Deconstructing Europe

Postcolonial Perspectives

Sandra Ponzanesi, Bolette Blaagaard

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781317995180
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

This book engages with the question of what makes Europe postcolonial and how memory, whiteness and religion figure in representations and manifestations of European 'identity' and self-perception. To deconstruct Europe is necessary as its definition is now contested more than ever, both internally (through the proliferation of ethnic, religious, regional differences) and externally (Europe expanding its boundaries but closing its borders).

This edited volume explores a number of theoretical discussions on the meaning of Europe and proposes analyzing some of the deeds committed, both today and in the past, in the name of Europe by foregrounding a postcolonial approach. To deconstruct Europe as a postcolonial place does not imply that Europe's imperial past is over, but on the contrary that Europe's idea of self, and of its polity, is still struggling with the continuing hold of colonialist and imperialist attitudes. The objective of this volume is to account for historical legacies which have been denied, forgotten or silenced, such as the histories of minor and peripheral colonialisms (Nordic colonialisms or Austrian, Spanish and Italian colonialism) and to account for the realities of geographical margins within Europe, such as the Mediterranean and the Eastern border while tracing alternative models for solidarity and conviviality. The chapters deal with social and political formations as well as cultural and artistic practices drawing from different disciplinary backgrounds and methodological traditions. As such it creates an innovative space for comparative and cross-disciplinary exchanges.

This book was previously published as a special issue of the journal Social Identities.

Negotiating white Icelandic identity: multiculturalism and colonial identity formations

Kristín Loftsdóttir

Professor in Cultural Anthropology,Faculty of Social and Human Sciences, University of Iceland, Reykjavík, IS

Post-colonial scholars have emphasized the need to explore the ways in which colonial contact shaped both the colonized and colonizers; that is, how European identities were formulated in relation to imperial projects. Colonial Europe itself has to be deconstructed, looking at similarities and variability within different countries.

This article explores the construction of ‘white’ Icelandic identity in historical and contemporary discourses. The article shows that even though Iceland did not participate directly in the nineteenth century colonial project, the interwoven racial, gendered and nationalistic ideologies associated with the colonial project were very much a part of Icelandic identity in the nineteenth and early twentieth century as shaped by parallel discourses in Europe. Analysis of contemporary blog sites reflects the increasingly complex manifestations of racism in contemporary Iceland. Whiteness continues to be invisible as a position of power to many contemporary Icelanders. Interestingly, despite being few in numbers in Iceland, Muslims are increasingly constructed in the media as a threat in a similar way as in the rest of Europe.

Introduction

In the fall of 2007, the republishing of the book Ten Little Negroes, originally published in Icelandic in 1922 under the name The Negro-boys (Negrastrákarnir),caused enormous debates within Icelandic society. The existence of such debates can be seen as symbols of the great transformations that Icelandic society has undergone since I was growing up there in the 1970s. Contemporary Iceland is becoming increasingly connected with a globalized reality of migration and plurality. This particular debate was evident in different media forms, such as newspaper articles, talk-shows, radio programs and on-line blog sites. One blogger, expressing surprise over the fuss of republishing the book, states: ‘… these are just simple subtractions¹ placed forward in an amusing way, I for one look at it in that way rather than seeing it as some kind of racism’. What makes this comment particularly noteworthy is how it minimizes the racist character of the book – positioning it as a choice, i.e. the writer of the blog chooses not to see it as racist. The comment shows how those who have benefited historically and in the present from the social classification of people into different races often see racism as irrelevant, and in a sense such comments imply that Europe’s colonial history had nothing to do with themselves or their current global and national reality.

As pointed out by Ann Stoler (1992), post-colonial theories have tended to see the ‘West’ as a collective whole, thus losing the particularities within the different countries and social groups located within this socially defined unit. Her arguments point to how we need to pay closer attention to the ‘us’ part of the dichotomy ‘us’ and ‘other’, destabilizing the normalization of whiteness as well as problematizing European identities within colonial and post-colonial contexts. The Nordic countries exemplify this. Very few studies have been conducted on colonialism in relation to these countries and some of which (such as Sweden and Denmark) were directly engaged in colonial enterprises in other parts of the world as well as having an ambiguous relationship with each other due to internal colonization (see still, for example, Jensen, 2005; Keskinen, Irni, Mulinari, & Tuori, 2009; also Freiesleben, 1998). These legacies can be seen as silenced for the most part within contemporary European discourses. Iceland became a Danish dependency as early as 1380 when the Danish and the Norwegian crowns were unified, Iceland having been colonized by Norway more than a decade earlier following the Commonwealth period in the ninth century. Iceland’s ‘struggle for independence’ is usually seen as starting in 1851, when nationalistic ideas swept through Europe. Icelanders have long emphasized their geographical isolation and the ‘purity’ of their ethnic origin, combined with grand narratives of how they gained independence and became one of the richest nations in the world. Accompanying Icelandic financial investments overseas, and thus increased participation in global markets, are growing numbers of immigrants. The expansion of the Icelandic economy called for added immigration to supply the increased demand for labor, increased immigration thus being the response to a demand from Icelandic industries and businesses. The issues of multiculturalism have become increasingly debated and discussed with the visual destabilization of this idea of a homogenous, ‘white’ Iceland. When the three largest banks in Iceland collapsed in October 2008, the economic situation of the country became almost so bad overnight that the Icelandic government saw itself forced to seek financial assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The high unemployment and insecurity that has followed could increase the likelihood of a growing prejudice against these new Icelanders. Iceland’s past entanglement as a dependency, and the current jump from its status as one of the richest countries in the world to a recipient of IMF loans, clearly demonstrates the importance of looking at Europe as a contested and problematic term.

In this article, I explore the construction of ‘white’ identity in Iceland within colonial and post-colonial contexts, attempting to contribute to a dynamic and historical view of racism within colonial and post-colonial Europe, its maintenance, gendered implications, and how it had to be constantly remanufactured through various discourses and praxis.² I show how the formulation of Icelandic identity included, as in the rest of Europe, a racialized visualization of whiteness as both a distinctive and normative category, which today still continues to inform Icelandic identity. The interwoven racial, gendered and nationalistic ideologies associated with Europe’s colonial project were very much a part of Icelandic identity, even though Iceland was also considered a dependency at the time. Simultaneously, this construction of Icelandic identity has to be seen as meaningful in particular local contexts and deriving from local politics and events, although a part of more global currents of nationalism and racism.

My theoretical orientation is based upon the work of authors who have criticized how ideas of modernity, civilization and nationalism have often been seen as arising within European contexts as isolated from imperialistic and nationalistic situations. Post-colonial scholars have emphasized the need for more extensive explorations into the ways in which colonial contact shaped the colonizers themselves. Paul Gilroy (1993) uses the term ‘Atlantic world’ to capture the transnational and intercultural perspectives which have formed the world and the nationalistic identities of today, thus criticizing what he calls ‘cultural insiderism’, which focuses on national entities as fully formed within their own spaces rather than as products of transverse dynamics (p. 3). The celebrated meta-narrative of the Enlightenment as the age of discoveries leading to the advancement of science has, as observed by Nicholas Dirks (1992), to a great extent ignored the colonial project as stimulating and facilitating the scientific imagination. Meta-narratives of civilization have thus focused on how Europeans brought civilization to ‘others’, rather than seeing the idea of ‘civilization’ itself as taking shape within various transnational and geographical encounters. Furthermore, European gendered identities were shaped by racial policies in the overseas colonies (Stoler, 1992).

I start the discussion by contextualizing it theoretically within feminist and post-colonial theories of gender and whiteness, stressing the importance of seeing identity as relational and contextual; individuals occupy different subject positions that are situationally dependent. Contextualizing Icelandic identity within colonial ideologies by the use of nineteenth century texts, I show that even though the Icelanders identified strongly with the colonizer’s discourse, their own subject position varied and is in some instances seen as part of the civilized world but in others as colonized subjects. I show how the gendered aspects of this identification, based on Mary Louise Pratt’s ideas of ‘brotherhood’ (1990), and narratives of colonial explorations, served for Icelandic men as a way to visualize and situate themselves as part of the educated European elite. I use texts from the annual periodical Skírnir dating from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century, as well as schoolbooks from the same period, in order to capture the insights that, as stressed by Pratt (1992), through textual means nineteenth century Europeans were able to imagine themselves in relation to people they had never seen.

Focusing on the current post-colonial reality of Iceland, I map out currently debated issues relating to race and difference in a contemporary Icelandic context utilizing blog pages. Blogging can maintain and create a cohesive, nationalistic identity outside geographical boundaries, especially for nations utilizing a language that is not widely spoken. Blogging has become increasingly important in Iceland partly due to how individuals can link their comments to news stories in one of the most popular media-based websites, Morgunblaðið, creating vivid forums of public discussions, as well as increased accessibility for people to have their viewpoints heard. My analysis limits itself to discussions on a few blogs published on Morgunblaðið’s blog hosting service that are often linked to particular stories in the newspaper, the link being clearly visual with the news itself. One discussion refers to Muslim women and the other comments on the republishing of the book The Negro-boys. The blogs in question are personal blog pages that have been linked with a particular news story in the net-based version of Morgunblaðið, making these viewpoints likely to be widely heard. These personal blogs have then been responded to by various individuals, posting their personal comments on the same blog-page. Placed together these ‘texts’ give important statements of difference and gender within the Icelandic context.

Theorizing gender, race, and whiteness

Whiteness as a scholarly subject has, however, become extremely important across various disciplines and is studied from different angles (Fine, Weis, Pruitt, & Burns, 2004, p. ix). This theoretical trend can be seen as connected to the scholarly emphasis on turning the gaze not only towards those who have less power and are marginalized within society but also at those holding more powerful positions or status. Scholarly studies have in general had a tendency to focus less on those in power, as reflected in Peter Rigby’s critical comment that scholars need to pay attention to this discrepancy, and focused on the ‘culture of the rulers, rather than that of the ruled’ (1996, p. viii). Nirmal Puwar (2004), among others, has stressed how power rests with the normalization of certain bodies, their invisibility hiding how access to power within society is clustered along social variables. It is this invisibility, its deconstructing and decoding, which scholarly analysis must address. In my opinion, anthropology has been valuable in this regard in its classical tradition of what Vincent Crapanzano has called ‘defamiliarization’; that is, the self-distancing required to recognize social constructions and to ‘reevaluate our respective cultural presumptions’ (2003, p. 4). Feminist scholars from various disciplines have highlighted and made visible the relationship of power embedded in different relationships, predating in various respects the post-modernism emphasis on representation and power (Mascia-Lees & Sharpe, 2000; Moore, 1994). Importantly, feminist scholars have also shown that power is not singular and that individuals have different subject positions and identities. It is important to stress the situational character of power and to situate people as creative beings, resisting and manipulating various conditions, and who can thus simultaneously be oppressors and oppressed within certain structures of power (see also Loftsdóttir, 2004). Feminist analysis importantly acknowledged the gendered bias that was predominant in academic studies (Moore, 1988), but for the last few decades the focus has extended to men and women, the gendered constructions of men just as women, as well as the relationship between men and women. The analysis of gender as evolving simply around women does not challenge men’s normative position, stressing the importance of studying men and masculinities. Gender is both constructed socially and textually but also produced (Miescher & Lindsay, 2003, p. 7) through various encounters and interactions, locally and through multiplex translocal encounters. Nevertheless, there is still a tendency within masculinity studies to focus more on men who are perceived as marginal in some sense (Wright, 2005).

The emphasis placed by gender studies on identities as fluid and fractional also draws attention to the interrelationship between racism and sexism in society. Race is constituted as an important and meaningful social category, and as a source of identity, exclusion and domination. Scholars have disputed when to date the appearance of racism, some seeing it as primarily arising in the nineteenth century while others see its roots as much older (Stoler, 1995, pp. 27–28, 91; Isaac, 2004). Underlying these disputes are questions about how ‘racism’ is defined. Classifications based on skin color were certainly evident prior to the nineteenth century – but during that time the association of skin color with certain social variables was not as fixed as it became in the late nineteenth/early twentieth century. Also, going further back it is certain that even though we find negative references to dark skin color in medieval times (but also positive ones), human diversity in general was conceptualized in rather different ways from those which became evident later on (Loftsdóttir, 2006).

As studies of masculinity challenge the normative categorization of maleness, studies of whiteness can similarly be defined as explorations of how whiteness has been treated as a normative category, as if race had nothing to do with socially defined categories of whiteness. Frankenberg’s (1993) breakthrough study of white women’s identity emphasized how these women did not ‘see’ race as a part of their identity formation. Placing the spotlight on whiteness can help to demonstrate how certain groups – those defined as white – can benefit from such an apparently socially neutral category that creates various institutional arrangements that to whites seem to have no racial basis (Hartigan Jr., 1997, p. 496). Whiteness can thus be seen as including certain privileges where individuals can ‘afford’ to forget their own skin color and position of power (Loftsdóttir, 2003).

I...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction: In the name of Europe
• Part I: Outbound: geographical margins, historical cores
• Part II: Deconstructing Europe: conviviality and invisibility
• Workings of whiteness: interview with Vron Ware
• Index