A Decolonial View

By students in the Colonial and Postcolonial Master

A visit to the Gothenburg Book Fair – celebrity cultural capital and the power to speak back

2026-01-15

By: Serena Fedeli

Disclaimer: this post is intended as a recollection of personal experiences following a university seminar and two interviews which I attended. I will relate them along with some excerpts which I have noted down by hand, and which therefore should be taken for what they are: loose quotations. In what follows, you will see authors, discussions and even scholarship through my eyes. 

A few weeks ago, I attended the annual Gothenburg book fair, an event which gathered almost 100 000 visitors this year. I was interested in particular in listening to two interviews with two Nigerian authors, which I wished to observe and compare. The idea came from a discussion from a seminar that I attended recently, in which the guest lecturer, dr. Doseline Kiguru, discussed African celebrity writers and canon formation, as well as the idea of ‘poverty/trauma-porn’. According to my understanding of Kiguru’s arguments, there is in fact a connection between contemporary African fields of literary production, canon formation and capital circulation which should not be overlooked. In short, Kiguru’s analysis, building on Bourdieusian notions of cultural capital, places the literary text within a framework of production, to bring forth the interlocking mechanisms that exist between cultural/literary capital value and circulation, and canon formation (see Kiguru 2016 for more on this topic). A common denominator between the two texts read to prepare for the seminar was the figure of the celebrity African writer, often a winner of prestigious literary prizes, who embodies in their public persona the accruement of social and cultural value, and therefore power, in Bourdieusian terms (see Kiguru, 2022 for the figure of the celebrity writer). Moreover, during the seminar, we had the chance to observe the features of the short stories which, throughout the years, won the Caine Prize for African Writing, finding a blatant similarity amongst them all: the common topic of poverty, trauma and sufferance. With these in mind, I headed to the Gothenburg book fair, to listen to two award-winner Nigerian writers —Chigozie Obioma and Chimamanda Adichie— and observe if and how their ‘celebrity power’, so to speak, played out in the interviews. The experience did not disappoint.  

Figure 1: The large crowd at the Gothenburg Book Fair 2025 

The first interview I attended was with Chigozie Obioma, about— supposedly— his latest novel The Road to the Country, which, admittedly, I am yet to read (I will!). I hope Obioma will not get offended if I state that he is not quite the same celebrity as Chimamanda Adichie, though her popularity is truly hard to beat, but more on that later. Even though his words might not have been associated with fashion shows and Hollywood stars like Adichie’s, Obioma is still a well-established writer, with a bunch of prestigious achievements under his belt. In 2015 alone he was named one of the ‘100 global thinkers’ by Foreign Policy magazine and called ‘the heir to Chinua Achebe’ by The New York Times, which is, arguably, quite impressive. Moreover, he served as a judge for the Booker Prize, and he is a distinguished professor of English at the university of Georgia, which, to me, means that he knows a thing or two. Nonetheless, the Gothenburg book fair did not consider that he would gather such a crowd, and in fact the interview took place in a rather small room.  

Figure 2: Chigozie Obioma 

Interestingly, the interviewer (a journalist) set the tone for the whole conversation right from the first moment, contextualising the novel in the period of the Biafra war. A large chunk of the time was subsequently dedicated to asking the author about the formation of the Nigerian nation state, colonialism, and the arrival of the British. Despite this speedy lesson on colonial history, the interviewer at this point said again: “Though, really, the war is the centrepiece of the novel”. Obioma explained then that he believed some of the best stories to be those that deal with “a rebel without a cause, fighting against his own convictions”, and proceeded to illustrate what he saw as the most interesting features of his novel: the inner development of the main character, the deep bond he formed with the other soldiers, “the genuine attention and love for others”, “war as a refining tool for human identity”… in other words, showing that war is not to be monumentalised, and that such a tendency is part of a larger “Enlightenment project”. Yet, monumentalising is precisely what I understood the interviewer to be aiming at. At this point in fact, an interesting back-and-forth dynamic surfaced between interviewer and interviewed. On the one hand, the journalist who time and time again went back to real-life issues of war and trauma, such as the author’s research on the Biafra war, his meetings with veterans: “how much of it is based on real events?”. On the other, Obioma talking about African literature, the importance of the mystical in today’s life, and his attempt to “offer the metaphysical to open up questions in the reader’s mind”, insisting that veterans do not really talk much about the war. This exchange, which in the end was centred around real-life war, resulted in the author exclaiming: “I know you are all very pragmatic and rational, this is Sweden after all!”. Ok, I said to myself, should I take this as frustration? Nevertheless, this talk was all about the ‘trauma-porn’ we discussed with Kiguru, and I wondered if that could be due to the fact that the author did not embody enough power in his celebrity personhood to simply speak about whatever he wanted: cosmology, mysticism, identity, solidarity…cool stuff! Instead, he ended up feeding his Swedish audience a generous portion of trauma and sufferance so dear to the sympathetic Western reader. Admittedly, I was a bit frustrated by the predictable outcome, somewhat ashamed to embody the stereotypical Western reader myself and still rather curious to hear what the author could have said about his writing, if only he had been given the opportunity. Let’s move on. 

Next on my program was nothing less than celebrity-superstar writer Chimamanda Adichie. The Gothenburg book fair had organised her seminar in the biggest room they had, which holds 500 people. To give you an idea, after queuing for 45 minutes I got nervous that I would not manage to get in! If you are not familiar with Adichie (aren’t you though?!), she is exceptionally famous, she won more prizes than I can list here, she spoke with Michelle Obama, Kamala Harris, Robert De Niro among many others, she collaborated with Beyoncé, Dua Lipa and the Met Gala designers, her Ted Talk words were printed on Dior’s clothes …in short, celebrity capital through the roof. I must admit, I was not immune to her charm, this became clear to me right away. I even forgave her for arriving almost 40 minutes late, in true celebrity style. I liked her right away, when she said that the first thing she thinks about when she finds out that she has won an award, is what she is going to wear; this small detail, I thought, served the purpose of instantly connecting her to her audience: she is one of us in some ways, but with an added wow-factor that makes her different from us…she has a stylist, after all!  

This talk was surprising. Adichie received the 2025 Mermaid Award, and was interviewed during the ceremony by author Agri Ismaïl. The dynamic between the two was very different than in Obioma’s interview, not because of the interviewer, I would say, but because Adichie stirred the conversation from the beginning. In fact, Ismaïl started by talking of Adichie’s supposed postcolonial identity, but she replied that she is “not nostalgic of pre-colonial West Africa”, and when asked about her intention to move from a postcolonial to a post-postcolonial narrative she asserted that the African writer always gets asked about postcolonialism, but she wants to talk about those same “universal feelings that drive Western classics”, insisting that formerly colonized people do not think of themselves as postcolonial subjects all the time and —drum roll— that people read novels from the global south as anthropology, while literature is universally human; therefore, she does not want “to see her characters framed as representatives of Nigeria’s postcolonial identity”. At this point, Ismaïl was literally forced to change the trajectory of his interview (which he did, with a few bumps, rather well).  

Figure 3: Chimamanda Adichie receiving the Mermaid Award 

It was really clear to me as a spectator that Adichie from this point on stirred the conversation towards what she wanted to talk about: the evolution of her characters, her relationship to them and how this relationship registers in the narrative’s form in terms of first- or third-person narration, for example. Nonetheless, the speaker tried again to discuss some more ‘postcolonialism’ and brought up literary historian and critic Franco Moretti and the idea of the novel as the prime cultural artifact of the European Bourgeoisie. He asked: “doesn’t the form itself force you to conform to something that doesn’t really represent non-Western realities?”. To which Adichie replied that “the novel has become African because Africans have written it” and reiterated, once again, that belonging to a formerly colonized country should not define everything that the African writer does, including when it comes to the use of the English language: “Igbo is mine and English is also mine. Can we just move on?!”. Towards the end of the interview, the conversation acquired a somewhat political tone, as Ismaïl asked Adichie for some advice to those in the U.S, “living their first dictatorship”. According to Adichie, who has herself been living in the U.S for decades, people in America should remember that their country has a long history of imposing dictatorships to others, so they should “suck it up”. The end, long applause. Wow, I was truly mesmerized not only by her words, but also by her wittiness and audacity, her presence and power.  

Figure 4: Chimamanda Adichie signing my copy of her latest book 

To sum up my considerations of this experience then, I think that not only do we, Western readers, still seem to have a very soft spot for ‘poverty-porn’, a need to feel sympathetic towards the so-called Global South, even when it comes to fictional representations of it; that this, in simple words, is still what sells. But also, I got to observe the very evident connection between celebrity status and ‘power’, and how the writer who has been canonized through recognitions and international literary awards, accrues enough symbolic and economic power that can be used to support and/oroppose other matters and causes which depart from the literary industry and expand to larger cultural, social and political issues. Essentially, the subaltern can speak, in Spivak’s words, but only when she is a superstar.  

Further readings 

Kiguru, Doseline. 2016. “Literary Prizes, Writers’ Organisations and Canon Formation in Africa”, African Studies 75:2, pp. 202–214. 

Kiguru, Doseline. 2022. “Contemporary African literature and celebrity capital”, in African Literatures as World Literature, edited by: Alexander Fyfe & Krishnan Madhu, New York: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 189–211. 

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 2001. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” In Imperialism, edited by Mark Harrison and Peter J. Cain, 171–219. 1st ed. London: Routledge. 

A Refugee – Displacement through the Lense of Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

By: Serena Fedeli

“Weights of Whispers” is a short story by Kenyan author Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor which won the prestigious Caine Prize for African writing in 2003. It is a short story that feels, well… long: it is slow, complex and intense. The first time I read it, these features confused me: shouldn’t a short story be immediate and, I guess, short? Moreover, I thought, can one really describe the experience of genocide in a short, limited space? It is, however, the story’s intricate complexity that captivates the reader and makes it impossible to let go of it. In what follows, I wish to highlight some of the ways in which Owuor’s skilful writing delivers the convoluted and multifarious experience of genocide in a brief novella, guiding the reader into, somehow, making sense of it. This story is set in Kenya and follows the experience of displacement and decline of Rwandan prince Boniface Louis R. Kuseremane and his aristocratic family, following the Rwandan genocide and their consequent exile to Nairobi: “The sum total of what resides in a very tall man who used to be a prince in a land eviscerated” (2). While it fictionalises a real event, the story is able to make it believable, I would argue, by approaching genocide from the perspective of the individual, and by narrating it in first person; that is, this story brings the reader close to the experiential level: it guides the reader into feeling a genocide, rather than just simply learning about it. 

It all begins as Kuseramane and his family are forced to escape Rwanda following the assassination of two presidents, for which Kuseremane ends, somehow, on a “ a list of génocidaires” (14). Along with his fiancé, mother and sister, he flees to Kenya with their belongings stuffed in exclusive Chanel suitcases, on four of “the last eight seats on the last flight out of [their] city. [They] assumed then, it was only right that it be so” (5), as if they deserved those seats somehow, given their status. In Nairobi, they check into a suite at the Hilton. Money is running low, both Kuseremane and the reader are well aware of it. It becomes clear to him that they will not be able to sustain their exclusive lifestyle for much longer. They are ultimately forced to flee the hotel in secret, aristocrats turned common thieves, without paying their bills; they leave the Chanel bags behind at least, since “they are good for at least US $1500. Agnethe-mama is sure the hotel will understand” (13). From that point on, life takes a very unfamiliar turn; it takes a while, for Kuseremane —the prince— to understand his new status, for, he states, “The Kuseremanes are not refugees. They are visitors, tourists, people in transit, universal citizens with an affinity…well…to Europe” (9). However, he will soon find out, to seek asylum is not to be a citizen of the world, it is, actually, to go from being a someone, to becoming dehumanised, all the same, a mass of people with no country and no name: “all eyes, hands and mouths, grasping and feeding off graciousness” (14). In one of the very many queues for visas and permits which he is forced to join, Kuseremane observes “Like the eminent-looking man in a pin-striped suit, I am now a beggar” (12), the fact that he is a diplomat and a prince is totally irrelevant. The visa application process proves to be literally impossible, for it must be done in one’s own country, and Kuseremane’s country is…well, even Kuseremane himself does not know what is left of his country at this point (11). He spirals more and more into anguish and fear, unsure of whether to give up or resist; he becomes too afraid to voice his terror to his family: “it is simpler to be silent” (9), to believe that the tears that wet his pillow in the morning are not his (13). Who is he, anyways? “Kuseremane, Kuseremane, Kuseremane” (13) he repeats, more for the sake of reminding himself than anything else, for nobody around him seems to remember him, even though they knew him well when he was a someone. He could be an “expatriate’ and therefore desirable” (27) back then, while now he is an “illegal alien” (24), a “pariah” (27) in exile, a nobody, whose humanity is rapidly fading before his very eyes. In his new condition, his identity needs to be suppressed: “Camouflage… place dictates form. […] The first lesson of exile – camouflage. When is a log…not a log? When a name is not a name” (30-31). 

Owuor is skilfully able to draw parallels between the character of Kuseremane and the figure of the Jew, without, however, universalising this experience in a way that would risk further degrading of the human behind it. In other words, the author uses the idea of the Jew as a trope, to challenge the reader’s ethical standpoint. Through Kuseremane we are uncomfortably reminded, once again, that “the zenith of existence cannot be human” (Owuor, 3), for “nobody wants to know that contemporary history has created a new kind of human beings” (Arendt, 111) with no rights left but human rights, as Hanna Arendt once wrote in her well-known text “We Refugees”. Arendt writes that to be a refugee is to be stripped of all humanity, but what are human rights good for, when humanity fails to see you as a human? Refugees do not want to be called ‘refugees’, they do all they can to prove themselves and others that they are “just ordinary immigrants” (110). Refugees, according to Arendt, have not only lost their home; they lost their language, their jobs, and their identity is now dismembered (110).

Kuseremane, the refugee prince—the genocidal prince perhaps— is not a Jew, yet he is not spared from this condition. However, the reader’s ethics are challenged here: we are unsure whether to see him as ‘the Jew’ or ‘the Nazi’, as some scattered textual elements reveal. His lack of tact and human empathy in meeting an academic whom he asks, bluntly, “are you a Jew?”, causing the man to cry, then simply walking away “unable to tolerate the tears of another man” (3).  Moreover, Kuseremane is often depicted wearing a Hugo Boss coat (15), a designer notably known for having made his fortune by creating uniforms for the Nazi government in the 1930s. In this way, “Weight of Whispers” arguably succeeds in making an ethical intervention; that is, Owuor uses tropes such as these historical references to place the reader in relation to the subject it engages with; not only in making us understand genocide from an experiential level, but also urging us to take an ethical stand, questioning ourselves, and in so doing making sense of things from an ethical perspective as well. The whole idea of Nazi Germany is, thus, encapsulated and crystallized in a Hugo Boss suit. Even those who might struggle with historical references (those for whom ‘the past is another country’, as someone once said), are given the opportunity to question their ethical point of view through, for instance, the questionable role of the UNHCR in Kuseremane’s process of asylum seeking. Indeed, what are human rights good for, when even the UN office for the protection of refugees requires a 200$ bribe to decide who gets to enter their offices? (22) And even then, when leaving depends on whether or not you are willing to ‘cooperate’, “by agreeing to be examined […] by the officials at their homes for a night.” (34)? Kuseramane is powerless, he can do nothing but watch (35). 

The story’s ambiguous end left me wondering if its protagonist will end up committing suicide —the ultimate identity erasure—again, echoing Arendt (112-113). But, much more importantly, the story ends leaving me uneasy, having to grapple with the experience of exile. Thus, this is not just a matter of first-person narrative. It is about the much larger question of first-person engagement in the real-life displacement of millions of people. This story demands that we —you and I— remember that according to the UNHCR’s latest report there are over 122 million forcibly displaced people in the world, real people, that is. Perhaps Owuor would argue that very many more might never reach the UNHCR at all. Albeit fictional, this story shakes our moral grounds, and urges us to keep seeing the human behind the figure of the Refugee. “Photographer, do you see us at all?” (Owuor, 32).

Further reading: 

Arendt, Hanna. “We Refugees”. Altogether Elsewhere: Writers in Exile. edited by Marc Robinson. Faber and Faber, 1994, pp. 110-19. Originally published in 1943.

Owuor , Yvonne Adhiambo. “Weight of Whispers”. Nairobi. Kwani Trust, 2003

UNHCR. “Press Releases, 12 June 2025. https://www.unhcr.org/news/press-releases/number-people-uprooted-war-shocking-decade-high-levels-unhcr  

Wikipedia. “Hugo Boss”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Boss

Genocide of Herero and Nama

2025-03-27

By Dimitris Diamantis

In the 19th century, conquering colonies was an indicator of power for European states. As a newly established state, Germany was slow to enter the colonial struggle, by the mid-1880s they became interested in acquiring colonies in Africa in an attempt to compete with established colonialists like Great Britain and France[i]. One of the colonies they acquired was in Southwest Africa, today’s Namibia. The main goal of Germany was settling the area where the Herero and Nama indigenous tribes lived. However, the tribes resisted the occupation[ii] and despite the resistance German settlers took control of a quarter of the region and planned to develop a railway line that would further divide the region in two.

The resistance of the indigenous population hurt the ego of Germany and strength of their military apparatus– the German forces resorted to extensive use of violence against the indigenous population to maintain their supremacy at all costs.[iii]They showed vengeful behavior against their enemies by killing women and children, going so far as poisoning the course of water to force them to die of thirst. Sadly, the fate of the survivors was bleak since they constituted the slave labor in the cities of German settlers in Africa[iv]. As a result, in the three years 1904-7, a robust population of 80.000 Hereros’ turned into a starving populous of 15,000[v]. The consequences of the Herero and Nama Genocide had such an impact on the German political scene that it resulted in the dissolution of parliament on the 13th of December 1906 after the calling of elections prompted by the Center Party’s rejection of a request for 29 million marks in supplementary funding for the expedition in Southwest Africa[vi]. So, it is unsurprising that Germany’s colonial policy (Weltpolitik) was the main issue[vii] in the political conflict between the two parties. On the one hand, the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD)  argued for the unprofitability of colonial expenses[viii]. On the other hand, it created a political alliance that supported German colonial policy that won the election. Notably, the Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft (DKG)[ix] used cinema as a propaganda medium to show the suffering and privation of German soldiers during the Herero War[x].

The colonial alliance drew their arguments from social Darwinism[xi] in order to justify their policy and the genocide. The phrases “non-human” and “bloodthirsty beast”[xii] were evidence that the Herero rebellion and Nama resistance were not the only factors in which German forces used such extensive violence and how racism and European superiority motivated their actions.

The line of racist reasoning allowed proponents of the genocide to present the actions of the German forces as a response to the crimes committed by the indigenous populations by targeting European civilization[xiii]. The Germans resorted to a common practice of presenting themselves as defenseless[xiv] in order to be able to justify the atrocities they committed against the Herero and Nama. A typical example of how the German settlers portrayed the situation in the colonies was that they believed the surviving indigenous were a danger to them, when in fact the German authorities were oppressing the Herero and Nama[xv] leaving them to live in miserable conditions.

[i] Norman M. Naimark, Genocide: A World History, The New Oxford World History (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2017). P. 66.

[ii] Ben Kiernan, Blood and Soil: A World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007). P. 381.

[iii] Kiernan. P. 382.

[iv] Kiernan. P. 385.

[v] Naimark, Genocide. P. 68.

[vi] John Phillip Short, Magic Lantern Empire: Colonialism and Society in Germany (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012). P. 135

[vii] Wolfgang Fuhrmann, Imperial Projections: Screening the German Colonies, First paperback edition, Film Europa, Vol. 17 (New York Oxford: Berghahn, 2017). P. 83.

[viii] Short, Magic Lantern Empire. Pp. 136-7.

[ix] Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft (German Colonial Society)

[x] Fuhrmann, Imperial Projections. P. 86.

[xi] Naimark, Genocide. P. 64.

[xii] Short, Magic Lantern Empire. Pp. 133-4.

[xiii] Kiernan, Blood and Soil. P. 388.

[xiv] Donald Bloxham and A. Dirk Moses, eds., The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies, Oxford Handbooks in History (Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press, 2010). P. 105.

[xv] Kiernan, Blood and Soil. P. 389.

Mythical Casus Belli

2024-01-26

Ejner Pedersen Trenter

The Westphalian state system is very much alive and kicking, at least as a meta-theoretical lens through which we observe the world. However, and here I quote one of Marx’s perhaps most famous lines ‘The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.’ Is this not also the foundation upon which the very idea of decolonisation rests? Not just to observe the effects on colonialism in a postcolonial society, to actively decolonise it! In a sense this is an ongoing academical debate, and to anyone who follows it, it is clearly a heated debate. However, as I write this, there is philosophical current which has been incredibly efficient in not just describing the political world, but to shape it through discursive means. It is the state-oriented Realist school within International Relations.

Allegory of the Peace of Westphalia, by Jacob Jordaens from Wikipedia

The idea that the state-system is one of constant, and often deadly, competition is an old one which rests on centuries of Enlightenment ideals of rationality. It has reigned supreme in its ideologically hegemonic position for so long that we even call it ‘realism’, for they do after all call it the way they see it. And what they see in today’s international system, is a return to the old idea of power-balance and the threat of war. I am of course referring to both Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing genocide in Gaza. While no school of thought can change the atrocities taking place, the way in which they become codified and articulated by international actors do very much shape the way in which actions become legitimised. I will briefly look at two cases of perceived justifications of violence.

Firstly, the invasion of Ukraine in 2021 greatly helped the former realist concept of balance-of-power to re-enter the mainstream discourse, both in academic terms but also in general media coverage. Consider the way in which NATO has become one of the main political topics of discussion in Europe, and especially Sweden. According to NOVUS which conducts regular surveys on political opinion in Sweden, the support for NATO has increased drastically, with a record of 54% for joining the military alliance and 23% against, measured in May 2022 (Novus, 2022). At the time of writing, the Turkish parliament has voted for Swedish membership, while Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, the last remaining obstacle, expected to do the same.

What does this mean? Well, Orbán, who’s no stranger to bellicose rhetoric, is also one of the few European leaders to maintain a relatively good relation with Russia after the invasion, raising questions of whether the obstruction in the Swedish NATO-matter is a political game (The Guardian, 2024). As has been covered in literature, Orbán’s discourse is often based on the notion of an ethnic Hungarian state which is under threat from a Muslim ‘invasion’ (Kovacs, 2020; Washington Post, 2015). So while the political (Westphalian, if you will) principal of self-defence is applied with regards to Sweden, there is also speculation about whether this is just power-politics and stone-cold state diplomacy. Of course, that would fit very well into the Enlightenment rationale which permeates the international state system based on the ‘realist’ school of thought.

On the other hand, the same rationale, albeit with a twist, is applied to Israel’s invasion of Gaza. Amidst heated UN debate on how to end the ongoing ‘conflict’, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres stressed the importance for a two-state solution, while US spokesperson ‘emphasized Hamas’ role in unleashing the conflict’ (UN, 2024). By now, the utter destruction of Gaza has been widely reported and many call for, if not ceasefire, at least precaution on Israel’s part to avoid humanitarian casualties. What is rarely questioned, however, is the reason for invasion. It is accepted as politically legitimate in a Westphalian state-system, to defend one’s borders. Despite occupying Gaza since 1948, Israel’s response to the October 7 attack is legitimate insofar as it corresponds to a Westphalian rational reaction to transgression of state sovereignty. That the invasion descended into what is widely recognised as genocide is not the important issue here (however harsh that may sound). The issue is that the ontological state-system with ingrained rights and responsibilities is allowed to invade from the very beginning. The October 7 attack is condemned by international actors on almost every level, and so is the horrors perpetrated by Israel, with the difference that the initial invasion by the latter is justified.

Sweden, who’s neutrality as served as a cornerstone of its international identity, now stands to join as a fully-fledged member of NATO. The decision to do so was made on rational grounds, as part of a larger geopolitical logic, in which states seek to protect themselves. Like Sweden, Israel’s to invade Gaza was a fully rational one, after all, their sovereignty was under attack. However, the decision to attack Israel by Hamas is repeatedly seen as an act of terror. Hamas is, in other words, an Other to the state system itself, an actor external but contingent to it. It serves as the irrational Other which, through its difference points to what is rational.

 My aim is not to debate what constitutes acts of ‘legitimate state violence’ and ‘acts of terror’, but to hint at the link between the difference between the two being linked to the production of knowledge attributed to a ‘realist’ school of thought within academia. What scholars have called the meta-theoretical myth of Westphalia which has permeated IR discourse since the field’s conception continues to define the legitimacy of casus belli, well beyond the borders of Europe itself.

Bibliography:

Kovács, K (2020) ‘People, sovereignty and citizenship: the ethnonational populists’ constitutional vocabulary’ Statelessness & Citizenship Review, (2:2), p. 389-394

Novus (2022) ‘Majoritet för NATO’, Novus https://novus.se/egnaundersokningar-arkiv/majoritet-for-nato/ 
[Last Accessed: 25-01-2024]

The Guardian (2024) ‘Orbán reaffirms backing for Swedish Nato bid as allies’ patience runs Low’ The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/24/orban-reaffirms-backing-for-swedish-nato-bid-as-allies-patience-runs-low  https://press.un.org/en/2024/sc15569.doc.htm      
[Last Accessed: 25-01-2024]

UN (2024) ‘Secretary-General Underscores Two-State Solution Only Way to End Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, One-State Formula Inconceivable, in Day-Long Debate’, United Nations Meetings Coverage and Press Release https://press.un.org/en/2024/sc15569.doc.htm      
[Last Accessed: 25-01-2024]

Washington Post (2015) ‘Hungary’s Orbán invokes Ottoman invasion to justify keeping refugees out’, Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/09/04/hungarys-orban-invokes-ottoman-invasion-to-justify-keeping-refugees-out/  
[Last Accessed: 25-01-2024]

National culture canon in Sweden as a “unifying force” in a “polarized” society

2022-12-06

On September 11 this year, Sweden had a general election to the national parliament (Riksdagen), the 21 regional councils and the 290 municipal councils. The right-wing coalition between the Sweden Democrats, the Moderate Party, the Christian Democrats, and the Liberal Party obtained a majority in the Riksdag, leading to Ulf Kristersson as new Prime Minister and a new government in Sweden in October 18 (based on the Tidö agreement, which was presented on a press conference in October 14).

One of the new ministers in Kristersson’s cabinet was the relatively unknown Parisa Liljestrand, former municipal councilor in Vallentuna between 2018-2022, as Minister of Culture.

Parisa Liljestrand, the Minister of Culture in Sweden.Photo: Ninni Andersson/Government Office

Parisa Liljestrand, the Minister of Culture in Sweden.
Photo: Ninni Andersson/Government Office

One of her tasks will be to appoint an “independent expert committee” with the aim of developing proposals for a Swedish cultural canon, in accordance with the Tidö agreement. Nevertheless, nowhere in the text of the Tidö agreement does it say what Sweden should have such a cultural canon for. The inspiration is though said to come from the Danish model, which since 2006 has introduced a national cultural canon. However, one of the key arguments, according to an interview with Liljestrand in SVT, is that culture could become a “unifying force” in a “polarized” society.

Among scholars and intellectuals, this is a highly controversial statement that engages. In Sweden, there has been a long-standing tradition of the principle of keeping politics at arm’s length from culture, which means that politics can create basic conditions for culture to be brought to life (for example through budgets and legislation), but not get directly involved in the culture’s content. The proposal to introduce a national cultural canon breaks with this tradition.

As a student of postcolonial studies, I find the “unifying force” argument not only deeply problematic but also suspect, downright unpleasant. Constructing a national cultural canon rather contributes to hiding the societal conflicts and contradictions that art in its various forms aims to make observable. That in turn contributes to the risk of maintaining a false notion of an united “we” as well as an artificial consensus about Sweden. To put a label on an individual profile and let that person be presented as representative of that label is to take an interpretive priority over their artistic efforts. Would, for example, August Strindberg, Karin Boye, and Vilhelm Moberg appreciate being part of such a national canon? That is not certain. Would artists like Lars Vilks and Elisabeth Ohlson Wallin contribute to a desirable “unifying force”? That is extremely doubtful. In any way, the political canonization had meant that all their works would have been read/seen in a completely new context. In other words, it means that politics in practice seizes artistic works.

Regardless of what the “expert committee” presents for works to might be included in this canon, there are no objective measures of quality. Valuation and taste regarding cultural expressions is always subjective. Moreover, the inclusion of some in a culture canonization implies that others will be excluded, which can definitely be analyzed from postcolonial perspectives.

Something that even becomes more worrying is that Culture Minister Parisa Liljestrand does not exclude the idea of letting knowledge of the cultural canon be used in citizenship tests for immigrants. The same demand does not seem to apply to Swedish citizens. This means that Swedes can move freely with their lack of knowledge about famous cultural figures, while immigrants can be denied citizenship if they have a lack of knowledge about the same famous cultural figures. This discriminatory approach creates an “us” and a “them”.

With the background of the above-mentioned critical objections in mind, what remains as the real reasons for establishing a national cultural canon? It is probably one of many concessions to the Sweden Democrats from the Moderate Party, the Christian Democrats and the Liberal Party. The Sweden Democrats are a political party with ideological roots in Nazism, who addresses their ideology in all substantive political areas. A cultural canon is thus a far-reaching ideological project with nationalist overtones, which aims to win the struggle over historiography and thereby define “Swedishness”. At the end of the day, it is about defining who “we” are and what “we” are not.

Before I finish this text, I would like to quote the Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: “A great writer is, one might say, the second government of his country. And therefore no regime has ever loved great writers, only the less important ones.”

 

Filip Hallbäck

Nya kulturministern Parisa Liljestrand (M): ”Kulturkanon kan vara en enande kraft” | SVT Nyheter (2022-11-23)

Who’s afraid of speaking about Elizabeth II’s colonial legacy?

2022-09-26

Royalty - Queen Elizabeth II Visit to Jamaica - Kingston

Troops parade for Queen Elizabeth II as she arrives in Kingston. The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh arrived in Jamaica at the start of a three-day Golden Jubilee visit. (Photo by PA Images via Getty Images)

On September 8, Queen Elizabeth II of United Kingdom died at the age of 96. She reigned longer than anyone else in British history, from 1952 until her death (which is 70 years). She was Head of the Commonwealth, Supreme Governor of the Church of England, and head of state not only in Great Britain, but also in 14 other countries that are part of the Commonwealth realm (including Australia, New Zealand, Jamaica, Grenada, and Canada).

The news of her passing caused grief among many in the Western world for Britain’s regent, but it has also sparked debate about permissions for discussions of the system of which the Queen was a part and its legacy of colonialism. The resulting debate has been about whether the colonized are allowed to speak about their colonizers’ abuses, at the time of the colonizer’s death. If yes, can it be considered ethically and morally right to do so? If no, then when is it ever the right time to discuss the colonizer’s abuse?

For many in the countries that have been and/or are still part of the Commonwealth realm, the British monarchy is strongly associated with colonial violence, oppression, and murder. For example, Uju Anya (who is an associate professor of second language acquisition at Carnegie Mellon University) tweeted the following:

“If anyone expects me to express anything but disdain for the monarch who supervised a government that sponsored the genocide that massacred and displaced half my family and the consequences of which those alive today are still trying to overcome, you can keep wishing upon a star,”[1]

Another voice, Zoé Samudzi, a Zimbabwean American assistant professor of photography at the Rhode Island School of Design, tweeted:

“As the first generation of my family not born in a British colony, I would dance on the graves of every member of the royal family if given the opportunity, especially hers.”[2]

Even when Elizabeth II was alive, she was subject to colonial presence. Indigenous senator Lidia Thorpe was due to repeat the oath of allegiance to members of Australia’s parliament at the beginning of August this year. During the repeat, she raised her fist in the air and called the Queen a “colonizer”.[3]

From a Swedish perspective, my experience is that the traditional media coverage here of Queen Elizabeth II has been relatively one-sided. Often one uncritical perspective is raised, and it is about the Queen’s leadership of her institution. How she has dealt with “difficult” situations. She is often portrayed as an innocent matriarch with style, class, and a sense of duty, when in fact she in other parts of the world is seen as an active participant in the preservation of British colonialism. The wealth of the British Royal House, for instance, is largely plundered from the resources of colonizing countries worldwide.

Perhaps Swedish media are influenced by the dramaturgy of popular cultural productions, for example the Netflix series The Crown. Perhaps because Great Britain never in history attacked Sweden militarily? Or perhaps the monarchy in Sweden, as in Great Britain, is seen as a fundamental part of the national identity? Perhaps this is yet another clear example of what is commonly referred to as “white innocence” (in this context, meaning that justifying colonial actions by establishing the notion that the colonizers and their heirs meant no harm). Perhaps this constitutes a school example of the need and relevance for a decolonizing look at media reporting? To paraphrase the title of Edward Albee’s most famous play: Who’s afraid of speaking about Elizabeth II’s colonial legacy?

Unfortunately, I am not sure. What I do know, however, is that one of the Swedish public service media’s most important tasks is comprehensive reporting. That means you must zoom out, watch the whole picture, and dare to see its complexity. In this case, it is about including the voices that live with the aftermath of British colonialism. Inconvenient as it may be for the white, Western majority population, this needs to be told. As for now, these voices are found almost exclusively on social media.

Filip Hallbäck

 

[1] https://twitter.com/UjuAnya/status/1567933661114429441?cxt=HHwWgsDT4fDWtcIrAAAA (2022-09-11)

[2] https://twitter.com/ztsamudzi/status/1567888385347297281?cxt=HHwWgoCxgb6LocIrAAAA (2022-09-11)

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/aug/01/australian-greens-senator-lidia-thorpe-calls-queen-coloniser-while-being-sworn-into-parliament (2022-09-11)