“Wronged White Men”: The Performativity of Hate in Feminist Narratives about Anti-Feminism in Sweden

Abstract

This article takes a close look at the phenomenon of “wronged white men”, focusing primarily on how this phenomenon has been conceptualized by Swedish feminist Maria Sveland. It is a poststructural critique of the standpoint feminism of her narrative about anti-feminism in Sweden, as well as an exploration of a possible companionship between poststructural and material feminisms. I also look at how Sveland attempts to universalize the experiences of the “(disraced) women-feminists” in her writings. This concept, which I develop here, is intended to highlight how the omission of racial markers in this context functions both to claim universality and to locate racist practices somewhere else, most notably in the “wronged white men”. Feminism, in this narrative, is written as the morally good, always in opposition to the morally bad “wronged white men”. I conclude by proposing a different understanding of the “wronged white men” phenomenon, where it is used not as a moral enemy to feminism, but as a figuration that opens up space for feminist self-reflexivity and where feminism and anti-feminism alike are understood as responsible for the worldly configurations of which they are part.

Notes

¹ All quotes by Maria Sveland are translated from Swedish by the author of this article.

² My own theoretical framework for this article is at once poststructural, with an emphasis on the practices of language, and material; I am interested in what happens in the intra-action (see note 3 below) between language and bodies (Ahmed 2004b: 4, 46; Haraway 2004b: 68; Butler 2011: xviii–xix).

³ As developed by Karen Barad, intra-action refers to the becoming of interacting parts, and their agency, rather than assuming that they pre-exist the interaction and thus meet and depart as separate and identifiable entities: “… in contrast to the usual ‘interaction’, which assumes that there are separate individual agencies that precede their interaction, the notion of intra-action recognizes that distinct agencies do not precede, but rather emerge through, their intra-action” (Barad 2007: 33, see also pp. 139–141).

⁴ I use heterosexual matrix and heteronormativity interchangeably. With both concepts I refer back to Judith Butler's definition of the heterosexual matrix as “a hegemonic discursive/epistemic model of gender intelligibility that assumes that for bodies to cohere and make sense there must be a stable sex expressed through a stable gender […] that is oppositionally and hierarchically defined through the compulsory practice of heterosexuality” (Butler 2006: 208n6).

⁵ See e.g. Eduards et al. (2012), Holmberg (2003), and Kronsell (2005).

⁶ At one point, Sveland states that not “all men deny their collective responsibility and far from all men think that they have ‘deserved’ their power and privileges”, but she does not grant them the position of feminists (Sveland 2013: 136).

⁷ That this is a “rational” feminism is made clear in the passage from Zolfagary's book (2012), where reading about the world-view of the anti-feminists is likened to tumbling down a black hole like Alice in Wonderland.

⁸ For Barad, discourse and matter intra-act in the configuration of reality: “The material and discursive are mutually implicated in the dynamics of intra-activity and enfolding” (2007: 244). According to Mouffe, even “good democrats” participate in–and are responsible for–a world where “the extreme-right” is gaining political influence (2005: 72). As strange as the combination of Barad and Mouffe may appear, they do, in fact, share a similar vision of the relational character of worldly and political configurations.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mia Eriksson

Mia Eriksson is a PhD student in Gender Studies at the University of Gothenburg, Department of Cultural Sciences. Research areas are: feminist theory; nationalism and national narratives in Sweden; nationalism and masculinity in Anders Behring Breivik's manifesto. Currently studying for one year as a Visiting Student Researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, under the supervision of Trinh T. Minh-ha.