Faculty of Arts Department of Cultural Sciences The Poor Talent, the Unusually Knowing Housewife and the New You A historical study about temporal constructions of gendered and classed subjectivities in the working-class struggle for education in Modernity’s  Sweden Master’s  Thesis in Gendering Practices, 30 hec Author: Tina Andersson Supervisor: Lena Martinsson Spring 2015 i Abstract The starting point of this thesis is the   working   class’   fight   for   knowledge,   education   and   bildning during the 20th century in Sweden. With  the  general  question  “who  has  the  right  to   knowledge?”   I   go  over   text- and image material from the two time periods 1930-1949 and 1960-1979 and I also work with material from 2015. All material researched deal with the question of who should partake in education and knowledge production and for what purpose and I search for understandings of gender and class visible in the argumentation for the working  class’  right  to  education.  The choice to make a historical study is part of my intention to elaborate with the concept of time. I argue that the discursive constructions of gendered and classed subjectivities that take shape in the material cannot be separated from what I call temporal fantasies; that is, cultural ideas about past, present and future. I find that such fantasies are crucial in the formation of the important citizen: a core figure in the idea about who should gain knowledge and why. I also aim at using the different time periods to illustrate discursive similarities – this in order to problematize the modern story about a linear, development-based time line that assumes historical shifts, generation differences and progress. I draw from the conviction that we need to seek new ways of dealing with time and history, since I believe this to go hand in hand with how we understand matters such as gender- and class based power orders. Key words: education, bildning, knowledge, class, gender, time, temporal fantasies, subject positions, discourse, citizenship, modernity, history, Sweden ii “Yet  you  surely  hope,  that  the  sheet  of  our  Swedish  history,   that   will   tell   of   the   social   democracy’s   transformation   of   society in the area of education and schooling, will get pondered in the future society, where it is given that you have a self-determined occupation and where you can just help yourself  to  the  cultural  values” The signature Ingrid Levin in Morgonbris 1968 iii Table of content Abstract i Table of content iii Word list v 1 | Introduction ....................................................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Purpose and research questions .................................................................................................. 2 1.2 Disposition ................................................................................................................................. 3 1.3 Research field ............................................................................................................................. 4 The research field of gender and class ............................................................................................ 4 Gender and temporality .................................................................................................................. 6 2 | Theoretical and methodological approaches ...................................................................................... 8 2.1 My position: situating my knowledge......................................................................................... 8 The  idea  of  a  “solution” .................................................................................................................. 9 2.2 A rhizomatic way of working with text- and image analysis .................................................... 10 Analyzing discursive texts and images ......................................................................................... 11 2.3 Gender-classed subjectivities and education ............................................................................. 13 2.4 What time is it? Challenging aspects on time, temporality and history .................................... 15 The difference between Past and History ..................................................................................... 15 A ghost story about time............................................................................................................... 16 An untimely feminist theorization ................................................................................................ 17 So is the history present or the present history? ............................................................................ 19 The illusion of neutral time .......................................................................................................... 20 Time and class and gender? .............................................................................................................. 21 3 | Material ........................................................................................................................................... 23 3.1 The material.............................................................................................................................. 23 3.2 Lost in translation: translating context- and culture specific material ....................................... 24 Swedish  “Bildning”  and  “Folkbildning” ...................................................................................... 26 4  |  Workers’  knowledge:  a  resource  for  The  Future  Society ................................................................. 27 4.1 The dream of a brighter future .................................................................................................. 27 4.2 Talented but poor...................................................................................................................... 30 4.3 Summary .................................................................................................................................. 35 iv 5 | Here and now: who is needed for the future?................................................................................... 36 5.1 Towards a high and noble human life ....................................................................................... 36 5.2 The working-class girl and her future ....................................................................................... 38 5.3 Fostering housewives for their future ....................................................................................... 39 Unusually knowing housewives ................................................................................................... 40 5.4      “We  can  perfectly  well  compare  our  kitchens  with  small  laboratories,  where  the  chemist- housewife  reigns” ............................................................................................................................. 42 Scientification of housework ........................................................................................................ 43 Wife, mother, citizen .................................................................................................................... 44 Her own present, her own future .................................................................................................. 46 5.5 Summary .................................................................................................................................. 49 6  |  The  life  competition:    “Papers  you  got  to  have” .............................................................................. 50 6.1 Competitiveness on equal terms ............................................................................................... 50 6.2 Both means and ends ................................................................................................................ 53 6.3      Society’s  next  investment:  the  adult  worker ............................................................................. 55 …and  the  women ......................................................................................................................... 56 6.4 Summary .................................................................................................................................... 59 7| Conclusions ...................................................................................................................................... 60 Reference list........................................................................................................................................ 64 Appendix 1 Appendix 2 v Word list This thesis is written in English. Although, throughout the thesis some words and concepts from the Swedish language are used which, because of the context specific meaning, are hard or impossible to translate. Here, I try to explain their meaning in a summarizing word list, but some comments are also made in footnotes throughout the text as the concepts are referred to. Bildning A concept  not  captured  by  the  term  ”education”  which  often involve external measurement, like degrees and specific competence for the labour market. Bildning focuses more on the internal process for an individual or group that engages in knowledge  production.  Sometimes   the  English   term   “liberal  education”   is   used (see The National Encyclopedia) but since the term bildning in the Swedish context is largely associated to the 20th century democratization of knowledge and the Social Democratic impact on society, this is the term I will use. Folkbildning A direct translation  gives  the  term  “people’s  bildning”  which  emphazises  the  democratic   aspect of the work of bildning: that the people are taking charge of their own knowledge production. In Swedish history, the   people’s   movements or the temperance movement, the free-church   movement   and   the   workers’   movement are often put forward as important for the work of folkbildning. Folkskola Directly translated: “Folk  School”  or  “People’s  School”.  Folkskola  was  from  1842  a  statutory   public school thought to provide a basic schooling for all children, in reality for farmers- and working class children  who  could  not  go  to  private  schools.  The  Folkskola  was  replaced  by  the  elementary  school  in  the  1970’s   (Lindensjö & Lundgren, 2014:33-34, 56). Gymnasium The upper secondary education instance in Sweden, that takes place after the nine-year elementary school. The schooling is often three years and optional. Folkuniversitet Directly  translated:  “Folk  University”  or  “People’s  University”.  Study  association  that   works with folkbildning and adult education that for example differs from the academic university in terms of credits and grade systems. Komvux Kommunal  Vuxenutbildning,  in  Enlish  “Public  Adult  education”.  A function established in 1968 and provides adult education that equals elementary school or Gymnasium, partly for providing the formal qualification for further studies or work. LO The Swedish Trade Union Confederation. A collaborative organization for fourteen Swedish trade unions for workers founded in 1898. LOVUX Was an LO-working group during  the  late  60’s  and  early  70’s  dealing  with  the  political  question   of adult education. 1 1 | Introduction I will start with an everyday walk that I often take. It is a walk from where I live in Majorna to the university at Campus Haga, where I took my bachelor exam in Political Science and where I have spent so many days throughout my education. Walking through Majorna; the so called working-class heart of Gothenburg, that is now also a trendy middle class hangout  where  you  can  buy  a  chair  at  “Majorna – things  from  the  past”  for 1500 kronor, is walking through history. That is, not by the past, but by history: our story about the past. I walk  towards  Stigbergstorget,  past  my  parents’  house.  They  go  to  work,  I  go to the university where they have never set foot. Dad went seven years in Folkskolan. Mum quite upper secondary school after the first semester and now her words are ringing in my ears: ”Get an education! Never become economically dependent upon someone else!   Don’t   get   stuck   in   health care like me!”   I  pass  Komvux  where   she   later  on  got   the  grades   she  needed   for  her   assistant nurse job. I was in first grade and came with her a few times when we had the day off in school. I walk down Stigbergsliden, towards Järntorget. I pass the job centre Arbetsförmedlingen and stand in the crossing. To my left:  Olof  Palme’s  Place.  There  is  the  community  center  Folkets   Hus, the state-sponsored Folkteatern and the sculpture Through work in work. The engraved text says: In memory of those who fought for bread, justice and freedom. What they won we inherited. The legacy obliges. Opposite of me is the ugly white building with the red logos. The   Workers’   Educational   Association [Arbetarnas Bildningsförbund]. The Social Democrats. Folkuniversitetet for adult education and The  Workers’  Movement’s  Folk  High  School. It is like standing on the square of  workers’  history  of  bildning. I feel the legacy in my bones. When I stand at this square it is like time is physically present. Why do   I  want   to  describe   this   as   if   “time  has   stood   still”?   This square is haunted by Social Democratic history and the ghosts are everywhere. Although, it is not only the past that is present at this square. Looking around, it is accompanied by the story of The Future, demanding space and attention. The billboard on the tram stop is by the University West [Högskolan Väst] promising an Academic exam & working life experience – at the same time, showing a smiling black man ripping his 2 “freshman  initiation”  overall of, revealing a suit underneath. I also remember that the current slogan of the Social Democrats, even if it does not say so in the logo at the square, is The Future Party. Visiting their webpage, the first thing you see is the campaign the future starts in school.  “Our  politics”  they  say  “invests  in  the  future”  and  “Sweden  should  compete  with   knowledge  and  competence”  (Socialdemokraterna  2015).   But right now, in this time, I am not in the future, but here, going to the University. I am not going to the Workers’  Movement’s  Folk  High  School.  Passing  it,   it   is  like  passing  a  part  of   myself, a potential other life, towards another which is located only a few blocks away. I walk from  the  workers’  historical  square,   toward   the  University  World.  Campus  Haga.  The large university library. Handels. Departments. Faculties. A world that I know so well now, filled with merits, prestige, credits, grades, papers. The way out. The way in. I hear my mum again: “Get  an  education!”:  present.  “Look  at  where  I  ended  up!“:  history.  “Don’t  end  up  like  me!”:   future. It is about where you have been and about where you are going. In the entrance hall I grab an ex of the University Catalogue of the year. Become you, the front page says in large, black capital letters. In a picture a girl is riding a bike, smiling. “Here it is permitted to become you” the text says, “since GU has a study environment that is so open and multifaceted that there is space for all of you”. I am encouraged to “take the chance to become you…Welcome to the new you”. The new me. What was the old me? No matter who they are speaking of I know the statistics: less than one in four students come from families where the highest educational level is two year upper secondary school or less (Folkhälsomyndigheten, 2015). The new me. Past, present, future. In a month I will be double   ”scientist”.   Political scientist. Gender researcher. I have papers that will decide my future. I will show them to my mum. 1.1 Purpose and research questions My belief is that the way we understand and speak of education and class – or the way we do not speak of it – cannot be separated from the way these phenomena have been understood and spoken of in past time. By researching material that has been used in the struggle for workers’   right to knowledge, both by and for workers, I aim at seeing how the role of education, citizenship, gender and class have been constructed and understood. 3 The purpose of the thesis is to problematize the role of temporality in the construction of different groups and in the way power structures operate in the discussion of who has the right to knowledge and education. Through experimenting with the concept of temporality I want to discuss and problematize how questions of class, gender and education interact with understandings of time and history. How are understandings of past, present and future part of the way class and gender are understood and (re)produced? The purpose of working with material from different times is to show how temporal figurations are important constructions, no matter when we discuss class and education. They re-occur in the material from all the researched time periods, and I want to show that our understandings of how different separate times are and how we constantly develop on a linear time-line, are crucial to the way we can speak of and understand the matter of who has the right to knowledge and education. This is the reason for why I have deliberately chosen not to structure the analysis along a chronological time-line. The research questions I aim at answering are: x What values are ascribed to bildning in the material? x What subject positions are constructed for workers in the material? How are these gendered-classed? x What discursive understandings of past, present and future show in the material and how do temporal fantasies relate to the way class, gender and knowledge are understood? 1.2 Disposition The thesis is structured into six parts. In the introductory part I have introduced the topic of the thesis together with purpose and research questions and I end this section with presenting research from different research fields important for my work. In the second part I will present the theoretical and methodological approaches that have been important for my thinking about time, knowledge, class and gender. I present them together, since I partly use perspectives reflected in both theoretical and methodological attempts. In the third part I present the material on which I have grounded my analysis and parts of the material are also 4 put in Appendix 1 for further illustration of the texts and images I analyze. The fourth part is divided in three analytical chapters where I make a discourse analysis of my material. I have deliberately chosen not structure them along a chronological time line, since I argue throughout the thesis for why such an approach is problematic. Instead, I present these chapters thematically along the temporal understandings they reflect and discuss. In the last chapter I discuss conclusions of the analysis and reflect on what happens when you introduce the analytical concept of temporality into the discussion of class, gender and knowledge. 1.3 Research field In this thesis I discuss many different aspects of class and education. For one, the thesis has a historical perspective and this is for the purpose of exploring the role of temporality when matters of class injustice in knowledge and education are discussed. Besides this, there is also a power analysis exploring how the idea of the educated citizen is connected to intersectional power hierarchies, such as gender and class. Thus, there is no easy positioning of the thesis only within Gender Studies, educational studies, education sociology, history or history of ideas. These are all fields where research of class and education is common. However, I could say that I use Gender Studies in the  study  of  class  and  history  “touching  upon” or interfering with traditions of thinking and working from several other disciplines. Two research fields have been particularly important for my work: the first is field of the intersection between gender and class, and the second is that of temporality and gender. What I have been trying to do is to bring these issues, which are often dealt with separately, together. The research field of gender and class Lukas  Moodysson’s  movie  Fucking Åmål had premiere at Swedish cinemas in 1998. Seeing it was a head-over-heels experience and it is still my favorite movie of all times. It has it all; the difficulties certain people experience trying to live their lives through the web of gender- classed norms and power systems. Fifteen years later I saw another movie, set in the  2010’s   France  instead  of  the  1990’s  Sweden.  Blue is the warmest colour also deals with the complex entanglement of class and gender, showing how the possibilities and limitations for sexual mobility are intertwined with classed positions. An aspect that has not been that highlighted, but that is highly present in both movies is the matter of education. In Blue is the warmest colour the  young  couple  Emma  and  Adéle  are   introduced   to  each  other’s   families.  Emma’s   intellectual parents serve oysters and when Adéle says that she would like to be a preschool 5 teacher there is a tense ambiance at the table. At Adéle’s  house  the  father  warns  Emma,  when   she tells of her dreams to become an artist, that one cannot make a living out of painting. The dreams about the future for the youths in Fucking Åmål; the ideas about what can and cannot be, are tightly knot to their gendered and classed subject positions. “Are  you gonna  be  a  psychologist?”   Jessica  asks  her   sister,  Elin,  who   is   choosing  between   that or becoming a model. “Not   a   chance   you   get   into   that.   Do   you   get   what   grades   you   need?”   Jessica’s   boyfriend   Markus adds. “Alright”   Elin   replies.   “Then   I’ll   have   to   be   a   motor   mechanic   instead   then” [Markus is studying motor engineering]. “That you need really high grades  for”1 A researcher who has also been watching Fucking Åmål is social anthropologist and gender researcher Fanny Ambjörnsson. She actually writes that her dissertation In a class of their own is   about   norms   “…made   visible   through   a   fictive   Åmål…For   it   is   among   reality’s   equivalents to Elin and Agnes, Jessica and Johan Hult that I have gathered material for this study”  (Ambjörnsson,  2003:11).  She  is  making  an  interesting  study  of how gender, class and sexuality formations take shape in the lives of a group of upper secondary school students. Inspired by sociologist Beverly   Skeggs’   contribution   to   the  matter she shows how middle class femininity and its status is highly connected to both whiteness and heterosexuality (Ambjörnsson, 2003:204 f). When I read about how classed and gendered subjectivities are made in relation to the educational context I often come across this type of research; where the matter is studied through the experiences of certain individuals. In   addition   to   Ambjörnsson’s   interactive   participant observation there is also the research strand of class journey portraits. In sociologist Lena   Sohl’s   dissertation   Knowing   one’s   class:   Women’s   upward   mobility   in   Sweden, where she is moving in the feminist and postcolonial critique that has re-formulated the concept of class. Many of the women in her dissertation have made their class journey through education and Sohl analyzes this tendency from an intersectional perspective. This demand,  she  claims;;  to  put  efforts  on  higher  education,  work  hard  and  be  “well  integrated”  in   the Swedish society, is a significant part of contemporary racism (Sohl, 2014:419). She also 1 The emphases throughout the dialogue are my own. 6 focuses on how sexuality can be a central dimension of reproduction or breaking with class belonging (ibid:422). I love this style of taking on an analysis of class injustices; where you come in contact with the complex mechanics of how power works through the accounts of certain people. Although, I also find it interesting when other matters than individuals play the main part in research. As when gender- and cultural scientist Nirmal Puwar takes on the matter of how intersectional power structures are institutionalized in education and academia through studying the physicality of spaces, walls, positions and bodies. In this phenomenological analyze of institutional racism, she describes experiencing hardship to move is spaces such as the Whitehall or the Westminister, something that she connects to the institutions of power and racism impregnating such spaces (Puwar, 2004:35). I understand this research as also dealing with how certain subjectivities are racialized, gendered and classed, but through another perspective than for example Ambjörnsson and Sohl. A perspective that opens up for analysis of how institutionalized class hierarchies in academic time and space works for and against different subject positions. A strand within this research field that is important for my topic is that of the construction of citizenship and citizen fosterage through education. Political scientist Sara Carlbaum analyses in her dissertation Will you be employable little friend? (Blir du anställningsbar, lille/a vän?) how discursive constructions of future citizens are made in political reforms for upper secondary high school during four decades in Sweden. She shows how these constructions are connected to gender, ethnicity and class in different ways depending of discourse. For example she discusses how discourses of entrepreneurship and employability reproduce class- related and ethnified constructions of femininity and masculinity (Carlbaum, 2012:231). Gender and temporality The second research field that has been important is that of gender and temporality. Here, I have looked for research that understands time as one important part in the process of how different power mechanisms work together. An example is literature- and gender researcher Rita Felski  who  in  her  readings  of  Marshall  Berman’s  analysis of  Goethe’s  Faust shows that time is not neutral, but highly gender-coded. She discusses how past time is (re)produced and pictured as feminine and present time as masculine. Also professor of American Studies and Ethnicity, Comparative Literature and Gender Studies Jack Halberstam deals with how 7 spaces, but most importantly for this thesis; aspects of time are not neutral, given entities but rather part of hetero- and cisnormative power mechanisms (Halberstam, 2005). Apart from gender and class presented in the previous section, Ambjörnsson is also dealing with the matter of temporality, discussing the issue of how age is an important factor of the heteronormative time line (Ambjörnsson, 2013). Like Halberstam, this approach problematize temporality like any other intersecting aspect of power. I wanted to highlight these two research fields since this is where I have, in different ways, gathered inspiration, found challenging questions and been directed towards new ways of thinking about the topic of my thesis. In a similar way to how the researchers dealing with time and temporality work with gender, I want to involve the aspect of class and knowledge in a power analysis of how all these aspects work together. 8 2 | Theoretical and methodological approaches When discussing the matter of what decides who has the right to knowledge I start off in perspectives that understandings are solid and stable. With such an approach definitions of knowledge and its usage are therefore constantly reformulated and changing. I use post- structuralist2 discourse theory throughout the thesis; both as theoretical and methodological approaches. In this part I present perspectives that have been important for my reflections: first dealing with my own position, then introducing the way I have worked with text- and image analysis. I then present the perspectives on class and temporality that have been important for the thesis. 2.1 My position: situating my knowledge Writing a thesis is trying to problematize and discuss issues that I find interesting and important. This process involves producing knowledge and sharing my account of the world; actions that in many aspects are connected to power. The traditional way of doing and viewing research: that we (researchers) study objects out there, rests on the understanding that it is possible to place yourself outside of the knowledge act; the production of knowledge. With   this   perspective   the   researcher   is   often   “invisible”   in   the text, in the illusion that the theory/material “speaks for  itself”. What is ignored in such an approach is the subjectivity and power always there when knowledge is created and produced. In the classic essay Situated Knowledges professor of feminist theory Donna Haraway is dealing with what   it  means   to   “see   something” that is; to understand, create knowledge or ”say  something  about  something”.  Haraway  writes  that: Vision is always a question of the power to see…How to see? Where to see from? What limits to vision? What to see for? Whom to see with? Who gets to have more than one point of view? Who gets blinded? Who wears blinders? Who interprets the visual field? (Haraway, 1988:587). Two   people,   viewing   “the   same   scene”3 will thus see very different things, and so the re- telling of what happened; the crafting of knowledge, will also be different. How I understand, 2 I  am  at  the  same  time  hesitant  when  using  the  term  “post-structuralism”,  since  I  see  the  usage  of  “post”- as a clear  marker  of  temporal  “shifts”  over  time  – something I find highly problematic. I develop this further throughout section two. See also note 8. 3 I use this expression to illustrate the process of reproducing and creating knowledge, in which the two viewers are  part.  That  said,  I  am  aware  that  a  statement  like  “the  scene”  suggests  that  there  actually  is something there, outside of the viewers understanding. This is a problematic understanding, especially when I want to illustrate 9 will be a product of experiences, it is in our head, in our bodies and in the place; physical and social, that we are located. To be self-reflextive and create awareness about this position, both for yourself and potential readers is, in  Haraway’s  words, to situate your knowledge. When discussing the importance of feminist and postcolonial perspectives on knowledge in the academy, sociologist Suki Ali argues that noticing of the own situatedness and partiality, should be used as a strength in the feminist approach to research (Ali, 2007:207). The idea of a “solution” The first time I read Haraway I ended up with a feeling of relief: this is it! A great tool to counteract   the  power   structures   you   reproduce  as   a   researcher  aiming  at   “saying   something   about the world and the people in  it”.  Haraway wrote that  “it  is  irresponsible  to  not  be  able  to   be called   into   account”   (1988:583) so the solution seemed to be easy; just declare your position and try to shed light on where your knowledge is coming from. However, this perspective is also problematic in several ways. For  example,  the  act  of  “calling  myself  into  account”  is  still  based  on  my own understandings about myself. I am the one providing the reader with information about myself – and of course, there is no other possibility, since there is no “pure” knowledge behind the subjective. However, using this approach in order to even out the power position you sit in as a researcher is not altogether satisfying in my view. I notice that it rather provides me with a dangerous feeling  of  “I have declared myself, now I can do whatever I want!” that goes hand-in-hand with a liberal  understanding  of  “individual  confessions”. I believe that a good feminist interpretation  of  Haraway’s  discussion  is  to  avoid  “resting”  in  places and thoughts that feel comfortable and safe,  but  rather  to  regard  the  impossibility  of  “ultimate  solutions”.  In her work Becoming respectable sociologist Beverly Skeggs discusses the tendency of trying to fit the material into an already set template, something she experiences herself in her own research. Instead,  she  suggests  the  approach  where  you  “…not[e]  contradictions  and   differences…”  (Skeggs:1997:32). This approach, to stay in the uncomfortable bits that do not fit, is something that I have applied as a theoretical-methodological framework for my analysis. I develop this from a Deleuzian perspective below. the  viewers’  partaking  in  the  process  of  meaning-making  of  “the  scene”.  There  is  no  scene  without  the  viewers’   interpretation/understanding of the scene as such. 10 2.2 A rhizomatic way of working with text- and image analysis When I approach the material I use “Deleuzian  thinking”  as  a  strategy  for  analysis. I see this as both theoretical and methodological perspectives, or instead of “both”   I should probably write theoretical-methodological since  a  separation  between  “the  two”  goes  against  the  entire   line of thought. Cultural scientist Claire Colebrook has in many works interpreted and discussed the analyses of Gilles Deleuze and in Understanding Deleuze she introduces the thinking through starting with a core in modern thinking: the   notion   that   there   is   a   “real   world”  and  then  “re-presentations”  or  copies  of  the  same. Instead, according to Deleuze, there are no representations of the real: everything is real, including representations. Or as Colebrook puts it: There would be an actual world (the real), and then its virtual and secondary copy. Deleuze wants to reverse and undermine this hierarchy. Both the actual and the virtual are real, and the virtual is not subordinate to the real. On the contrary, the virtual is the univocal plane of past, present and future; the totality or whole, never fully given or completed (2002:1). This philosophy introduces opportunities to challenge the modern dualistic idea of separating body and soul, subject and object, active and passive. When I say that this perspective is how I approach my material theoretically- methodologically I mean that this is part of my way of working; how I try to think of and act with  my  material.   I  use  Deleuze’s  concept   rhizome when trying to describe my approach to the material. Colebrook explains that: The  rhizome  is  one  of  Deleuze’s  many  figures  that  describes  movement  along  a  single  surface…no  point   elevated above any other, and no foundation or surface upon which movement and activity takes place, just movement and activity itself (2002:77). Often, thinking is illustrated as the shape of a tree: there are roots at the bottom, working its way up, developing into a tree trunk that extends in branches and twigs. There is a beginning at the base, leading towards the next entity, ending at the tip of the smallest twigs. Using the rhizome on the other hand, also meaning a mass of roots, is a way to try to get away from the thought  model  of  “A  leads  to  B  which  could  lead  to  C  or  D”, where linear cause and effect are important understandings. When I imagine the rhizome it is a process, going off in any direction, with no start or end, no logic and as Colebrook puts it: just movement and activity itself. I want to use this concept as a tool for thought when taking on my analytic material. To think with the rhizome, I want to try to get away from – or, as far as possible – rational values 11 such as beginnings, endings, tops, bottoms, A to B. Instead  of  “this”  and  “this”  there  is  always   “and…and…and…and…” and I find this particularly helpful for me when I explore and elaborate with the concept of time. Analyzing discursive texts and images In a post-structuralist understanding of meaning-making processes nothing is given and stable. Definitions and concepts that appear as given are instead understood as constantly re- created and reproduced constructions; neither of them are solid, but mobile, shifting and continuously changing units. For example, the concept “a   citizen”   does   not   imply   a   given   meaning just there in  itself,  ready  to  “be  understood”. I cannot understand something without understanding it as something. So to make meaning out of the concept “citizen”  can  be  seen   as depending on constructions   of   for   example   “culture”,   “race”,   “nation” and   “gender”. I understand discourse in a similar way that Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe (2001) speak of it: that everything is discursive – objects, subjects, practices, processes. In this tradition, the studying of texts is a common method for problematizing how power works through language: what can be understood and in what way: something that sociologist and educational researcher Stephen J. Ball has described as how the discourse speaks us, and not the other way around (Ball, 2006:48). Rather than that we speak the discourse, the discourse conditions what can be said, that is: it speaks us. I use a Deleuzian inspired text- and image analysis in this thesis. In their method book on text analysis Göran Bergström and Kristina Boréus discuss sociologist  Stuart  Hall’s  approach   to   the meaning of text. They write that: [He is]…less  interested  in  concrete  persons  (a  Mary  Wollenstonecraft,  a  John  Stuart  Mill…)  and  more  of   societal structures and the positions for different kind of actors they create (2005:27). In the same manner, I am not interested in historical research of “how  things  were”  in  the  30’s   or  40’s. What I want to discuss is what part temporal fantasies and figures play in the way meaning is created of the right to knowledge in the context of class, gender and education, as well as how these temporal understandings are tied to constructions of certain subject positions and power structures. Like this: to understand, or create meaning, around the question of who has the right to knowledge, I believe that certain ways of understanding time play an important part. Ways of understanding time could be ideas like;;  “time  passes”,  “the   present  is  very  different  from  the  past”,  “the  future  is  filled  with  possibilities”,  “the  future  is   12 filled with impossibilities  and  hopelessness”,  “we  can  affect   tomorrow”.   I want to elaborate with discourses connected to such understandings of time, explore what temporal fantasies they produce and what this does to understandings of who should study, or in other ways have access to knowledge. When Ball discusses the concept of discourse he leans towards an understanding that they: are about what can be said and thought, but also about who can speak, when, where and with what authority. Discourses embody the meaning and use of prepositions and words (Ball, 2006:48). I thus understand discourse as the practice of how boundaries are set for how and what we can understand. But like Laclau and Mouffe, I do not see this practice as only regarding speech and writing. They write   that   “…rather   that   speech   and   writing   are   themselves but internal  components  of  discursive  totalitites”  (1987:82)  [my  emphasis].     The who is also important here, it relates to what classed and gendered subject positions such discursive understandings produce. Perhaps student, schoolmistress [lärarinna], academic or loan borrower. When I speak of subject positions I mean those specific positions that are discursively produced and reproduced: there is never a given subject, never a given subject position outside of the discursive understanding. For example, as Laclau & Mouffe write: “The same system that makes that spherical object into a football, makes me a player” (1987:82). So the discourse produces different social positions, which not anyone can intake. Continuing with the subject position of the football player we could for example discuss what discourses related to sports, masculinity, functionality and nationality might condition the understandings of what a football player is. Intaking this position of a football player also provides certain possibilities and limitations for how to act and how to intersect with other matters and other subject positions. In the analysis I also reflect on who is understood as a political subject and who is not. I think of a political subject not as a subject position in itself, but more as the idea that certain subjects positions are ascribed certain capacities that makes possible political agency. When political scientist Carol Bacchi discusses the meaning of political subjects she uses a Foucaultian perspective and describes it as being capable of agency through mechanisms of power-knowledge (Bacchi, 2009:25). In my discussion I especially put emphasis on the aspect of knowledge as a part of political agency. 13 2.3 Gender-classed subjectivities and education When  I  type  “working  class”  on  Google  I  get  420 000 000 hits. I get black and white images of men in helmets, overalls and sturdy boots. The first image that pops up is the famous photography Lunch atop a skyscraper from 1932, where eleven men sit on a girder eating lunch with the streets of Manhattan 268 meters below them. It feels old. Outdated. But at the same time it is obviously a highly present image: a bestseller hanging in a variety of homes and an easily  accessible  reference  to  “working-class”  in   the contemporary cultural reference bank. They are all white men. This is a familiar story that often gets to symbolize modern class   theory.  There   are   the   icons   from   the   nineteenth   century’s   industrial-capitalist society: white   men   theorizing   about   other   white   men’s   positions   in   the process of production. Positioned in the historical materialism, thinkers like Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels are considered to have given birth to the modern theorizing of power, resources, class and stratification as it is known today. The core of this traditional analysis of class is the organization of production of goods and services: who has and who has not, who does what and who can decide what in this process. In this understanding of the class society important concepts are power and conflict between   the   bourgeoisie’s   and   the   proletariat’s   conflicting   interests (Marx, 1997:167). As a critique of only looking at class as a matter of what you materially have, much research has been stating that the production of class is not only a process starting and ending with money. In the gender research on class injustices the “doing”   of class is also taken in into account, problematizing how class and classed subjectivities are made. A research field such as Gender Studies opens up for a broadening of how class is (re)produced and constructed, not only through economics and production but also through culture and language. In her dissertation about women’s  class  journeys  in  Sweden Sohl claims that you cannot understand class as either material or cultural. She writes that: One definition of the class position is that it is decided by the ownership, and this is important for the employment relations for the own work or others. A wider definition, that I follow in the study, is to view ownership, economy and the position on the labour market as one part of the class position, which for example also contains education capital (part of the cultural capital) (Sohl, 2014: 108). By expanding the definition of class to wider matters than economy, aspects such as gender- or sexuality constructions can also be regarding in analyses of how class is (re)produced. For example, when Sohl discusses the importance of education as a factor for making possible 14 upward class mobility in Sweden, she emphasizes the femininely coded subject position of the good4 daughter as a key (2014:259). This illustrates how specific intersections between class and gender are important in the construction of gendered-classed subjectivities. Also sociologist Ulrika Holgersson argues that class cannot only be reduced to matters of economy. She claims that class is just as much about cultural practices that, just like in the case of gender, is something created and reproduced through our bodies and through language. In her own words “…   since class is not a structure outside of ourselves class can be reduced to economy   just   as   little  as  gender   can  be   reduced   to  biology…” (Holgersson, 2011:164-165). Such an approach is important when I want to search for how specific gendered-classed subject positions are constructed in the discussion about class and knowledge. In a similar manner to how Gender Studies and feminist research have worked to show how concepts like “men”  and  “women” are  not  solid  and  stable,  the  concept  of  “class”  can  also  be  analyzed  as   changing, constructed and unstable. In this analysis, other  matters   than  “economy”  must  be   considered. For example, compare the traditional subject of the working-class movement – the white, male worker – with the situation for migrants without papers, or unemployed. Would  “economic  situation”  be  the  only  aspect  taken  into  account the analysis would be very insufficient, overlooking power mechanisms like racism, gender oppression or norms as well as formal laws based on ideas of nationality – and the inter-relatedness between them. In the discussion of how class is something that is discursively made and reproduced I want to emphasize the part of this research that focuses on how subjectivities and practices are intersectionally classed, in the context of education. As part of the project The Teacher in the Transformation of Society 1940-2003, Ulla Johansson (ed.) published a report with the same name. Here, she examines how discourses about  “the  good  teacher”  intersect with discourses about gender and class. She discusses how different and changing discourses have been important   for   the   narratives   of   “the   good   teacher”,   such   as   the   genealogical   middle-class masculinity (Johansson, 2007:56), a hybrid masculinity (ibid:77) but also a de- professionalization of the occupation and an re-negotiated middle-class status (ibid:87). This thus shows how   constructions   of   “the   good   teacher”   are   created   through   discursive   understandings of class and gender. In a similar way, also recalling the previous discussion of discourses and subject positions I want to explore how discursive constructions are made of such classed and gendered positions. 4 The  Swedish  term  “duktig”  an  another  concept  that  is  not  easily  translated into English language. Sohl explains that she intends a specific femininely constructed version of values like good, capable and efficient (Sohl, 2014:259). 15 2.4 What time is it? Challenging aspects on time, temporality and history Wanting to explore the role of time in constructions of class and gender in the context of education, I will use several theoretical perspectives that in different ways challenge traditional understandings of time and temporality. The difference between Past and History A common expression is that “we  write  history”.  For  example,  you  can  see  in  news headlines of sports events or political happenings, expressions like “Team A can write history this Saturday”  or  “Germany  writes  history: now  quotas  are  adopted”.  This is an interesting way of viewing   “history”:   that   something present is so extraordinary, so spectacular that it automatically becomes part of what will be history. This rests on an understanding that history is “The Way It Was Back Then”, that history equals the past. I will use gender researcher and historian   Sara   Edenheims’ explorative understanding of history and its function. In her essay The Antagonism – against the historical mania Edenheim separates the concepts  “the  past”: what actually  happened,  and  “history”: our present creating of cultural, linguistic and symbolic meaning of that past. History  it  not  just  “there”;;  it  is  something  we  are   creating in present time (Edenheim, 2011:15-16, 60). Why? Edenheim formulates the question like this: No matter if you turn to history for conservative, fascist, liberal or revolutionary reasons there is one question remaining. A question that we historians do not want or cannot answer no matter ideological dwelling: why is it merely history that is seen as the only alternative to turn to for political recognition? Why is it there we are expected to find answers to our questions? (2011:7). Inspired by feminist historian Joan Scott, Edenheim uses tools from psychoanalysis and she introduces the concept fantasies when trying to understand our modern historicizing. She explains that fantasies are “formations5 of  desire…  that  can  both  weaken  and  strengthen  an   order” (Edenheim, GFFP, 20136). Following this logic our historical creations about the past; what we call history, is actually present-day fantasies that fulfill present-day desires. What desires? According to Edenheim, it is our longing for escaping the trauma that injustices, violence and horror in the past evoke in us. Through inscribing the trauma in history, we can give   it  meaning,  we  can  understand  it   in  a  “larger  sense”  and  we  can  also  fix   these  matters   5 My own  translation  of  the  Swedish  ”gestaltningar”.  To  me,  the  word  “formations”  does  not  really capture the word  “gestaltning”,  which  more  emphasizes  a  physical  appearance.         6 Lecture  given  by  Edenheim  at  the  Gothenburg’s  Society  for  Philosophy  and  Psychoanalysis  (Göteborgs   Förening för Filosofi och Psykoanalys) 2013: https://vimeo.com/80097883 16 into a specific time period. That is, not in our own time. Thus, we do not have to deal with prevailing power structures here and now (Edenheim, 2011:32-34). Along these lines the narrative  goes  like  this:  “things  used  to  be  bad,  but  then  they  got  better  and  bad  things  today   are just relics from that time. Edenheim is critical to this understanding of time and reality and writes that: My criticism is directed towards the specifically historical hermeneutics and the chronological fantasy where everything makes sense if you only add the time perspective (2011:14). Based on this perspective, my aim with this thesis is not to study the past to understand how it was, but instead to problematize how ideas about education and class are given meaning through fantasies about time and history. For example, standing at Järntorget I easily picture a linear time-line: the old workers of Majorna, my mother at Komvux, me going to the University. All these figures are so temporally coded, and in the act of placing them in a time, they also get a specific historical meaning: the reason for why they should study and their relationship to knowledge varies. I want to explore why and how these relations are linked to each other. A ghost story about time Another theorist that blurs the borders between past, present and future is sociologist Avery Gordon. In her book Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination she uses the language of ghost stories to illustrate the message that what affects and decides what we think and do today is, also, matters that in a traditional perception of knowledge belong to the past: things that are dealt with, behind us. Things that are…   dead. Gordon calls this the ghostly aspects of social life (2008:7). Here, we also elaborate with the space between then and now, or like Gordon poetically puts it, we should: …move   analytically   between   that   sad   and   sunken   couch that sags in just that place where an unrememberable past and unimaginable future force us to sit day after day (2008:4). Like Edenheim, Gordon challenges a core understanding of time and history; the linear, rational and spatial-material. She questions “our conventional notions of cause and effect, past and present, conscious and unconscious” (2008:66). So what is meant by this   ‘ghost’? According to The Oxford Dictionaries a ghost is “An apparition of a dead person which is believed to appear or become manifest to the living, typically as a nebulous image” (2015). 17 But according to Gordon this does not fully capture its meaning. The ghost is: …not simply a dead or missing person, but a social figure, and investigating it can lead to that dense site where history and subjectivity make social life (2008:8). But what about the part “appear  or  become  manifest   in   the   living”?  For  Gordon   this   is   the   implication of haunting.   “To  be  haunted”, she writes, “is to be tied to historical and social effects” (2008:190). Haunting  is  about  what  has  been  jostled  to  the  margins,  or  in  Gordon’s   words: …it  refers  us  to  what’s living and breathing in the place hidden from view: people, places, histories, knowledge, memories, ways of life, ideas (Gordon, 2011:3). She exemplifies with her own relationship to Marxism, which she says she has been reared and trained in and to which she still feels a connection. Although, she says, many have had to part   company   with   Marxism   because   of   its   “…ongoing   trivialization   of   the   problem   of   racism”  (Gordon,  2011:1  f).  So along these lines, what haunts Marxism would be the denied racism it contains,  and  in  the  context  of  workers’  education  it  could  be  the  sexist,  male  norms   through  which  the  story  of  “the  working  class”  is  told.  These are matters that could be viewed as haunted, by what has been jostled to the margins. Both  Edenheim’s  and  Gordon’s  views  on  history   leaves  me  with  challenging  and  exploring   questions:   can  matter   ever   be   “left   behind”   just   because   time   passes?  Why   is   our   cultural image of the linear time – that we move forward, develop and leave past times behind – so connected to leaving matters behind? And what does this cultural understanding do to the way we think, understand, act and live in present time, for example to the way we are political and do politics? An untimely feminist theorization In her article in Tidsskrift för genusvetenskap; “Out of Joint is the feminist time”, Claudia Lindén explores how the historicizing of feminist theory is impregnated with particular temporal constructions. She criticizes how this historicizing goes hand in hand with an understanding of “break-offs/discontinuities and turning-points”;;  something  that  she  claims  is   highly  problematic.  Instead,  Lindén  argues,  “feminist  theoretization  need  to  be  more  untimely   18 in   Nietzsche’s   view”7 (Lindén, 2012:8). Having taken part of Nietzsche’s   discussions of “historical consciousness”   she asks for more questioning of temporal understandings; how feminist theory needs to raise awareness of how it is also connected to development-linear understandings of past-present-future concepts. Lindén focuses on temporal aspects of feminist   theory   (something   that   I   am  not)   and   she   is  particularly  discussing   the  “generation   feminism”   that  has  been  on   the  agenda   in  media   recently.  She   is  discussing  what  has  been   represented  as   a   “generation   conflict   of   feminism”,   exemplifying with debates between for example Yvonne Hirdman, Ebba Witt-Brattström and Sara Edenheim. Lindén means that a temporality is shown in this debate, in the sense that there is said to have been “a setback of feminism” with the younger generation (ibid:12), an approach that Lindén argues is highly problematic.   Instead,   she   claims,   we   must   adopt   another   way   of   viewing   “old   and   new”   feminist   theories.   She   suggest   that   we   “…refuse   to   view   them   as   separated   sort-wise and time-wise”  (ibid:20-21). Like Gordon, Lindén is also experimenting with the concepts of the undead, besides the concept of ghosts, also using the Swedish words   “vålnader”   and   “gengångare”   [English: phantom, spectre].   Based   on   Nina   Lykke’s   critique of “new   turns” and turning-points in feminist theorizing8 Lindén introduced the concept of parallelity “…  as  a  way  to  understand   when something similar, but not identical, shows up  again”  (ibid:21).  As  another  word  for  this   phenomenon Lindén introduces  the  concept  “hauntology”  [hemsökologi], something that she exemplifies   with   reading   literature   from   another   time.   “The   literature,   the   text   of   the   predecessor”   she   writes   “is   never   fully   separated   from   theory,   it   haunts   us…   Think   of Wollstonecraft  or  de  Beuvoir,  what  are  they  if  not  ghosts,  undead?”  (ibid:22). But how should 7 In the series of writings published between 1873-1876 Unzeitgemäße Betrachtungen (Eng: Untimely meditations  /  Swe:  Otidsenliga  betraktelser)  Friedrich  Nietzsche  problematizes  the  “historical  consciousness”  of   the human mind; our creation, reproduction and relation to temporality as understood:  “past-present-future”.  In   Untimely meditations part two: On the Use and Abuse of History for Life (also referred to as On the Advantages and Disadvantages of History for Life)  Nietzsche  claims  that  “…we  all  suffer  from  a  debilitating  historical  fever   [that  we]  at  least  should  acknowledge  that  we  suffer  from”  (Nietzsche:  2005:82).  He  compares  this  tendency  of   historicizing  to  “…the  heard  that  are  on  pasture  in  front  of  you:  it  does  not  know  what  is  yesterday  or  today…”   and  writes  that  humans  “…on  the  contrary  brace  themselves  towards  the  heavy  and  increasingly  heavier weight of the past: it pushes her down or bends her to the side, disturb her walk like an invisible and dusky burden…”   (ibid:83).   “We   want   to   call   them   the   historical   humans;;   the   gaze   towards   the   past   drives them towards the future…  These  historical   humans   believe   that   the  meaning  of   life   increasingly  will  uncover   in   the   course  of  a   process, they look back only to through observing the hitherto process, learn to understand the present and more fiercely  desire  the  future…” (ibid:88). 8 Lykke  discusses  the  problems  arising  when  thinking  along  the  lines  of  “post”  in  feminist  theorizing,  partly   since it implies imagining  something  “before”  and  “after”  a  turning-point. She develops this in the article The timeliness of Post-Constructionism, and also in an essay in the same issue of Journal for Gender Studies as Lindén’s article. See reference list for further details. 19 one relate to this  “ghost”  then?  Lindén  calles the ghost an “excellent  feminist  companion”  that lets us understand time and history in another way than through break-offs/discontinuities and turning-points  and  setbacks”  (ibid:22-23). No matter how one sees this ghost; as a figure, as a thinking experiment, as the base for all other thinking, or   just   as   a   “reminder”/addition to other theorizing it   presents   great   opportunities   for   counteracting   modernity’s   linear,   development-focused way of understanding, doing and thinking time and all aspects it relates to (read: everything). So is the history present or the present history? As the heading suggests the story depends on the perspective. Since I want this thesis to challenge the modern story of a linear, development-focused perspective on time and instead of viewing past and present on a time-line I want to try to see past and present lives and phenomena as more alike than different. This is not because I do not believe that differences do not exist, but because there is already so much cultural, institutionalized support for this perspective. We know this story already, which is why I find it interesting to see what would happen to a story with a different, more challenging perspective. For example we can problematize the modern view of “The  ancient  Greeks”.  Yes,  these individuals are dead and the modern,  “rational”  understanding  would  therefore  place  them  in  the  past.  They belong to history. But their ideas do not. And in fact, they do not either – we talk about them all the time. Present living people think, talk and understand through them today, and thus you could say that these individuals are highly active, have agency (and is this not the definition of living?) today. Why then, is the main understanding that these ancient Greeks are stuck in the past¸ where they once did act and lived, and then time passed and today we are the ones with agency taking about and using them, as if they are frozen, unchanging objects stuck in a book. What if they are using us, so to speak: that the understandings of these people, what they did and thought in a passed time, affect our understanding of ourselves, our present time and current phenomena? If so, does it matter who is currently living and breathing? The  genealogies  offer  “both”9 theoretical and methodological perspectives when wanting to problematize time, past and present. In Foucault, power and education Stephen J. Ball uses Foucaultian concepts to discuss how present educational policies interacts with our understanding  of  so  called  “history”.  Ball  writes  that: 9 As often within humanities these are not always possible to separate. 20 Foucault  asserts  that  our  own  times  and  lives  are  not  the  beginning  or  end  of  some  “historical”  process,   but a period like, while at the same time unlike, any other. I want to point   to   an   absence   of   “turning   points”,  of  “progress”  and  discontinuities  and  the  non-emergence of new forms of reasoning and highlight instead the continuities of the specifics of division (2013:109). With such an approach the aim is not to understand the past in  order  to  “learn  from  history”,   that is: to avoid repeating what we today identify as previously made mistakes, or for that matter, to re-establish  “old  values”.  Neither  is  it to comprehend how progress has been made, to be able to continue that progressive development into the future. Instead, this alternative genealogical view can offer insights to dangers that arise today as a result of this “development-progressive”  view  on  time.  For  example,  with  an  understanding  of  our  present   time as being in the front, the farthest forward possible – what does that do to our views of coeval inequalities? And adding the understanding that the development is about to continue to automatically move forward and progress into the future, almost by time itself, what does such an approach do to our urge to change matters – for example fight inequalities – today? I do not aim at answering all these questions, but I will bring them and these challenging takes on time, history, past and present with me throughout the thesis. The illusion of neutral time In In a Queer Time and Place Jack Halberstam works with challenging perspectives on time and space in relation to different aspects of queerness, challenging norms involving time and temporality. For example, Halberstam speaks of queerness as a self-description bringing about  “… potential  to  open  up  new  life  narratives  and  alternative  relations  to  time  and  space”   (Halberstam:2005:1-2). The temporal aspect is explored through what Halberstam names “queer  temporalities”,  a  concept he describes as following: Queer subcultures produce alternative temporalities by allowing their participants to believe that their futures can be imagined according to logics that lie outside of those paradigmatic markers of life experience – namely, birth, marriage, reproduction, and death (ibid:2). With this perspective time is   thus  not   something  which   is   just   “out   there”,  but   it   is   instead   given   meaning   through   institutionalized   “meaning-making”   processes,   illustrated   by   Halberstam through the gendered markers mentioned above. The fact that these markers are connected to gender is also an aspect important to illuminate for this thesis. Often time is described as a “neutral”,   blank   phenomenon   which   is   just   there,   moving   us   forward   with   pretty much the same implications for all people. Thinking along the lines  of  Halberstam‘s   21 reasoning though, opens up for discussing and problematizing how time is also a phenomenon that could be analyzed from feminist problem formulations: time, like anything, can be the subject of power analyses – it is understood through cultural-institutionalized meaning- makers, which is among other things gendered-racialized-classed. Halberstam gives a great example of this way of dealing with temporality and queerness through discussing the transgender body. He writes that: The gender-ambiguous individual today represents a very different set of assumptions about gender that the gender-inverted subject of the early twentieth century; and as a model of gender inversion recedes into anachronism, the transgender body has emerged as futurity itself, a kind of heroic fulfillment of postmodern promises of gender flexibility (ibid:17). This is an exciting take on temporal concepts such as present and future, opening up for discussions of how matters and subject – bodies even – can be culturally understood as representing specific temporal phenomena, such as the future. This reasoning also invites to discussions   of   what   this   says   about   the   understanding   of   “being   located”   in   the   so   called present. For example, much research is made on how power structures work through constructing norm-breaking people and groups as The Other. By applying the aspect of temporality one could also analyze how cultural understandings of time are used in this process; as when putting the transgender body in a temporality that is not here and now, but in a cultural fantasy-context that is not known – the future. Time and class and gender? So far, the matter of on the one hand; power, discourses and subject positions connected to class and gender, and on the other hand, time and temporality have been separately discussed. I want to combine these aspects and problematize what importance temporal understandings have in discursive constructions of gendered-classed subject positions. But how can one open up for relating these to each other? In her essay On time, out of joint, out of step [I tid, ur spår, i otakt] Fanny Ambjörnsson explores the connections between temporality, gender and sexuality as they are captured in the  concept  “lifeline” (Ambjörnsson, 2013:90). Ambjörnsson focuses on what she calls “the   heteronormative   timeline” (ibid:94) and she mainly focuses on age as a time-marker, when analyzing how gender- and sexuality power orders are tied to temporality. She concludes that “Lifelines  can  thus  be  said  to  be  cultural  constructions  of  time  and  space”  (ibid:105)  and,  like   22 norms, they work through force and expectations. This is an example of how temporal understandings play part in how heteronormative power  works   in   people’s   lives. Like this: “time  understandings”  also  creates  “time  subjects”. With such an approach, where time and temporality are explored as part of how power works together with norms, it is also possible to open up for discussing how temporal discourses and subject positions are produced. Like in the example of Halberstam, such analyzing also opens up for seeing how certain subject positions are tied to fantasies of past, present and future, with all it implies of power mechanisms, possibilities and limitations. I am basing my thesis in the analytical meeting- point between the temporal and the gender-class theorizing. 23 3 | Material In this section I want to present and account for the material on which I have based my analysis. I want to explain what material is used and how I have thought in the choices I have made in the process of selecting material. I also discuss the matter of what happens when I work with material that is published in the early 20th century Sweden, communicated through a specific language, when I work with the same material in a different context; the 21th century academic English. 3.1 The material My main thought when searching for material has been that it in some sense should speak of workers’  right  to  bildning, knowledge or education. Although, rather soon a pattern started to take shape: in the material where workers where the main group there was also a clear male norm. Turning to forums where women where in focus the norm was always the middle– or upper class women. Thus, I started to search for gaps in these canonizations to get sight of who was not there at first sight; the working class woman. This became a methodological approach: to search for what was not primarily there. An important aspect for me when selecting the material has also been that it should reflect an understanding of a we or a them. This is important in order to capture ways in which subjectivities and figures have been constructed. Another characterizing aspect of the material is that it should have a political purpose. Outspokenly, or more vague, it speaks to a particular target group; certain people are interpellated in this process; a process where subject positions and (re)production of figures and understandings are taking place. The actual material I have been using are magazines specifically for workers, or female workers, books and prints that argue for workers’ right to education. An important magazine is the paper Morgonbris: the members’ magazine for Social Democratic women founded in 1904 and still published. I chose this magazine partly because the group working-class women are visible and partly because the question of bildning, knowledge and education is a re- occurring topic in the articles. To find this group, I also realized the need for elaborating with traditional   understandings   of   “work”,   something   that   I   develop   later   in   the   analysis,  why   I   have also studied publications aiming at providing the group housewives with knowledge. I have studied political posters, organization prints from Landsorganisationen (LO) and The 24 Social Democrats (S) and material published by Gothenburg University and University West [Högskolan Väst]. The material is published during three time periods: 1930-1949, 1960-1979 and the present time; 2015. Why have I chosen these time periods? I am thinking about the way I have chosen these times as “formally  random”.  I  do  not  believe  that  much things are  actually  “random”;;  of course I am governed  by   the  general  cultural  understandings  of  “how  it  was” in for example the  30’s or 70’s.  I  cannot  escape  this  and I am sure that a personal interest grounded in such ideas plays a role in why I chose certain times and not others. Although, I would like to make a formal point about the random factor in the selection process and that point will be: it does not matter what time periods I chose and why. What I discuss in the thesis is the importance of temporal figures and fantasies; that is, the function of temporality as such, and so the certain time periods in which these fantasies take place are of less importance. Instead, it is the fact that I have chosen different time periods that I want to highlight. After all, if the time aspect had no importance what so ever I could just as well have chosen times like 1999, 2000 and 2001? But in that case I would not touch upon the core of our discursive understanding or differences, linearity and development. So there is a reason to why I chose time periods that are quite far from each other in actual time, since this also means that they symbolize so different ideas and values that we ascribed them in present time. This is important when I want to illustrate how certain discursive ideas and understandings come back and exercise power, no matter time. Along these lines, there is also a point to be made that chance in this context is okay as a research method; it even fills a crucial point. 3.2 Lost in translation: translating context- and culture specific material Working with the material: texts and images produced in specific contexts regarding time, place  and  so  called  “culture”,  my  own  position  and  context  become  visible.   In many cases, this material was probably meant for someone in a similar position as the writer; for example the paper Morgonbris is   a   members’   paper and thus meant for members of the social democratic  women’s  movement  of  the  specific  time.  This  is  an  aspect  that  becomes  apparent   when I sit at the library, carefully turning the withered, yellowing pages photographing them with my iPhone, transcribing the words on my computer. Some of the words are underlined with a green or red line in the Word document, to indicate that it does not go with modern ways of expressing oneself. At the same time, I am amazed that I can totally relate to much of the material, both linguistically and when it comes to content. This process of understanding 25 and processing the material is still something that I do in my mother tongue, Swedish. Afterwards waits the process of translating this beautiful material using my modern second language English. After only a few lines I see how a very different text is taking shape, not corresponding with the expressions and certain strain of the original text. And I want to do the material justice; I want to avoid turning it into a distorted modern-academic version of itself. However, I will not pretend that I believe it to be possible that I and the context that I reflect will be invisible in the translations10. In this process I have searched for guidance in the field of Translation Studies, where I have never been before, for ways to think when dealing with context- and cultural specific material. For example, translation theorist André Lefevere writes that: Translation is, or course, a rewriting of an original text. All rewritings, whatever their intention, reflect a certain ideology and a poetics and such manipulate literature to function in a given society in a given way. Rewritings is manipulation, undertaken in the service of power, and in its positive aspects can help in the evolution  of  a  literature  and  a  society…  But  rewriting  can  also  repress  innovation,  distort  and  contain… (1992: preface). Given this, what I have been dealing with is specifically 1) how to make this manipulation visible and not pretend the situation to be otherwise, and 2) how to deal with certain context specific expressions and strain that do not easily translate into other contexts, both regarding language and time. Theorist Rune Ingo writes of language- and culture internal situational factors that affect a translation and that suddenly, some factors do not matter anymore, some are added and some change in the process. The  translators  assignment   is   then  to  decide  whether  there  are…  such  differences…that  bring  about  the   need to adjust (usually supplement, sometimes shorten or in other ways re-work) the translation. This is important   for   the   text   to  “sit   right”   in   the   situation   that  arises  when   it   in   the   same  or  a  new  purpose   is   received  by  a  reader  in  another  environment… (Ingo, 2007:126-127). These are perspectives that I have tried to convert into practice when working with the material. 10 I attach all of the quotes used in the thesis in original language in Appendix 2. 26 Swedish  “Bildning”  and  “Folkbildning” Such a context- and culture specific matter is the Swedish history of bildning and folkbildning, which plays a large part in this thesis. When I read the words in Swedish, I register so much more than only the semantic meaning of the words, that is; education, cultivation and literacy for people. I also see images in black and white that have been conveyed to me through national-cultural stories throughout my life. The words do not say anything about this, yet I understand it. This is something I have to deal with when explaining and translating my material. The Swedish National Council of Adult Education [Folkbildningsrådet] writes that the Swedish term Folkbildning: “…refers to the folk high schools and the study associations, i.e. the organisations that constitute the liberal, non-formal and  voluntary  educational  system  in  Sweden”.  They  also  explain  why  they  have  chosen  not  to   translate the term in their English texts, but instead keeping the Swedish term: The   term   ‘folkbildning’   is   difficult   to   translate   into   English.   It   is   sometimes   translated   as   liberal   or   popular  education.  However  the  specific  conceptual  foundation  of  ‘folkbildning’  extends  beyond  the  term   ‘adult  education’  which  is  why  ‘folkbildning’  is  used  in  this  text  as-is (Folkbildningsrådet, 2013:2). As it is for the term bildning there is neither here a great equivalent in the English language. The Norwegian research group for Humanities studies in Education compare the German term bildung with the English term education: …   the   word   Bildung…we   find   it   in   the   German   enlightenment   conception   of   human   beings   as   self- educating. Self-education presupposes a self and a world. The self strives toward expressing and developing its individuality (Faculty of Educational Sciences, 2011). This is a concept that contains more than the process of gaining knowledge and get “educated”  and  so  I  will  use  the  Swedish  terms  for  both  concepts throughout the thesis. 27 4 | Workers’  knowledge:  a resource for The Future Society In the researched material I have found that education is partly spoken of as something valuable for the own individual and partly as something valuable for society as a whole. Thus, there are both micro- and macro perspectives in the discussion. Often, but not always, these aspects  are  brought  together  in  a  declaration  of  the  citizen’s  importance  for  the  societal  body  – together we build the future society, you are part of that building. In this chapter I will discuss the importance of temporal fantasies of The Future in the argumentation for a democratization of knowledge and bildning, but also who is actually thought to be part of this process. I will discuss how liberal discourses and subject positions are important for constructing understanding of who should partake in knowledge productions and for what purposes, in material produced in different times. 4.1 The dream of a brighter future One recurring theme in the material is education’s   importance   for   a   societal,   “higher”   purpose. The idea is that society profits from getting educated citizens. Exactly what is meant by “education” and what this  “profit” implies differs depending on context. But no matter the details the pattern remains: there is something larger behind education as a benefit for the sole individual. In an article from 1935 in the paper Morgonbris the working class writer Knut Lånström argues for the importance of a “workers’  press”: …the  stronger   the  workers’  press   is,   the  better  the  workers  can give voice to their meaning…when  this   little by little, through our participation, gains readers and spreads, it can also fill its fostering purpose even   better…The  paper,   if   it   is   a   good  paper…spurs   the   good within us to development and initiative force…it   colours   our   perception   of   the   past   times   and   our   hopes   for   the   future…if   you   are   a   modern   human, a human who at your place in life struggles and strives to   improve   today’s   society and lay the foundation for   a   better   tomorrow’s   society…then   you   demand   of   that   paper   [that   it]…shall   show   the   masses  the  way  to  a  brighter,  culturally  richer   life…Large and tragic happenings in other countries and among other people have brightly illuminated the importance of, that also the women understand democracy  and  protect  it…in  a  democratic  society  we  must  all  act  under  responsibility  and  set  to  work,   supplied with the best and most knowledge possible (Morgonbris, 1935: no 1). Here, the value of gaining knowledge, through the press, is not presented as something mainly concerning the sole individual. The focus is instead set on the outcome, the result which is the working   class’   increased   societal   influence   and   the   keeping   of   the   democratic   system.   Knowledge for the class; the collective of workers as a unit, is not primarily presented as 28 something for individual growth or well-being here and now but as something that will build a society to come. The knowledge needed for building a better future is something that the modern human should demand of their news paper. The modern human is a subject position constructed totally in symbiosis with these temporal fantasies about past, present and future. What is meant by “modern” cannot exist without ideas of what is “not modern”; there cannot be “a bright future”  without  “a dark past”  or  “a  dark  present”. Knowledge, or bildning, as well as the subject positions that partake in the knowledge production, are the means, the vehicle towards the final aim: a brighter, future society. Speaking of the subjectivities involved in this process, the modern human is also gendered: the writer says that   it   is   important  “that also the women”  understand  democracy.  Here,   “the women” are not part of the self-description of the working-class as a unit, but these are described as two separate things. There   is   “the   working   class” (not   gendered)   and   “the   women” (explicitly femininely gendered).The political subject of the movement is thus implicitly gendered as a man. That men as a group already understand democracy is assumed – now the purpose is to include women in the struggle for a better society, particularly working-class women since the forum is the Social Democrats’ women’s  magazine.  What  the   writer wants for women to do is partly to understand democracy, and partly to protect it. There is thus a demand for the working class both to think (understand, gain knowledge) and to act (protect): that is, to be political subjects. The issue is that women should also, like men, through knowledge become such political subjects and the implicit question mark behind such a demand must be highlighted. The purpose of such a development is not, I notice, feminist emancipation (possibly put another way if that would be the case) but to prevent further international conflict, and is thus for societal benefit. The aim is for the working-class women to participate in the fight for another society alongside the male workers. I thus find that the phenomenon of temporal fantasies, particularly about a future is an important part of the classed and gendered construction of who is capable of political agency and who is not. Another contribution to the debate is made by Alva Myrdal, in an interview in Morgonbris 1935. She argues that: …you  need  go  in  for  a  cheaper  education  for all. That means, not only that the education in itself is cost- free from primary school all the way to university and beyond. Talented children from all classes should get special study scholarships that give them free livelihood during the study period. This would more than anything work as a equalizing of classes (Morgonbris, 1935: no 1). 29 Two things are being described as important: 1) that we move towards a classless society, and 2) that talented individuals get to study, no matter class background. It is thus not just anyone who should educate themselves, but talents. Thus, there must be other goals involved than only the benefit for the individual – would that be the case the matter of talent would not be important. Myrdal continues to say that: …the entire breeding process should also get another direction than it has today. The school should foster all children to individually strong collectivists, not like now to a mixture of obedient, non-reflective feudal people and selfish private capitalists suited for a past social order. The school must have a social goal (ibid). A number of things are being said here. Firstly, school should have a fostering role and play part  in  shaping  the  pupils  in  their  values.  Actually,  to  shape  the  pupil’s values might not be an accurate description – what is really being said is that school should foster all children to become individually strong collectivists. I see a difference here between on the one hand “promoting  values” and on the other hand shape someone into an “-ist”, a term that suggests professing  and  committing  to  an  “ism”.  This  leans  more  to  identity  formation  than  lobbying   for certain values. Secondly, Myrdal speaks of the coeval fostering process as suited for a past social order. The temporal aspects are an important part of the discussion:  Myrdal’s   argument for why the way school fosters children now, in present time, is bad, is because it does not suit the coeval time. It belongs to a past time. Certain values are described as bad through historizing them. The argument thus rests on a linear, development-based understanding of time and temporal fantasies about past and future as the base for understanding the present. It is thus suggested that the school is crucial for what kind of society we want to have: if we want another social order we need to foster the children differently in school,   what   Myrdal   refers   to   as   the   “breeding   process”. To also include working-class children in this process might open up for political transformation of society; away from the past, towards a different future. In a letter from a reader of Morgonbris with the title Let us recognize practical capability as well,  the  signature  L.T  writes  of  their  friend’s  fight  for  education.  The  friend,  L.T  writes,  has   been struggling as a maid, in the factory and as a nursing assistant. On her weekly evening off she has been visiting lectures and study circles and  now  when  she  wants  to  apply  to  “a course for the education she is longing for” [a childcare course] she is frequently declined due to lack of  “recommendations”  and  “papers”.    L.T  regrets  that:   30 …the  country  had  so  little  use  of  a  person,  who  could  one  day  have  helped  making  circumstances  better   and   brighter…it   has   been   shown   several   times   that   people   with   slight   schooling   have   made great contributions   for   the   benefit   of  mankind…let   us   try and put forward the people who have the greatest qualifications  to…inspire  and  create  good  citizens,  for  is  it  not  ultimately  on  this  that  the  entire  society’s   happiness depend upon (Morgonbris, 1936: no 9). Alongside   the  obvious  claim  that   the  friend  should  be  able  to  do  what  she  wants,  or  “longs   for”,  the  main  argument  for this working woman’s  right  to  study is for the benefit of society. What is presented as regrettable is that society loses an opportunity to get contribution from an   individual.   The   values   sprung   from   education   is   “making   circumstances   better   and   brighter”,   “the   benefit   for   mankind”,   “create   good   citizens”   and   “society’s   happiness”   – values that are all benefits for society as a whole. This is also constructed alongside a temporal understanding of a different, brighter future. Worth noticing is that even though the class aspect is put forward as important in the story it is not for the sake of class justice itself that this working class woman should get to study. But what is important is what she can contribute with to society. I also note three things related to gender in this text: 1) the friend in question is described as a working-class woman 2) the argument for why she should get to study is that her knowledge can be important for society and its development into a better future, and 3) the main focus of her knowledge production is not that she as a citizen herself will be part of a this societal prospering, but that she will help inspire and create good citizens for society. She is thus not directly portrayed as the main citizen for the future society, but she will help, support and make possible the fostering of other people, main citizens, that will be important  for  “society’s  happiness”. She is not the main political subject and I connect this to discursive ideas about gendered characteristics and values such  as  the  feminine  “helping” and “supporting” and the masculine  “leading” and “deciding” in the power orders and practices that of course temporal fantasies, like anything, are part of. 4.2 Talented but poor When  going  through  the  arguments  for  workers’  right  to  education  it  is  clear  that  not all are included in this group; for example I have discussed how female subject positions are not as included in the argumentations as the male equivalent. A constantly re-appearing element in the discussions of who should have access to knowledge is the matter of talent [begåvning]. The real problem seems to be that specific talents do not get to fulfill their potential, as a consequence of the class system. Thus, there is a certain group of subjectivities that are constructed; the talented, naturally in contrast  with  the  “non-talented”, and it seems especially 31 unfair that this talented group get hindered from studying. In The  Workers’  movement’s  Post- war Program11 from 1944, in the chapter Democratized schooling the authors write: …many   who lack study head12 get an extensive schooling, while other youths with much better qualifications not at all get the opportunity to develop their traits. This also means, that the selection of people, that can be used at leading positions in production and societal life, get substantially less satisfying, than would be necessary (1944:115). It is the   youths   with   ‘study   head’; good qualification and traits, who should get the opportunity to develop this through studying. The purpose is expressively to get competent people in leading positions and is thus   for   society’s   prospering   and   benefit.   This is emphasized even further by the focus on youths;;  like  in  Myrdal’s  discussion  the  emphasis  is   on younger generations, a group with many years of working life in front of them and thus with large possibilities to “contribute to society”. This can be contrasted with a valuing of knowledge and bildning in itself, where factors like time and age would play less or no role. The authors also write that: …for   the   sole   individual   the   economic obstacles for education are all the more serious, since the individual’s possibilities to establish their capability now increasingly depends on his theoretical and practical education (ibid:115-116)…the  economic   obstacles for education should be completely broken up for all youth who have desire and inclination to conduct a continuing education beyond the public elementary school as well (ibid:117). Here, there is a larger focus on the individual and not only on the society and its values. The individual should  get  the  possibility  to  “proclaim  their  capability” and the education should be democratized for anyone who has “desire” and, not or, “inclination”. That is, young people with  talent.  “Desire”  for education is not enough in  itself,  one  must  also  have  “inclination”, a tendency and capability, for the being included in the economically hindered group that should get to study. This individual spoken of is also gendered; it is he who should proclaim his capability through his theoretical   and   practical   education.   The   workers’   struggle   for   education can thus be said to intend that the subjectivity of the male, talented worker get to develop his abilities for participating in the development of society. 11 The program was a political action plan for the Social Democrats and the trade union movement on the social and economic politics after the Second World War. The program was elaborated by the Social Democratic Party, The Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO), Social Democratic Women in Sweden (now: S-kvinnor) and the Swedish Social Democratic Youth League (SSU) (The National Encyclopedia, Arbetarrörelsens efterkrigsprogram). 12 In  the  original  text  the  Swedish  specific  word  “läshuvud”  [direct  translation:  “reading- or  study  head”]  is  used,   which can be said to be an everyday speech expression aiming at someone  with  “talent”  or  “natural  inclination”   for studying. 32 This is also the message in a political campaign poster used by the Social Democrats in the parliamentary election in 1948. The poster was created by the Swedish Social Democratic Youth League (SSU) and the slogan is: Talented but poor – give him equal chance. Choose the  Workers’  Party. The poster shows a working boy – possibly an errand boy, since he has a paint stain on his jacket and a wooden chest on his bicycle. From a distance he is watching three laughing, just-graduated students. The three are all dressed in suits, one of the boys wears  a  student  cap  and  holds  a  student  stick  and  is  riding  on  the  two  friends’  shoulders.  They are laughing. At first sight, the poster gives a clear message: education is a matter of class, this is unfair and the Social Democrats will change that. But a number of other things are also being said. First, and perhaps the most obvious is that the four people in the poster are all white, young, fit, high functional men. The all belong to the same group portrayed as suited for education. The only way in which the errand boy differs from the students is when it comes to class. It is not primarily a matter of who he is, but of what he has, or rather does not have: money. The message is not necessarily only speaking of groups – yes, the poster is obviously   for   the  “Workers’  Party”  and   so,   there   is   an  awareness  of   class   structure  and   the   working class group – but simultaneously there is a clear focus on the individual. This is one worker in question, and he is a man, a talented man. This can be put in contrast to the three students that show  in  the  background;;  “the wealthy” as a group, but what makes the errand boy appear alone in the poster is because of his talent. And talent is something that breathes uniqueness, one of a kind, singular, non-group oriented. Again, this is what justifies his right to education. Otherwise it could just have said  “Wants  to  study  but  is  poor” and the emphasis would only be on the matter of money and class. I see such a class analysis; split between a structural and an individualized understanding of class as a way to speak about class injustices through a liberal discourse – where  the  individual  and  “his  backpack” is in focus rather than the structural power mechanisms that cause the individual experiences in the first place. I have also found that an important idea in this liberal, individualized understanding of the class matter  in  educational  context  is,  again,  the  idea  of  today’s  progress  into   the future. I connect this to the  use  of  the  concept  of  “chance”:  a  word  that  leaves  open  what  is  to  come.   Give him equal chance the poster says. It is the individual, male worker that should be given a chance. To what? One interpretation could be a chance to experience what the three students are obviously experiencing: happiness, joy, celebration – perhaps for their chance to personal development, inner growth – the values of education in itself. Although, I question whether this would have been illustrated with the presence of material props such as suits, paint stains, 33 wooden chest. I read these as symbols for positions on the labour market, or in the production process and the chance would thus be the chance for a more beneficial position in this structure. The chance of a different future: it is like a shadow future is visible in the picture, another life and the temporal fantasy of a future; another time is an important part for the political message in the poster. This must also be connected to the gendered subjects in the poster. Reading them as subjects in relation to labour market positions, the question of how citizenship, the public sphere and societal influence connect to gender must also be considered. Both in the Post-War Program and the SSU-poster a group of young, male, talented individuals are constructed, associated to characteristics such as readiness, capability and brilliance – just waiting to partake in the new life of today and tomorrow. This is a construction of citizenship that rests on certain understandings of gender and class: that working-class men, in capacity of masculinely coded qualities, are an untapped resource for society. Untapped, in the capacity of their class belonging. These arguments for the working- class right to bildning thus rests on a specific gendered understanding of class and is also highly connected to the temporal fantasy of a progressive timeline. When I write this I have been sitting at the social science library. It is easy for the imagination to run free; illusionary ideas about how it was back then. Illusions of differences and development. I cannot help but thinking that  an  expression  like  “talent”  is  very  dated  and  that   it is no surprise that this is written in the 1940’s.  When  I  take  the  tram home that day I browse through today’s  Metro  newspaper and I stop at the column heading: School bullies talented pupils. The liberal debater and columnist Johan Norberg claims that in Sweden one is not allowed to say that some children are talented and some are not. He writes that: Some countries have schools that are adjusted after particularly talented pupils’   personalities, but in Sweden this is forbidden as all schools must be open for all, regardless of talent…We have been so concerned with equality that we have neglected that it crushes those  who  do  not  fit  in…If  everyone  has  it   [talent] it would not be a gift in that way. But this you cannot say. Someone might get hurt…first  and   foremost it was urgent for them [The Swedish National Agency for Education13] to establish that everyone are talented. That says everything you need to know about how hard it is to speak about tolerance for highly talented individuals. [my emphasis] Clearly, also in 2015, a distinction is made between children with and without talent. Norberg even speaks of different personalities and   views   talent   as   “a   gift” that certain individual; certain highly talented individuals, are blessed with. An interesting remark is that a focus on 13 Swedish: Skolverket. Nordberg discusses their interventions (or, in his opinion, lack of interventions) for adjusting education to  “particularly  talented  children”. 34 so called talents is imagined as the opposite to a value such as equality. Through this reasoning, the mere  chance  that  some  people  have  this  “gift”  and  some  do  not  (how  one  come   about this gift, if it is by birth, up-bringing or other circumstances is not elaborated) is a legitimate reason for an, I take it, unequal educational system. Such a reasoning do not include considerations of for example; what norms are active in setting the standards for what is  to  count  as  “talent”  or what groups are normatively and discursively more prone to end up in such categories. The argumentation lacks a structural- and group perspective. Instead a clear liberal discourse can be identified, with the right of the sole individual – here, the talented individual – as a main question. I chose to include this column in the thesis because of its clear illustration of how temporal understandings of matter, here: my own development- based time-coding of the concept of talent (that it is an old concept stuck in the past) inhibits more complex analyses of how time might work. I see this as an expression of a liberal discourse, showing itself differently in two random years: something that challenges ideas of linear development where understandings, discourses are stuck in time. Instead, this can be viewed as a parallelity using  Lindén’s  concept. These understandings of individual talent are similar to one another, as a product of an individual discourse always present,  not  “passed  on”   along a linear generation- or succession order, but alive and well in a more cyclic manner. Yet another way of viewing this matter is through the concept of haunting. For example: if we view the word and concept talent as a ghost,  using  Gordon’s  terminology,  could  we  say  that  it   is haunted by those who have never been included in this notion? Certain groups, certain types of knowledge have not been considered having talent. So, reading about such a concept in present time, I feel that it is haunted – by those groups that would never be allowed to appear in the SSU-poster from 1948. That is, perhaps anyone but the white, young, fit male. What I want to emphasis here are the dangers that arise from automatically giving things meaning only by adding a time perspective. By understanding talent as an old, dated concept I also place it on a linear timeline. Although, through using concepts like ghost or haunting, I also open up for understanding matters connected to a more cyclic understanding or time. Like this: instead of seeing specific time periods as symbols or representations of certain values – an idea that risks making us blind for similar injustices in present time – thinking along lines of circular, cyclic time opens up for understanding discourses as returning, perhaps never leaving. Maybe they are changing, mobile as they are, but stapled to decades or years – time might pass through discourses, like water passing through a brail, but it does not automatically leave the discourse behind, stuck in past time. I believe that haunting might be 35 the glitch in this understanding, which makes me react to reading a concept like talent in 2015. 4.3 Summary In  the  argumentation  for  worker’s  rights  to  knowledge  and  bildning temporal fantasies about the future are important. Knowledge is seen as a vehicle away from the present towards a brighter society. An important factor is also the subjectivities thought to ride this vehicle, which is the male, main important citizen and constructions of these subjectivities are totally intertwined with temporal constructions of past, present and future and a modern, development discourse of progress and linearity. I also identify a strong liberal discourse, with a large focus on the individual also in the arguments against class injustices, where the collective group is central. This discourse is particularly visible in the focus on talents which can be viewed as a parallelity; discursive understandings re-occurring in different times. 36 5 | Here and now: who is needed for the future? Alongside the societal focus of education, there are also perspectives that stress the benefits for the sole individual as something valuable. The way meaning is created around this value differs, but the common factor is still that the individual worker is said to gain something through education. However, what the individual is supposed to gain is highly related to gendered constructions of the working-class citizen. Here, I have chosen to work with material produced for housewives working in and sometimes also outside of the home. I do this in order to problematize what happens with understandings of knowledge, citizenship and time when the matter of bildning is dealt with in other contexts than the traditional. I will now discuss discourses and subject positions related to private and public spheres, modernity and political subjectivity. I also discuss how the temporal discursive understanding of modernity is an important aspect for creating meaning around the coeval present in every time. 5.1 Towards a high and noble human life Besides   the   societal   perspectives   of   education   there   is   also   discussion   of  workers’   right   to   knowledge where the main purpose primarily seems to be the growth and development of the individual. In The  Workers’  Movements  Learning  Ideals from 1935 Natanael Beskow writes: What is strived for must be something else, something on the other side of the economic and political power. That is the possibility to live the  highest  and  best  human  life…a high and noble human life will not come about, if it is not in the individuals, in the single humans (9-10) …  So far it has been the mere egoistic point of view that has reigned: you want to learn that which can help you to get ahead in the struggle for subsistence. So far it has been from the point of view of the society’s   or   the   state’s   benefit…also this ideal brings on the danger that the fostering of character is put aside, that the question of spiritual deepening and that the harmonious interaction of the spiritual and the bodily forces is not sufficiently regarded (19) If this efficiency aspect dominates, the danger is close, that you educate single- minded  and  dependent  people…the function  of   the  work  of  bildning…must be to help the people to as rich personal development as possible and to put them in position to by their power standards make their contribution to the human collaboration and thereby intake  one’s  place  in  the  human  community  (20) A person is not cultivated, because he is a professor…  It is possible to be exceptionally lettered and yet be a rude and rough person with a primitive emotional life. Then you are not cultivated [Swe:bildad] (21). In the text there is a clear focus on the personal, inner development of the individual. The valuable is something on the other side of economic and political power. The highest, best and noble human life. It is the fostering of character, the spiritual deepening that the workers 37 will gain through bildning and this will trim the edges of the rude, rough and primitive human. The front page of the text is also illustrated with an oil lamp, such as the one figuring in the folktale One Thousand and One Nights, in which a genie shows up and fulfills the main characters highest wishes. I take this as a metaphor for what knowledge, or bildning, could do for the working-class individual. The person who will go through this refinement is also gendered. It is the male professor who is not necessarily cultivated just because he is lettered. In this meaning, anyone else but men, for example women are put outside of the subject position who through knowledge will take their place in the human collaboration and community. Thus, the individual growth is not the only purpose of knowledge, but it is also accompanied with  strengthened  capacity  for  “collaborating”  in  the  “human  community”; that is, partaking in societal life. Such a place speaks of capacities like agency, autonomy and interaction in the public sphere of society and it thus demands a political subject. When this argument  for  workers’  right  to  education  is  suddenly  gendered the working-class women are automatically not included. So what is the plan for them when it comes to knowledge and bildning? This is what I will discuss in the next section. First, I want to connect this discussion of refinement and personal change through bildning to the  content  of  this  years’  catalogue from Gothenburg University (GU). Beside the picture of a girl  riding  a  bicycle,  smiling  with  the  wind  blowing  in  her  hair,  the  text  says  “Take the chance to   become   you…Here   it   is   allowed   to   become   you…Welcome   to   the   new   you”.  Yes, this image shows a girl and the political subject of knowledge production is not only a man, like the  professor  or  the  male  worker  from  Beskow’s  text, but the prominent idea that a change is going to take place is definitely present in both materials. The subject entering the world of knowledge is in both contexts created through a discourse of individual change. In  Beskow’s   text   the   subject   position   available   for  worker’s   prior to the process of bildning is that of a rude, rough, primitive person. In the GU-catalogue there is no explicit description of the subject prior the education process, but that there is one personality before and one after the education at the Gothenburg University is obvious. The interpellation “Become  you”  and the phrase “Welcome   to   the   new   you” clearly imply that there has been something before; another you and this new you is only attainable through education. Through choosing two examples of material with eighty years in between I want to illustrate how discursive understandings and the power they invoke, can be seen as working in different ways than through a progressive, linear time-line. The understanding of progressive development suggests   that   material   from   the   1930’s   also   rests   on   ideas   from that coeval time. As time 38 passes,   we   would   “naturally”   have   left   such   ideas   behind   and   material from 2015 would reflect totally different values. I am not saying that things are always the same, never changing. But I believe that viewing such changes linearly creates illusions of turning-points, differences and binary “either-or   truths”.   Thinking along lines of parallelities and re- occurrence, can instead open up for understanding discourses as something that cyclically change. Like in this example where the discourse of individual personality change is active in different times, on different conditions. 5.2 The working-class girl and her future In a piece in Morgonbris from 1935, the social democrat and pioneer in folkbildning Hulda Flood interviews the principal  of  the  Female  Citizens’  School  at  Fogelstad,  Horine  Hermelin,   on account of the  school’s  tenth  anniversary. Flood writes that Hermelin highlights: …the  importance  of   the  mixture  of  people  with  and  without  higher  education,  and  emphasizes  how  this   obviously gives the latter larger courage. Namely it often becomes apparent during the studies, that when it comes to judging current time circumstances, the maturity and discernment of the practically working women is not behind the ones having higher degrees. And that those with less schooling get the opportunity to ascertain this, must naturally strengthen their self esteem, and give them courage to step forward (Morgonbris, 1935: no 1). The focus here is, in contrast to the reasoning of education’s   societal benefits, on the self- worth and personal development of the sole individual, and particularly the working class woman. It is her own emotions; the recognition of the self-worth, that will enable her to take action, to step forward. However, no matter how much emphases is  put  on   the   individual’s   inner journey, there must still be a reason to why the academic or occupational positions of the women are mentioned. Would the class analysis play no role in the discussion, there would  be  no  mentioning  of   ‘practically  working  women’  or   ‘higher  degree’. Then it would just be a matter of any individual’s  personal  growth.  What is stressed here is the importance of the working  class  woman’s  individual growth and thus it must be concluded that bildning is also valued as a key to societal change for evening out class hierarchies and uneven preconditions. The meta-perspective goes: societal change through individual change. In an organization story in Morgonbris from 1935 the signature I.F.C writes about the Eskilstuna club’s  book  circle.  They  explain  that: 39 …Private  book  purchases  to  any  larger  extent  are  not  a  possibility  for  the  worker’s wife. And still it is so valuable  also  for  her  to  win  membership  to  the  world  of  books…  Problems,  that  the  lone  housewife  has   dwelled on in her brain perhaps to weariness, become in the world of books illuminated and possibly straightened out, at least put under debate (Morgonbris, 1935: no 8). The  goal  is  here  for  the  worker’s wife to gain access to another world. That is, a world that is not her own, not the world that she currently lives in. This world is to provide intellectual stimulation and problem-solving; something that she desires but do not acquire in her current world. The value becomes the gain for the individual worker’s wife  of  not  having   to  “dwell on problems  alone  without  answers”. Here, knowledge seems to be, if not for the sole sake of learning, to learn something for the sake of the own satisfaction. Interesting to notice is that when the focus is set on the individual, their inner journey and/or their emotions it is like time freezes. There is often little or no talk of the future, development or progress. These values seem to be separated. Especially so for the subject position of the female worker. Knowledge, is something  that  the  worker’s  wife  can  have  for  herself  here and now, not even for affecting society here and now, neither for affecting her career here and now and definitely not for affecting the societal future – as so often described in the portraits of knowledge for the male subjectivities, for example the poor talent. I find this as illustrating how temporality is not a neutral or given phenomena, just there, but created and highly gendered-classed. In this example, it is part of a masculine-capitalist construction  of   linear  development  of   society’s progress and prosperity. It is a development discourse in which the subjectivity of the worker’s  wife  is  not  part.   5.3 Fostering housewives for their future Thinking of bildning and folkbilning the thoughts immediately go to study circles, folk high schools or other forms of public organizing. When these areas are represented in history there is often a large focus on working class men14. Another aspect is the subjects often associated with the process of self-education: humanities, philosophy, culture, literary studies. Who engages is such studies depends partly on who has time and access to a sphere outside of the private and partly on what norms and power structures that affects who should be active within what field. Since the research on bildning has largely been focused on these public, traditional organizations, other practices of bildning have been excluded from the research 14 See for example several historical descriptions of Swedish folkbildning, such as The cultivated worker by Thomas Ginner, For the people and through the people by Inge Johansson or People’s  breeding,  People’s   enlightenment  and  Folkbildning:  the  Swedish  People’s  history  of  bildning by Gösta Vestlund. 40 field. Trying to find material by and for working women has been a difficult task. I find that these subjectivities are neither visible in the forums  for  workers’  education, where the male norm rules, nor in the forums  for  women’s  education,  where  the  middle- and upper class norm rules. Therefore I found that I would have to challenge the term “working”,  elaborating  with   different forums. Through incorporating the work of housewives I thought to expand traditional views and definitions of work, as well as borders between public and private spheres. Unusually knowing housewives In a   story   in   Morgonbris   from   1935;;   “Housewives   of   the   future   – the   practical   work’s   renaissance  within   the   school” the author investigates the new Household technical middle school of the city of Stockholm; a   girls’   school   that   combines   practical   and   theoretical knowledge. The reporter asks: What chances do Karin and Greta   have   to   hold   their   own?…An exam paper that shows a higher knowledge measurement is an important document in the competition on the large labour market (Morgonbris, 1935: no 4). The value connected to education is in this sense the opportunity for the individual to participate  in  the  run  for  a  job;;  but  not  just  any  job  but  a  position  where  “a  higher  knowledge   measurement”  is  requested.  The individual thus invests in competitive value. However, in the same piece the reporter  asks  the  principal  Gertie  Söderberg  about  the  school’s  aim  and  way  of   working. She answers that the school tries to put the theoretical subjects; chemistry, physics, biology into practice that “will work in the home…  and the base for a more cultivated taste that is hereby laid, will surely mark the future homes, when the girls get married”.  Regarding   the future prospects for the students the principal says that many continue on to get a practical occupation: Through the education  the  girls  get  a  good  portion  of   independence  and  confidence  (…)  it  could  be  that   they become maids, but in that case they become highly qualified, that in many ways differs from the maid force in general. They get more independent and understand to demand respect for themselves and their occupation. They want ordered work times and ordered work conditions and can on the whole take charge  of  their  interests  in  an  efficient  way  (…)  but  a  large  part  of  the  girls  do  get  married  sooner  or  later.   That they then become unusually knowing housewives, is just natural (ibid). The reporter also asks what other wishes the principal has for the school and she is quoted: 41 I  cannot  help,  that  I  find  it  cruel  that  a  child’s  future  and  possibilities  for education is so inexorably tied to the  parents’  economic  position.  How  often  has  it  for  example  not  been  that  a  girl  starts  here,  but  after  a   while has come with tears in her eyes and announced that she has to quit, for the father has been put out of   work…she must then set off to be an errand-girl or something similar, while the fortunate mates remain, take their exam and probably face a very different future (ibid). In this piece, what is brought forward as valuable with education is very differing and in some sense contradictory. On the one hand, the primary reason for education seems to be to get ahead at the labour market: to get a good job. I deliberately write good job, since the quote about the economic injustices clearly states that working as an errand-girl or   “something   similar” is   not   a   desirable   future.  On   the   other   hand,   the   discussion   about   the   girls’   future   prospects ends with the statement that most of the girls get married sooner or later and then become  “unusually  knowing  housewives”, insinuating that they will not continue working on the labour market. That said, marriage is not outspokenly presented as the goal of the education, nor as something that regrettably puts an end to a career. It is just there, an observation without judgment. Again, the future is an important temporal aspect in the discussion: the primary context seems to be the personal future for the women in question and their family. This can be compared to the   writings   of   the   workers’   movement   in   general,   where the male-normative subjects are highly linked to the future of society. It is interesting to notice that even though the girls will not use their knowledge and education for a future on the labour market, education is described as something very important for   the  girls’   future.   Why? An interesting judgment is made in the small passage about how the theoretical subjects are adjusted  to  suit  the  home.  Education  it  hereby  said  to  provide  “a  more  cultivated  taste”  that   “will  surely  mark   the  future  homes”.  A  hierarchy   is  here  presented: there cannot be a more cultivated taste without a lesser version. There cannot be homes marked by this taste without homes that are marked by a different, lesser taste. Here,   an   explicit   gendered   “making”   of   class is made:  a  better,  higher  level  of  “taste”  is  put  forward,  being  part  of  a  self-description, forming a specific “us”  and  in  the  same  sentence  also  critically  judging  a  “them”. The middle class practice of creating distance to “the   others” through the concept of taste as a class indicator is something that Skeggs   names   the   middleclass’   “classing   gaze”   (Skeggs, 2000:14f). Education is therefore connected to status value; style and taste that you would not get otherwise and it thus becomes an important function in the (re)production of class. An interesting aspect is the gendered context of this; the women bear a crucial role of bringing 42 this classed taste into the private sphere of the home – so the interconnectedness of class and gender is therefore an essential factor in the distinguishing and ordering of classes. As education is pictured as a crucial class-marker   for   the  girls’   future   lives   and  homes,   the text also visualizes an alternative shadow future, as a result of not getting an education. The future life of the girl who has to drop out of school and start working is pictured as a situation of hopelessness and despair. She is crying, not necessarily because she enjoys education in itself, but because of the different future she will face. The future of the educated girl, who will not work, but who will use her knowledge for marking the home with a upper class taste is ascribed much more value than that of the un-educated girl that will work. A specific female working-class subject position is thus constructed, here her usage of knowledge is tightly tied to her gender and class belonging. Implicitly, education can here also be said to contain (hetero)sexual middle- or upper class values, since it is thought to lead to a future where the family can survive on only one income and thus presuming a certain economic standard and perhaps amount of children. The   sentence   “through the education the girls get a good portion of independence and confidence” could also be said to be a matter for the individual, a value in itself, no matter if the girls go on to the labour market or stop working when they get married. It is not described as something bad that they might stop working; this confidence is not primarily connected to the labour market. And the independence must involve a sort of criticalness, since it cannot be about economic independence. Although the gendered subjectivity must be taken into account here: I cannot imagine the situation where the same conditions would be legitimate for a male subjectivity – that knowledge is important no matter going on to the labour market or not. 5.4 “We  can  perfectly  well  compare  our  kitchens  with  small  laboratories,   where the chemist-housewife reigns” Media scientist Karin Nordberg has studied the relationship between folkbildning and the Housewives’  Education  that  was  broadcasted  on  the  radio  during  the  late  40’s  and  early  50’s.   Something that Nordberg emphasizes in her research is that there might be need for different definitions of the term folkbildning to   be   able   to   view   the   housewives’   education   as   a movement for bildning and knowledge (Nordberg, 2001: 65). 43 As Nordberg explains the need for challenging definitions of folkbildning, I elaborate with the concept of work when I search for working class women. This, because I have found that the template for   “working   class”   is   mainly   based   on   standards   for   male   life. I have studied a publication on the subject of housewife-knowledge called Reasonable Housework [Vettigt Hemarbete] which was published by Radiotjänst15 in conjunction with a series of radio programs called The Housewife School [Husmorsskolan], with start in 1949. The handbook Reasonable Housework is an instructive book, where several experts contribute with rules  and  advices  on  how  housewives  can  “improve  and  facilitate  their  house  work  and   stimulate  the  interest  for  new  discoveries  and  experiences…”  (1950:10).  There  is  also  a  large   section where housewives have sent in their stories and testimonies from their daily lives. The main focus is on women who work in the home, but in this section some women testify that they also work on the labour market. In studying of the material, there are four main themes that I want to focus on in relation to bildning:  1)  the  “scientification”  of  the  housework,  2)  the   housewife’s  role  as  a  citizen,  3)  bildning for  the  housewife’s  own  sake,  and  4)  “the  past”  and   “the  future”  as  an  important  aspect  for  knowledge.   Scientification of housework The book title itself sets the tone  of  the  content:  “reasonable”  [vettig] is a word into which I read values such as sense, logic, rationality, science, order, rules and standardization. Although it is pointed out that the occupation of the housewife differs from other professional work, it is still clear that the housework is seen as a profession. For example one section in the chapter  “The  housewife  herself”  states  that: The external conditions for the work, the sort and amount of tasks, the length of work time, the character of the work place – all such things are within the separate working groups exactly fixed…  This  is  not the case  for  the  domestic  work…The housewife profession uptake in many respects an exceptional position. The recruitment for this work does not have its equivalent in any other way. The educational circumstances  are  unclear… (1950:11-12). Terms such as “recruitment”   and   “profession”   compares   the   house   work   with   a   formal   occupation on the labour market – something that is, throughout the book, tied to the importance  of  “reasonable”  knowledge  and  competence  among  the  housewives.  This  form  of   bildning is thus seen as a kind of professional competence, necessary for doing a good job. 15 Radiotjänst is part of Swedish public service. 44 The text is very theoretically dense and there is a problematization and a methodical approach that  can  often  be  associated  with  traditional  “scientific  education”.  Throughout   the chapters, that  cover  the  housewife  herself,  the  household’s  food,  working  devices  and  chemical  aid  and   sewing, there are measurements, arithmetic examples, chemical knowledge and formulas, machinery knowledge, illustrative images and manuals, up-to-date research findings, economic cost estimates calculating for example annual cost and operating expenses for kitchen aids. After each chapter there are also discussion questions to problematize the relation between the housewife, the family, the topic of the chapter and society. In the chapter Chemical aid in the home Iwan Bolin writes that: “We can perfectly well compare our kitchens with small laboratories, where the chemist-housewife reigns” (ibid:71). In the back there is also a literature list attached: “Suggestions for specialist literature16 for housewives” including titles such as “Society and the children”, “Swedish legislation for protection and support for children”, “A   Swedish   citizen’s   safety   from   scarcity”, “How to handle your economy”,” Nutrition- and dietics teaching”, “Sickness- and accidental care in the home”, “Children and money” and “Diet, the individual and society” (ibid:189-191). The   term   “specialist   literature”   suggests   a   specific   field   competence   and   a   professional   identity. The housewife needs specific knowledge to be able to work within the field. This could be viewed as an effort to try to strengthen and uplift the status of the housewife and her work. It could also reflect an effort to try and fit the function of the housewife into an already existing template or model of professional work and thus fill it with labour market value without the housewife actually getting in contact with the labour market. That is, without having to change the gendered private-public division of labour. One reading can also be that, no matter intention, this:   rationalization,   “scientification”,   rationality   and   progress is one coeval example of a modernist discourse that exist now as well and that might take different shapes in different contexts. Wife, mother, citizen “Scientificationized”   and   professionalized   as   it   is,   there   is   still   an   important   difference   between   the   housewife’s   knowledge   and   subject   for   learning   and   the   equivalent   of   the   traditional bildning organization. The knowledge, and the housewife, spoken of in this text are meant to stay in the home and thus not thought to participate in the public sphere. However, 16 The  Swedish  translation  is  “facklitteratur”,  where  the  term  “fack”  (meaning box, case or drawer) indicated that this literature belongs to a certain scientific area or discipline. 45 this does not mean that the function of the housewife and her knowledge is not important for society – on the contrary it is presented as crucial for societal stability. The housewives are self-employed  and  contribute  through  their  work  to  the  family’s  breadwinning. Their social position   and   the   formation   of   their   work   task   and   work   environment   are   however   fully   tied   to   the   man’s economic and social position in society (1950:12). The   housewife’s   knowledge   and   competence   in   her   profession   is   thus   crucial   for  making   a   good job and fill an important function in society, however, the ideal citizenship for women is oriented around the private rather than the public sphere. This also shows through the fact that although some of the women in the text have other occupations as well, and thus work both in another profession and runs their households, it is only the latter that is premiered and presented as the important field for developing knowledge. That such testimonies are shoved away also illustrates the classed aspect of the ideal citizenship for women; only higher class positions allow you to work unpaid in the home – that, which is put forward as the most important. The material also reflects an image where the private and the public are divided by a clear-cut line. But paradoxically, in parts it also opens up for a problematization and a blurring of those lines. Several times, the women write of the radio, for example the Housewife School series, as a time where they broaden their context and partake in a larger/other space than that of the own home. One listener writes that: I am not ashamed to read a chapter in a good book while Björn naps after dinner, not every day, but rather often. Moreover, I want to read the daily news paper quite closely and generally keep up with politics and in the cultural pages. Something I usually appreciate a lot, and particularly this year, is the radio feuilleton. Then I darn socks while I listen and enjoy (1950:185-186). When Nordberg discussed the radio as a medium for folkbildning she connects the public sphere/the publicity to the notion of the modern. She writes that: Because the modern has so persistently been tied to the places and the streets, to the public premises and institutions, the home has come to appear as the opposite of the public life (Nordberg, 2001:75). Here, the radio, or the newspaper, written of by the women as providing something else, something beyond that of the home, could be seen as a bridge of a passage blurring the borders between private and public life. This could be said no matter if the knowledge, or bildning, taking place in these forums primarily touches on matters of house work or on subjects such as politics or culture. But if we are to focus on the house work-knowledge of the 46 Housewife School, this knowledge is exchanged, discussed and communicated in the semi- public sphere of the radio. Besides the practical expert advices given, the handbook and the radio program is also a meeting point and a place to exchange knowledge and experiences. In other words, it is a knowledge organization, which is the entire foundation of the work of bildning. Her own present, her own future Even though the knowledge is mainly about house work, there are many stories in the book where housewives seethe of a desire for other knowledge as well. In the piece Mother of three runs two households a listener writes down her daily work schedule. It is a hectic work day that starts at 5.30 a.m. and includes caring for the own home and the children, bringing the two youngest children (the youngest being six weeks old) to her employer; another family, presumably from a higher class, where she also takes care of their home and children. The day ends  after  8  p.m.  when  she  has  taken  care  of  “possible  cleaning  and  washing”  of  her  own.  She   writes: Is there a good radio program it is darning of socks or other mending to the last daily news. So, mama gets to relax to a cup of coffee, a real hot footbath and a good book (combined). I borrow books at the public library and seldom read colored weekly press. (Spiritless). Am also very interested in stenography and have learned on my own two years ago (1950:132-133). Another listener writes that: I do not want to lose the knowledge that I once have had, but I try to keep some of it alive, simultaneously as I gain new ones in capacity of housewife. Right now e.g. I study English once a week during the autumn and spring (1950:180). Yet a third one writes that: Every afternoon when I have done the dishes, I make myself a cup of coffee and read the daily newspaper…  I  try  to  keep  up  my  language  knowledge  and  I  also  willingly  read  history  and  fiction.  Such   things must also  have  their  time…  (1950:182-184). Knowledge outside of the housework is here presented as something else; something that does not serve in their current work, but it is something for the sake of their own situation solely. Even though for example the comment about learning stenography could be read as planning for of hoping of a different future life, there is no remarks that there would be a connection between  the  housewife’s  education  and  a  future  outside  the  home,  or  to  society. Instead it is 47 only described as a value for the situation here and now,   either   for   the   housewife’s   satisfaction or for making the housework situation easier in some sense. One listener describes engaging in literature studies as something that keeps her going in her daily work. She writes that: Eventually we [her and the children] started to read the same books. If every mother knew how fun it is to read  children’s  books  and  then  discuss  them  with  the  children!  The  years  passed,  and  as  the  children  grew   older we started reading different authors. It was a lovely relaxation from the work day, the children had sort   of   unconsciously   brought   me   into   the   world   of   literature…   those   still   moments that a housewife during the day indulge in to nurture the soul [is sort of] the oil to all bodily work (1950:116). It is interesting to note that the temporal aspects change when the knowledge is not set in the traditional, male working class context. Often it is like time has stood still, the housewife and her knowledge is here and now. When there is a future visible the time regards the lives of herself and her family, rather than the progress of society. But it is not only the future that shows as a temporal figure. In the chapter Right food in an easy way Greta Bergström writes of a past heritage that should be passed on to future generations: The housewife of our time has in fact so much essential to do both within and outside of the home, that she is forced to rationalize also in the area of cooking. Because of this one could wish that also the household  education  got  more  modernly  oriented…  At  any  rate  one   longs for an interesting and for all parts worthwhile discussion between housewives, scientists and educators at this point, for the benefit of the housewives of the future who might have even less time on their hands at the  kitchen  stove…  we  must   with all power try to maintain that food culture we inherited of past generations, a food culture that to a large  extent  is  about  to  disappear…here  we  must  through  housewifely  professional knowledge through a positive critique and  a  declining  buyer’s  attitude speak up, that this does not fit us (1950:25-26). A clear genealogical narrative takes shape here; it is us housewives, a group identification that stretches from the past to the future. This raises interesting questions about in what ways and on what terms education is viewed as a societal value, as well as what kind of future different groups are associated with. There is the very prominent understanding of a now, a present time, placed in between a known past (they had a good food culture) and an unknown future that one can picture vaguely and most importantly – affect through present time action. I find that this can also be seen as a practice of agency. The idea that these women must take action in  a  certain  way  for  the  benefit  of  tomorrow’s  housewives  and generations ascribes them with a certain political value of being capable of judgment, decision and action. Paradoxical, since 48 one might say that the knowledge in this context is highly femininely gendered – something that is seldom thought to be for politics, society or public life. Unlike in the rest of the material, where femininely gendered knowledge production (be it the topic or the mere fact that the people involved are women) is something presented in a still time, her own present now, but   here   genealogical   timeline   hits   with   full   force:   the   present   time   housewife’s   knowledge matters for the future development. However, the context is still mainly private regarding the housewives themselves and their families. I would like to claim though, that no matter context the mere act of imagining oneself as a critical-thinking, reflecting individual or group capable of action and agency is a crucial step for also being able to act as one. You could say that this is expressed through a discourse of political change over time, but in the genealogical  context  of  “us  housewives”,  where  the  change  stays  in  the  private  sphere  of  the   family. Another interesting understanding of time is illuminated when a listener discusses how to divide the housework in the family, something that affects the spare time and what you can engage in when having time off. She writes that: The modern man is to be sure no conservative individual but a realistic present time human, who do not reason so, that because the woman has stood by the stove for generations she shall stand there still – even if she cannot cook (1950:172). In this last passage interesting things are said about time and temporality. The modern man is no conservative individual but a realistic present time human [nutidsmänniska]. Sitting in present time, reading these lines written in 1949-1950 really illuminates how people in every time period think of their own time as the most up-dated, the most developed where the highest and best values have been reached so far. The development-based and progress- oriented  values  of  modernity  are  highly  visible  in  the  text.  Recalling  Edenheim’s  discussion   about making history, this passage can be viewed as a fantasy,   or   in   Edenheim’s   words   “formations  of  desire”  (Edenheim,  GFFP,  2013).  No  matter  time  period,  such  fantasies  can  be   viewed as creations to fulfill present-day desires. Intertwined with the modernity story of temporality, as a linear time-line that breathes progress, such fantasies also contribute to making meaning out of the current present time. That is, creating fantasies about past time and future and comparing the present to such temporal fantasies and the values ascribed to each. For example, in the text the listener is imagining a past time man who is conservative and thinks that women should do all the housework and thus not gets the opportunity to engage in other things, such as reading and learning. Through this imaginative figure, that things used to 49 be worse, a comparison can be made of the present time, and in this case: a present time man with totally different values.   Inspired   by   Edenheim’s   analysis such a comparison could be said to be a way of dealing with and ease the trauma of coeval injustices. 5.5 Summary I have found that there are also ideas about knowledge and bildning as something primarily for   the   sole   individual,   one’s own inner growth and personal satisfactory, something that I identify as a liberal discourse of individual personality change. I found that this discourse is visible in different times and contexts, challenging the temporal understanding of linear development, turning-points and progress. However, this focus on the individual is almost always accompanied with a focus on societal benefit as well. Here, the future concept plays an important part. Again, not all are counted as important in this progress through knowledge into the future. Not all subjectivities are part of this modernist discourse. This is illustrated in writings that deal with housewives and knowledge, where the time perspective is usually either set on the present here and now, or at the very furthest at the individual future of themselves or their families. The housewives are thus not constructed as political subjects for the future of society, although there are interesting takes on the agency of this position when the context is set in the private sphere of the household. I see this as an important illustration of how temporal fantasies are un-ignorable parts or how gendered and classed constructions are made of who has the right to knowledge. 50 6 | The life competition: “Papers  you  got  to  have” In this chapter I primarily focus on the constructions of the individual lifeline in relation to education and the labour market. Here, education comes in as an important factor related to when in life one can study and what this knowledge will lead to. I particularly focus on adult education for discussing how discursive understandings of competition and future produce gendered working-class subjectivities. I use examples from different times when discussing how a discourse of competitiveness is visible in the argument for why certain groups should get to educate themselves. I also discuss how ideas about a past time are important for creating  “truths”  about  coeval  values.   6.1 Competitiveness on equal terms In countless articles competitiveness is described as the central value of education. Different societal groups that are described as subjected to unjust structural conditions on the labour market; workers, women, female workers, people discriminated because of function, and older generations are primarily described as groups with low competitive value. Interestingly there is no direct questioning of structural or institutional reasons for this symptom, but the solution presented is instead that these groups need to increase this value. Thus, they will gain work-related benefits such as higher status, salary and comfort and the key is said to be education. In the article Seize the chance when you have it, in Morgonbris from 1969, administrative officer of the National Labour Market Board17, Ingeborg Jönsson, encourages women wanting a position on the labour market not to: …get  paralyzed  by  the  insight of the difficulties to get a job and maybe start thinking that when there are so  few  job  openings,  those  few  will  go  to  the  men…one  should  not  be  so  negative  but  positively  strive  for   making use of the opportunities that are there. Build on and get competitive, when the chances come along! (Morgonbris, 1969: no 1). The message here is to ”seize the  chance”.  The  chance  to  compete. Or rather, to invest in your competitive value and thus improve your odds in the competition that you are expected to participate in. In the context of this article the competition is between men and women as groups on the labor market, competing for work. 17 Translation of the Sweden specific authority Arbetsmarknadsstyrelsen, which was the central authority for labour market issues between 1948 and 2007 (Riksarkivet). 51 This perspective is stressed in several other articles. In What about the ones without vocational training? the signature Eva Olsson writes that: …there  are  youths  with  seven- and eight-year Folkskola, with 9-year elementary school, with vocational school, Upper secondary school, occupational training and folk high school education. There are the older generation with six-year elementary school but with long practical experience  of  the  labour  market… and there are the disabled who was not until recently acknowledges  and  given  chances…  There  are  the  group   women… who after some decades of homework  revisit  the  labour  market… education is one of the best means of competition both within and outside our country. For those who have not been given the opportunity to education however, the competition is not on equal terms [my emphasis] (Morgonbris, 1967 no 12). The injustice is described as not getting a fair chance in the competition; the competition is not on equal terms. That is, to have the equal amount of what is primarily asked for on the labour market: education. The groups spoken of as the competitors here are primarily younger and older generations, and women working in the home. The signature Ingrid also elucidates the importance of formal education for getting a job. From a critical perspective she writes, in the article Students may in school bench sit: In the current wage   debate   it   is   gladly   spoken   of   e.g.   teachers’   or   architectures’   indisputable   right   to   charge more – because think of the long education they have gone through! – but then what do the female factory worker have, who since her teenage has acquired more and more skills and become much more usable…is this   not   education   as   well?…you try, 40-year old, to compete with a 20-year old, just examined from a childcare-course! Moreover, it does not help you much that you have – by interest – read the same books that   she   has   read…it highlights the already all too deeply rooted approach that, papers, you got to have (Morgonbris, 1969 no 3). What you get out of education – its value – is here presented as papers. Papers that will give you advantage in the competition on the labour market. One word I react on is usable: the “female  factory  worker”  is  described  as  having  become more usable through the skills she has gained through years of working at the factory. The argument is that this person actually is usable despite the lack of education and since this has to be pointed out, education is assumed to automatically carry usability in itself. That is its value. To become usable: able to use. Usable to whom? The text speaks to you as an individual: it is your future. But it is simultaneously the societal arena that is in focus – so   for   who’s   benefit   and   future   this   actually is might be discussed. In the example of childcare in the article, by the employer, perhaps the municipality or a private family, that looks to buy your work force. Since the example of work experience is also brought up in the text, I also play with the thought of 52 seeing it the other way around: you stand there with your papers, getting nowhere, because you  are  stuck   in   the  hopeless  circle  of  “work  experience,  you  got   to  have”.     I  note   that   this   argument is written in 1969 and compare this view with the poster from University West from 2015  that  profiles  their  education  as  “Academic exam & working life experience – at the same time. Get stronger in practice” implying that the knowledge you gain gives you the right papers as well as the right experience for the labour market. The  competition  talk  is  not  only  present  in  the  readers’  inputs  to  the  debate,  or  in  the  articles   by the editorial staff. It is also a publically promoted argument presented from the political sphere. To the question What should we put efforts on politically 1968 and why? the desk officer Anita Gradin answers: …the  adult  education  is  an  important  element  here  if  you  want  to  help  the “older”  work  force  to  compete   with the younger also for the well-paid  and  stimulating  jobs…we have 1,5 million people in our country who work full time without ever reaching an annual income at 14.000 kronor18, that is without any chance of ever reaching the  initial  salary  of  the  recently  graduated  academic”  (Morgonbris,  1968:  no  1).   Here,  a  distinction  is  made  between  different  kinds  of  jobs,  understood  to  be  either  “well-paid and  stimulating  jobs”  or,  I  must  assume,  the  opposite;;  low-paid and un-stimulating jobs. Since it is, in this case, the adult education  that  will  help  the  “older  work  force”  to  compete  for  those   desirable jobs, it is also said that in the current situation this group can compete for the less- desirable jobs, whether or not they have education. An interesting remark is also the last sentence, where the injustice is described as not getting the same wage increase through work experience as through an academic education. However, the political claim is not to upgrade the value of the work experience no matter academic education, but to give the non-educated work force access to what the academics have: an education. The difference in annual income, or the difference in quality of jobs between people with and without academic education is not in itself described as unjust. The changes takes place within a system that is itself kept intact. I want to connect this talk of competitiveness for the future with our present time. It is often spoken of that individuality, competitiveness, employability   and   “marketization” are strong discourses today and something that distinctly marks our time. This is contrasted with an imagined past, where values such as collectivity and the welfare state are said to dominate. Here however, I find such discursive understandings of competitiveness highly prominent in 18 At present, 14 000 in the Swedish currency kronor equals approximately 1500 euro. According to Statistics Sweden (Statistiska Centralbyrån) the equivalent value today would be approximately 116 650 kronor. 53 the material from all time periods studied. Expressions, concepts and ideas are so similar: “Give   him   equal   chance”   from   SSU   1948,   “Seize   the   chance   when   you   have   it”   from   Morgonbris   1969   and   “Take   this   chance” and   “Do   you   want   to   increase   your   competitiveness?” from GU 2015: these texts do all speak a discourse of competitiveness. And with another view on time than the linear, chronological   one   that   imagines   ‘turning   points’ in history and difference and change per definition, this could more easily be understood   as   ideas   that   do   not   necessarily   go   “out   of   time”   but   that   rather   take   different   shapes in different contexts. Returning  to  Nina  Lykke’s  concept  of  parallelities it is easier to picture time as for example cyclic or re-emerging. With such a view, concepts of past, present and future must get totally different meaning and functions, which could open up for different ways of understanding matters like power, injustices and political change. My point with comparing these two texts from 1969 and 2015 is that I could just as easily have mixed up the different dates of when they were published and would probably have understood them differently.  Or  they  could  have  been  ‘non-time  coded’  and  I  would  have  no temporal context to place them in. The interesting thing here is not when these arguments where written, but how they use the same way of speaking about education as something filled with opportunities for the future. This also opens up for discussing what such temporal fantasies do to the way we can understand certain matters today; for example choice patterns within Upper Secondary School or University. Giving things meaning only through adding a time date, like “ah,  now I understand! It is written in the  50’s!” closes the door to a widened analysis of how ideas of linearity, progress and development are connected to ideas about why certain subjectivities should have access to knowledge. 6.2 Both means and ends Alongside the competition value I also find discussions that speak of education as a value for the development of the sole individual. In the contribution Against reactionary solidification the signature Ingrid Levin argues for an education system without pre-decided programs. She writes that: Yet   you   surely   hope,   that   the   sheet   of   our   Swedish   history,   that   will   tell   of   the   social   democracy’s   transformation of society in the area of education and schooling, will get pondered in the future society, where it is given that you have a self-determined occupation and where you can just help yourself to the cultural  values…Schooling,  in  a  wider  sense,  should  give  that  richness  in  nuances   to life that must be so that we do not become only knowing people but living individuals (Morgonbris, 1968 no 9). 54 In this text there is an imagination of a  “transformation” from the present situation to another imaginary future society, where the democratization of education has lead to a society where anyone could work with what they wish   and  where   “cultural   values” are like a free buffet open to all. True, this is said from a structural perspective where an equalization of societal hierarchies is a goal. However, the core value seems to be the benefits for the individual: to be able to do what you like (self-choice) and not get hindered by structures. This is particularly visible in the last sentence about schooling as something more than gaining know-how, but also   for   becoming   a   “living   individual”. Education is here tied to values such as personal prosperity, a growth taking place inside of the individual, making that person more living. To gain meaning this must naturally stand in contrast to a person without education, presumably then a less living person, not growing inside or gaining personal development. Thus, education is presented both as means and ends: it is a way to the occupation you want, but it is also valuable in itself, giving you the satisfaction to prosper and develop. Be living. Regarding gaining access to cultural value, this can be seen from both the perspective of being valuable in itself – implying personal development and stimulation. But it must also be seen from the perspective of value. Since value is relational it gains meaning first in relation to something else; it needs matter, a context. I can only gain more cultural value in relation to a lesser counterpart, without this value, and thus we are back in the competition argument where education plays the role of means. Of getting me somewhere, ahead of someone else. I read this discussion as a highly liberal discourse: the right to knowledge and education is viewed as something that the individual has the right to in capacity  of   individual,   for  one’s own sake, rather than something that is part of a collective solution of structural injustices. I also react to how this imagines society; a situation where cultural values and occupations are not class-based is placed in the future. Is  this,  like  in  Halberstam’s analysis of the transgender body (the transgender body symbolizing futurity itself) something that is pictured as too un- relatable? Discursive, normative understandings make sense of the phenomena through placing it in another, un-reachable context that is not here and now. In the article A new way out in life in Morgonbris from 1968 the reporter interviews three women who have been re-educated for office occupations. They are all over forty and come from previous work; two from other professions, one from housework. The two from professional work describes the re-education as a positive change, since their earlier work within the industry and as a waitress were too heavy. The third woman says that she is grateful for the re-education that gave her a fun and varied work. The story is illustrated with 55 a picture of a woman sitting in a chair in her home, doing some kind of needlework or embroidery, gazing down at her work. In all three stories education plays the role of a vehicle to another, more desirable situation than the present. The picture is explained through the text line   “Linnea   Eriksson sometimes undertakes some work from her old occupation to keep herself busy with in   the   evenings”.   The   needlework   clearly   gets   to   symbolize   a   past life, something that she has left behind but now and then take on her spare-time. Education has brought her into another situation, implying a different personal future. There is no explicit mentioning of competition, or getting ahead, neither for a specific group in society or for the mentioned individuals. Yet, without education there would be no leaving of the present situation, meaning that there is already someone in those attractive positions [here: an office occupation] with education background. Otherwise also these three women would be able to apply for such a position without going through re-education. The article thus describes some form of competitive reality, even though the main focus of the article is the well-being and benefits for three specific individuals. 6.3 Society’s  next  investment:  the  adult  worker In 1969 The Swedish Trade Union Confederation (Landsorganisationen, LO) published a separate print in their journal The Trade Union movement (Fackföreningsrörelsen), on account of their series of reports on adult education that the working group LOVUX19 focused on at this point. The print, named Also a question of Equality focuses on LO:s views on the matter of Swedish adult education as a political question. A matter that is dealt with in the text is in what way the adult education is a matter of justice. It is clear that the large focus is to eliminate economic, social and geographical hindrances for adult workers to educate themselves. But why these workers should be able to do this seems to be part of something else,   something   bigger   than   the   sole   reason   of   the   individual’s   practical   possibilities. Both explicitly and implicitly, the life-course of the group in question, the adult workers, are presented as tightly tied to the overall progress and building of society. Under the heading The adult education will be our next large equality reform it says that: The adult education reform will by all accounts be our next large equality reform (LO, 1969:4-5)  …  The   adult education is, LOVUX sums up, a question of equality simultaneously as it is essential for a continued progression for society (ibid:5)…   [Much]   speaks   for   a   strong   societal   investment   in   adult   19 LO:s working group for adult education at the time. In Swedish: LO:s arbetsgrupp för vuxenutbildning. 56 studies.  The  society  changes  rapidly  and  our  knowledge  acquired  in  youth’s  school  are  quickly  outdated.   We   can   never   gain   knowledge   that   lasts   a   lifetime…   Therefore   in   a   longer   perspective…the adult education gets as meaningful for our education  standard  as  the  youth’s  education  and  the  key  focus  must   shift so that the youth- and adult education become two comparable goods (ibid:6). Here, a clear linear, progress-oriented, development-based time line is drawn up, both outspokenly and more subtle. Expressions such as our next large reform, a continued progression for society and a longer perspective speaks of a time that is not here and now, but the perspective is set on the future society. Educational equality for workers now means increased societal values for the future. The matter of class equality in education is often presented as an either-or situation in the material:  worker’s  right  to education is either a value for the single worker or for society as a whole. When this future-perspective is added the texts also often lean toward the latter. With a focus set on the progress towards a future society, the “here  and  now”  for  the  single  worker  is  not  the  main  matter  of  interest. That society changes rapidly, knowledge is quickly outdated and can never last a lifetime even further emphasizes the feeling that time passes and what we do now is intended for the future. The text also explains, under the heading An overall view on adult education that the purpose of the expanding investments in adult education has been to: …bridge   the   education-gap, to give them who for different reasons got an inadequate elementary schooling,   possibilities   to   catch   up   that   head   start   that   today’s   young   and   educationally privileged generation got (ibid:11). Such individual, liberal ideas are apparent in the text: it speaks of individuals rather than collectives,   groups,   classes   or   structures.   The   solution   is   to   “give   them…possibilities”   in   retrospect, sort of when “the  damage  is  already  made”.  At  the  same  time,  this  is  written  in  a   left,  “red”  forum: it is an LO print and there is thus an  awareness  of  workers’  conditions  – so, is this how one, even the left, can speak of “justice”   and   “equality”   through   a   liberal   discourse? …and the women In   the   general   mentioning   of   “the   adult   worker”   there   is   no   gendering   of   the   subject.   Although, there are a lot of other ways in with the groups aimed for adult education are made through formations of class-gender. With the exception of the sentence “If the adult got a 7- year schooling he should be entitled to 50 months study grant” there is never an explicit 57 gendering   of   the   subject   “adult   worker”.   That   is,   until there is. Until the special, the exceptional has to be pointed out – which illuminated the up-to-then invisible norm. For example, the LOVUX working group expresses worries that special measurements has to be taken to make sure that the adult education really reaches those in need for it. The authors write that: Those that now primarily take advantage of the possibilities to further educate themselves are people, who already have a relatively good basic education, while it is harder to get hold of those, that only got a few   years   schooling   behind   them…   they   have   no   study experience, perhaps they have low self- confidence, they other live ill from a study aspect, they have low income. It takes special attempts to reach these groups as is the case for the handicapped and the women, the LO-report points at (LO, 1969:11). The entire article, and the whole text for that matter, speaks of the adult worker and after a long   section   of   arguing,   there   is   suddenly   a   short  mentioning   of   “the   handicapped   and   the   women”.  From  this  you  have   to  conclude   that  it  was  in  fact   the  male adult worker that was intended up till then, although this was never explicitly expressed. The Others, those that are not male, are not the primary citizens. This is also visible in a section of hindrances that stands in the way for adult workers and education. Again, the adult worker is mentioned in many ways; the LO-member, people with short basic schooling, those with low income, those who live on the countryside, the most deprived groups are   some  examples.  After   this   it   is  mentioned   that   LOVUX  “besides this”   (my   emphasis)   “…discusses two groups with special need for adult studies, namely handicapped and women”.  Here,   it   becomes  clear   that   those  groups;;  people  with   functional   variations and women, are not seen as adult workers, or the other terms used to describe this group – which is after all, the main target group of the entire reform. Also in the images that are used in the text reveals important differences in the presentation and creation of people and groups. Throughout the entire text there are images of male decision-makers in suit and tie that are in different ways important for the political process. There is Olof Palme, at the time Minister of Education, lector Torsten Eliasson, LO ombudsman Tore Karlsson. In the images they are absorbed in discussions, smoking a cigarette, sitting in front of a microphone. There is also one image of a woman in the text. It is a large image of a woman sitting in a sofa, barefoot, with the legs drawn up underneath her. 58 She has a rather sad expression on her face. The heading  says  “Ingrid Gunnarsson – it is her the  adult  education  reform  is  about”. The immediate introduction starts with: The garment worker Ingrid Gunnarsson, 32 years old and mother of two children, got a 7 year-schooling in  her  youth.  It  is  her…that  the  adult education reform shall help to better knowledge, either meant for the work life or for a richer future or both (ibid:3). She is presented both as a garment  worker  and  also  a  “mother  of two”.  Thus,  in  this  workers’   forum, equally important as the fact that she is a worker is the aspect of motherhood. In the representation of the female worker that is, since it is not mentioned whether the men in the texts are fathers. This is a further indicator of the male norm;;  of  “the  worker” and in the text in general, since remarking on her motherhood further emphasizes her   “otherness”,   her   divergence from that which is not said elsewhere. Another interesting aspect in this article is the temporal perspective. Or rather, the lack of it. There  is  no  “longer  perspective”,  “future  society”  or  “progression”  or  knowledge  that  needs  to   be   updated   to   “last   a   lifetime”.   They   do   however,   mention   that   Gunnarsson   could   use   the   “better   knowledge”   in   her   work   life   – but there is no talk of competition, progress, advancement or even development of her job sector. Time seems to stand still, both from an individual perspective (her career) and from a societal (progress, development and the linear time  line).  There  is  no  clear  connection  between  Gunnarsson’s  further  education  and  society. However, there seems to be other reasons for why Gunnarsson should get to engage in further education,  as  suggested  in  the  text  she  could  use  it  for  “a  richer  spare  time”,  which  has  to  be   interpreted as something for her own satisfaction, her own personal development. The reasons for the groups that are explicitly mentioned, that is; not the norm groups (in this text perhaps the male, high-functional norms) are also presented as reasons for justice, but they are other reasons than the ones presented for  “the  adult  worker”   (male,  high-functional). When those are spoken of, the reasons contracted alongside a future-progress temporal, societal-focused context. The non-norm groups are not, and thus the reasons for justice are built on other grounds than the partaking of construction and development of society. Rather than this, the reasons are about justice and well-being of the individual. 59 6.4 Summary In this chapter education is presented as something important in the competition on the labour market and knowledge is said to give you increased competitive value. I find that there is a clear competition discourse in the material from all times. Two things are worth noticing: 1) It is especially certain groups that should gain increased value; that is the groups that are not automatically part of the definition of workers – working-class  women  and  “handicaps”. 2) Knowledge itself cannot give you this competitive value, but you will need papers for getting ahead. This is also quite paradoxical,   since  “papers   for   the  future” later turns out to mainly regard male, highly functional workers. Here, I also focus on fantasies about the past as important  for  creating  “truths” about the own present, for political purposes in coeval time. 60 7| Conclusions Sitting at the library it is like I am not alone at the table. The figures that have gradually taken shape in the material are all seated around the table. Wrapped up in the terminology of ghosts and haunting I see them as blurry, translucent-like, black-and-white figures: the male worker who, supplied with knowledge, will partake in the democratic society. The poor, male talent who will be an asset to society and its future. The poorly schooled working-class woman who through courses at the Fogelstad school gains strengthened self-esteem. The unusually knowing housewife who gains confidence as well, but also invests in a ticket to a higher classed personal future. The housewife creating knowledge and science out of her housework and who blurs the boundaries between the private and the public spheres. The adult working woman investing in her competitive value on the labour market. Ingrid Gunnarsson, who  “the   adult education reform is about”  and who might get a richer spare time through education. They are all there. As are the full-color figures of today: the girl in the GU-catalogue, riding in full speed towards The New Her, becoming herself through entering University. The boy uncovering a suit behind his freshman overall, gaining a ticket to a career where a suit is needed through his education. The bullied talent, not getting the attention they deserve in capacity of being a talent. These are all subjectivities that are constructed in the argumentation regarding democratized education and who has the right to knowledge. They are not only constructions intertwined with layers of power relations regarding gender and class. But they are also constructed through specific temporal fantasies and through different ways of doing time: they have different futures and different relations to the future society. Time is never neutral, never just there. On the contrary, it is created. Constructed through an intricate relationship with the mentioned constructions of for example gender, class and nationality. Such constructions are a crucial part of which groups are put forward as important citizens and thus worth investing in  for  society’s  future.  This  story  rests  on  the  idea   of development on a linear time line: that time periods succeed each other where the present and the future represent the highest, most   improved  values  “so   far”. I also want to make a point  out  of   the  “intertwined-ness” of the   temporal  and   the  “group-based” power dynamics. To say   that   these  matters  are  “mixed” also rests on the idea that they are separable and can exist apart from each other. At least in the context that I have researched, the right to education and knowledge, I do not believe that there is the one without the other. The temporal aspects   and   particularly  modernity’s   idea   of  moving   quickly away from the past, 61 towards the future should be regarded to be as important as any other discursive factor if one wishes to understand the gendered and classed power mechanisms of who should partake in knowledge production. The general pattern I find throughout the material is that whenever norm- and power subjectivities are the main characters of democratized knowledge, there is a focus on the future and societal progress. When other groups are, there are different arguments for why this should be realized. The reason vary from questions like the right to nurturing the soul, to the sake of equal treatment or for a enriched spare time. The common factor seems to be that for those subjectivities the reference to time is always either a present here-and-now, or for the own future, reachable within your own lifetime, as opposed to the larger and longer societal future. Another prominent aspect is that when working with the material it becomes clear that the topic of bildning, education and knowledge is tightly tied to understandings about the relationship between individual and society with reference to citizen and citizenship. These understandings are not solid concepts, with ready definitions, just there – but they are constructed in intricate symbioses with different ideas about time. These understandings about time are part of the way we think, part of the way who has the right to knowledge can be understood. It is part of the liberal, modern, development discourses through which meaning is created around this issue. And these understandings also create certain temporal subject positions that are highly gendered and classed – which create different possibilities for people’s  movement  in and around these positions. The poor talent, the knowing housewife, the resource weak adult-student. We place them all in the past, they are not alive and is seems like the understanding is that the class-related injustices died with them? Does this haunting, together with the legacy of the welfare state; the ghost that constantly reminds us that everyone can study, affect the way we view class and education today? Could this be a present time formation of history, designed for present day desires about how we wish to view our own time? Does this also affect the way we can speak of present injustices? If we can staple class injustices within education to a past time we do not have to face  them  fully  here  and  now.  “Differences”  can  be  put  on  an  individual  level,  put   in an individual backpack even, and dealt with through the more  apolitical  ‘diversity’  aiming   at  ‘a  mix  of  people’ and ignoring matter like conflict and power. I believe that working with concepts  of  ghosts  and  “hauntology”  – or whatever one wants to call it, opens up for refusing 62 to give matters meaning only after placing them on a chronological time-line. Of refusing to view matters from different time as belonging to that time, being stuck in that time and stop existing   just   because   that   “time   has passed”. It opens up for an understanding of time that counteracts ideas about differences and turning-points: and that ideas from different times are particularly different. This is why I wanted to work with material from different times without that difference in time being the main focus of the thesis. Instead, we need to start thinking more along lines that counteract the modern timeline of development. Through a more cyclic understanding of time we can also view discourses as mobile over time. Like this: yes, historical perspective do play an important part in Gender Studies – but I think that the tools and possibilities that Gender Studies offer, for example the way special analytical tools are often used, provides great conditions for also understanding the power dynamics of time. For example, we talk a lot about spaces, rooms or zones: matters that are important for great analyses of how power is mobile processes, shaped through rhizomes and assemblages. I believe that understandings of time and temporality must be part of this thinking. Like this: I have found that the ways in which we understand time; certain discourses about time, for example a development discourse, a liberal discourse, a modernity discourse are tightly tied to understandings of who has the right to knowledge. Through such discourses several subject positions are also produced, regarding who is important for different times, such as talent, housewife or adult worker. Such subject positions are highly gendered and classed, and they play different parts in temporal fantasies of past, present and future. Their role as citizens tie them to different temporal understandings, like; who is important for society, both here and now and for the future? Thus discourses about time are an important part of analyzing how power works. It is like with the engraving on the statue at Järntorget, which I see again through the tram window going home from the library: In memory of those who fought for bread, justice and freedom. What they won we inherited. The legacy obliges. Maybe the legacy is to understand that there is no legacy. Because maybe they are not dead. Maybe they are ghosts, like all the other figures from the past time material. Figures, that allow us to think of time in different ways – ways that can open up for other ways of understanding why some have and some do not have attainable access to knowledge. 63 For me, this thesis started with a genealogical desire to discuss the intricate relationship between class and education. Involving temporality in the analysis of how power works has provided new, challenging understandings that I wish more feminist research will explore. I guess time will tell. 64 Reference list Ambjörnsson, Fanny (2004). I en klass för sig: genus, klass och sexualitet bland gymnasietjejer. Diss. Stockholm: Univ. Ambjörnsson, Fanny (2013). ”I tid, ur spår, i otakt: reflektioner över temporalitet, genus och sexualitet”. Ymer. 2013(133): pp. 87-108. Bacchi, Carol (2009). “The Issue of Intentionality in Frame Theory: The Need for Reflexive Framing”. In The Discursive Politics of Gender Equality. Stretching, Bending and Policymaking. Milton Park: Routledge. Ball, Stephen J. (2006). ”What  is  policy?  Texts,  trajectories  and  toolboxes”. In Ball, Stephen J. (ed.). Education policy and social class. The selected works of Stephen J. Ball. London: Routledge. Bergström, Göran and Boréus, Kristina (eds.). (2005). Textens mening och makt. Lund: Studentlitteratur. Carlbaum, Sara (2012). Blir du anställningsbar lille/a vän?: diskursiva konstruktioner av framtida medborgare i gymnasiereformer 1971-2011. Diss. Umeå: Statsvetenskapliga institutionen, Umeå: Univ. Colebrook, Claire (2002). Understanding Deleuze. Crows Nest: Allen & Unwin Felski, Rita (1995). The gender of modernity. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press. Ginner, Thomas (1988). Den bildade arbetaren: debatten om teknik, samhälle och bildning inom Arbetarnas bildningsförbund 1945-1970. Diss. Linköping : Univ. Gordon, Avery. (2008). Ghostly matters: haunting and the sociological imagination. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Gothenburg University (2015). Become you. Catalogue of courses and programs at the Gothenburg University 2015-2016. Bohus: Ale Tryckteam. Halberstam, Judith (2005). In a queer time and place: transgender bodies, subcultural lives. New York: New York University Press 65 Haraway, Donna (1988). “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective”. Feminist Studies, vol. 14, 1998:3. Holgersson, Ulrika (2011). Klass: feministiska och kulturanalytiska perspektiv. 1. uppl. Lund: Studentlitteratur. Ingo, Rune (2007). Konsten att översätta: översättandets praktik och didaktik. 1. uppl. Lund: Studentlitteratur. Johansson, Inge (1985). För folket och genom folket: om idéer och utvecklingslinjer i studieförbundens verksamhet. Stockholm: Liber Utbildningsförlag. Laclau, Ernesto & Mouffe, Chantal (2001). Hegemony and socialist strategy: towards a radical democratic politics. 2. ed. London: Verso. Laclau,  Ernesto  &  Mouffe,  Chantal  (1987).  ”Post-marxism  without  apologies”.  New left review. 166, nov-dec: pp.79-106. Lefevere, André (ed.) (1992). Translation, history, culture: a sourcebook. London: Routledge. Lindén, Claudia (2012). ”Ur led är feminismens tid: om tidsmetaforer, otidsenlighet och gengångare i feministisk historieskrivning”. Tidsskrift för genusvetenskap. 2012:3: pp. 5-25. Lindensjö, Bo & Lundgren, Ulf P. (2014). Utbildningsreformer och politisk styrning. Stockholm: Liber. Lindgren, Anne-Marie & Lindgren Åsbrink, Marika (2007). Systrar, kamrater!: arbetarrörelsens kvinnliga pionjärer. Stockholm: Idé och tendens. Lykke, Nina (2012). ”Generationsfeminisme – nej tak!”. Tidsskrift för genusvetenskap. 2012:3: pp. 26-33. Moodysson, Lukas (1998). Fucking Åmål: manuskript. Stockholm: DN Nietzsche, Friedrich (2005) [1874]. ”Om historiens nytta och skada för livet”, in Samlade skrifter. Bd 2, Otidsenliga betraktelser I-IV; Efterlämnade skrifter 1872-1875. Nikanor Teratologen (translator), Eslöv: Brutus Östlings bokförlag Symposion. 66 Nordberg, Karin & Rydbeck, Kerstin (2001) (eds.). Folkbildning och genus: det glömda perspektivet. Linköping: Mimer, Institutionen för beteendevetenskap, Univ. Nordberg, Karin (2001). En flitig, förnuftig, finurlig, förnöjsam, företagsam, fredsälskande, föreningsaktiv fru och flerbarnsmor med förråden fyllda. Om husmorsfostran och medborgarbildning i radion. In Nordberg, Karin & Rydbeck, Kerstin (red.). Folkbildning och genus: det glömda perspektivet, pp. 63-95. Linköping: Mimer, Institutionen för beteendevetenskap, Univ. Radiotjänst (1950). Vettigt hemarbete. Handbook published in connection to The Housewife School in radio. Radiotjänst. Skeggs, Beverley (1997). Formations of class and gender: becoming respectable. London: Sage. Sohl, Lena (2014). Att veta sin klass: kvinnors uppåtgående klassresor i Sverige. Diss. Uppsala : Uppsala universitet. Vestlund, Gösta (1996). Folkuppfostran, folkupplysning, folkbildning: det svenska folkets bildningshistoria - en översikt. Stockholm: Brevskolan. Online material Articles Ali, Suki (2007) “Introduction: Feminist and postcolonial: Challenging knowledge”. In Ethnic and Racial Studies, Special Issue Feminism and Postcolonialism: Knowledge/Politics, 30 (2) Available at: http://www-tandfonline- com.ezproxy.ub.gu.se/doi/pdf/10.1080/01419870601143877 Gordon, Avery (2011). “Some Thoughts on Haunting and Futurity”. In Borderlands, vol. 10, no 2. Available at: http://averygordon.net/files/GordonHauntingFuturity.pdf Lykke, Nina (2010). “The Timeliness of post- Constructionism”. In NORA – Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, 18 (2), June 2010. Available at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/08038741003757760 67 Reports and other online publications Folkbildningsrådet (2013). ”Folkbildning’s  Direction  &  Intent”. Available at: http://www.folkbildningsradet.se//globalassets/aktuella-projekt/vagval-vilja/direction- intent.pdf?epieditmode=true Johansson, Ulla (2007). Kön, klass och goda lärare: en diskursanalys av texter om yrkeslärare, läroverkslärare och gymnasielärare 1945-2000. Pedagogiska institutionen, Umeå Universitet: no 76. ISBN 978-91-7264-283-6. Available at: http://www.pedag.umu.se/digitalAssets/35/35274_rapport_76.pdf Video links Edenheim, Sara (2013). Historikerns omedvetna. Göteborgs Förening för Filosofi och Psykoanalys. 21 November. Available at: http://gffp.snappages.com/media.htm (Collected 2015-03-19). Socialdemokraterna (2015). Framtiden börjar i skolan. Available at: framtidenborjariskolan.se (Colleted 2015-02-10). Web pages Ghost. 2015. Oxford Dictionaries. http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/ghost (Collected 2015-04-16) Gustafsson, Agne. 2015. “Arbetarrörelsens efterkrigsprogram”. Nationalencykopedien. http://www.ne.se/uppslagsverk/encyklopedi/l%C3%A5ng/arbetarr%C3%B6relsens- efterkrigsprogram (Collected 2015-03-13). LO (Landsorganisationen). 2013. “This is LO”. http://www.lo.se/english/this_is_lo (Collected 2015-03-13). Regionarkivet.  2014.  “Demokratins  spegel  i Frölunda  och  Angered”.   http://www.arkivnamnden.org/publikationer/manadens-arkivhandling/demokratins-spegel-i- frolunda-och-angered (Collected 2015-02-01). Riksarkivet. Archive search. “Arbetsmarknadsstyrelsen”. http://sok.riksarkivet.se/?postid=ArkisRef+SE%2FRA%2F366&type=2&s=TARKIS08_Bald er (Collected 2015-03-12). 68 S-women  (The  Social  Democrats  Women’s  Organization).  2014.  “About us”. http://www.socialdemokraterna.se/Webben-for-alla/S-kvinnor/S-kvinnor/In-English1/About- us/ (Collected 2015-03-13). Socialdemokraterna (2015). ”Vuxenutbildning stärker Sverige”. http://www.socialdemokraterna.se/Var-politik/Var-politik-A-till-O/Vuxenutbildning/ (Collected 2015-02-10). UiO: Faculty of Educational Sciences (2011). “Bildung/Education”. http://www.uv.uio.no/english/research/subjects/bildung/bildung-education.html (Collected 2015-03-01). Folkhälsomyndigheten (2015). ”Utbildningsnivå, skillnad mellan olika befolkningsgrupper”. http://www.folkhalsomyndigheten.se/amnesomraden/livsvillkor-och- levnadsvanor/folkhalsans-utveckling-malomraden/ekonomiska-och-sociala- forutsattningar/utbildningsniva/ (Collected 2015-02-09). E-books Ball, Stephen J. (2012). Foucault, power and education. Available through Gothenburg University. Published by Taylor and Francis. eISBN: 9781136156137. E-book. News paper articles Norberg, Johan (2015). ”Skolan mobbar begåvade elever”. Metro. 30 april. Archive material Issues from the magazine Morgonbris, available at the Gothenburg University library, details given on request Issues from 1935: no 1, no 4 and no 8. Issues from 1936: no 9. Issues from 1967: no 12. Issues from 1968: no 1, no 2, no 9. Issues from 1969: no 1, no 3. 69 Material published by political parties and organizations, available at Labour Movement Archives and Library The  Workers’  movement’s  Post-war Program (1944). Stockholm: Victor Petterssons Bokindustriaktiebolag. Election poster from SSU 1948. Begåvad men fattig. Organization publication by LO, 1969. Också en jämlikhetsfråga – vuxenutbildningen. Appendix 1: Material 1 The magazine Morgonbris Issues from 1935 No 1 I cannot read by Knut Lånström No 4 Housewives of the future – the  practical  work’s  renaissance within the school, no signature Issues from 1968 No 2 A new way out in life – no signature Issues from 1969 No 1 Seize the chance when you have it – no signature Material published by political parties and organizations Talented but poor. Election poster from SSU, 1948. Also a question of equality – the adult education. Organization publication by LO, 1969. Other material The  Workers’  Movements  Learning  Ideals, by Natanael Beskow 1933. Reasonable housework. Handbook published in connection to The Housewife School in radio 1950. The Future starts at School¸video from campaign by The Social Democrats 2015. Poster of University West (Högskolan Väst), 2015 Become you. Catalogue of courses and programs for the Gothenburg University 2015-2016.. 2 I cannot read 1935 3 Housewives of the future – the  practical  work’s  renaissance  within  the  school 1935 4 A new way out in life 1968 5 Seize the chance when you have it 1969 6 Material published by political parties and organizations Talented but poor. Election poster from SSU 1948. (Available at the Labour Movement Archives and Library. For copyright reasons this is the version I publish. The version I analyze in the thesis contains a paint stain on the jacket of the boy in the front and is published online by Regionarkivet. See reference list for details.) 7 Also a question of equality. Organization publication by LO 1969. 8 Other material The  Workers’  Movements  Learning Ideals 1935 9 Reasonable housework.. Handbook published in connection to The Housewife School in radio 1950 10 11 12 13 The Future starts at School, 2015 Link to video: https://youtu.be/3McG1AiHWEM 14 Poster by University West, 2015 15 From the GU-course catalogue, 2015-2016. Appendix 2: Quotes in original language 1 Dialogue from Fucking Åmål ELIN Jag ska bli psykolog, fast ... tror jag i alla fall. Jessica ger sig in i diskussionen. JESSICA Psykolog? ELIN Fast jag vet inte vilket program man ska gå då. JESSICA (tvivlande) Ska du bli psykolog? ELIN Ja. JESSICA Det har du aldrig sagt. ELIN Jag behöver väl inte säga allting till dig heller. JESSICA Varför vill du bli det då? ELIN För att jag vill det. MARKUS Ingen chans du kommer in på det. Fattar du vilka betyg man ska ha eller? ELIN Och vad fan vet du om det? Är du psykolog eller? Eller hur vet du det annars? MARKUS Jag bara vet det. Eller hur Johan? JOHAN (osäkert) Ja, det ... Jag vet inte ... Det är det nog. Det är nog väldigt höga betyg ... Elin tar bort sin hand från Johans axel. MARKUS Inte en chans du kommer in på det. 2 ELIN (surt) Nähä. Då får jag väl bli bilmekaniker i stället då. Det behöver man ju jättehöga betyg för. MARKUS Nåt som passar dig. 5,12 ska du ha. ELIN Du är ju pinsam. MARKUS Vadå pinsam? Ingen säger något mer. Ett gammalt löv flyger förbi i sandlådan framför dem. (PP. 115-119) 3 Quotes from the magazine Morgonbris Jag kan ej läsa Din tidning ska visa massorna vägen till ett ljusare,  kulturellt  rikare  liv…  Din  tidning  kan  vara  fattig,  den   kanske inte ha möjlighet att följa med det allra sista i tidningarnas tekniska utveckling. Men den måste ha viljan  att  fostra,  uppmuntra,  inspirera…  ju  starkare  arbetarpressen  är,   ju  bättre  kan  också arbetarrörelsen ge   uttryck   åt   sin   mening…   när   denna   undan   för   undan,   genom   vår   medverkan,   vinner   läsare   och   spridning,  kan  den  också  ännu  bättre   fylla   sin   fostrande  uppgift…  Stora  och   tragiska   händelser   i   andra   länder och hos andra folk ha bjärt belyst vikten av, att också kvinnorna förstå demokratin och skydda den…  i  ett  demokratiskt  samhälle  måste  vi  alla  handla  under  ansvar  och  gå  till  våra  gärningar,  utrustade   med bästa och mesta möjliga kunskap. Knut Lånström, 1935 nr 1 Intervju med Alva Myrdal Man måste gå in för en förbilligad utbildning för alla. Det innebär inte bara att själva undervisningen blir kostnadsfri från småskolan och hela vägen upp till universiteten och därutöver. Begåvade barn ur alla klasser borde få särskilda studiestipendier, som ger dem fritt uppehälle under studietiden. Detta skulle mer  än  något  annat  verka  som  ett  klassutjämnande  medel…  Hela  uppfostringsprocessen  borde  också  få  en   annan inriktning än vad den har nu. Skolan borde fostra barnen till individuella starka kollektivister, ej som nu till en blandning av lydiga, oreflekterande feodalmänniskor och själviska privatkapitalister passande ett förgånget samhällsskick. Skolan måste ha ett socialt mål. Alva Myrdal citerad, 1935 nr 1 Fogelstadskolan 10 år …  betydelsen  av sammanblandningen av människor med och utan högre skolutbildning, och framhåller hur detta påtagligen ger de senare större kurage. Det visar sig nämligen många gånger under studiernas gång, att när det gäller bedömandet av aktuella förhållanden i tiden, så stå inte det praktiska arbetets kvinnor i mogenhets och omdömesförmåga efter dem som ha höga examina. Och att de som ha den mindre skolundervisningen få tillfälle att konstatera detta, måste helt naturligt stärka deras självkänsla, och ge dem mod att framträda. Hulda Flod intervjuar Horine Hermelin, 1935 nr 1 I bokcirkeln …  privata  bokinköp  i  någon  större  utsträckning  är  ju  något,  som  ej  kommer  ifråga  för  arbetarhustrun.  Och   dock är det så värdefullt även för henne att vinna medlemskap i böckernas   värld…  Problem,   som  den   ensamma husmodern ältat i sin hjärna kanske till leda, bli i böckernas värld belysta och kanhända utredda, åtminstone  ställda  under  debatt… Signaturen  ”I.F.C”,  1935  nr 8 4 Framtidens husmödrar Vilken chans har Greta att göra sig gällande?... Ett examenspapper som visar på högre kunskapsmått ett viktigt   dokument   att   komma  med   i   konkurrensen   på   den   stora   arbetsbörsen…  Genom  utbildningen   får   flickorna   en   god   portion   självständighet   och   självförtroende…  Det   kan   ju   också   hända   att de går till hemmen och blir husföreståndarinnor eller hembiträden, men i så fall blir de högt kvalificerade sådana, som nog i mycket skiljer sig från hembiträdeskåren i övrigt. De blir självständigare och förstår att kräva respekt för sig själva och sitt yrke. De vill ha ordnad arbetstid och ordnade arbetsförhållanden och kan över  huvud  taget  tillvarata  sina  intressen  på  ett  effektivare  sätt…  Men  en  stor  del  av  flickorna  gifter  dig  ju   förr eller senare. Att de gå blir ovanligt kunniga husmödrar, faller av  sig  själv…  Jag  kan  ej  hjälpa,  att  jag   anser det grymt att ett barns framtid och bildningsmöjligheter så obönhörligt skall vara knutna till föräldrarnas ekonomiska ställning. Hur ofta har det t.ex. inte hänt att en flicka börjat här, men så har hon efter en   tid  med   tårar   i  ögonen  kommit  och  anmält  att  hon  måste   sluta,   ty   fadern  har   blivit   arbetslös…   Hon måste då ge sig ut som springflicka eller något liknande, medan de lyckligare lottade kamraterna får gå kvar, ta sin examen och antagligen gå en helt annan framtid till mötes. 1935 nr 4 Låt oss erkänna även praktisk duglighet När jag vid avskedet kramade hennes hand, tyckte jag det var sorgligt att landet hade så litet användning för en människa, som kanske en gång hade kunnat hjälpa till med att göra förhållandena bättre och ljusare…  Det  har   ju  visat  sig  åtskilliga  gånger  att  personer  med  ringa  skolunderbyggnad  gjort  storartade   insatser   till   mänsklighetens   nytta…   Låt   oss   försöka   få   fram   de   människor   vilka   har   de   största   förutsättningarna att kunna hjälpa sina medmänniskor, som kunna inspirera och skapa goda medborgare, ty det är väl ytterst på detta som hela samhällets lycka beror. Signaturen  ”L.T”,  1936  nr  8 Grip chansen när du har den I en sådan situation är det viktigt, att kvinnorna ej blir förlamade av insikten om svårigheterna att få jobb och kanske också slår in på tankegången, att när det finns så litet arbetstillfällen, skall de som finns gå till männen…  Man  skall  inte  vara  så  negativ  utan  positivt  sträva  efter  att  ta  vara  på  de  möjligheter  som  finns. Bygg på och bli konkurrenskraftig, när chanserna kommer! Ingeborg Jönsson, 1968 nr 1 Hur går det för dem utan yrkesutbildning? Det är ungdomar med sju- och åttaårig folkskola, med nioårig grundskola, med fackskola, gymnasium, yrkesutbildning och folkhögskoleutbildning. Där är den äldre generationen med sexårig folkskola men lång praktiskt erfarenhet av arbetsmarknaden, kanske inom både ett och två yrkesområden och där är handikappade som först under senare år uppmärksammats och givits chanser, mer eller mindre, till utbildning  och  arbete.  Där  är  gruppen  kvinnor…  som  efter  några  tiotal  år  av  hemarbete  åter  söker  sig  ut   på  arbetsmarknaden  …  utbildningen  är  ett  av  de  bästa  konkurrensmedlen  både  inom  och  utom  vårt  land.   För dem som inte givits möjlighet till utbildning sker emellertid inte konkurrens på lika villkor. Eva Olsson, 1967 nr 12 5 Studerande må i skolbänk sitta I den aktuella lönedebatten talas det gärna om, t.ex. lärares och arkitekters obestridliga rätt till mera betalt – för tänk vilken lång utbildning de har bakom sig! – Men vad har då fabriksarbeterskan, som sedan tonåren förvärvat mer och mer skicklighet och blivit   allt   mera   användbar…   är   inte   detta   också   utbildning?… Försök du, 40-åring, att konkurrera med en 20-åring, just examinerad från en barnavårdskurs! Det hjälper dig inte mycket att du dessutom har – av intresse – läst samma böcker i barnavård som hon  har  läst…  fördelningen av anslagsmiljonerna innebär en favorisering av skolklasserna och det formella kunskapsinhämtandet. Det understryker den redan alltför hårt rotade inställningen att papper  måste  man  ha… Ingrid, 1969 nr 3 Vad ska vi satsa på politiskt 1968 och varför Arbetsmarknadspolitiken måste anpassas och göras så flexibel att den underlättar för de grupper som drabbas speciellt hårt av omställning att de endera får ett nytt arbete genom omskolning eller ges skydd genom  trygghetspolitiken.  Vuxenutbildningen  blir  här  ett  betydande  inslag  om  man  vill  hjälpa  den  ”äldre”   arbetskraften att konkurrera med de yngre även om de välbetalda  och  stimulerande   jobben… vi har 1,5 miljoner människor i vårt land som arbetar på heltid utan att komma upp till en årsinkomst på 14.000 kr, alltså utan chans att någonsin nå till den nyutexaminerade akademikerns begynnelselön. Anita Gradin, 1968 nr 1 Mot reaktionärt stelnande Ändå hoppas man nog, att det blad i vår svenska historia, som ska berätta om socialdemokratins omvandling av samhället på utbildningens och bildningens område, ska komma att begrundas ibland i det framtida samhället, där det är självklart att man har ett självvalt yrke och där det bara är att ta för sig av de kulturella  värdena…  Bildningen,  i  vidare  bemärkelse,  bör  få  ge  den  nyansrikedom  åt  livet  som  måste  till   för att vi inte ska blir enbart kunniga människor utan levande individer. Ingrid Levin, 1968 nr 9 6 Quotes from the handbook Vettigt hemarbete, 1950 From the chapter Husmor själv De yttre förutsättningarna för arbetet, uppgifternas art och mängd, arbetstidens längd, arbetsplatsens beskaffenhet – alla sådana saker är   inom   de   skilda   yrkesgrupperna   ganska   exakt   fastställda…   Husmorsyrket intar i många avseenden en särställning. Rekryteringen till detta arbete har inte sin motsvarighet på något annat håll. Utbildningsförhållandena är oklara Carin Boalt, s. 11-12 Husmödrarna är egna företagare och bidrar genom sitt arbete till familjens försörjning. Deras sociala ställning och utformningen av deras arbetsuppgift och arbetsmiljö hänger dock helt samman men mannens ekonomiska och sociala ställning i samhället Carin Boalt, s. 12 From the chapter Rätt mat på lätt sätt Vår tids husmor har trots allt så mycket väsentligt att göra både inom och utom hemmet, att hon tvingas rationalisera även på matlagningens område. Därför skulle man önska att även hushållsundervisningen bleve   mer   modernt   inriktad…   I   varje   fall   längtar   man   efter   en   intressant   och   för   alla   parter   givande   diskussion mellan husmödrar, forskare och undervisare på den punkten, till fromma för framtidens husmödrar, som kanske kommer att ha ännu mindre tid på sig  vid  köksspisen…  vi  måste  med  all  makt   försöka bevara den matkultur vi ärvt från gångna generationer, en matkultur, som i stor utsträckning håller   på   att   försvinna…  Här   måste   vi   med   husmoderlig   fackkunskap   genom   en   positiv   kritik   och   en   avböjande köparattityd säga ifrån, att detta inte passar oss. Greta Bergström, s. 25-26 From the chapter Så har vi det Jag skäms inte för att läsa något kapitel i en bra bok medan Björn sover middag, inte varje dag, men ganska ofta. Dessutom vill jag läsa dagstidningen ganska väl och följa med i stora drag i politiken och på kultursidorna. Något som jag uppskattar mycket i vanliga fall, och i år i synnerhet är radioföljetongen. Då stoppar jag strumpor medan jag lyssnar och njuter (185-86). * Är det bra radioprogram blir det strumpstoppning eller annan lagning till sista dagsnyheterna. Så får mamma koppla av vid en kopp kaffe, ett jättevarmt fotbad och en bra bok (kombinerat). Lånar böcker på folkbiblioteket och läser sällan kolorerad veckopress. (Andefattigt). Är även mycket intresserad av stenografi och har lärt mig på egen hand för två år sedan (132-33). * 7 Jag vill inte förlora de kunskaper som jag en gång haft, utan försöka hålla en del av dem vid liv, samtidigt som jag inhämtar nya i mim egenskap av husmor. Just nu läser jag t.ex. engelska en gång i veckan under hösten och våren (180). * Varje  eftermiddag  när   jag  diskat,  kokar   jag  mig   en  kopp  kaffe  och   läser  dagens   tidning…  Jag   försöker   uppehålla mina språkkunskaper och läser också gärna historia och skönlitteratur. Sådana här saker måste också  ha  sin  tid…  (182-84). * Så småningom började vi [hon och barnen]läsa samma böcker. Om varje mor visste hur roligt det är att läsa barnböcker och sedan diskutera dem med barnen! Åren gick, och allteftersom barnen växte började vi läsa olika författare. Det var en härlig avkoppling från vardagen, barnen hade omedvetet fört mig in i litteraturens   värld…   de   stilla   stunder   en   husmor   under   dagen   unnar   sig   för   att   ge   själen   näring   [blir   liksom] oljan till allt kroppsligt arbete (116) * Den moderne mannen är ju ingen konservativ individ utan en realistisk nutidsmänniska, som inte resonerar så, att därför att kvinnan stått vid spisen i generationer så skall hon stå där fortfarande – även om hon inte kan laga mat (172). 8 Quotes from the publication Arbetarrörelsens efterkrigsprogram Det betyder, att många som saknar läshuvud får en omfattande skolutbildning, medan andra ungdomar med vida bättre förutsättningar inte alls blir i tillfälle att utveckla sina anlag. Det betyder också, att urvalet av personer, som kan användas på ledande poster i produktion och samhällsliv, blir väsentligt mindre tillfredsställande, än vad som skulle vara nödvändigt (s. 115). För den enskilde är de ekonomiska utbildningshindren desto mer allvarliga, som individens möjligheter att göra sin duglighet gällande numer i allt högre grad beror av hans teoretiska och praktiska utbildning (s. 115-16). De ekonomiska utbildningshindren skall fullständigt brytas upp för all ungdom som har lust och fallenhet att väl tillgodogöra sig en vidareutbildning utöver den allmänna enhetsskolan (s. 117). [See footnote 11] 1944 Quotes from the collection of essays Arbetarerörelsens bildningsideal Är inte kampen för den ekonomiska makten betydelsefullare än kampen för bildningen? Och kampen för den   politiska   makten?…  Det som eftersträvas måste vara något annat, något på andra sidan om den ekonomiska och politiska makten. Det är möjligheten att leva det högsta   och   bästa  människoliv…  Ett högt och ädelt människoliv kommer icke till stånd, om det icke finnes i individerna, i de enskilda människorna (s. 9-10)…  Än  har  det  varit  den  rent  egoistiska  synpunkten  som  har  härskat:  man  vill   lära   sig det som kan hjälpa en att slå sig fram i kampen för tillvaron. Än har det varit samhällsnyttan eller statsnyttans synpunkt: staten behöver ett visst antal ingenjörer, ett  visst  antal  militärer  o.s.v.…  Även detta ideal medför faran av att karaktärsfostran skjutes åt sidan, att frågan om själslivets fördjupning och själs- och kroppskrafternas harmoniska samspel icke tillräckligt beaktas (s. 19)…   Om   denna   nyttosynpunkt   dominerar, är faran nära, att man utbildar ensidiga   och   osjälvständiga   människor…   Bildningsarbetets uppgift…  måste vara att förhjälpa människorna till en så rik personlig utvecklig som möjligt samt att sätta dem i stånd att efter måttet av sina krafter göra sin insats i det mänskliga samarbetet och därigenom intaga sin plats i människogemenskapen (s. 20)…  En person är inte bildad,  därför  att  han  är  professor…  Det är möjligt att vara utomordentligt lärd och ändå vara en ohyfsad och rå människa med ett primitivt känsloliv. Då är man inte bildad (s. 21). Natanael Beskow, 1935 From the daily paper Metro Vissa länder har skolor som är anpassade efter särskilt begåvade elevers personlighet, men i Sverige är det  förbjudet  då  alla  skolor  måste  vara  öppna  för  alla,  oavsett  begåvning…  Vi  har  månat  så  mycket  om   jämlikheten  att  vi  har  struntat  i  att  den  krossar  dem  som  inte  passar   in…  Begreppet  ”begåvning”  brukar   syfta på att man har en särskild kunskap eller färdighet. Om alla har det är det inte en gåva på det sättet. Men  så   får  man   inte  uttrycka  sig.  Då  kanske  någon  blir   ledsen…  först  och   främst  var  det  angeläget  för   dem [Skolverket] att slå fast att alla är begåvade. Det säger allt man behöver veta om hur svårt det är att tala om tolerans för högt begåvade individer Johan Norberg, Metro Kolumn 2015-04-30