Hunter, Elizabeth Löwe. “Diasporiske perspektiver på racialiseringens kolonialitet i Danmark.” (2021) [PDF]

Hunter, Elizabeth Löwe. “Diasporiske perspektiver på racialiseringens kolonialitet i Danmark.” Periskop – Forum for kunsthistorisk debat, no. 25, 25, Aug. 2021, pp. 88–111.

Fra indledning:

Da jeg i begyndelsen af 2020 blev opfordret til at bidrage til dette særnummer, kunne ingen af os have forudset, hvad året ville komme til at bringe, og jeg ser det derfor som en mulighed for at stille nogle grundlæggende spørgsmål til teamaet sorthed i en dansk kontekst. Især i kølvandet på George Floyd. Og mordet på Bornholm (Hunter 2020). Hvad og hvem taler vi egentlig om, når vi taler om sorthed? Hudfarve, en racemæssig kategori, en strukturel position, en kulturel identitet, en politisk identitet, levede erfaringer eller ideologi? Den kortvarige og selektive offentlige opmærksomhed usynligjorde måder, hvorpå nævnte mord kan være udtryk for en anti-sort status quo i Vesten rettere end beklagelige særtilfælde. Mediernes/offentlighedens fokus på mordene på disse enkelte mænd tilslører med andre ord, hvordan et samspil af magthierarkier gør sorte personer, der marginaliseres på flere måder, udsatte på andre måder, mens disse samme personer også systematisk ekskluderes fra gængse kritikker af anti-sort vold og død. Jeg rejser dog primært de ovenstående spørgsmål, da sorthed og afrikansk diasporisk baggrund i stigende grad, og med rette, er omdrejningspunkt for politisk organisering og græsrodsaktivisme i Danmark. Der er stor diversitet blandt folk med afrikansk baggrund i Danmark. Og derfor også afgørende forskellige positioner i samfundet inden for den brede gruppe. Fra mit perspektiv er det derfor ikke indlysende, hvilke forståelser af sorthed, og hvilke former for sammenfiltrede magtrelationer, der mobiliseres gennem termer såsom sort, afro eller afrikansk. Jeg er nysgerrig på, hvordan nationalitet, køn, klasse og konkrete, diasporiske historier medtænkes og kontekstualiseres lokalt i danske formuleringer af sorthed. Og på, hvad, om noget, der får sorthedtil at hænge sammen på dansk i organisering på tværs af afrikanske diasporaer i Danmark.

PDF: https://tidsskrift.dk/periskop/article/view/128472

Hassani, Amani. “Muslims and Islamophobia in ‘Raceless’ Societies: Critical Insights from Denmark and Quebec.” (2021) [PDF]

Hassani, Amani. “Muslims and Islamophobia in ‘Raceless’ Societies: Critical Insights from Denmark and Quebec.” The Sociological Review, The Sociological Review, June 2021. thesociologicalreview.org, https://doi.org/10.51428/tsr.gijy3798.

PDF: https://thesociologicalreview.org/magazine/june-2021/sociological-theories/muslims-and-islamophobia-in-raceless-societies/

Borevi, Karin, Kristian Kriegbaum Jensen, and Per Mouritsen. ‘The Civic Turn of Immigrant Integration Policies in the Scandinavian Welfare States’. (2017) [PDF]

Borevi, Karin, Kristian Kriegbaum Jensen, and Per Mouritsen. ‘The Civic Turn of Immigrant Integration Policies in the Scandinavian Welfare States’. Comparative Migration Studies, vol. 5, no. 1, Physica-Verlag, Dec. 2017.

This special issue addresses the question of how to understand the civic turn within immigrant integration in the West towards programs and instruments, public discourses and political intentions, which aim to condition, incentivize, and shape through socialization immigrants into ‘citizens’. Empirically, it focuses on the less studied Scandinavian cases of Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. In this introduction, we situate the contributions to this special issue within the overall debate on civic integration and convergence. We introduce the three cases, critically discuss the (liberal) convergence thesis and its descriptive and explanatory claims, and explain why studying the Scandinavian welfare states can further our understanding of the nature of the civic turn and its driving forces. Before concluding, we discuss whether civic integration policies actually work.

doi:10.1186/s40878-017-0052-4.

PDF: https://vbn.aau.dk/da/publications/the-civic-turn-of-immigrant-integration-policies-in-the-scandinav-2.

Bissenbakker, Mons, and Michael Nebeling. ‘En følelsernes grammatik og politik’. (2020)

Bissenbakker, Mons, and Michael Nebeling. ‘En følelsernes grammatik og politik’. i Et ulydigt arkiv: Udvalgte tekster af Sara Ahmed, Eds. Daniel Nikolaj Madsen, Eva Obelitz Rode, Lea Hee Ja Kramhøft, and Mette A. E. Kim-Larsen, Forlaget Nemo, 2020, 11–22.

Et ulydigt arkiv er syv af Sara Ahmeds artikler fra de sidste 20 år samlet og for første gang udgivet på dansk. Teksterne arbejder med figurer som ’den feministiske glædesdræber’, ’den melankolske immigrant’, ’det egenrådige barn’ og ’den fremmede’ indenfor emner som racisme, feminisme, klagen, m.m. Samlingens tekster skifter kontinuerligt mellem det teoretiske og det hverdagslige; mellem filosofi og popkultur; mellem det strukturelle og personlige erfaringer. 

Et ulydigt arkiv indeholder derudover et helt nyt forord dedikeret til denne udgave samt et introducerende forord af lektor Mons Bissenbakker og lektor Michael Nebeling, som viser Ahmeds tænknings relevans i dansk kontekst.

https://portal.findresearcher.sdu.dk/da/publications/en-f%C3%B8lelsernes-grammatik-og-politik.

https://www.forlagetnemo.dk/butik/ulydigtarkiv

Keskinen, Suvi. ‘Antiracist Feminism and the Politics of Solidarity in Neoliberal Times’. (2021) [PDF]

Keskinen, Suvi. ‘Antiracist Feminism and the Politics of Solidarity in Neoliberal Times’. Feminisms in the Nordic Region: Neoliberalism, Nationalism and Decolonial Critique, Eds. Suvi Keskinen, Pauline Stoltz, and Diana Mulinari, Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2021, 201–221.

This chapter analyses the establishment and expansion of antiracist feminism in the last decade throughout the Nordic region, with new groups, media sites, and public events organised, especially in the large cities. I examine antiracist feminist and queer of colour activism in which the main or sole actors belong to groups racialised as non-white or “others” in Nordic societies. A fundamental argument developed in the chapter is the central role and potential of these emerging social movements to reconfigure political agendas and tackling of pressing societal issues, due to their capacity to overlap and connect the borders of antiracist, feminist, and (to some extent) class-based politics. The chapter further argues for the usefulness of theorising the neoliberal turn of racial capitalism as the societal condition in which feminist activism takes place. 

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-53464-6_10.

PDF: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-53464-6_10

Hussain, Naimah. ‘Bourdieu in Greenland: Elaborating the Field Dependencies of Post-Colonial Journalism’. (2017) [PDF]

Hussain, Naimah. ‘Bourdieu in Greenland: Elaborating the Field Dependencies of Post-Colonial Journalism’. Present Scenarios of Media Production and Engagement, Eds. Simone Tosoni, Nico Carpentier, Maria Francesca Murru, Richard Kilborn, Leif Kramp, Risto Kunelius, Anthony McNicholas, Tobias Olsson, and Pille Pruulmann-Vengerfeldt, edition lumière, 2017,

The scarcely populated island of Greenland offers a unique opportunity both to study the complex dependencies and tensions of contemporary “global” or “transnational” journalism and to test and develop the explanation power of one key theoretical framework, field theory. With only one (national and public) broadcaster and two weekly newspapers, the journalistic field in Greenland is small, exposed and vulnerable. It is embedded in the broader political, economic and professional field dynamics of Denmark, the former colonial power. For instance, the legislation and the organizational structure of the media are inherited and a flow of Danish visiting journalists and editors keep up the norms and the value system of the field. At the same time, Greenlandic journalism operates in a nation of its own with distinct characteristics: small size, politics of the bilingualism, tight local networks with a small elite and close ties between reporters and possible sources shape the field practically, professionally and socially (in a specific, local way). These tensions between the “global-colonial” and “local” capitals and capacities are negotiated and managed in the everyday practices of newsrooms. There is almost no previous research on Greenlandic media in general and journalism practice in particular. Mapping this small but contested field allows us to highlight some of the key analytical strengths of Bourdieu’s field theory and its ability to capture the dynamic actor relationships in such a complex, structured space. At the same time, however, the “post-colonial” realities of Greenlandic journalism can help us to pose some questions about the limits – or the need for further development – of Bourdieu’s initial sketch about the journalistic field. This chapter tests the analytical concepts of capital and habitus by putting them to empirical work through an ethnographic study of practices and structures of news making in Greenland.

https://forskning.ruc.dk/da/publications/bourdieu-in-greenland-elaborating-the-field-dependencies-of-post-. https://forskning.ruc.dk/da/publications/bourdieu-in-greenland-elaborating-the-field-dependencies-of-post-.

PDF: http://www.researchingcommunication.eu/SuSobook2016.pdf

Spanger, Marlene, Hanne Marlene Dahl, and Elin Petersson. ‘Rethinking Global Care Chains through the Perspective of Heterogeneous States, Discursive Framings and Multi-Level Governance’. (2017) [PDF]

Spanger, Marlene, Hanne Marlene Dahl, and Elin Petersson. ‘Rethinking Global Care Chains through the Perspective of Heterogeneous States, Discursive Framings and Multi-Level Governance’. Nordic Journal of Migration Research, vol. 7, no. 4, De Gruyter Open, Dec. 2017, pp. 251–259.

In investigating global and regional care chains, scholars have traditionally adopted a sociological bottom–up approach, but more attention has recently been focussed on the role of the state. Despite this new attention to states and how they condition care chains, the existing frameworks cannot grasp the complexity of potential struggles and tensions within states and at the various state levels. In outlining a broad and tentative analytical framework for exploration of the role of the state in shaping global care chains, this theoretical article combines feminist state theory, discursive policy analysis and multi-level governance theories. Paying attention to the role of the state, we focus on the framing of policy problems that are important for care chains and on potential tensions between different framings within a state and across the different state levels. We argue that these framings should be investigated in both receiving and sending states.

https://vbn.aau.dk/en/publications/rethinking-global-care-chains-through-the-perspective-of-heteroge.

PDF: 10.1515/njmr-2017-0029.

Hervik, Peter. ‘Refiguring the Public, Political, and Personal in Current Danish Exclusionary Reasoning’. (2018) [PDF]

Hervik, Peter. ‘Refiguring the Public, Political, and Personal in Current Danish Exclusionary Reasoning’. Political Sentiments and Social Movements, 2018, 91–117.

Hervik uses the new concept of “fractal logic” as a way to explain how scaling takes place in Danish exclusionary reasoning, in news articles, web commentaries, blogs, and Facebook posts about Muslims. Through two incidents in Denmark, an amusement park controversy and a missing handshake panic, he shows how participants and other commentators move from small-scale particularity to a generalizable pattern that is understood to give it strength from scaling up to higher levels where the stakes are higher. This leads to the argument that the reproduction of a specific fractal logic called “the nation in danger” works as an exclusionary reasoning that reinforces the political subjectivity of Danish neonationalism. In addition, the argument opens up for a refiguring of the public–private in both psychological and political anthropology.

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-72341-9_4.

PDF: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/323947565_Refiguring_the_Public_Political_and_Personal_in_Current_Danish_Exclusionary_Reasoning.

Hvenegård-Lassen, Kirsten, and Dorthe Staunæs. ‘Elefanten i (bede)rummet. Raciale forsvindingsnumre, stemningspolitik og idiomatisk diffraktion’. (2019)

Hvenegård-Lassen, Kirsten, and Dorthe Staunæs. ‘Elefanten i (bede)rummet. Raciale forsvindingsnumre, stemningspolitik og idiomatisk diffraktion’. Kvinder, Køn & Forskning, no. 1–2, 1–2, July 2019, pp. 44–57.

The elephant in the room. Racial disappearance acts, mood politics and idiomatic diffraction summarizes a particular way of handling social and cultural problems. It is about social taboos that are affectively charged: even if everybody knows the elephant is there, they ignore it. In this article, we are grappling with disappearance acts related to race and racialization at a white-dominated Danish university. Race is simultaneously there and not there in organizational policies and practices preoccupied with governing diversity. Using a recent debate over ‘prayer rooms’ in educational institutions, we develop a methodology (‘idiomatic diffraction’) sensitive towards race and racialization in contexts dominated by whiteness. Leaning on Karen Barad, we argue that diffraction may open up a space from where light can be explored in the shadows of what Sylvia Wynter names ‘Man’s Project’.

doi:10.7146/kkf.v28i1-2.116116.

https://tidsskrift.dk/KKF/article/view/116116.

Hvenegård-Lassen, Kirsten, and Dorthe Staunæs. ‘Race Matters in Intersectional Feminisms. Towards a Danish Grammar Book’. (2020)

Hvenegård-Lassen, Kirsten, and Dorthe Staunæs. ‘Race Matters in Intersectional Feminisms. Towards a Danish Grammar Book’. NORA – Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, vol. 28, no. 3, July 2020, pp. 224–236.

In this article, we ask: “how does race matter when working with intersectional feminism in a postcolonial Nordic context?” We take our cue from feminist and postcolonial scholars who have pointed out that minoritisation and majoritisation processes in the Nordic area are entangled in ongoing racialization processes. Working with and around the video installation Black Magic at the White House by the artist Jeanette Ehlers, we hold on to the particularities of racialization processes in the Danish context, as well as their insertion in a global racial ontology. We establish a conversation between Ehlers’ installation and the work of two black American scholars from the humanities: Sylvia Wynter and Hortense Spillers. These scholars have not been influential in the European uptake and further elaboration of intersectionality, but we argue that engaging with their work opens up a perspective that focuses on affect, absence and disappearance rather than only representation, identity and recognition, thereby worlding intersectionality differently than standpoint theory. Experience is also constituted through affective encounters, the ephemeral, forgotten and bypassed qualities and intensities. We conclude the article by drawing a preliminary sketch of elements in what we, paraphrasing Spillers, call a Danish “grammar book” of the racialized and gendered ordering of the human that again complicates the stories we may tell about how race matters and what Nordic intersectional feminism may look like, as well as the interventions this may open up.

doi:10.1080/08038740.2020.1758206.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08038740.2020.1758206.

Jensen, Sune Qvotrup. ‘Othering, Identity Formation and Agency’ (2011) [PDF]

Jensen, Sune Qvotrup. ‘Othering, Identity Formation and Agency’. Qualitative Studies, vol. 2, no. 2, Dec. 2011, pp. 63–78.

The article examines the potentials of the concept of othering to describe identity formation among ethnic minorities. First, it outlines the history of the concept, its contemporary use, as well as some criticisms. Then it is argued that young ethnic minority men in Denmark are subject to intersectional othering, which contains elements of exoticist fascination of the other. On the basis of ethnographic material, it is analysed how young marginalized ethnic minority men react to othering. Two types of reactions are illustrated: 1) capitalization on being positioned as the other, and 2) refusing to occupy the position of the other by disidentification and claims to normality. Finally, it is argued that the concept of othering is well suited for understanding the power structures as well as the historic symbolic meanings conditioning such identity formation, but problematic in terms of agency.

PDF: https://tidsskrift.dk/qual/article/view/5510

Keskinen, Suvi, and Rikke Andreassen. ‘Developing Theoretical Perspectives On Racialisation and Migration’. (2017) [PDF]

Keskinen, Suvi, and Rikke Andreassen. ‘Developing Theoretical Perspectives On Racialisation and Migration’. Nordic Journal of Migration Research, vol. 7, no. 2, 2017, pp. 64–69. DeGruyter,

https://journal-njmr.org/articles/abstract/10.1515/njmr-2017-0018/

PDF: http://archive.sciendo.com/NJMR/njmr.2017.7.issue-2/njmr-2017-0018/njmr-2017-0018.pdf

Khawaja, Iram, and Line Lerche Mørck. ‘Researcher Positioning: Muslim “Otherness” and Beyond’. (2009)

Khawaja, Iram, and Line Lerche Mørck. ‘Researcher Positioning: Muslim “Otherness” and Beyond’. Qualitative Research in Psychology, vol. 6, no. 1–2, Routledge, June 2009, pp. 28–45.

This article focuses on the complex and multilayered process of researcher positioning, specifically in relation to the politically sensitive study of marginalised and “othered” groups such as Muslims living in Denmark. We discuss the impact of different ethnic, religious, and racial backgrounds, of membership in a minoritised 1 or majoritised group, and the influence of different theoretical and methodological outlooks on our common goal of trying to transcend existing othering and objectifying representations of Muslims in Western societies. This process sometimes entails a direct political and personal involvement by the researcher, which challenges traditional perspectives on research and researcher positioning. A key point in this regard is the importance of constant awareness of and reflection on the multiple ways in which one’s positioning as a researcher influences the research process. Studying the other calls for close reflections on one’s own position, theoretically, personally, and politically, taking into account one’s complicity in either overcoming or reproducing processes of othering and marginalisation. 1We use the term (ethnic) minoritised not as a distinction with numerical proportions but rather related to societal power relations (Phoenix 2001, p. 128).

doi:10.1080/14780880902900713.

Lægaard, Sune. ‘The Cartoon Controversy: Offence, Identity, Oppression?’ (2007) [PDF]

Lægaard, Sune. ‘The Cartoon Controversy: Offence, Identity, Oppression?’ Political Studies, vol. 55, no. 3, Oct. 2007, pp. 481–498.

If the publication of twelve drawings of the Prophet Mohammad in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, which sparked the ‘cartoon controversy’, was wrong, why might this be the case? The article considers four arguments advanced in relation to the quite similar Rushdie affair for judging such publications to be wrong, and asks whether they provide plausible moral reasons against such publications, and whether they justify legal restrictions on freedom of speech. The arguments concern: (a) the consistent extension of group defamation legislation to cover Muslims; (b) offence to religious sensibilities; (c) issues of identity; and (d) oppression. The article also considers whether such arguments can be acknowledged within a liberal model of toleration. It is argued that versions of several of the arguments may in fact be thus accommodated, but that they nevertheless do not provide strong reasons for judging the kind of publications under consideration to be morally wrong or suitable objects for legal restrictions. The argument from oppression is different, however, in pointing to different kinds of factors, but its applicability is limited both by a number of conditions for when oppression provides the right kind of reasons, and by empirical constraints. The suggested conclusion is that the publication of the Mohammad cartoons was not wrong, at least not all things considered, for any of the noted reasons, but that there might be other kinds of factors that are not captured by traditional liberal models of toleration, which might provide reasons for moral criticism of this and similar publications.

doi:10.1111/j.1467-9248.2007.00685.x.

PDF: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/4780115_The_Cartoon_Controversy_Offence_Identity_Oppression/link/5d7b74a5299bf1d5a970eb2e/download

Lentin, Alana, and Gavan Titley. The Crises of Multiculturalism: Racism in a Neoliberal Age (2011)

Lentin, Alana, and Gavan Titley. The Crises of Multiculturalism: Racism in a Neoliberal Age. London ; New York: Zed Books, 2011.

Across the West, something called multiculturalism is in crisis. Regarded as the failed experiment of liberal elites, commentators and politicians compete to denounce its corrosive legacies; parallel communities threatening social cohesion, enemies within cultivated by irresponsible cultural relativism, mediaeval practices subverting national ‘ways of life’ and universal values. This important new book challenges this familiar narrative of the rise and fall of multiculturalism by challenging the existence of a coherent era of ‘multiculturalism’ in the first place. The authors argue that what we are witnessing is not so much a rejection of multiculturalism as a rejection of lived multiculture. In documenting mainstream racism and the anxieties that inform it, Lentin and Titley argue that the crisis is a projection of neoliberal societies’ disjunctures. Combining theory with a reading of contemporary events, it examines the transnational, mediated nature of crisis itself, and argues challenging this notion provides activists with a chance to transcend resurgent racism.

The Crises of Multiculturalism

Pedersen, Marianne Holm, and Mikkel Rytter. ‘Rituals of Migration: An Introduction’. (2018) [PDF]

Pedersen, Marianne Holm, and Mikkel Rytter. ‘Rituals of Migration: An Introduction’. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, vol. 44, no. 16, Dec. 2018, pp. 2603–2616.

This introduction presents a framework for the articles in the special issue Rituals of Migration. First, it provides an overview of studies of ritual and migration, highlighting the fruitfulness of exploring the two fields together and arguing for the use of ritual as a cultural prism on processes of continuity and change in migration. In light of these analytical approaches, the introduction continues by outlining and discussing the three major themes that crosscut the articles (the interrelations between change and continuity, processes of placemaking and lines of social differentiation), demonstrating how the articles can shed light on these issues.

doi:10.1080/1369183X.2017.1389024.

PDF: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369183X.2017.1389024.

Rostbøll, Christian F. ‘Autonomy, Respect, and Arrogance in the Danish Cartoon Controversy’. (2009)

Rostbøll, Christian F. ‘Autonomy, Respect, and Arrogance in the Danish Cartoon Controversy’. Political Theory, vol. 37, no. 5, Oct. 2009, pp. 623–648.

Autonomy is increasingly rejected as a fundamental principle by liberal political theorists because it is regarded as incompatible with respect for diversity. This article seeks, via an analysis of the Danish cartoon controversy, to show that the relationship between autonomy and diversity is more complex than often posited. Particularly, it asks whether the autonomy defense of freedom of expression encourages disrespect for religious feelings. Autonomy leads to disrespect for diversity only when it is understood as a character ideal that must be promoted as an end in itself. If it by contrast is understood as something we should presume everyone possesses, it provides a strong basis for equal respect among people from diverse cultures. A Kantian conception of autonomy can justify the right to freedom of expression while it at the same time requires that we in the exercise of freedom of expression show respect for others as equals.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0090591709340138

Rostbøll, Christian F. ‘The Use and Abuse of “Universal Values” in the Danish Cartoon Controversy’.

Rostbøll, Christian F. ‘The Use and Abuse of “Universal Values” in the Danish Cartoon Controversy’. European Political Science Review, vol. 2, no. 3, Nov. 2010, pp. 401–422.

During the Danish cartoon controversy, appeals to universal liberal values were often made in ways that marginalized Muslims. An analysis of the controversy reveals that referring to ‘universal values’ can be exclusionary when dominant actors fail to distinguish their own culture’s embodiment of these values from the more abstract ideas. The article suggests that the solution to this problem is not to discard liberal principles but rather to see them in a more deliberative democratic way. This means that we should move from focusing on citizens merely as subjects of law and right holders to seeing them as co-authors of shared legal and moral norms. A main shortcoming of the way in which dominant actors in Denmark responded to the cartoons was exactly that they failed to see the Muslim minority as capable of participating in interpreting and giving shared norms. To avoid self-contradiction, liberal principles and constitutional norms should not be seen as incontestable aspects of democracy but rather as subject to recursive democratic justification and revision by everyone subject to them. Newcomers ought to be able to contribute their specific perspectives in this process of democratically reinterpreting and perfecting the understanding of universalistic norms, and thereby make them fit better to those to whom they apply, as well as rendering them theirs.

doi:10.1017/S175577391000024X.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S175577391000024X/type/journal_article.

Siim, Birte. ‘Feminist Challenges to the Reframing of Equality and Social Justice’. (2016) [PDF]

Siim, Birte. ‘Feminist Challenges to the Reframing of Equality and Social Justice’. NORA – Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, vol. 24, no. 3, Routledge, July 2016, pp. 196–202.

Global mobility and the present economic, political and refugee crisis have resulted in political contestations and new theoretical challenges. Inspired by several European research projects, in this paper I reflect upon feminist activism and the challenges to reframing equality and social justice in contemporary society (see Siim & Mokre, 2013; Lazaridis et al., 2016). I first discuss intersectional relations between anti-racist activism and feminist activism in the Danish context. Then I discuss how feminist theorists can contribute to the reframing of (gender) equality and social justice in contemporary Nordic societies. The focus is on two approaches, each of which has inspired Nordic researchers, as well as my own thinking (e.g. Siim & Mokre, 2013): Nira Yuval-Davis’ (2011) proposal for a multilevel and intersectional approach to the politics of belonging, and Nancy Fraser’s (2013) proposal fora transnational approach to social justice, premised on redistribution, recognition and participatory parity. I argue that both need to be adapted in order to contribute to an understanding of the feminist challenges in the particular Nordic contexts.

doi:10.1080/08038740.2016.1246109.

PDF: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/311244650_Feminist_Challenges_to_the_Reframing_of_Equality_and_Social_Justice/link/5852ba0008ae95fd8e1d6f0b/download

Khawaja, Iram. ‘Anger, Shame and Whiteness: On Using Memory Work as an Educational Tool for Reflections on Racialization, Otherness and Privilege’. (2020)

Khawaja, Iram. ‘Anger, Shame and Whiteness: On Using Memory Work as an Educational Tool for Reflections on Racialization, Otherness and Privilege’. Nordic Journal of Social Research, 2020.

The article draws on years of experience teaching otherness, racialization and whiteness on a postgraduate level in Copenhagen, and aims to analyze how it is possible to facilitate constructive discussions on race, whiteness and otherness utilizing memory work. The article is structured around three main points of relevance, which are connected to the main challenges of teaching sensitive topics such as racism, whiteness and privilege in majoritized class rooms. Challenges such as the need to negotiate teacher authority and manage the affective intensities in the class room. The aim of the article is to unfold a form of ‘engaged pedagogical’ strategy for critical reflections on racialization and whiteness in academia highlighting the need to move towards new ways of understanding knowledge production, teacher positionality and lived life as part of curriculum.

https://pure.au.dk/portal/en/persons/iram-khawaja(d5c034f8-2f3f-4e2d-ad31-f4169167546a)/publications/anger-shame-and-whiteness(99861bf7-fb1c-45b9-a5d1-c1d1675dcc9f).html

Skadegård Thorsen, T. ‘Minoritetsbeskatning – et værktøj til at forstå opretholdelse af strukturelle uligheder i dansk akademia’. (2019) [PDF]

Skadegård Thorsen, T. ‘Minoritetsbeskatning – et værktøj til at forstå opretholdelse af strukturelle uligheder i dansk akademia’. Kvinder, Køn & Forskning, no. 1–2, July 2019, pp. 31–43.

Denmark has a strong tradition for doing critical analyses of the gendered inequalities of Danish academia – a critique that is particularly critical of gendered hiring practices. As such, Danish gender research has long grappled with the meta-scientific theories of positionality we recognize from e.g. Donna Haraway and Eve Sedgwick. However studies have yet to be conducted of the implicit and indirect inequalities that occur in the academic day-to-day experiences of researchers who are minoritized in more ways than their gender. Taking its point of departure in autoethnographic vignettes created during 3 years as a research-employee (PhD Fellow) as well as 7 years of teaching and supervising at 3 Danish universities, this article argues that Minority Taxation, a proposed Danish derivative of the US term Cultural Taxation (Padilla 1994), is a useful analytical tool for understanding the everyday experiences of structural inequalities in Danish academia. Minority Taxation covers both the concrete and affective extra-work minoritized academics are ‘taxed with’ performing due to structural inequalities. Deeming this form of work a tax aids in making more palpable the inequalities that can often seem hard to understand, quantify or negotiate.

doi:10.7146/kkf.v28i1-2.116115. ‘

PDF: https://tidsskrift.dk/KKF/article/view/116115.

Tønder, Lars. ‘Humility, Arrogance and the Limitations of Kantian Autonomy: A Response to Rostbøll’. (2011) [PDF]

Tønder, Lars. ‘Humility, Arrogance and the Limitations of Kantian Autonomy: A Response to Rostbøll’. Political Theory, vol. 39, no. 3, 06/01/2011 2011, pp. 378–385.

The author comments on the article ‘Autonomy, Respect, and Arrogance in the Danish Cartoon Controversy,’ by Christian Rostbøll. According to the author, Rostbøll’s assertion of whether the Kantian conception of autonomy can create the necessary conditions for care and sensitivity related to the publication of cartoons depicting the Islamic prophet Muhammad, which led to violent protests in Denmark, is problematic. The author suggests the need for a pluralization among citizens in their conception as citizens that includes exposing autonomous conceptions to the forces that enable and disturb free speech.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0090591711400031?journalCode=ptxa

El-Tayeb, Fatima “Secular Submissions—Muslim Europeans, Female Bodies, and Performative Politics”

El-Tayeb, Fatima “Chapter 3: Secular Submissions—Muslim Europeans, Female Bodies, and Performative Politics” in El-Tayeb, Fatima. European Others: Queering Ethnicity in Postnational Europe. 1 edition, Minneapolis: Univ Of Minnesota Press, 2011.

From introduction:

In chapter 3, I trace this discourse from its affirmation in both liberal feminism, exemplified by Dutch playwright Adelheid Roosen’s work, and in the escape narratives of ex-Muslims such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali, to its deconstruction by Muslim feminist activists like Danish Asmaa Abdol-Hamid. My focus throughout is on the uses of performative strate- gies in constructing as well as destabilizing binary notions of movement and immobility, progress and stagnation in relation to West and Global South, Orient and Occident, Islam and (secular) Christianity, Muslim men and women. That is, I am following Diana Taylor in using performance as a “methodological lens that enables [me] to analyze events as perfor- mances” (Taylor 2003, 3). Common to these very different types of per- formative politics is the centrality of the image of the (veiled) Muslim woman, signifying much larger assumptions around cultural (im)mobili- ties and (im)possibilities. My notion of performance in this context be- gins with Frantz Fanon’s assessment of nationalism as a scopic politics often symbolized by the clothing of female bodies. I move from tradi- tional forms of performance illustrating this view, such as Roosen’s plays, to the performative interventions of political activists like Hirsi Ali, both of which retain a hierarchy in which the authors “speak for” Muslimas, literally inscribing their perspective on generic, deindividualized female bodies. I end with feminist socialist Abdol-Hamid, who takes a radically different approach by using her own body to insist on the compatibility of supposedly exclusive positionalities, such as wearing the hijab and be- ing a radical feminist, and most importantly on the right and ability of European Muslimas to speak for themselves.

Publisher’s book description:

European Others offers an interrogation into the position of racialized communities in the European Union, arguing that the tension between a growing nonwhite, non-Christian population and insistent essentialist definitions of Europeanness produces new forms of identity and activism. Moving beyond disciplinary and national limits, Fatima El-Tayeb explores structures of resistance, tracing a Europeanization from below in which migrant and minority communities challenge the ideology of racelessness that places them firmly outside the community of citizens.Using a notable variety of sources, from drag performances to feminist Muslim activism and Euro hip-hop, El-Tayeb draws on the largely ignored archive of vernacular culture central to resistance by minority youths to the exclusionary nationalism that casts them as threatening outcasts. At the same time, she reveals the continued effect of Europe’s suppressed colonial history on the representation of Muslim minorities as the illiberal Other of progressive Europe. Presenting a sharp analysis of the challenges facing a united Europe seen by many as a model for twenty-first-century postnational societies, El-Tayeb combines theoretical influences from both sides of the Atlantic to lay bare how Europeans of color are integral to the continent’s past, present, and, inevitably, its future.

https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/european-others