In Malin Kivelä?s novel Du eller aldrig (2006) the reader experiences the world through the body of Aija, the narrator; a middle aged woman living in Helsinki. Aija has no family or other social relations. Hers is a life of strict routine: she spends her time reading, cleaning and studying snowflakes. Critics of the novel have stressed that Aija?s way of narrating creates a strong sense of presence in the text, but also that Aija?s atypical social behavior evokes a sense of loneliness and Alienation.

This essay examines the grotesque in Samuel Becketts wellknown play Waiting for Godot. The play is primarily seen as an icon of absurdism, and it is such not appropriate to examine the play as if it belongs to the litterary genre of grotesque. The primary purpose of absurdism is to reveal the pointless- and emptiness of existence. In order to illustrate these points absurdism will often make use of the common characteristics of the grotesque. With this in mind I present, within this essay, an eximination of whether Samuel Becket makes use of these characteristics to assist his portayal of emptiness in Waiting for Godot.A prior understanding of absurdism is required and i have as such primarly used Martin Esslins famous studies.The studies of the grotesque are mainly represented by two theorists.

This essay constitutes an attempt to expose, with reference to contemporary animal research, the limits of Martin Heidegger?s concept of the being of animality in Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik (1929/30) and to propose some possible ways to think, within the philosophical style of this particular work, the being of those animals that most distinctly transcends Heidegger?s concept. The essay seeks to address the following question: Do the results of contemporary animal research expose ways of being within animality that withdrawal from Heidegger?s concept of the being of animality in general, and if so, how should we think these new ways of animal being? The motivation to ask this question, I argue, are immanent to Heidegger?s thinking in at least three ways: 1) Because of his standpoint that philosophy cannot, in any meaningful way, create an ontological concept of animality without an orientation towards the results of the positive sciences; 2) Because of the unfinished and tentative character of Heidegger?s analysis, a character that is such that it should be seen, according to Heidegger himself, as an essential point of departure for further thinking; 3) Because of Heidegger?s view that the being of the animal are such that it involves the withdrawal of this very being from any originary access, a withdrawal that necessitates an infinite return to the question concerning the being of the animal. The essay wants to be a continuation of lines that are present in Heidegger?s open-ended thought on this theme rather than to be an external critique that approach the text, which is most often the case, as a closed point of view which we are forced to affirm or reject.

This essay constitutes an attempt to expose, with reference to contemporary animal research, the limits of Martin Heidegger?s concept of the being of animality in Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik (1929/30) and to propose some possible ways to think, within the philosophical style of this particular work, the being of those animals that most distinctly transcends Heidegger?s concept. The essay seeks to address the following question: Do the results of contemporary animal research expose ways of being within animality that withdrawal from Heidegger?s concept of the being of animality in general, and if so, how should we think these new ways of animal being? The motivation to ask this question, I argue, are immanent to Heidegger?s thinking in at least three ways: 1) Because of his standpoint that philosophy cannot, in any meaningful way, create an ontological concept of animality without an orientation towards the results of the positive sciences; 2) Because of the unfinished and tentative character of Heidegger?s analysis, a character that is such that it should be seen, according to Heidegger himself, as an essential point of departure for further thinking; 3) Because of Heidegger?s view that the being of the animal are such that it involves the withdrawal of this very being from any originary access, a withdrawal that necessitates an infinite return to the question concerning the being of the animal. The essay wants to be a continuation of lines that are present in Heidegger?s open-ended thought on this theme rather than to be an external critique that approach the text, which is most often the case, as a closed point of view which we are forced to affirm or reject.

Mårdhunden är en invasiv art i Europa och har tack vare sin generalistiska diet, hög reproduktivitet och stor anpassningsbarhet lyckats etablera sig i stora delar av Nord-, Öst- och Centraleuropa. Den introducerades i tidigare västra Sovjetunionen mellan 1929 och 1955 med syftet att få ett nytt pälsdjur att jaga. Då mårdhunden gärna vandrar långa sträckor spred den sig snart från utsättningsområdena och etablerades i Europa. I dagsläget finns det en oro för att den ska påverka andra arter och deras ekosystem samt att den ska sprida olika parasit- och virussjukdomar. Min studie undersöker om man sett någon påverkan på andra arter och huruvida mårdhunden fungerar som sjukdomsspridare.