My essay is an investigation of American Psychos Patrick Bateman. Why is Patrick Batemans identity one so easily described as shallow and superficial? I discuss theese questions from a marxists point of view putting Bateman in the context of Georg Lukács theories of Reification. I compare the structure of Patrick Batemans identity with the idea of an reified identity to se how the mechanisms of Reification creates the entity that is Patrick Bateman.My conclusion is that one answer to Batemans shallowness is the phenomenon of Reification. To get a grasp of how shallowness might be understood I combine the theories of Lukács with Bakhtins idea of the aouthorative discourse.If one look upon Reification as an aouthorative discourse and one also presume that human existence is social and verbal the conclusion is that Patrick Bateman cannot exist because of what he is an example of.

The present MA thesis analyzes how body and blood functions as historical and narrative elements in Yu Hua's novel Chronicle of a Blood Merchant (1995). In the novel, the story and the plot can not be regarded as disparate items; the two levels of the text are tightly interwoven by what the thesis introduces as a sangvinolent narration. The term conceptualizes the use of blood as a structural element and the thrust of the text, in this case how the ability to sell blood is a prerequisite for the story and the plot.Close readings reveal the structural correlations between the blood-selling main-character Xu Sanguan in the plot on the one hand, and in the story on the other, which can be detected to have, inter alia, an effect on the temporality of the narrative. Themes linked to identity, belonging and survival (performativity, mimicry, Reification and alienation) permeate the text. In the novel the body and bodily fluids are sacrificed in order to form and enforce perceptions of identity and societal roles.The rhetorical use of ?blood and tears? (Ch.

This thesis analyzes contemporary Swedish discourse on Russia, i.e. the ways Russia and Russians are perceived in Sweden today. After a summary of historical Western and Swedish perceptions of Russia, and a discussion about the treatment of these tensions within modern research, contemporary Swedish discourse is reconstructed based upon analytical articles in three major newspapers during the period 1992-2007. It is argued that the prevailing image of Russia contains the reproduction of old stereotypes and prejudices. The five major representations of Russia in contemporary Swedish discourse are: non-Western, unreliable, authoritarian, threatening and eternal, with the last one being a meta-representation functioning both as a representation of its own and a mechanism for the Reification of the others.