The white tent of grief. Racialized conditions of public mourning in Denmark

ABSTRACT

In 2015, Danish-Palestinian Omar El-Hussein shot and killed two men in Copenhagen, before being killed himself by the police. Danish media immediately classified El-Hussein’s actions as ‘a terrorist attack’, and they became the object of extreme concern to the Danish public. In the following days, the two murder sites were momentarily turned into public memorial spaces. When the site of the killing of El-Hussein also became a site of mourning, however, it prompted a negative reaction from politicians and the white majority public. While the mixed reactions to publicly mourning a murderer are understandable, they also reveal something about the racialized conditions of public mourning. Reading the different acts of publicly mourning El-Hussein, the article investigates the ways in which public sites of grief are outlined by racialized economies. This article builds upon Butler’s argument that public mourning forms as indicative of which lives are considered lives at all. However, we argue that such an analysis must consider the racialized logics of the performativity of public mourning: Thus, while non-white grief seems not to be recognized as grief at all, white grief tends to reiterate the racialized processes that outline white lives as grievable at the expense of non-white lives.

En 2015, le Danois-Palestinien Omar El-Hussein a tué par balles deux hommes à Copenhague avant d’être lui-même tué par la police. Les média danois ont immédiatement classé les actes d’El-Hussein comme « attaques terroristes » et ils ont fait l’objet d’une grande inquiétude auprès du public danois. Les jours suivants, les deux sites des homicides se sont transformés momentanément en espaces publics commémoratifs. Quand l’emplacement où El-Hussein avait été tué est aussi devenu un lieu de deuil, cela a toutefois provoqué une réaction négative de la part des politiciens et de la majorité blanche du public. Alors que les réactions mitigées face au deuil public d’un meurtrier sont compréhensibles, elles révèlent aussi quelque chose des conditions racialisées du deuil public. En interprétant les différents actes de deuil public pour El-Hussein, l’article explore les façons dont les sites de deuil publics sont délimités par les économies racialisées. Cet article s’appuie sur l’argument de Butler que les formes de deuil public sont révélatrices de quelles vies sont réellement considérées comme des vies. Pourtant, nous soutenons qu’une telle analyse doit prendre en compte la logique racialisée de la performativité du deuil public. Ainsi, tandis que le deuil des non-blancs semble ne pas être du tout reconnu comme deuil, le deuil des blancs a tendance à réitérer les processus racialisés qui présentent les vies blanches comme dignes de deuil au mépris des vies de personnes qui ne sont pas blanches.

En 2015, el danés-palestino Omar El-Hussein disparó y mató a dos hombres en Copenhague, antes de ser asesinado por la policía. Los medios daneses clasificaron inmediatamente las acciones de El-Hussein como ‘un ataque terrorista’, y se convirtieron en objeto de extrema preocupación para el público danés. En los siguientes días, los dos sitios de asesinato se convirtieron momentáneamente en espacios conmemorativos públicos. Sin embargo, cuando el sitio del asesinato de El-Hussein también se convirtió en un sitio de duelo, provocó una reacción negativa de los políticos y de la mayoría blanca. Si bien las relaciones mixtas para lamentar públicamente a un asesino son comprensibles, también revelan algo acerca de las condiciones raciales del luto público. Considerando los diferentes actos de luto público de El-Hussein, el artículo investiga las formas en que los sitios públicos de duelo son descritos por economías racializadas. Este artículo se basa en el argumento de Butler de que las formas públicas de duelo son indicativas de qué vidas se consideran vidas como tales. Sin embargo, se argumenta que tal análisis debe considerar las lógicas racializadas de la performatividad del luto público. Así, mientras que el dolor no blanco no parece ser reconocido como un dolor en absoluto, el dolor blanco tiende a reiterar los procesos racializados que describen a las vidas blancas como reclamables a expensas de vidas no blancas.

KEYWORDS:

• Public memorial sites
• necropolitics
• racism
• affect
• Copenhagen shootings
• whiteness

MOTS CLÉS:

• Lieux publics de commémoration
• nécropolitique
• racisme
• affect
• tueries de Copenhague
• fait d’être blanc

PALABRAS CLAVE:

• sitios conmemorativos públicos
• necropolítica
• racismo
• afecto
• tiroteos en Copenhague
• el ser blanco

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Lene Myong and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions to this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. See https://larsvilks.com/.

2. This sort of understanding has been prevalent, e.g. in the Norwegian public in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks 7.22.2011, where the pull to understand the background for the perpetrator’s action has been more significant (see for instance Seierstad, 2015). Such pull has not been as prevalent in Denmark, although this may prove to be challenged by Soei (2018), whose book, unfortunately, was not yet available during the writing of this article. Through interviews, Soei investigates both the case of El-Hussein and other so-called ‘radicalized’ or criminal young men of minority background in order to describe their experience of the production of what Soei dubs ‘counter-citizenship’.

3. Whether Denmark is indeed a secular society is of cause an issue that could be debated: App. 75% of the Danes are members of the Christian-Lutheran state church (‘Folkekirken’), national holidays primarily mark Christian celebrations, and important parts of the national imagery, politics and iconography are heavily influenced by Christian tradition. However, Christian-Lutheran influence must be characterized as naturalized to an extent that may make it appear as non-relevant to the dominant white Danish perception. While one must remain critical to this perception, it does nevertheless form an important precondition for understanding the hegemonic political and cultural discourses surrounding Danish Muslims.

4. See, e.g., /BlackLivesMatterDenmark: https://www.facebook.com/BlackLivesMatterDenmark/.

5. A published interview with scholar-in-migration Garbi Schmidt about El-Hussein, religion, marginalisation and political, rhetorical dehumanisation is a notable exception (Byrkel, 2015).

6. Pind’s tweet can be found at https://twitter.com/sorenpind/status/567288883998912512 .

7. One may indeed see El-Hussein’s actions as an extension of Mbembe’s reading of the suicide bomber, who, by turning his body into a weapon, in one respect kills himself and his victims, but in another escapes the necropolitical state of death by putting his already-death into effect (Mbembe, 2004, p. 37).

8. An image of the note can be found at http://ekstrabladet.dk/nationen/bilal-lagde-blomster-forkert-at-udstille-blodtilsoelet-lig/5445568 .

9. This may be referred to as an instance of what Myong and Bissenbakker mention as ‘white transraciallity’, namely a relation in which the lovability and humanness of the non-white person are understood as dependent upon it being the object of white affections (Myong & Bissenbakker, 2014).

10. See Stræde (2010) for a typical example of the latter and Bak for a rare example of the former.

11. Similar narratives can be found in Danish representation of enslavement in the Danish colonies. See Danbolt and Myong (2015).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the The Danish Council for Independent Research [Loving Attachment: Regulating Danish Love Migratio,Medicine Man: Media Assemblages of Medicalized Mas].