Cracks in the Nordic Exceptionalist Foundations

Abstract

This article examines AfroNordic feminisms as distinct, contextspecific praxes by engaging with the historical intersections of race, gender, and colonialism in the Danish landscape, exploring how AfroNordic feminisms, challenge the narratives of Nordic racial and gendered exceptionalism and innocence that pervade Scandinavian societies. I explore the conditions for knowledge production and ways of knowing in a Nordic exceptionalist region and how AfroNordic feminist scholars are indebted to and continue to rely on well-established U.S. Black feminists—despite the need for the development of context-specific concepts. Grounded in the Danish context, I reflect on the hostile political environment for gender, critical race, and decolonial researchers and the conditions for knowledge-making as an AfroDanish feminist researcher. I critically interrogate these conditions by theorizing from lived experiences, and I expand the concept of Nordic exceptionalism by addressing how structural issues are frequently individualised in postfeminist and postracial Nordic states. This is particularly pertinent against the backdrop of rising facism, queerphobia, and racism in Europe. This inquiry ultimately seeks to explore the possibilities for resisting epistemic erasure, and at the same time the necessity for community building and collective resistance.