Abstract
The chapter analyzes Loveleen Rihel Brenna’s Min annerledeshet, min styrke (2012) and artist collective Queendom’s Oppdrag Norge (2008). These autobiographical reconstructions of self and society articulate emic perspectives about self-identity, belonging, and social change in Norway. The chapter discusses the interaction between the narratives and Norwegian public discourse from the mid-1990s through the early 2010s, focusing on floating signifiers and notions of cultural competence about “minority situations.” Queendom and Brenna make sense of individual experiences of the “self” through “life writing” about their “minority” backgrounds and polysemous subjectivities. Tisdel argues that through these “dually historical” narratives of reckoning, the authors challenge common ideas in the public discourse and seek to influence future meaning-making. Moreover, as interventions in processes of social change, the life narratives “touch” history, performing instrumental, symbolic, and productive roles.
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Notes
- 1.
All English quotes from these works are my translations.
- 2.
Another useful concept, which I do not include in this analysis, is literary scholar Mary Louise Pratt’s (1991, 1992) perspective of literature as a “contact zone.” Pratt discusses how social actors mediate different and competing perspectives, create new understanding, and use literature as a shared space for voicing and appraising contradictions and meaning.
- 3.
Laura Peers and Alison K. Brown use “source community” to refer to “cultural groups from whom museums have collected” (Peers and Brown 2003, p. 2).
- 4.
Fagerlid (this volume) also discusses Norwegian “minority situations.”
- 5.
Molek and Fagerlid (this volume) discuss the articulation of the self and dialogues with the “self ” in narratives.
- 6.
Molek (this volume) discusses the interrelatedness of life writing, facts, public discourse, and representation.
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
For an analysis of this work in relation to literary appropriation techniques, gender equality, public discourse, and the role of the Bildungsroman, see Barkve (2018).
- 10.
Nic Craith (this volume) discusses how individual values and self-identification relate to new re-framings of society.
- 11.
For an analysis of Queendom’s relevance as examples of Norwegian and Scandinavian Black women’s activism, see Kennedy-Macfoy (2014).
- 12.
Dr. Wangari Maathai was a Kenyan professor and environmental activist. Maathai received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004, becoming the first female African Nobel laureate.
- 13.
Manuela Myriam Henri Ramin-Osmundsen is a French-Norwegian jurist, civil servant, and politician (Labor Party). She was Minister of Children and Equality in Jens Stoltenberg’s second government from October 18, 2007 to February 14, 2008. She was Norway’s first minister with a non-European background.
- 14.
In 2005, Queendom toured Norway with the critically acclaimed “Integrert som faen,” and received the City of Oslo’s artist award the same year. In 2019, Monica Ifejilika and Asta Busingye Lydersen (the current active members) celebrated Queendom’s 20th anniversary, releasing the album Mama Love, which draws inspiration from their personal and political experience. See www.queendom.no.
- 15.
García-González (this volume) discusses the “immigrant” as “perpetual guest” and notions of returning to a home country.
- 16.
- 17.
In 1990, Norway ratified the ILO C169, Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 (No. 169). In 1998, Norway ratified the Council of Europe Framework Convention of February 1, 1995, on the protection of national minorities. The historical presence of the Sami and the national minorities, Kvens (Norwegian Finns), Jews, “Forest Finns,” Roma, and Romani people, contradicts the idea that Norway had been a homogenous society.
- 18.
According to Statistics Norway, this corresponds to 944,402 individuals: 765,108 immigrants and 179,294 Norwegian-born descendants. https://www.ssb.no/innvandring-og-innvandrere/faktaside/innvandring
- 19.
See Barkve (2018) for a discussion of the Norwegian word and concept likhet, which means equality and likeness/sameness (p. 97).
- 20.
Nordstrand is a middle-class neighborhood in Oslo.
- 21.
Following the racially motivated murder of 15-year-old Norwegian-Ghanian Benjamin Hermansen (1985–2001) in the neighborhood Holmlia, the focus on issues of “race” and racism in public discourse shifted. A second shift in public discourse occurred after the terror attacks in Oslo and at Utøya on July 22, 2011. Gullestad’s analysis (2002a, b, c, 2004, 2005, 2006) concerns the mid-1990s through the early 2000s. For a later anthropological analysis of race, and “being Norwegian” (2005–2011), see McIntosh (2015).
- 22.
As McIntosh (2015) notes, “the national self-image disregards the history of Norwegian maritime involvement in the transatlantic slave trade during Denmark-Norway’s participation in colonial expansion” (p. 312).
- 23.
The original Norwegian text includes “negerdamene kommer” and “svartinger.”
- 24.
García-González (this volume) discusses reflexivity in migration narratives and children’s literature.
- 25.
Khalid Hussain’s (1986) Pakkis portrays the trials of a Norwegian teenage boy growing up in a Pakistani family, and was one of the first novels to attract attention as a Norwegian minority narrative. In the 1980s and 1990s, the derogatory Norwegian term pakkis was a common racial slur referring to people of Pakistani descent.
- 26.
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Tisdel, M.A. (2020). Narratives of Competence and Confidence: Self, Society, and Belonging in Norway. In: Fagerlid, C., Tisdel, M. (eds) A Literary Anthropology of Migration and Belonging. Palgrave Studies in Literary Anthropology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34796-3_6
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