Elefanten i (bede)rummet. Raciale forsvindingsnumre, stemningspolitik og idiomatisk diffraktion

TY - JOUR

T1 - Elefanten i (bede)rummet. Raciale forsvindingsnumre, stemningspolitik og idiomatisk diffraktion

AU - Hvenegaard-Lassen, Kirsten

AU - Staunæs, Dorthe

PY - 2019

Y1 - 2019

N2 - The elephant in the (prayer)room. Racial disappearance acts, mood politics and idiomatic diffraction. The elephant in the room is an idiom which hints towards a particular atmosphere or ‘collective mood’ (Anderson, 2016). Everyone knows the elephant is there, but they ignore it. Elephants in rooms are thus about social taboos that are highly affectively charged. In this paper, we are grappling with disappearance acts related to race and racialization. How race is simultaneously ‘here and not here’, ‘there and not there’ in organizational policies and practices preoccupied with governing diversity. Using a recent heated debate over ‘prayerrooms’ in educational institutions (and focusing on the University of Copenhagen), our aim is to contribute to the building of a diffractive methodology that is sensitive towards race and racialization. This may open up a space from where light may be searched for in the shadows (Barad, 2010). We send the elephant into the prayerroom. Reading diffractively through that idiom implies that we follow and affirm tendencies and movements in the empirical material, while it is ‘broken apart and cut together’. In this sense, it is an affirmative, however critical methodology.

AB - The elephant in the (prayer)room. Racial disappearance acts, mood politics and idiomatic diffraction. The elephant in the room is an idiom which hints towards a particular atmosphere or ‘collective mood’ (Anderson, 2016). Everyone knows the elephant is there, but they ignore it. Elephants in rooms are thus about social taboos that are highly affectively charged. In this paper, we are grappling with disappearance acts related to race and racialization. How race is simultaneously ‘here and not here’, ‘there and not there’ in organizational policies and practices preoccupied with governing diversity. Using a recent heated debate over ‘prayerrooms’ in educational institutions (and focusing on the University of Copenhagen), our aim is to contribute to the building of a diffractive methodology that is sensitive towards race and racialization. This may open up a space from where light may be searched for in the shadows (Barad, 2010). We send the elephant into the prayerroom. Reading diffractively through that idiom implies that we follow and affirm tendencies and movements in the empirical material, while it is ‘broken apart and cut together’. In this sense, it is an affirmative, however critical methodology.

KW - Videregående uddannelse

KW - Etnicitet

U2 - 10.7146/kkf.v28i1-2.116116

DO - 10.7146/kkf.v28i1-2.116116

M3 - Tidsskriftartikel

SN - 0907-6182

SP - 44

EP - 57

JO - Kvinder, Køn & Forskning

JF - Kvinder, Køn & Forskning

IS - 1-2

ER -