960s and 1970s investigated in part 1, but rather than examining the questions of immediate concern in the respective texts of the period, I approach today’s heightened interest in violence in light of a set of overarching problems, such as the risk of atomic annihilation, political unrest, the fear of propaganda, and brain washing. By way of these problems, I show that, running counter to the philosophical sources on which it draws, the contemporary concept of violence achieves a surreptitious re- institution of the substantial and autonomous subject otherwise believed to be dead. 

In conclusion, the paradoxical function of the contemporary concept of violence is thus to allow for the return of the kind of subject relentlessly attacked by the radical European thought of the 1960s and 1970s, the same thought which allowed for the invention of the concept in the first place. In this sense our age, in which, it would appear, “everything is violence”, is also an age where a kind of “bia-centrism” provides us, paradoxically, with the last conceptual stronghold for substantial subjects and stable identities. 

This essay in rhetoric examines TV commercials for some of the biggest online casinos in Sweden. The aim is to identify if these gambling companies are targeting young people under 18 years old in their communication. Therefor I analyzed a total of three commercial movies – one from each gambling company – to determine which audience they are directing their communication to. To be able to do this I used Edwin Blacks theory the second persona and Kenneth Burkes theories identification and dramatism. With the use of the pentadic analysis method I found several factors that young people can identify themselves with. According to my results in the analysis I found that the second persona for each TV commercial was young people. Therefor I determined that some of the biggest gambling companies have young people as one of their target groups. I discuss my result in comparison to earlier research about both gambling commercial and children’s ability to understand and trust TV commercials. I also discuss the problematic of these kinds of commercials that targets young people and I’m therefore trying to create awareness about this issue.

The purpose of this bachelor’s thesis is to investigate school staff's attitudes towards sexual education for young people with disabilities, within special needs education in Sweden. The rhetorical analysis aims to include answers to what school staff members consider to be adequate sexual education, what obstacles and opportunities they see as well as how they experience their own and their students' rhetorical agency. The study was done through a qualitative focus group method and individual interviews, inspired by appreciative inquiry. They were held after RFSU Stockholm hosted a sexual education lesson for the students. The theoretical framework is based on Sonja K Foss and Cindy Griffin's invitational rhetoric, an intersectional understanding of power structures and Karlyn Kohrs Campbell's definition of rhetorical agency. The results, developed through a thematization of the staff's responses, show that the staff have a positive attitude towards sexual education. Significant aspects within sexual education are consent, relationships and identities. The staff are aware of their position of power and that they influence students. It's important for them to have similar common ground in regards to the subject, leading students to gain correct information about HBTQI. They want to increase students' rhetorical agency in relationships, by building up students' self- esteem. 

This essay examines how the picture book characters Mamma Mu and Kråkan are presented in text and illustrations. The purpose is to analyze how the interaction between the characters play out and how it can be interpreted from a critical gender perspective, and how picture books can set a scenery on how children perceive the world. The analysis is based on three entries from the book Mamma Mu bygger koja. Through a social semiotic theory approach and a multimodal method, the essay examines how the book’s various semiotic resources may reproduce gender norms. The essay discusses the differences and similarities in how Mamma Mu and Kråkan are presented. The analysis shows several differences, partly in how their facial expressions and mood are expressed, how detailed their actions are visualized, and in attitudes towards each other. The conclusion is that Mamma Mu has a calm and friendly demeanor and approach towards Kråkan. Kråkan, on the other hand, has a harsh, heated and diminishing demeanor and actions towards Mamma Mu. The author states that the way the female and male characters are portrayed in this picture book could replicate outdated and problematic gender norms and therefore should be problematized and questioned. 

This article aims to analyse how the emerging Swedish school system in the early nineteenth century can be understood within the context of a gradual break-up of the estate society and its replacement with a class society in which citizenship was an important foundation. This is done through the discussion of the conceptions of citizenship on two levels. The first is the national level, focusing the national debate on education, and the second is the local level, investigating the local schools and the school setting. The main result is that the conceptions of citizenship in the school context were formed along two major lines: an inclusive social and civil citizenship and an exclusive, active and political citizenship. Consequently, the emerging Swedish school system simultaneously fostered these two citizenship conceptions, which coexisted in an educational system that was able to cast pupils as either subjects (comprehensive citizenship) or agents (designated citizenship). 

I januari valåret 2010 publicerade Svenska Dagbladet en gruppbild av alla åtta partiledare. Bilden är ett exempel på planerad fotojournalistik, men också ett exempel på hur bilders betydelse kan förändras och ges nya tolkningar jämfört med den ursprungliga avsikten. Artikeln analyserar arbetsprocessen bakom bilden utifrån observationer och intervjuer, dess iscensättning och relation till bildjournalistikens normer och traditioner. Det utgår från teorier om pseudohändelser och ikoniska bilder, och analyserar fotografiets estetiska och retoriska kvalitéer. Resultatet visar att processen bakom bilden inrymmer en rad ambivalenser i bildjournalisternas självförståelse och syn på pressfotografi. Det visar också att den process som skapar ikoniska bilder är komplicerad och oförutsägbar. Mediernas representationer av politiker kan planeras, men också omtolkas i mötet med publiken.

Studier av svensk utrikespolitik under det kalla har framför allt gällt den socialdemokratiska välfärdsstaten, dess neutralitetspolitik och visioner om demokratisk socialism och internationell rättvisa. Dessutom står ofta ett utrikespolitiskt neutralt Sverige och dess solidaritet med länder i tredje världen i centrum för uppmärksamheten. Dessa föreställningar härrör främst ur Sveriges kritik av stormakterna - särskilt Olof Palmes kritik av Vietnamkriget 1969 och 1972 - men också på svenskars engagemang inom FN och ett omfattande utvecklingsbistånd. I detta bidrag diskuterar jag alternativa föreställningar om Sverige utifrån begreppet tillit inom ramarna för svensk internationell politik och den planerade kupp från östtysk sida som gick under beteckningen Das unbekannte trojanische Pferd (med hänvisning till den antifascistiska kabarettisten Karl Gerhard). Den östtyske politikern Kurt Vieweg (pseudonymen Oswald) hade fått i uppdrag av Avdelning X att visa på en långvarig tradition av politiskt svenskt dubbelspel. Boken skulle visa hur den svenska staten och framför allt den svenska kungafamiljen hade samarbetat med Nazityskland under andra världskriget, trots att den officiella bilden var att landet hade varit ”neutralt”. På samma sätt var den svenska regeringens uttalande om neutralitet enbart en förevändning för stöd av den västliga NATO-alliansen. Boken skulle släppas på KSSE-konferensen i Helsingfors (30 juli till 1 augusti 1975), men avstyrdes i sista stund eftersom Olof Palme visade förståelse för östtysk sak. Retoriskt intressant är inte bara hur Vieweg argumenterar utan också med vilka ord, där begreppet tillit blir en central aspekt. Skriften var inte heller Viewegs sista uppdrag, då han i en text om 90 sidor också kom att beskriva dansk agrarpolitik. Det enskilda exemplet blir en utgångspunkt för mer generella överläggningar om hur historieskrivning är beroende av retoriken som en grundläggande kommunikationslära om tolkning och tolkningsföreträde.

Litteratur i urval

Abraham, Nils, 2007. Die politische Auslandsarbeit der DDR in Schweden. Zur Public Diplomacy der DDR gegenüber Schweden nach der diplomatischen Anerkennung (1972-1989). LitVerlag.

Almgren, Birgitta, 2021. Inte bara spioner: Stasi-infiltration i Sverige under kalla kriget. Södertörns högskola, Centrum för Östersjö- och Östeuropaforskning (CBEES).

Almgren, Birgitta, 2023. DDR und Schweden – kultureller Austausch und Stasi-Infiltration. Brill Schöningh, doi:10.30965/9783657790883_005

Andersson, Christoph, 2013. Operation Norrsken: Om Stasi och Sverige under kalla kriget. Norstedt.

Scholz, Michael, 2000. Skandinavische Erfahrungen eqrwünscht?: Nach Exil und Remigration der Ehemaligen Kpd-Emigranten in Skandinavien und Ihr Weiteres Schicksal in Der Sbz/Ddr: 37. Franz Steiner Verlag.

Seiler-Brylla, Charlotta, 2013. Das unbekannte trojanische Pferd: Schweden und die DDR im Kalten Krieg. VifaNord, https://portal.vifanord.de/blog/das-unbekannte-trojanische-pferd-schweden-und-die-ddr-im-kalten-krieg/

Vieweg Michael F. Scholz, 1997. Bauernopfer der deutschen Frage. Der Kommunist Kurt Vieweg im Dschungel der Geheimdienste. Aufbau Taschenbuch.

Henry Jenkins has coined the term civic imagination to emphasize the political dimensions of imagination. Civic imagination is the capacity to imagine alternatives to current cultural, social, political, or economic conditions; one cannot change the world unless one can imagine what a better world might look like. The question is to what extent literature more generally, and a children's book about Pippi Longstocking more specifically, can appeal to the reader's imagination and show new possibilities in such a closed society as the GDR. In a totalitarian society like GDR, children's literature was not a harmless genre, because it contained criticism that could not find expression in fiction for adults. The aim of the paper is to examine to what extent the stories about Pippi could have contributed to the capacity to see one’s self as a civic agent capable of making change and as empathetic to the plight of others different than one’s self. In this context, we will investigate the inherent possibility of aesthetics to enable acts of negotiation despite all the asymmetry of power which the bureaucracy of the party brought with it.

Literature: Glenn, Phillip. Laughter in Interaction. Cambridge University Press, 2003. Jangbar, Sakina. Rhetorical Silence: An Emerging Genre. Dissertation. He University of Texas, 2018. Jenkins et al. Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination. Case Studies of Creative Social Change. New Zork Press, 2020. Joosen, Vanessa. “Just listen? Silence, silencing and voice in the aesthetics, reception, and study of children's literature”. Silence and silencing in children’s literature. Ed. Elina Druker. Stockholm: Makadam, pp. 24–41. Lindgren, Astrid. Pippi Langstrumpf. Berlin: Kinderbuchverlag Berlin, 1975

What might a rhetorical theory approach look like that extends its hand to the field of intermedia studies? Based on this question and murals against the war in Ukraine, I emphasise the importance of developing an ontological understanding of rhetoric. Such rhetoric is no longer orientated along the axis of sender/receiver, speaker/audience, artist/viewer, but takes into account the communicative exchange we are all part of in our everyday lives. Such rhetoric is no longer just about strategic choices but allows the affective enactments to play a greater role in our understanding of communication.  

In the recent referendum on the European Union, right-wing parties in countries like Austria, France and Germany made strong inroads. Given the number of seats each country is allocated, it hardly helps that such parties like the Sweden Democrats suffered a setback. A radicalization of European politics might seem discernible. Social science research provides ample evidence that right-wing populist movements and related political parties are on the rise in most European Union Member States as well as in other countries. Of particular interest to a rhetorician is however how populist parties appeal to imaginary worlds to evoke (and construct) a shared nationalist past in the form of identity narratives. In a country like Germany, these narratives are of particular interest, because the country does not have a common past, divided as it was through the years of cold war. Notably, the Alternative for Germany(Afd) was the strongest party in the eastern parts of Germany, and if it had been for the voters in these areas, it would have prevailed over the established Christian Democrat Union (CDU). In this paper, the AfD is examined in an attempt to understand the success of the populist party in the recent referendum on the European Union. It is a rhetorical analysis in that the election results are interpreted embedded in the rhetorical situation. Given these results, the success in the eastern parts of Germany has been attributed to the socialization of the GDR-era and the dashed hopes after reunification. It is a lack of confidence in this aspect of democracy that provides a breeding ground for parties like the AfD, which they know how to exploit through the use of alternative fora such as TikTok and Twitter on which they promote their ideas on new boundaries and alternative governance.

Auf dem Deckblatt des lyrischen Bilderbuchs Djur som ingen sett utom vi (Tiere, die keiner außer uns gesehen hat, 2016) von Ulf Stark und Linda Bondestam finden wir die beiden Tiere „Liten“ (klein) und „Stor“ (groß). Laut der Titelseite handelt es sich dabei um zwei Tiere, „die niemandem sagten, wer sie sind“. Diese beiden und die anderen unsichtbaren Tiere führen ihr Dasein auf den Seiten des Poesiealbums, ohne dass sie durch Forderungen nach Sinn und Zweck gestört werden. Dem Bilderbuch fehlt auch die chronologische Abfolge, die für die Fabel so charakteristisch sein soll (Leibfried 2016). Trotz des Titels geht es in dem Bilderbuch nicht um bedrohte und unbekannte Tierarten. Stark und Bondestam beschreiben im Verse und Illustration nicht das Aussehen und die Konstitution der Mosaiklibelle im Feld oder der Natter, die sich beim Waldausflug eines Wanderers in den Schutz verdorrter Blätter schleicht. Vielmehr zeigen die Gedichte, die durch die Illustrationen in Szene gesetzt werden, die menschliche und schwer fassbare Natur unseres täglichen Lebens. Die Tiere werden zu Sinnbildern für verschiedene Stimmungslagen: Einsamkeit (Eskalopen und Bombomen), Erstaunen (Lummalin), die Fähigkeit, das innere Tier und/oder die innere Pflanze freizusetzen (En Annan), Einheit (Kakakerna), Vitalität (Bipolaren), Sehnsucht nach Freiheit (Nomadinen), der Traum, jemand anderes zu sein (Klumpantropus), die Fähigkeit, mit dem Leben zufrieden zu sein (Gulalan), die Liebe zur Natur (Doranen), die einzigartige Freude an einem besonderen Erlebnis (Celansetten) und der Optimismus derjenigen, die hohe Erwartungen haben (Daglingen). Ella Andrén schreibt: „Det vilar något djupt mänskligt och komplext över dessa nästan osedda djurfilurer. Något som gör att dessa dikter och bilder kan roa och slå rot hos såväl barn som vuxna” [„Es gibt etwas zutiefst Menschliches und Komplexes an diesen fast unsichtbaren Tierfiguren. Etwas, das es diesen Gedichten und Bildern erlaubt, sowohl Kinder als auch Erwachsene zu amüsieren und sich in ihnen zu verwurzeln“], in einer Rezension mit dem aussagekräftigen Titel „Knasigt, komplext och alldeles underbart“ (Eigenwillig, komplex und absolut wunderbar!, Andrén, 2016).

Ziel dieses Beitrags ist es zu zeigen, was passiert, wenn wir das Bilderbuch (seine Gedichte und Illustrationen) mit der besonderen rhetorischen Energie im Fokus lesen, die entsteht, wenn wir die Seiten des Buches umblättern, den Geruch der Tinte spüren und die Farben auf uns wirken lassen, während wir am rhythmischen Klang der Worte teilnehmen (Källström 2022, 2023). Das Umblättern wird zu einer Form der Technik, zu einer erlernten Tätigkeit und gleichzeitig zu einer formativen Aneignung. An diesen Prozessen ist der Leser selbst beteiligt (Field, 2019; Kümmerling-Meibauer & Meibauer, 2019; Müller-Wille 2017, 2020). Das bedeutet, dass wir uns für die so genannte kulturell geprägte (kodierte) Materialität des Buches interessieren, d. h. dafür, wie das Buch als greifbares Objekt innerhalb bestimmter sozialer und historischer Kontexte im alltäglichen Gebrauch Gestalt und Bedeutung erhält. Auch der Blick des Lesers ist ein wichtiger Aspekt dieser Materialisierung (Källström 2022, 2023).

Über die finnische Illustratorin und den schwedischen Autor

Linda Bondestam, (1977-), hat mehrere Auszeichnungen für ihre Kunst erhalten. Sie wurde für den Astrid-Lindgren-Gedächtnispreis nominiert. Für ihr Buch Min egen lilla liten - auf Deutsch erschienen bei Fischer Sauerländer unter dem Titel Graugrau und Fünkchen - erhielt sie den Finlandia Junior Prize. Zusammen mit Ulf Stark wurde sie im Herbst 2017 für das Buch Djur som ingen sett utom vi mit dem Nordischen Kinder- und Jugendliteraturpreis ausgezeichnet.

Ulf Stark (1944-2017) war einer der führenden schwedischen Kinder- und Jugendbuchautoren. Er debütierte 1964 mit einer Gedichtsammlung namens Ett hål till livet. Erst 1975 wurde sein erstes Kinderbuch Petter och den röda fågeln veröffentlicht. Der literarische Durchbruch gelang ihm mit dem Kinderbuch Dårfinkar och dönickar (1984), mit dem er den Kinderbuchwettbewerb von Bonniers Juniorförlag gewann. Mehrere von Ulf Starks Büchern tragen autobiografische Züge und sind in seinem Heimatort Stureby angesiedelt, wo er aufgewachsen ist. Aus seiner Zusammenarbeit mit Linda Bondestam sind mehrere Bilderbücher hervorgegangen.

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Dr. Lisa Källström ist Bildrhetorikerin an der Universität Södertörn. Ihre Forschung beschäftigt sich mit der politischen Signifikanz von Bildern am Schnittpunkt von ästhetischem und rhetorischem Ereignis. In dem Projekt 'Pippi jenseits der Mauer' diskutiert sie mit der Historikerin Ines Soldwisch (Heinrich-Heine-Universität) die Rezeption von Pippi Langstrumpf in der DDR (gefördert von der Ostseestiftung). In "Putte und Pippi in der Welt" diskutieren Källström und Petra Bäni Rigler über die visuellen Transformationen zweier schwedischer Kinderbuchfiguren (gefördert von Ridderstad).

Literature:

Stark, Ulf & Linda Bondestam. Djur som ingen sett utom vi. Stockholm: Förlaget Bergh,2016.

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André, Ella. Knasigt, komplext och alldeles underbart. Dagensbok.com,2016. Tillgänglig:Knasigt, komplext och alldeles underbart | dagensbok.com

Bjørlo, Berit Westergaard. Illustrerte dikt: Bildeboka som arena for barnepoesi. Barnelyrikk: En antologi. Anne Skaret. Vallset: Oplandske Bokforlag, (2015) 105–124.

Field, Hannah. Playing With the Book: Victorian Movable Picture Books and the Child Reader. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, (2019).

Leibfried, Erwin. Wort und Begriff der Fabel. Fabel. Sammlung Metzler. Stuttgart; J.B. Metzler, 2016.

Källström, Lisa. Lyssna, hör du dem kvittra och ryta. Bilderboken som fabelövning [Lausch, sie zwitschern und brüllen. Das Bilderbuch als Fabel]. Är man två har man alltid en publik. Festskrift till Lennart Hellspong [Zu zweit gibt es immer ein Publikum. Festschrift für Lennart Hellspong]. Lisa Källström & Anders Sigrell. Lund: Mediatryck, (2022) 233–248. 

Källström, Lisa. Pippi aus dem Rahmen: Die Einrahmung als bildrhetorisches Phänomen. Kids+ Media: https://doi.org/10.54717/kidsmedia.12.1.2022.4, 2023.

Kümmerling-Meibauer, Bettina & Jörg Meibauer. Picturebooks as objects. Libri & Liberi, (2019) 257–278.

Müller-Wille, Klaus. Sezierte Bücher. Hans Christian Andersens Materialästhetik. Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink, 2017.

Müller-Wille, Klaus. ”Das Lesen neu erfinden.” Konzepte, Analogien, Beispiele. Schnittstellen der Kinder- und Jugendmedienforschung: Aktuelle Positionen und Perspektiven. Red. Ute Dettmar et al. Berlin: J.B. Metzler (2020), 11–26.

Setting of from the concept of the silencing discussed by Cheryl Glenn in her book Unspoken: A Rhetoric of Silence (2004), we discuss Astrid Lindgren’s children’s book Pippi Longstocking in East Germany (GDR). The GDR-edition is particularly interesting because of its creative and anti-authoritarian approach to the Swedish original from 1945. Parts of the text were deleted so that the stores would better reflect the ideological ideals of the time. For example, Pippi decides not to leave the small village for a trip to the South Sea, realising the benefits of being part of a larger social community. The book is also interesting because of the negotiations that preceded its publication to position Pippi within a socialist framework. Pippi does not resemble a typical GDR hero like Gerhard Holtz Baumert's Alfons Zitterbacke or Peter Hack's Meta Morfoss. The presentation will focus on changes in the text, but also on the strategic negotiations that preceded the publication. In this context, we want to develop a concept of censorship as a dispositive of political rule in the field of cultural production that not only follows the top-down direction, but also has inherent acts of negotiation despite all the asymmetry of power. Silence can be linked to what is left unsaid, what is explicitly censored. In other words, which subjects are tabooed and banned. But it is not just a discursive practice for silencing. It can also be a tool for empowerment (see Glenn 2003, Jangbar 2018, Joosen 2021). 

Street artists have demonstrated their condemnation of Russia’s invasion of a neighbor with murals, both in Ukraine and abroad. The most famous of these artists is Banksy. On a wall of what was oncea kindergarten, he has sprayed the image of a child in a judo match overcoming a seemingly far more powerful opponent (an adult with some resemblance to the Russian leader). Although such works of street artists in Ukraine sometimes also show Putin, children area common theme – often a girl with two stiff braids. Some of these works are presented in this essay, considering the role of the child in them, seeking to understand the role of art in protest as an appro-priation and reconfiguration of public space.

An AI-generated photo on Instagram with some Banksy effect shows two children watering an olive tree. The boy is wearing a yarmulke, the girl a Palestinian shawl, a keffiyeh. The photo serves as a starting point for this presentation in a discussion about the possibilities and risks of K1 in terms of the relationship between knowledge/information and the transmission of values. In doing so, I want to contribute to a richer picture of how political opinion changes in times of crisis by asking how visual meaning-making takes shape in an intense news flow. Digital platforms offer new and valuable ways to share opinions and information, while also enabling the spread of false information (Schirrmacher & Mousavi 2024, 2). Here, the viewer believes that it is a photograph of a street art work by Banksy and attributes a certain authenticity and value to it. In the viewer’s co-creative gaze, the photograph become a communicative act, a technical medium of display (Elleström 2021), and as such perhaps even an intervention in an ongoing conflict (cf. Källström 2023).

With AI-tools it is possibly to create a picture like the one of the two children watering an olive tree. Some may argue that this kind of art lacks originality, creativity, or soul. That it is just copying existing data without understanding or meaning. Taking off from Aristotle’s hylomorphic modell (Manning 2013), we could stress that it lacks content (hyle), being just form (morphe). Other may claim that AI-art expands our horizons and challenges our perceptions. It is said that, although the internet has democratised access to information and publishing, it also brings about communication methods that threaten democratic processes (Schirrmacher & Mousavi 2024, 2). Harvard scholar Shoshana Zuboff argues that digital technologies threaten democratic societies in her book on “surveillance capitalism”. Zuboff defines “surveillance capitalism” not only as a “new economic order” but also as “an expropriation of critical human rights”. This warning points to the necessity of addressing the role of communication in contemporary society and in particular, how networks serve as spatiotemporal performative space in which communicative events can take place. It also makes it necessary to re-emphasise the active role of the media user in an attempt to emphasise the ethical implications of aesthetics (see Källström 2023; cf. Bäckström, Führer & Schirrmacher 2021, 217). 

Literature

Bäckström, Per & Heidrun Führer, Beate Schirrmacher. “The Intermediality of Performance.” In The Intermediality of Performance. New York: Routledge, 2021.

Elleström, Lars. 2021. “The Modalities of Media: A Model for Understanding Intermedial Relations.” In Lars Elleström, ed., Media borders. Houndmills; New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Källström, Lisa. “Street Art Against War: With Stencil Marks and Paint Cans in Ukraine.” Baltic Worlds, https://balticworlds.com/with-stencil-marks-and-paint-cans-in-ukraine, 2023.

Manning, Gideon. 2013. “The History of Hylemorphism.” In Journal of the History of Ideas. 

Schirrmacher, Beate & Nafiseh Mousavi. 2024. “Introduction: The Dynamics of Truthfullness and Media.” In Truth Claims Across Media. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.

Zuboff, Shoshana. The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2019.

From publisher’s perspective, it is well known that the translation of texts also is a matter of negotiating license rights, while format, illustrations and paper quality are up to the publisher. The choices reflects different ideals as ideas about the considered reader, recognising how important the choices are according to the motivating aspects of the reading experience. For readers, it is equally obvious that books in their material aspects have the capacity to engage emotionally and hereby motivate to further reading. This recognition brings the reader/viewer’s embodied memories, aisthesis, to the centre of our analysis.Aisthesis can be summarized as the embodied experience that is actualized in the rhetorical experience. Closely linked to aisthesis are other concepts such as memory (memoria), emotions (pathos), imagination (phantasia), all of which have an impact on our motivation. Through the concept of aisthesis, the critic’s attention is drawn to this composite experience, in which the rhetorical artefact is a component and cannot be isolated as an object of analysis. Using the classical concept of aisthesis as a reference framework the starting point of this presentation are illustrations for different editions of Astrid Lindgren’s work (Karlsson on the Roof, Pippi Longstocking) in the GDR, Poland, Slovakia, Ukraine and Russia.

A sketch for the cover of the second East German edition toPippi Langstrumpf (1988) showing a girl standing on her headon horseback is the starting point for this article. It was drawnby Cornelia Ellinger, only one year before the fall of the Berlinwall. The sketch becomes a starting point for a discussion ofhumor and materiality in the reception of Pippi in the GDR. Justas the cover frames and delimits the text, our preconceptions frame our gaze and affect what we can see. However, this act is not just something that is imposed on us but an invitation toact ourselves, which makes issues of illustration, color choiceand book format particularly important in a monolithic society, inan attempt to steer the reader’s attention in a desired direction.The discussed sketch was never printed. Instead, the publisher chose a more blatantly humorous image.

Street artists have demonstrated their discontent with Russia's invasion of a neighbor with murals, both in Ukraine and abroad. The most famous of these is Banksy. On a wall of what was once a kindergarten, he has sprayed the image of a child in a judo match overcoming a seemingly overwhelming opponent (an adult with some resemblance to the Russian leader). Although such works of street artist in Ukraine sometimes also show Putin, children are a common theme - often a girl with two stiff braids. In this essay, I present some of these works while considering the role of the child in them, seeking to understand the role of art in protest as an appropriation and reconfiguration of public space.

As the American political debate heats up in the run-up to the election, memes are being used as posts (bats) in the debate. Donald Trump's hairstyle and body weight are mocked, while he is attributed similar qualities to a superhero and is, among other things, scrutinised by ultra-conservative voters (cf. fandom, Fiesler & Bruckman, 2019). Trump himself often posts memes by, among others, Brian Heestand on Twitter (cf. twitter use Hietanen, 2023). In a discussion about the body and the digital, we can reflect on how these memes are created and why, but also how Trump is presented (cf. Kjeldsen 2021; Iversen 2021). In a presentation last autumn at the conference ‘Media and Emotional Mobilization’ (LMO, Linnaeus University), I argued that Trump's ‘alternative facts’ serve the same function as his slogan ‘Make America Great Again’ - they become the shibboleth that signals the group's cohesion towards other groups. This would mean that the truthfulness is subordinate to Trump's importance as a politician (cf. Laler & Sundby 2022). Now, as before, I discuss Trump's rhetoric in terms of a mediated spectacle, a form of ritual arena similar to American football, where an emotional audience shows cultic loyalty to its tribe (the home team) in a mediated process of empathetic participation with strong elements of aggression and violence. The memes I discuss here become further examples of Trump's personality-centred and emotion-driven arena politics (via mass rallies and a large following on Twitter) where humour is also The memes I discuss here are further examples of Trump's personality-centred and emotion-driven arena politics (via mass meetings and a large following on Twitter) in which humour (Bruhn & Donna2022a) also becomes important. Central to this interplay between queue and leader (which is very similar to the American revival song), language and other sensory and semiotic resources take on a mobilising function (cf. Laler & Sundby 2022). In this song, it is not the truth function in the usual sense of the word as fidelity to an empirical reality that is important, but trust: trust in one's own leader and one's own team. And this trust is expected to take bodily expression.

Syftet med artikeln är att undersöka hur läsaren uppmuntras att hantera de frågor som tematiseras i ett urval böcker om Greta Thunberg och hur agens (både läsarens och Gretas) gestaltas genom text och bild.1 Vårt material är två böcker om Greta Thunberg som har givits ut på de tyska, franska, engelska, danska, italienska och svenska bokmarknaderna. För att problem-atisera och fördjupa vår studie av bokomslagen undersöker vi också de ”att-göra-listor” som har bifogats några av böckerna. Det gör vi för att studera den roll som läsaren tillskrivs. De verbaltextliga elementen analyseras med utgångspunkt i systemisk-funktionell grammatik och illustrationerna med retorisk bildanalys. Med detta som utgångspunkt frågar vi: hur kommer Gretas och andra barns agens till uttryck?

The chapter investigates how ecological sustainability and ecocriticalagency are made explicit in Norwegian, Swedish, and Finnish curricula for primaryand lower secondary school. The study shows that the concept of sustainability isvaguely dealt with in the Swedish and Finnish curricula. What all the curricula have incommon is that the teachers’ agency is omitted. The pupils, on the other hand, areexpected to learn and act according to their newly acquired knowledge. They are hence expected not just to understand, but also to participate in public debates onsustainability. 

The aim of this article is to explore the relationship between aesthetics and pedagogy by focusing on the aesthetic design of reading books. The idea that multiple senses and activities interact when children learn to read is not new in educational studies. Research shows that children’s aesthetic experiences can contribute to increased learning outcome. In this article, we discuss the application of such considerations by examining two reading books in the Swedish series Vill du läsa? (1935–1936) and Nu ska vi läsa (1948–1949), thus taking a historical perspective on the topic. The books were illustrated by two of Sweden’s most famous artists, Elsa Beskow and Ingrid Vang Nyman. We examine how the books appeal to the reader’s creativity and playfulness. Our theoretical starting point is Walter Benjamin’s reflections on the reading and writing child where the gaze is also important. Benjamin’s thoughts were important for Swedish reform pedagogy, which in turn influenced the work of Elsa Beskow and Ingrid Vang Nyman. With the reform pedagogy’s celebration of the creative child, the focus shifts from the book as a product to the actual learning process for which the aesthetic is a prerequisite.