Att fly sin kropp. En studie om gränsöverskridning i Sara Stridsbergs prosa
LitteraturvetenskapSara StridsbergHappy SallyDrömfakultetenDarling RiverFigurationNomadismRosi BraidottiHydrofeminismTranscending
Sara Stridsberg?s novels Happy Sally, Drömfakulteten and Darling River are all brimming withliterary images of movement and becoming. The physical aspects of being a female subject inbecoming highlights the enfleshed body as important. Themes such as sexuality, power andviolence can be traced in the beautiful but most disturbing narratives of Stridsberg.The purpose of this study is to show the reader how the literary female characters aretranscending the physical borders of their bodies in order to become something more than what thehuman form allows them to be. Heteronormative sexuality, sickness, closeness to water andanimaling are bound together by the way they enact the female characters to stretch beyond thesurfaces of their skins. It is within these four themes the feminine body is seen to break, push ordissolve the boundary between the human body and it?s surrounding. Even though many of thecrossings must be read as destructive there are still potentials of subversiveness.By applying Rosi Braidottis feminist figuration The Nomadic Subject and Astrida Neimanishydrofeminist theory to the reading of the novels, I will be able to detect these various forms oftranscendings and transformations. By suggesting these crossings as ways of trying to escapeviolence or patriarchal boundary, the study takes on a feminist approach towards the understandingof the female literary subject as multiple and transformative. Not only are they complex withinthem self, but together they can be understood as an literary image of one female subject, shiftingand stretching forms. Here the image of the kaleidoscope is giving the idea of the multiple literarysubject more body and it is introduced as a way of understanding the process of the shiftingelements within and between the female characters in Stridsbergs novels.