This thesis is about the relation between pain and language and focuses on migraine, a specific type of headache that comes in attacks. The first conclusion is that migraine is a signifier without... Show moreThis thesis is about the relation between pain and language and focuses on migraine, a specific type of headache that comes in attacks. The first conclusion is that migraine is a signifier without signified. A diagnosis of migraine only depends on the words of the patients by applying internationally agreed on criteria which form a discourse and artificially exclude ‘non-migraine headaches’. Further research-questions are whether so-defined migraine can destroy language and what is the role of time in its existence. The answers to these questions will be applied to selected novels that include protagonists with migraine. The aim of these analyses is not how migraine is being described, but how it is performed in and through these texts. The overall goal of this thesis is to come to a better understanding of the relation between migraine and language and vice versa, on the one hand by seeing the patient as text and on the other by seeing the text as patient. Show less
This thesis aims at thinking through the ethical position of animals in a way that differs radically from the manner in wich this ethical position is thought within contemporary animal rights... Show moreThis thesis aims at thinking through the ethical position of animals in a way that differs radically from the manner in wich this ethical position is thought within contemporary animal rights discourse. The reason for this alternative approach is that today's animal rights discourse is characterized by a polemic on demarcation that seems both irresolvable and scientifically unwarranted for being centred on a necessarily arbitrary demarcation between the human and the animal.This cannot but lead to irresponsible demarcation decisions, which implies we must imagine other ways of thinking through the question of the animal. In my research I propose to do this by looking at how language operates within demarcation decisions between humans and animals, both in the legal, literary and popular domain. More specifically, this study demonstrates that the study of tropes in literary texts may enable us to work out modes of identification with animals other than those we typically encounter in the legal and public sphere and,hence, can help us to get beyond the issues of cruelty and consiousness that dominate contemporary animal rights debate as a result of its excessively tight focus on demarcation. Show less
