En human maskin : Giljotinens införande och dödsstraffets legitimitet vid tiden för sekelskiftet 1900

Sammanfattning

This study examines the introduction of the guillotine in Sweden as a historical case through which to analyse how the state sought to preserve the legitimacy of capital punishment at a time when its moral and political foundations were increasingly contested. Although executions had become rare and abolitionist criticism was gaining ground, the Swedish Parliament decided in 1906 to replace beheading by axe with the guillotine. The reform was justified through arguments emphasising speed, reliability, uniformity, and reduced suffering. Drawing on qualitative text analysis and argumentation analysis of parliamentary debates, motions, committee reports, government bills, and archival material relating to the execution of Johan Alfred Andersson Ander, the only person guillotined in Sweden, the study investigates – through the lens of the theories of Michel Foucault and Zygmunt Bauman – how the reform was framed in relation to humaneness, modernity, and state legitimacy. The thesis argues that the guillotine should be understood not merely as a technical innovation, but as a political and symbolic instrument through which state violence was renegotiated in a manner compatible with contemporary ideals of humanity and modernity. At the same time, the execution of Ander in 1910 revealed the limits of this reform. Once the method itself appeared technically perfected, the irreducible problem of legal uncertainty remained. In this sense, the guillotine may paradoxically have contributed to undermining, rather than reinforcing, the legitimacy of capital punishment in Sweden and thereby played a more significant role in the abolition process than its brief use might suggest.