Horror and Postcolonial Guilt in Abo Rasul’s Unfun

Oxfeldt, Elisabeth

doi:10.18261/issn.1500-1989-2016-01-04

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…As mentioned, both Medina and Abdel reflect upon the privileges of being not only celebrities, but also citizens of Denmark, a rich Scandinavian welfare state. Elisabeth Oxfeldt connects this kind of Scandinavian guilt to the bubble position that stems from a self-image that is "based on a sense of having attained equality, wealth, and happiness without being directly engaged with the rest of the world, either through postcolonial or neo-imperial exploitation, or through contemporary warfare" (Oxfeldt 2016). In an article about the program Abdel confirms what is also explicated in the program, namely that he had a "constant guilty conscience" while filming, because "I am a refugee, and my parents and I got here, when I was very small [.…”

Section: The Agentic Body and The Politics Of Guiltmentioning

confidence: 99%

Instagrammable humanitarianism and the politics of guilt

Reestorff

2018

Journal of Aesthetics & Culture

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This article is based on a study of the collaboration between the Danish pop singer Medina and Act Alliance, the TV-program Medina and the Refugees-Access with Abdel and the harsh attacks on Medina and her humanitarian engagement on social media. The article follows three trajectories. Firstly, I suggest that Act Alliance uses celebrity advocacy in a mediatized campaign effort to mobilize young Instagrammers accustomed to peer-to-peer communication. Secondly, I suggest that Medina's advocacy manifests as a particular form of politics of guilt, which on the one hand positions her as an "icon-body" that reproduces the classic distinction between active Westerners and passive sufferers and on the other hand challenges this distinction when her celebrity body becomes agentic. The politics of guilt is crucial because Medina and Act Alliance ask for recognition of a collective Scandinavian guilt, i.e. guilt about being on the receiving end of global inequality and consequently redemption through aid. Thirdly, I study the ways in which the politics of guilt is rejected when newspapers, bloggers and Facebook users cross-feed each other and affectively intensify a collective shaming of Medina. This kind of shaming, it is argued, is a way of rejecting guilt towards suffering others by shaming and denying Medina agency and insisting that she is merely an icon-body. Finally, while the article distinguished between politics of guilt and the shaming strategies directed at Medina, both work according to the logics of affective governmentality, seeking to govern who has agency and what the appropriate affects in the face of suffering might be. In this context, the analysis shows, shaming reflects a neoliberal and ethnocentric welfare-protectionism that conceals its own anti-refugee ideology.

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Section: The Agentic Body and The Politics Of Guiltmentioning

confidence: 99%

Instagrammable humanitarianism and the politics of guilt

Reestorff

2018

Journal of Aesthetics & Culture

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Danish Ex-Colony Travel: Paradise Discourse, Commemoration, and (Not Quite) Dark Tourism

Körber

2017

Scandinavian Studies

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In the conclusion of her book Danmarks gamle Tropekolonier (Denmark's Old Tropical Colonies) from 1946, geographer, writer and traveler Sophie Petersen wrote that ved Siden af Sorgen over, at disse [de tidligere kolonier] ikke laenger er dansk Jord, [er der] ogsaa. .. Mulighed for Glaede over, at der er saa mange Minder tilbage derude om Danmark baade i Form af Bygningsvaerker og i Menneskers Minde. Derfor er det en stor Oplevelse for en Dansk at faerdes i vore gamle Tropekolonier, i Egne, hvor Slaegt efter Slaegt af Danske har virket, og hvor Dannebrog engang har vajet i mer end 200 Aar. (Petersen 1946, 407) (while there is regret that they [the former colonies] are no longer Danish soil, [there is also] an opportunity for joy, for there are so many memories about Denmark on the islands, both in the form of buildings and in the people's memory. It is therefore an incredible experience for a Dane to visit our old tropical colonies, where generations of Danes once worked, and where the "Dannebrog" flew for more than 200 years.) Petersen's Danmarks gamle Tropekolonier and the multivolume Vore gamle Tropekolonier (Brøndsted 1952-53 and 1966-68; Our Old Tropical Colonies) were for a long time among the most influential publications on Danish colonial history. Petersen's book is part historiography and part travelogue from her extensive travels, and the chapters are organized accordingly: they start with overviews of the history of the respective places, and end with sections about the situation at the time of the author's travels, for instance "A visit to present India." Petersen's travels to Danish former colonies are travels on a collective memory lane, and nostalgia is easy to discern. Commemoration and Tourism The memory of, and travel to, Danish ex-colonies is gaining new relevance in the context of the 2017 commemoration of the transfer of the former Danish West Indies, today's US Virgin Islands, to the United States in 1917. It seems that with the commemoration, a new phase is reached of Danish cultural remembrance of the circum-Atlantic colonial history and the triangular trade. There is a clearly recognizable new interest in the former Danish Caribbean islands: journalistic, artistic, political, and not least touristic. A large share of the material for this article on Danish tourism to former colonies is, indeed, advertisement for "jubilaeumsrejser," anniversary trips, to "Dansk Vestindien," the name still widely used in Denmark for the US Virgin Islands. Ian Gregory Strachan argues that "tourist advertising. .. maps and commodifies the region for the world consumer" (2002, 1). Tourism and tourism advertising can be seen as complicit with colonial and capitalist practices, and this complicity has specific implications in the case of tourism to former colonies. Another argument for the inclusion of tourism in studies of postcolonial relations is that scholars of tourism have found evidence for what they call "lingering effects of colonialism on tourist movements" (McKercher and L'Espoir Decosta 2007). Danes ...

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Horror and Postcolonial Guilt in Abo Rasul’s Unfun

Cited by 2 publications

References 5 publications

Instagrammable humanitarianism and the politics of guilt

Instagrammable humanitarianism and the politics of guilt

Danish Ex-Colony Travel: Paradise Discourse, Commemoration, and (Not Quite) Dark Tourism

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