"Mot allt, som plågar mej, jag reagerar" : Känslorna och det proletära subjektet i Karl Östmans litterära verk

Sammanfattning: This thesis explores the representation of emotion and feeling in the 1910’s and 1920’s fictional works of Swedish working class writer Karl Östman, against the historical background of the working class movement and its social communities. The material consists mainly of three collections of short stories (Pilgrims, A Fiddle and a Woman and Hunger) and one novel (The Broad Road). The author analyses how emotions arise and are represented, the relationship between emotion and action, the individual and collective practices of feeling, as well as the emotional reactions following suffering. Dreams of love and compassion are also addressed to investigate whether the texts point to the possibility of a new emotional community for the working class. The theoretical basis of the thesis is Barbara H. Rosenwein’s concept of ”emotional communities”, along with Sara Ahmed’s theories of emotions as patterns of action. The thesis argues that all actions in Östman’s fiction are, fundamentally, emotional reactions. To gain an understanding of capitalism and class society as the causes of oppression, Östman’s characters must first understand their own emotions from the perspective of a socialist emotional community, rather than the prevailing emotional community of working class men. Only then can their emotional response to suffering become anger and action rather than hopelessness. Östman identifies the great shame of the worker not as his vulnerable position under capitalism but as the culture of non-feeling that workers impose on one another – a change of perspective that becomes a call for action. If read attentive to the role of emotions in the text, the thesis argues, Östman’s fiction possesses an urgency and a complexity previously not accredited to him.