Abstract
The primary aim of this thesis has been to investigate how Ibsen's Når Vi Døde Vågner answers Socrates's question - how is one to live? And whether the play s comment on this question is: posthumanist ethico-ono-epistemological performance of life as a work of art in iterative intra-activity of becoming. The play suggests that when we dead awaken, we will observe that we have never lived life (HIS10: 266). Therefore, the play privileges the category of De Vågne and proposes one is to live life the way De Vågne live. I will apply Karen Barad's agential realism theory in order to investigate how De Vågne live life. I refer to the state of De Døde and De Vågne in the absence of apparatuses of knowing as ViDødeVågne. Accordingly, I will diffractively read the text of the play in its authentic language as well as Foucault and Barad's insights on ethics through one another to observe what apparatus of knowing cuts ViDødeVågne into De Døde and De Vågne and what style of living life based on separation of ViDødeVågne is performed as intelligible\acceptable\accountable. I understand Diffractive reading as commitment to understanding which differences matter, how they matter, and for whom (Barad, meeting 90). Finally, I will observe that ViDødeVågne has been cut based on two apparatuses of knowing in power: the Schöner Schein and posthumanist ethico-ono-epistemological performance. Accordingly, I will conclude that the play s answer to Socrates's question - how is one to live? is the posthumanist ethico-ono-epistemological performance of life as a work of art in iterative intra-activity.