This study investigates, for the first time, the relation between the Swedish feminist Ellen Key (1849- 1926) and the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). Ellen Key read Nietzsche extensively and this had a determining effect on her feminist thinking. This study argues that by reading her through Nietzsche it will be possible to interpret her writing not as 'essentialism' but rather as a way of transcending dichotomies such as mind/body; culture/nature. The theoretical framework for this study is the feminist readings of Nietzsche that emanated from Derrida's and Irigaray's interpretations of Nietzsche in the late 70:ies. There are many women in Nietzsche's text and some of the things he says about women are misogynistic while others are clearly the opposite. But 'woman' is also an important metaphor in the Nietzschean text. Feminist readings of Nietzsche show that, even if Nietzsche himself was not an outspoken feminist, his philosophy provides feminism with important tools for deconstructing patriarchal thinking and that he in this sense can be read as a'feminist'. This study argues that Key, who was one of the earliest readers of Nietzsche in Sweden, saw in his philosophy possibilities for 'the New Woman' as did many other feminists of her time, especially in Germany. However she took her 'use'of Nietzsche one step further; Key's thinking starts out with her critique of Christianity and its dualistic split of mind and body. In Nietzsche she recognises a fellow thinker in trying to move beyond the mind/body dichotomy. At the very centre of Nietzsche's thinking are metaphors of motherhood, pregnancy and birth, that speak of philosophy as a creative force. Key re-uses these metaphors in her feminist thinking when she constructs her concept of motherliness not as a biological effect or experience but as a creative force within culture.

Amitié Sincère – a Counter Narrative and a Story of Love Between Women. A Reading of Karen Blixen’s/Isak Dinesen’s »The Roads Round Pisa« »The Roads Round Pisa« is the opening story in Karen Blixen’s debut work Seven Gothic Tales (1934). It is also one of her most remarkable stories and the one that most openly questions heterosexuality as a road to happiness. Blixen often works with an ironic, intertextual play with other texts, which takes the character of a counter narrative. Early on, both Ellen Moers and the Gothic scholar David Punter saw the connection between Blixen’s interest in the Gothic tradition and a gender critical attitude. In spite of Dinesen’s use of the Gothic this has not played any central role in the Dinesen reception. Modern researchers on the Gothic period, like Cyndy Hendershot, have pointed out how the disruption of stable notions of gender and sexuality is a characteristic of the genre. It is in this respect Blixen’s relation to the Gothic tradition should be investigated. Her texts are full of skeletons and ghosts, and with a focus on the fundamental instability of identity, gender and sexuality. In this article, which is part of a larger project on Blixen and the Gothic, I argue that, by connecting Blixen again to this disruptive Gothic tradition of transgressing gender we can also change our way of reading her. Where earlier feminist readings have looked for feminist representations in Blixen, I suggest a change of focus, to how intertextual »genre trouble« also produces »gender trouble.« Blixen’s feminism works through criticism and irony. Through a reading of »The Roads Round Pisa«, I will show how the Gothic and the gender criticism work together in an intertextual play with two classical Gothic texts; Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla, to tell a story of love and loyalty between women.

The intention of this article is to follow Elizabeth Grosz’ invitation to explore some of the ways that time constructions and time metaphors attain significance in contemporary feminist theory. Each history includes and produces different temporal structures. How these temporal structures work, the value ascribed to them, and their implications for feminist historiography, is discussed by looking at various examples of writing contemporary feminist history. How is the recent history between the 1970’s and the present of Swedish feminist theory portrayed? Using Claire Hemmings’ historiography of Anglo-American contemporary feminist theory, the article traces similar patterns in the way the development of Swedish feminism is described. The article shows that the common way to write the history of feminist theory in terms of breaks and turning points are deeply problematic. Basically these metaphors rest on a conception of time as serial and hierarchical. That the time is “out of joint” is a prerequisite for feminist work. Feminist theorization must be untimely in Nietzsche’s sense. The later part of the article shows how concepts like untimeliness, anachronism and Derrida’s concept of “hauntology”, along with contemporary queer theoretical research on the literary Gothic, offer alternative constructions of time, which might make it possible to see feminist pioneers, not as specters either to be revenged or silenced, but as ghosts, as un-deads in a positive sense.

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Enahanda läsning: En queer tolkning av romancegenren (diss.). Ellerströms 2018 (286 sidor)ROM ANCE ÄR EN benämning som de senaste åren importerats från den anglosaxiska världen som en beteckning på en typ av populära kärleksberättelser med lyckliga slut. En framgångsrik genre som ofta nedvärderas och beskrivs som avskyvärd, dålig litteratur, som "skräp" och "porr" för medelålders kvinnor. Genren beskrivs på ett förvånansvärt likartat sätt även från feministiskt håll som ofta ser den som heteronormativ och/ eller antifeministisk. Hur kommer det sig, frågar Elin Abrahamsson, att samma texter som anses reproducera en könskonservativ heterosexism är föremål för en misogynt laddad kritik? Och hur kommer det sig att den feministiska kritiken mot genren så ofta använder sig av samma vokabulär som den misogyna kritiken? (Abrahamsson 2018, 17