"Det finns miljoner sätt att vara": om Monika Fagerholms Diva och den filosofiska läsningen

This article-based dissertation is a discussion of the relationship between fiction and theory/philosophy as well as a philosophical reading of Finland-Swedish author Monika Fagerholm’s novel "Diva. En uppväxts egna alfabet med docklaboratorium (en bonusberättelse ur framtiden)" (Diva. The Alphabet of an Adolescence with a Laboratory of Dolls (A Bonus Tale from the Future), 1998). The central questions concern the relationship between theory/philosophy and literature: What role does theory/philosophy have in readings if scholars are not to apply them as theory in a methodological sense, i.e. as a predetermined framework? What does such work look like concerning "Diva"?

The theoretical focus is on the thinking of Toril Moi, who argues for a renegotiation of the traditional relationship between literature and theory and/or philosophy. Moi’s primary criticism concerns the influence hermeneutics of suspicion, poststructuralism, and its deconstructive methods have had on the relationship between theory, philosophy, criticism and fiction. Instead, she proposes a reading which has a philosophical interest but which takes the literary text, its concepts and preoccupations, as its starting point.

The dissertation identifies three key concepts in "Diva": language, corporeality and spatiality. These form the basis for a philosophical reading in which the concepts function as motifs in the novel, as well as a thematic, philosophical discussion on the role of narrative, literature and representations for the protagonist. This opens for a feminist context, and "Diva" is related to Judith Butler’s and Rosi Braidotti’s thinking. The second half of this study consists of five research articles, which show how the novel’s recontextualization of the universal subject as a teenage girl is a way to critically examine the cultural conditions and presuppositions of the subject.

A central trait in Fagerholm’s fiction is identified: categories mix and coincide. This occurs on two levels. Firstly, concerning language, and corporeality in "Diva", the thematic and the textual coincide in such a way that both narrative style and the printed page verge on poetic expression – the flow of meaning is disrupted in both form and content. Secondly, space and place coincide and form an abstract, mental spatiality, which opens an exploration of norms and transgressions, of potential subjectivities.