Affectivity and Race

Rikke Andreassen is Associate Professor in the Department of Communication, Business and Information Technologies at Roskilde University, Denmark and author of Human Exhibitions: Race, Gender and Sexuality in Ethnic Displays. Kathrine Vitus is Senior Researcher in the Department of Children and Family at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

• Introduction: affectivity as a lens to racial formations in the Nordic countries, Kathrine Vitus and Rikke Andreassen. Part I How is Race Politicised through Affects?: Politics of irony as the emerging sensibility of the anti-immigrant debate, Kaarina Nikunen; If it had been a muslim: affectivity and race in Danish journalists’ reflections on making news on terror, Asta Smedegaard Nielsen; The racial grammar of Swedish higher education and research policy: the limits and conditions of researching race in a colour-blind context, Tobias Hübinette and Paula Mählck. Part II How Does Race Produce Affects?: ‘And then we do it in Norway’: learning leadership through affective contact zones, Kirsten Hvenegård-Lassen and Dorthe Staunæs; Nordic colour-blindness and Nella Larsen, Rikke Andreassen; Disturbance and celebration of Josephine Baker in Copenhagen 1928: emotional constructions of whiteness, Marlene Spanger. Part III How is Race Affectively Experienced?: Feeling at loss: affect, whiteness and masculinity in the immediate aftermath of Norway’s terror, Stine H. Bang Svendsen; The affectivity of racism: enjoyment and disgust in young people’s film, Kathrine Vitus; Two journeys into research on difference in a Nordic context: a collaborative auto-ethnography, Henry Mainsah and Lin Prøitz; Doing ‘feelwork’: reflections on whiteness and methodological challenges in research on queer partner migration, Sara Ahlstedt. Index.

’The meaning of racial formation remains a contested question in the Nordic countries where colorblind ideologies silence and trouble conversations on race. This book provides a timely and unique contribution that enables new understandings of the centrality of race and whiteness in a Nordic context.’ Lene Myong, Aarhus University, Denmark ’In social imaginaries the Nordic region is understood through exceptionalisms: idealized and homogenous societies where gender equality, social welfare, and anti-racism provide an exceptionally good life for all citizens. This excellent collection of essays critically examines these self-images through concepts of race and affect. Anyone interested in the ways in which race - particularly whiteness - is (re)produced through affect and emotion would benefit from this book.’ Karina Horsti, University of Jyväskylä, Finland