Unashamed Citizenship: Activist Voices in Scandinavia

Abstract

The Scandinavian countries have a reputation of being happy, egalitarian, and progressive. They have topped the United Nations’ world-happiness rankings since they were first compiled and published in 2012; they are among the most gender equal countries in the world; they are also among the most democratic nations in the world. Measures of well-functioning democracies include politically engaged citizens who vote and “play fair” as well as “an emphasis on preserving civil liberties and personal freedoms of both the majority and minorities” (ibid.) However, despite the countries’ good reputation and high international rankings, minoritized people in Scandinavia continually have to fight against racism as well as gender-based prejudice. An article on institutional racism in the Nordic countries in the Harvard Political Review recently maintained that the Nordic countries are the happiest and the most racist in the EU, with Finland in particular scoring high on discrimination based on “ethnic or immigrant background” (Kataja, 2020). The illusion of Nordic exceptionalism must be broken, and “those who do not have to experience racism themselves must try to consider how others experience it,” Finnish politician Vesa Puuronen urges. There are various ways of communicating the experience of racism, oppression, exclusion, and minoritization. This Special Issue on Unashamed Citizenship: Activist Voices in Scandinavia explores contemporary Scandinavian feminists raising their voices against racism as they experience harassment and exclusion due to immigrant or indigenous Sámi backgrounds. These are counter-narratives and alternative scripts negating the official story of the countries being just, democratic, and non-racist. They seek to change both majority and minority opinion, attitudes, and behaviour, whether they be written from the position of diaspora groups such as the Norwegian Pakistanis or by and about indigenous groups such as the Sámi. The material in focus in this special issue is first and foremost literature considered in various ways as literary activism. This literature constitutes a particularly salient form of communication, allowing for in-depth reflection and emotional involvement on the part of the author as well as the reader, with genres ranging from non-fictional autobiographies, testimonials, memoirs and essays, to fictionalized forms such as the novel. The texts can furthermore be more or less poetic, including conceptual poetry. While expressing the voice of an individual author at a particular time and place, they always function in a greater context of collective voices, from a contemporary, historic, intermedial, and transmedial point of view. In terms of history, they build on previous texts, often through intertextual quotations used directly in the texts or paratextually in titles, epigraphs, epilogs, etc. They can also link to previous texts through direct mention of inspirational works or, conversely, through critical reflection on formative readings (see articles by Malmio and Vold). Or they can reflect on earlier reading through remedialization of texts, communicating, and leading to, new framings of these texts and the people and events they depict (see articles by Allouche and Malmio). Intertextual relations illustrate how the individual relies on previous discourses and storytelling to understand and recount her own life story. At the same time, the ambition of joining a choir of voices is to add a new voice that may not just strengthen a claim, but also further nuance it. This often occurs in an intersectional manner, as in the case of the Sámi fighting against Scandinavian majority populations for recognition and rights as an indigenous group while also battling internal gender discrimination and homophobia (see articles by Bakken, Bjerknes, and Brovold). Younger feminist activists, especially, tend to use several media, not least internet-based media, which has notably become one of the characteristics of what some refer to as fourth-wave feminism (Munro, 2013). They may NORA—NORDIC JOURNAL OF FEMINIST AND GENDER RESEARCH 2023, VOL. 31, NO. 2, 109–116 https://doi.org/10.1080/08038740.2023.2207310