It Doesn’t Matter if You’re Black or White: Negotiating Identity and Danishness in Intercultural Dialogue Meetings

ABSTRACT

This article presents an analysis of the empirical case ‘The Cultural Encounters Ambassadors’ (CEA). The CEA project attempts, through what it calls dialogue meetings, to promote ‘positive’ cultural encounters in order to strengthen social cohesion and create an inclusive Danish society. The analysis focuses on the design of the dialogue meeting, in particular, the way in which the project mixes the ambassadors in teams of so-called visible and invisible minorities. This is a key feature of the design and is thought to be essential in supporting the project’s message that national identities are constructions. The analysis draws on participant observations and interviews, and uses Judith Butler’s concepts of subjectification and performativity to uncover ambiguous incidents in the dialogue meetings and the citational practice during which, for example, the mix of visible and invisible ambassadors seems to reinforce difference in unintended ways.

KEYWORDS:

• Intercultural contact
• intercultural dialogue
• contact
• intercultural encounter

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Helle Bach Riis is a PhD fellow in the research project ‘The Organised Cultural Encounter’ at Roskilde University. Her project is an ethnographic study of how negotiations of Otherness and Danishness take place in intervention projects such as dialogue meetings. In particular, she is interested in how identity is narrated through creative methods such as storytelling and game structures and how these methods structure the encounter. Her project is informed by cultural studies, performance studies, critical studies on race and whiteness and feminist theory.

Notes

1 It is worth noticing the reference to ‘people's enlightenment’. This is a concept that has very specific connotations in a Danish context. It is closely connected to the tradition of folk high schools, a form of adult education. The idea of ‘enlightenment’ in the tradition of folk high schools is about the light coming from below, from the people (Korsgaard 2000: 313). This idea was originally inspired by J. G. Herder's educational philosophy and the concept of ‘Bildung’, which in Denmark is translated as ‘people's enlightenment’ (Korsgaard 2000: 314–315). In ‘Bildung’, personal education is important; it is not a matter of mastering certain professional skills; rather, the aim is to become ‘an educated person’. The Border Association has ties with the folk high schools, and when the CEA project uses the concept of ‘people's enlightenment’, it carries these connotations of enlightenment from below; coming from the people, whose personal education is important in the definition of a nation.

2 I use the term ‘participants’ rather than ‘audience’, and as such continue the terminology that the CEA project itself uses. The term ‘participants’ indicates that the people present at the dialogue meeting are not passive viewers/listeners. They are participating in the meeting with questions, opinions and bodily work. I will demonstrate this in more detail throughout the article.

3 All material from the CEA project's website and empirical material such as observations and interviews are in Danish, and all translations are by Helle Bach Riis.

4 The CEA project bases its distinction between ethnic minority and national minority on an encyclopedia article which emphasises that national minorities identify with a neighbouring country, while ethnic minorities do not identify with a specific territory, and do not claim a native country within Europe, but demand the right to organise around questions of language and religion (Web 9).

5 The CEA project emphasises the Danish-German border region as an inspiration for peaceful co-existence. This is a particular interpretation of the historical processes in the region. The Danish-German border, like most borders between nation states, has moved back and forth historically. The current border was drawn in 1920 in the wake of the German defeat in the First World War and was the result of a referendum. It left a German minority in southern Denmark and a Danish minority in northern Germany. The Border Association was likewise established in 1920 with the purpose of supporting the Danish language and culture, especially south of the border (Web 10). Simultaneously, a corresponding German association was established. The association's vision is to let the historical processes in the Danish-German border region work as an inspiration in other border regions and in general to help shape attitudes towards linguistic and cultural diversity (Web 11). In particular, they mention the Copenhagen-Bonn Declarations that were drawn up in 1955 to ensure that minorities on both sides of the border retain certain legal rights. It is an important point in the declarations that the confession to Danish or German nationality and culture is free and indisputable by the authorities (Web 12). It is formulated as ‘a confession’ and as such a choice to be part of the minority. To be part of the minority is thus not dependent on where people were born or have lived prior to the choice. People can choose to be Danish minded or German minded. This is emphasised by both the Border Association and the Danish Consulate General in Flensburg (part of the Danish Foreign Ministry) as something unique to the Danish-German border region. The CEA project refers to the Copenhagen-Bonn Declarations as a constitution for minorities, and it is this understanding of the processes in the border region that is revealed when the CEA project aims to inspire peaceful co-existence between minority and majority.

6 This article is part of a PhD project under the wider research project ‘The Organised Cultural Encounter’, which was funded by the Danish Council for Independent Research with funding-ID: DFF-1319-00093.

7 A well-known example is the duck and the rabbit, an unattributed comic drawing from 1892 (Mitchell 1994: 54).