Att framställa ”den andre” : En analys av hur Nobelpristagarna i litteratur Bunin och Mistral skildrades i det offentliga rummet

Sammanfattning: In this essay I’ve been looking to extend the knowledge regarding the construction as someone as “the other”. The aim is to examine if it is possible to depict and find a general picture of ”the other”, as he/she is described in the media.   I’m not alone in examining this, and I present several works which are somewhat similar to this essay. My work is special however, in that I’ve decided to examine the picture of “the other" by examining how four different Swedish newspapers wrote about the first Russian and the first Chilean Nobel prize winner in literature, Ivan Bunin (1933) and Gabriela Mistral (1945). To be more specific, I’ve been asking the following thematic questions, to find answers to my initial question: Is “the other” portrayed differently, as a result of the winners’ native countries? Is "the other” portrayed differently, as a result of the winners’ social class or gender? Is it possible to distinguish any interesting differences and similarities in how “the other” is constructed, in diverse political schools? Through my findings I’ve discovered that the term “the other” isn’t a homogenous one, as it varies from situation to situation. In Bunin’s case the political aspect of the term tended to outweigh the ethnical one. In other words, the fact that Bunin, in the reporting, is constructed as someone who can represent the political views of the magazine (or is otherfied, as someone who’s representing deviating views), was considered more interesting than portraying a picture of Russia as “the other”. In Mistral’s case the newspapers tended to focus more on her otherness, as a female, in contrast to how the maleness is considered to be normal. There’s also a view of South American people as a whole – as embodied in Mistral – as something different and “other” compared to the Swedish.