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Tlostanova, M., Thapar-Björkert, S., Knobblock, I. (2019) Do We Need Decolonial in ? NORA: Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, 27(4): 290-295 https://doi.org/10.1080/08038740.2019.1641552

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Do We Need Decolonial Feminism in Sweden?

Madina Tlostanova, Suruchi Thapar-Björkert & Ina Knobblock

To cite this article: Madina Tlostanova, Suruchi Thapar-Björkert & Ina Knobblock (2019) Do We Need Decolonial Feminism in Sweden?, NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, 27:4, 290-295, DOI: 10.1080/08038740.2019.1641552 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/08038740.2019.1641552

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Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=swom20 NORA—NORDIC JOURNAL OF FEMINIST AND GENDER RESEARCH 2019, VOL. 27, NO. 4, 290–295 https://doi.org/10.1080/08038740.2019.1641552

POSITION PAPER Do We Need Decolonial Feminism in Sweden? Madina Tlostanovaa, Suruchi Thapar-Björkertb and Ina Knobblockc aDepartment of Thematic Studies (TEMA)/ (TEMAG), Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden; bDepartment of Government, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden; cDepartment of Gender Studies, Lund University/Vaartoe – Centre for Sami Research, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden

ARTICLE HISTORY Received 14 June 2019; Accepted 2 July 2019

We decided to reflect on this question because in the last several years, a number of scholarly projects and initiatives in different European countries, including Sweden, have applied the term “decolonial” or “decolonization”. However, what is meant is not decoloniality as an epistemic, existential or aesthetic delinking but rather a general critique or deconstruction that blurs the original meaning of decolonial thinking. Further, there is a lack of actual knowledge of the genealogies of decoloniality as aspecific ethical and political position and a way of thinking. This hijacking of a fashionable buzz- word, even though not entirely justified or fully conscious, is also detached from the reality of decolonial struggles in the global South and by Indigenous peoples. As a result, decoloniality is depoliticized or lumped together with other critical discourses and primarily with postcolonial theory. Coined through an indigenized world-system perspective, Anibal Quijano introduced the concept of “coloniality” (Quijano, 1992) “as a response from the underside to the enforced homogeneity of neoliberal modernity and to the realization that the state cannot be democratized or decolonized” (Walsh & Mignolo, 2018, p. 106). Coloniality is a full dependence of the models of thinking, making, and interpreting the world on the norms, created and imposed by/in Western modernity. Decoloniality is an epistemic, political and cultural movement for emancipa- tion from these limitations, foregrounding the fact that the achievements of modernity are inseparable from racism, hetero-, economic exploitation, and discrimination of non- European knowledge systems. Initial differences between the postcolonial and decolonial dis- courses had to do with different types of colonialism in the Americas and in Asia and Africa. These configurations led to an accentuation on Indigeneity in decolonial thought, and on subalternity, migration and creolization in the postcolonial case. But the postcolonial and the decolonial discourses refer not only to different locales, but also to different modes of thinking and being in the world. These discourses mainly differ in the degree of their delinking from the Western epistemic premises, naturalized cognitive operations, methodological clichés and dis- ciplinary divisions, and consequently, in their attempts to build a different conceptual apparatus to explain the world and launch an agency to change it (Mignolo & Tlostanova, 2007). Furthermore, the postcolonial discourse in its delocalized universalism, ultimately fails due to its too close and uncritically accepted link with modernity as a set of particular epistemic assumptions and tools. Starting from a brief critical overview of postcolonial scholarship in the Nordic region with an emphasis on the Swedish example, a central aim of our intervention is to underline the contribu- tions a decolonial reading—in conversation with Indigenous critique—could bring to feminist analyses in Sweden. The concepts of imperial difference, coloniality of gender, and, delinking serve as our explanatory focal points.

CONTACT Ina Knobblock [email protected] © 2019 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. NORA—NORDIC JOURNAL OF FEMINIST AND GENDER RESEARCH 291

Nordic Placing the Nordic in a postcolonial perspective, Loftsdottir and Jensen (2016, p. 1) argue that while the Nordic countries were certainly peripheral to major metropolitan centers and cultures, they actively participated and profited in the “production of Europe”. Keskinen, Tuori, Irni, and Mulinari (2009) make an argument for Nordic colonial complicity (coined by postcolonial critic Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak), meaning that the Nordic countries, including Sweden, were and continue to be complicit in (post)colonial processes in various ways: through national imaginaries and racialization intimately tied to the Nordic welfare state models and notions of . Postcolonial perspectives, according to these authors, interweave the historical genealogies of race, gender and nationalism with contemporary Nordic identities. For example, structural inequalities, understood as being some sort of “residue” from the colonial period, are recreated or projected onto different groups in contemporary Nordic countries” (Loftsdottir & Jensen, 2016, p. 2). These con- nected genealogies between the past and the present seen through a postcolonial lens have drawn the analytic connections between colonial legacies and racialized exclusions, and called into question the image of Nordic and Swedish colonial exceptionalism. Arguably, postcolonial and antiracist critical scholarship (e.g. see Keskinen & Andreassen, 2017;Molina,2004; Mulinari & Neergard, 2017) have thus provided important insights into the investment of Sweden (and other Nordic nation-states) in the European modern/colonial project. These scholars have also introduced the idea of decolonization understood as a means of critique of and resistance to the production of differences on both discursive and material scales (Liinason & Alm, 2018; Liinason & Cuesta, 2016). However, despite these conceptual developments, the particular value of postcolonial discourse for theoretical and methodological claims in the field is unclear. First, Swedish (and Nordic) feminist scholars appear to be analyzing coloniality (as a darker side of modernity rather than a merely descriptive attribute of particular colonialisms) through a postcolonial lens instead of the decolonial prism. For example, a wonderfully crafted anthology, inspired by transnational feminist frameworks (Martinsson & Mulinari, 2018) approaches the project of European modernity critically, suggesting the usefulness of “”de-colonial agenda’’ to nurture “multivocal explorations” and “insurgent knowledge” but limits its analysis to postcolonial repertoires. Second, the deloca- lized, historically decontextualized and perhaps overused idea of representation conflates the understanding of the production of third world subjects through Eurocentric epistemic tools with that of representation as speaking on behalf of the subaltern subject. This leads many thinkers engaging with this political economy of knowledge production to provide illuminating narratives about the “other” rather than co-producing knowledge with the other within the sites of alterity and multiplicity. Third, we argue that the focus on gender and racism at the core of postcolonial scholars’ understandings of “the Nordic”, though important, has nonetheless obscured the specificity of colonial trajectories in Scandinavia, which is of central importance for the analysis of racial formations in the region. One of them is the struggle of Indigenous peoples, which receives a mandatory acknowledgement but no substantial engagement. Notions of decolonization used by Sami scholars mainly draw upon the interpretations developed in relation to the more academically established and globally visible settler colonial contexts outside Europe such as Canada, New Zealand, the U.S, and Australia, whereas the Latin American Indigenous thinking and activism remains unknown and unaddressed. This is a feature akin to the emergence of the postcolonial canon, which despite sharing almost the same period of writing with decolonial thinkers (such as E. Dussel, A. Quijano and W. Mignolo), have never acknowledged the fundamental role of the colonization of Americas in constituting Europe and the emergence of occidental thinking. Despite this, through challenging the universal project of Eurocentric modernity/coloniality, Sami scholarship comes close to decolonial thought, even though it does not use the same vocabulary— most exemplary in the foregrounding of Indigenous narratives and histories which have been intentionally suppressed. This, we claim, allows for “deep coalitions” (Lugones, 2003,p.98)grounded in relationality between decolonial ideas and Sami knowledge production. 292 M. TLOSTANOVA ET AL.

Imperial difference The lack of decolonial approaches in Nordic feminist scholarship and the fact that elements of decolonial thought are confused with postcolonial theory, push behind the decolonial concept of imperial difference. Imperial difference makes a distinction between various modern empires (Boatcă, 2012; Tlostanova, 2018). It reflects the fact that with the emergence of modernity a global imperial hierarchy was built into the world system. Several imperial leagues were formed and transformed in the course of time. For example, in post-Enlightenment modernity, the Ottoman Sultanate and Czarist Russia became the zones of the external (non-European) imperial difference, as they were rooted in non-European religions, languages, economic models, and ethnic-racial classifications. Thus, imperial difference disrupts the homogeneity of imperial spatiality and complicates it by drawing our attention to various complete or partial losers that failed to fulfill their imperial missions, occupied second-class places within the modern imperial hierarchy, and competed among themselves rather than with the winners. Furthermore, it enlarges postcolonial conceptions of power which often remain confined to the discursive Foucauldian analysis between the West and the “Other” and the associated Fanonian feeling of “abbreviat[ion]” and “violation”. Sweden is an example of internal imperial difference due to its early suspended local territorial expansion in the Baltic region which was carefully dissociated from subsequent historical self- representations. The erasing from or assimilation of Indigenous European groups into this narrative (the most obvious being the Sami case) is an indication of the refusal to regard Swedish history as imperial and definitely not only due to its complicity or tacit agreement with the crimes of the first imperial league. Compared to other settler colonial contexts, “colonial processes were typically more insidious, gradual and less physically violent in Scandinavia” (Kuokkanen, 2019, p. 8). Nonetheless, similar to the experiences of other Indigenous peoples around the world, at the centre lies the historical and on-going dispossession of Sami people of their land in the name of (settler) nation- building and industrial development. Furthermore, a long-lasting confrontation with Russia and a fight for Ingermanland, resulting in the relocation and forced assimilation of many groups within the Nordic region, is also a narrative of coloniality which falls outside the frame of postcolonial theory but can be included within the decolonial frame. In sum, imperial difference can be useful to explain the imperial-colonial configurations in Nordic local histories and contemporary situations, particularly in Sweden. Obviously, the role of the Nordic imperial-colonial projects in modernity/coloniality needs to be further theorized. A productive direction would be to elaborate on the forms and ways of joining modernity/ coloniality in the case of early suspended expansionist project such as that of Sweden, including how it was compensated or rechanneled symbolically, discursively and epistemically.

Coloniality of gender The intersections of race and gender as an integral element of the modern/colonial matrix of power, are also the analytical focus of decolonial thought. A decolonial category that can be reworked and enriched in and by the Nordic Indigenous and wider feminist context, is the coloniality of gender. A few recently published articles by Nordic feminists have referenced the work of preeminent decolonial feminist María Lugones (Liinason & Alm, 2018). Yet, we are not aware of any Swedish feminist scholars’ attempts to seriously engage with her central idea of coloniality of gender. Lugones refuses to regard coloniality of gender as exclusively a circulation of power, which organizes the private sphere, the access to and the control over sexuality and demography. This would mean a reinstatement of biologization of gender and erasing its epistemic side. She draws the attention to the link between the conquering of nature and the transference of exploitation from the (European) man to nature and the essentially colonizing invention of gender. It directly resulted in dehumanizing as a manifestation of coloniality of being (Lugones, 2010). NORA—NORDIC JOURNAL OF FEMINIST AND GENDER RESEARCH 293

Decolonial feminism thus understood by Lugones mainly speaks from the zone of colonial difference and from the positionality of Indigenous people. In this respect, it would be crucial to trace how coloniality of gender can be reconfigured in a wider Nordic context where the colonial difference is balanced with the no less important imperial difference, and how the pluriversal category of coloniality of gender is altered in the case of European internal colonial difference (e.g. Sami and Inuit). A key starting-point would be Indigenous feminist critique of colonial gender/race binaries and dehumanization of Indigenous people. Greenlandic scholar Karla Jessen Williamson (2011) argues that the pre-colonial egalitarian Inuit society was de facto genderless. Sami feminist Rauna Kuokkanen analyses the consequences of colonial gender hierarchies in the context of Indigenous self- determination. She considers it to be integral to a pattern of domination with adverse effects especially for Indigenous women and other subordinated groups such as queer and trans individuals (Kuokkanen, 2019,pp.5–6). In Sweden, Katarina Pirak Sikku interprets Sami subjectivities that are shaped by, yet resistant to colonial knowledge production as manifested in scientific racism, thereby questioning distinctions of civilized/non-civilized and culture/nature (Pirak Sikku, 2014). Furthermore, the idea of the global colonial matrix of power incorporates both men’s and women’s vulnerabilities. So arguably, men are not always the subjects of humanity but also the victims of modernity/coloniality.

Delinking What makes decolonial thinking particularly attractive in trying to reflect on Nordic (post)colonialisms is its delinking from Western/modern knowledge production and distribution logic with its naturalized “epistemic contract” (Mignolo & Tlostanova, 2012). This allows for the formulation of categories that are fittodefine not only the local manifestations of historical colonialisms but also global modern/colonial intersections, correlations and deep coalitions between different experiences of coloniality. In seeking epistemic perspectives outside theoretical Euro-modern orthodoxies, decoloniality affirms the impor- tance of delinking from the western canon while postcolonialism tries to reform it from within, thus limiting its own capacity for imagining strategies of resistance. In this respect, Indigenous critical discourses have done much more than postcolonial scholarship. The latter still remained bound to modernity’s Eurocentric perspectives while simultaneously critiquing them. The former in parallel with decolonial thought, questioned the “hegemony of the master’shouse” as such, “in fact, mastery itself which then ceases to maintain its imperial status” (Walsh & Mignolo, 2018,p.7). To think and act from the spaces of Indigenous epistemes (Kuokkanen, 2007,p.6)wouldimply a fundamental cognitive shift. While the worldview of European colonial modernity is marked by values such as domination, exploitation, commodification, individualism, and separation, most importantly between human and natural worlds, Indigenous worldviews are generally characterized by interrelatedness, reciprocity, and responsibility. They suggest an interconnectedness between land, nature, and people, resulting in specific social, cultural, and ecological responsibilities (Kuokkanen, 2007, p. 32). As Indigenous feminists have pointed out, feminists may unintentionally support the structures of settler colonial states through intellectual and political projects that ignore or even negate Indigenous ways of knowing, nationhood, and land-based identities. Thus, going beyond mere inclusion or “add and stir” of Indigenous perspectives would also pose a challenge to critical, feminist and antiracist scholars, potentially leading to an openness to learn from the other and negotiate tensions within fraught coalitions (Arvin, Tuck, & Morrill, 2013; Kuokkanen, 2007, pp. 156–161). The ultimate goal is to formulate and advance the positive models of re-existence (Albán Achinte, 2006), rather than mere resistance.

Concluding remarks To conclude, we would like to revisit several aspects of particular importance for the Swedish context to reconnect with the question we raised in the title: “Do we need Decolonial feminism in Sweden?” 294 M. TLOSTANOVA ET AL.

The concept of imperial difference, we argue, provides a productive entry-point for analyses of colonial trajectories and structures in Scandinavia because it both firmly places the region within the context of European imperial expansion and acknowledges its specific manifestations. With regards to Sweden, such an entry-point could prove especially valuable for the development of analysis of settler colonialism beyond the more well-known settler colonial contexts of North America, Latin America and Oceania. Further, Lugones’ concept of the coloniality of gender could be put into fruitful dialogue with both gender studies and Sami research in Sweden. Indigenous feminist scholars have already done some important work on the imposition of gender binaries and have reminded us to pay attention to gendered power hierarchies within the present-day Indigenous communities (Kuokkanen, 2019). Finally, with regards to delinking, Swedish feminist scholars need to undertake the task of learning about and, most importantly, learn from Sami epistemes. This would imply re- thinking and re-configuring feminist knowledge production to accommodate or even place at the center an episteme that transcends the category split between human and natural worlds, and fore- grounds survival on local and planetary scales. A thorough understanding of the concepts and approaches offered by decolonial feminism may prove useful for Nordic gender studies to avoid confusing decolonial feminism with other forms of feminist thought which also deal with issues of race, discrimination, and (neo)colonialism. This may also enable us to see its links to other trajectories of anti-colonial critique and alternative epistemic positions beyond Eurocentric visions, most exemplary Indigenous knowledges, and therefore prove to be important in coalition-building against multiple oppressions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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