Race Matters in Intersectional Feminisms

TY - JOUR

T1 - Race Matters in Intersectional Feminisms

AU - Hvenegård-Lassen, Kirsten

AU - Staunæs, Dorthe

PY - 2020/7

Y1 - 2020/7

N2 - 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 deeply enmeshed in continuous circulations of racialised economies. In doing so, we also take up the challenge posed by mainly from US-based intersectionality scholars that European feminism white washes intersectionality. Working with and around the video-installation Black magic at the White House by the artist Jeanette Ehlers with a parental background in Denmark and Trinidad, we hold on to the particularities of racialisation processes in the Nordic context. Ehlers’ installation beautifully catches both the reiterated Danish amnesia of the expenses of past and present wealth and the ephemerality that characterizes the emergence and circulation of racialised economies in contemporary Danish/Nordic spaces. In addition, we engage with two US black 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 a road to world intersectionality differently than the dominant association with standpoint theory.

AB - 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 deeply enmeshed in continuous circulations of racialised economies. In doing so, we also take up the challenge posed by mainly from US-based intersectionality scholars that European feminism white washes intersectionality. Working with and around the video-installation Black magic at the White House by the artist Jeanette Ehlers with a parental background in Denmark and Trinidad, we hold on to the particularities of racialisation processes in the Nordic context. Ehlers’ installation beautifully catches both the reiterated Danish amnesia of the expenses of past and present wealth and the ephemerality that characterizes the emergence and circulation of racialised economies in contemporary Danish/Nordic spaces. In addition, we engage with two US black 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 a road to world intersectionality differently than the dominant association with standpoint theory.

U2 - 10.1080/08038740.2020.1758206

DO - 10.1080/08038740.2020.1758206

M3 - Journal article

SN - 0803-8740

VL - 28

SP - 224

EP - 236

JO - NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research

JF - NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research

IS - 3

ER -