Gotowa bibliografia na temat „Whiteness as goodness”

Films depicting the life of Jesus of Nazareth appear simple and easily readable, and this understanding of the films as mere dramatic interpretations of the gospels contributes to a lack of attention to issues of social identity. This study addresses the gap in critical inquiry, locating a profound anxiety about gender at the center of these religiously oriented films. Close readings of five mainstream American films reveal that the texts are structured by binary oppositions with other characters that position Jesus as the epitome of a divine masculinity defined against femininity, homosexuality, and hypermasculinity. These binaries are loaded with a discourse of ethnicity that links Jesus’ counterfactual whiteness with notions of masculinity and spiritual goodness. Though the films construct a relatively stable set of prohibitions on Jesus’ masculinity, they leave his gendered persona murky and undefined, providing little guidance about what ideal, transcendent masculinity can or should be.

The present paper is contrastive analysis of Bulgarian, Polish and Lithuanian phraseological units containing a color term naming black or white. It traces the way these components reflect the figurative meaning of the unit - through their color semantics or through their function as a cultural signs. The study classiffiеs Bulgarian, Polish and Lithuanian expressions as to their belongings to several groups, which refer to different concepts. In each group the comparison of the examples found in the three phraseological subsystems is based on their semantics, their lexical components and structure. Under observations are substantive, adjectival, adverbial and verbal phraseological units where the colors are used only as an adjective component. The analysis takes into consideration that black has negative symbolism and cultural connotations. Thus the phraseological units with black are linked mainly to the concepts such as death, sorrow, bad life, misfortune. The text suggests that color term for black is rarely used to express neutral or positive meanings. The white has a positive cultural connotation associated to whiteness, light, good life, goodness, but its meaning can vary to neutral or negative in phraseological system of the three languages. The present paper observes similarities of collected phraseological expressions and emphasizes their nation-specific features.

Even in today’s “postmodern” world, Norwid cannot be reduced to a single formula. He is rather a “constellation,” requiring that readers join the “continual discussion” on issues specific to a given era. His focus is on humanity, which he regards from a dualist perspective that necessitates pursuing a synthesis of matter and spirit under the sign of ethical universalism. Norwid refers to the “cupola of ‘a monologue-that-keeps-parabolizing-itself’” andregards culture as the parable of the world. His original aesthetics of “whiteness” refers, as it were, to the biblical “gentle gust of wind,” which announces God’s presence and indicates the rejection of the Romantic veneration for volcanoes, which he contrasts with the importance of work. This kind of philosophy, developed by Brzozowski, Tischner and John Paul II, has led to the self-limiting revolution of Solidarity in the years 1980-81, and ultimately to the de-legitimization and fall of communism; finally, after the bloody myth of the French Revolution reigned for two hundred years, this philosophy altered the paradigm of historical changes around the world. Norwid elaborated on the industrial-era Romanticism and opposed martyrological messianism, developing the original idea of a “messianism of work,”linking it with a vision of human Church, which “burns through the Globe with conscience.”He would contrast the global church with the parochial “church-turned-living-room.”Human beings count more than institutions, he argued, just like goodness prevails over formal sacraments. With the ultimate goal defined as the resurrection of the world, art becomes a church of work. Norwid embraced an anthropocentric perspective, in which human beings are called upon “to un-make” [od-poczynać] the mistakes of the past, and thus to begin afresh at a whole new level. With his language and style Norwid was constructing a new social stratum: intelligentsia (Łapiński), understanding it as the nation’s copula, i.e. the unifying force of conscienceand the collective consciousness. It would form an interpersonal, horizontal transcendence spanning the length and breadth of societies. The opposite of nation and its culture is “empire” – the root of subjugation – which particularly enslaved Central and Eastern Europe. Of special importance is the clash between Asian civilization and the “Roman” one, i.e. Christianity or Western Europe. However, the poet opposes Slavs to both the Westerners and the Easterners, emphasizing the processualand not the essentialistcharacter of national cultures. The question whether Norwid’s work is fundamentally dialogic or monologic in character continues to divide scholars. However, Norwid is in a way a Master or teacherwho embodies the Other and incarnates Wisdom in his Voice and Gesture. The nature of Wisdom is anthropocentric because man is a priest, although “involuntary / And immature,” which abolishes the distinction between the sacred and the profane. Through his ethical universalism Norwid provides a solution to the Enlightenment crisis of universal reason. Emancipation of the individual should not entail abandoning a sense of belonging, which is something that Norwid’s modernism shares with that of Central Europeans (Ch. Delsol). Understood as the expression of collective desires, cultures shape responsibility and a sense of belonging, at the same time constituting an answer to the crisis of narcissistic individualism characteristic for our times.

This study explores whiteness as property in parent engagement as experienced by Black and racialized parents in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area in Ontario, Canada. Drawing on counter-storytelling methodology, we explore the active harm endured by parents who have challenged racist educators, policies, and practices. We also explore how educators uphold whiteness as property (and intersections with “smartness” and “goodness”) through a spectrum of coercive power tactics, such as lies, denials, and cover-ups to protect their power and control at the expense of Black and racialized parents and students.

The scholarship on institutional racism has emerged from contexts such as Australia, the UK or the US. Less is known about how racism operates within institutional settings elsewhere. What is more, our understanding of Whiteness is shaped by this Anglocentric literature. In this article, I explore the contextual features of Whiteness in residential care in Germany. More specifically, I trace how institutional routines shape affective subjectivities and thereby develop material effects. The study draws on 17 expert interviews and 20 interviews with managers of care homes run by the two largest providers, the Christian welfare associations Caritas and Diakonie. Respondents frequently highlighted their organisation’s commitment to equality, which they saw grounded in its Christian ethos, their professional self-understanding as carers, or Germany’s post-racial nationhood. Paradoxically, however, my analysis shows that respondents also deployed these ‘representations of self’ to justify access and service quality differentials. On this basis, I argue that Whiteness materialises via self-ascribed civility, ‘goodness’ and egalitarianism in the German welfare state. Signified by visual markers, Whiteness emerges from projections of purity, innocence and good intentions. In varying ways, groups distinctively racialised as ‘Other’, notably as ‘Black’, ‘Muslim’ or ‘Eastern European’, are placed outside this notion of Whiteness.

In this paper, we consider how references to ‘development’ are deployed to convince communities to lease their land to agribusiness investors in Sierra Leone. We argue that promises of development made by companies resonate with the aspirations for development that communities already have. The already existing ‘imaginaries’ of development, actual conditions of economic hardship and the material relations of power bound up in who does the ‘asking’ for land mean that communities need little convincing to give their land. Imaginaries of development are effective not only because of the promises of development themselves, but also because of how these imaginaries function through the role of coloniality – and ‘whiteness’ in particular. Analyses that focus only on the coercive power of elites in making land deals miss the degree to which companies’ promises of development fit into already existing imaginaries of a more prosperous future.

Background: In U.S. contexts, the language of “quality” early childhood education is widely invoked to evaluate the “goodness” of teaching and learning and is often leveraged in attempts to ameliorate inequities. Likewise, efforts to define and achieve generalizable conceptualizations of early childhood quality often guide what takes place in teacher education. Though objections to quality reform efforts and the ways they uphold white supremacy have been extensively discussed, less work has explicitly examined how ableism intersects with racism in the ways quality is defined and applied in early childhood. Purpose: The purpose of this conceptual article is to extend prior critiques of quality to critically examine intersections of racism and ableism in the definitions, measurements, and enactments of quality early childhood teaching and learning. We bring disability critical race theory (DisCrit; Annamma et al., 2013) into conversation with literature on quality in early childhood to examine how traditional notions of early childhood quality position and affect multiply-marginalized children, families, and teachers. We emphasize how dominant notions of early childhood quality are reinforced and can be disrupted in teacher preparation. Interpretive Analysis: We utilize DisCrit’s seven interrelated tenets to analyze how ableism and racism mutually reinforce notions of early childhood quality by: (1) predefining universal goals for teaching and learning; (2) reducing the complexity of teaching and learning; and (3) discarding the wisdom of multiply-marginalized children, families, and teachers. Each of these technocratic processes rely on one another (and at times, overlap) to uphold whiteness and ableism in both early childhood practice and teacher education; exposing them allows us to imagine alternate ways of conceptualizing and enacting meaningful early education. Through DisCrit praxis, we offer an alternative language of evaluation that centers multiply-marginalized young children, families, and teachers using pedagogies of wholeness, access, and interdependence. Conclusions: At the nexus of ableism and racism, standardized notions of early childhood quality create myriad forms of harm for multiply-marginalized children, families, and teachers. Although the language of quality pervades the field, we know it is not the only way. We implore teacher educators to support teacher candidates in developing a DisCrit praxis, as we engage in such processes of reflection and action ourselves. When teaching and learning are rooted in principles of wholeness, access, and interdependence, we put multiply-marginalized communities at the heart of our work, reclaiming and enacting meaningful pedagogies in early childhood.

IntroductionNordic mythology, also known as Norse mythology, is a term used to describe Medieval creation myths and tales of Gods and otherworldly realms, told and retold by Northern Germanic and Scandinavian tribes of the ninth century AD (see for example Gaiman).I discuss a new type of Nordic mythology that is being created through popular culture, social media, books, and television shows. I am interested in how contemporary portrayals of the Nordic countries has created a kind of mythological place called Scandinavia, where things, people, and ideas are better than in other places.Whereas the old myths portray a fierce warrior race, the new myths create a utopian Scandinavia as a place that is inherently good; a place that is progressive and harmonious. In the creation of these new myths the underbelly of the North is often neglected, producing a homogenised representation of a group of countries that are in actuality diverse and inevitably imperfect.ScandimaniaGenerally the term Scandinavia always refers to Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. When including Finland and Iceland, it is more accurate to refer to the five as the Nordic countries. I was born and grew up in Denmark. My observations are skewed towards a focus on Denmark, rather than Scandinavia as a whole. Though I will use the term Nordic and Scandinavia throughout the article, it is worth noting that these definitions describe a group of countries that despite some commonalities are also quite different in geography, and culture.Whether we are speaking strictly of Scandinavia or of the Nordic countries as a whole, one thing is certain: in recent years there has been a surge of popularity in all things Nordic. Scandinavian design has been popular since the 1950s, known for its functionality and simplistic beauty, and globalised through the Swedish furniture chain IKEA. Consequently, Nordic interior design has become a style widely praised and emulated, as has Nordic fashion, architecture, and innovation.The fact that Scandinavian people are often represented as being intelligent and beautiful adds to the notion of stylish and aesthetically pleasing ideals. This is partly why sperm from Danish sperm donors is the most sought after and widely distributed in the world: perhaps prospective parents find the idea of having a baby of Viking stock appealing (Kale). Nordic countries are also known for their egalitarian societies, which are described as “the holy grail of a healthy economy and society” (Cleary). These are countries where the collective good is cherished. Tax rates are high (in Denmark between 55 per cent and 60 per cent of income), which leads to excellent welfare systems.In recent years other terms have entered the collective Western vocabulary. New Nordic Cuisine describes a trend that has taken the culinary world by storm. This term refers to food that is created with seasonal, local, and foraged ingredients. The emphasis being a renewed connection to nature and old ways. In 2016 the Danish word hygge was shortlisted by the Oxford Dictionary as word of the year. A word, which has no direct English translation, it means “a quality of cosiness and comfortable conviviality that engenders a feeling of contentment or well-being (regarded as a defining characteristic of Danish culture)”. Countless books were published in the United Kingdom, and elsewhere, explaining the art of hygge. Other Scandinavian words are now becoming popular, such as the Swedish lagom, meaning “just enough”.In the past two years, the United Nations’ World Happiness Report listed Denmark and Norway as the happiest places on earth. Other surveys similarly put the Nordic countries on top as the most prosperous places on earth (Anderson).Mythologies and Discursive FormationsThe standard definition of myth is a “traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining a natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events.” Or “A widely held but false belief or idea” (Oxford Dictionaries, Myth).During what became known as the “discursive turn”, both Barthes and Foucault expanded the conception of myth by placing it within a wider socio-political and historical contexts of power and truth. “Discursive formations” became a commonly accepted way of describing a cluster of ideas, images, and practices that define particular “truths” within a given cultural context (Hall 6). In other words, myths serve specific purposes within given socio-cultural constructions.I argue that the current idolisation of Scandinavia is creating a common global narrative of a superior society. A mythical place that has “figured it out”, and found the key to happiness. The mythologised North is based on an array of media stories, statistics, reports, articles, advertising, political rhetoric, books, films, TV series, exhibitions, and social media activity. These perpetuate a “truth” of the Nordic countries as being especially benign, cultured, and distinguished. The Smiling PolicemanIn his well-known essay Myth Today, Barthes analyses an image of a North African boy in uniform saluting the French flag on the front cover of a magazine. Barthes argues that by analysing the semiotic meaning of the image in two stages, one can identify the “myth”.The first level is the signifiers (what we see), a dark skinned boy, a uniform, a raised arm, a flag. The signified is our recognition of these as a North African boy raising his arm to the French flag. The second level of interpretation is the wider context in which we understand what we see: the greatness of France is signified in the depiction of one of her colonial subjects submitting to and glorifying the flag. That is to say, the myth generated by the image is the story of France as a great colonial and military nation.Now take a look at this image, which was distributed the world over in newspapers, online media, and in turn social media (Warren; Kolff). This image is interesting because it epitomises much of what is believed about Scandinavia (the new myths). If we approach the image through the semiotic lens of Barthes, we firstly describe what is seen in the picture (signifiers): a blonde policeman, a girl of dark complexion, a road in the countryside, a van in the distance, and some other people with backpacks on the side of the road. When we put these elements together in context, we understand that the image to be depicting a Danish policeman, blonde, smiling and handsome, playing with a Syrian refugee girl on an empty Danish highway, with her fellow refugees behind her.The second level of interpretation (the myth) is created by combining the elements into a story: A friendly police officer is playing with a refugee girl, which is unusual because policemen are commonly seen as authoritarian and unfriendly to illegal immigrants. This policeman is smiling. He is happy in his job. He is healthy, good-looking, and compassionate.This fits the image of Scandinavian men as good fathers (they have paternity leave, and often help equally with child rearing). The image confirms that the happiest people on earth would of course also have happy, friendly policemen. The belief that the Scandinavian social model is one to admire would appear to be endorsed.The fact that this is in a rural setting with green landscapes adds further to the notion of Nordic freshness, naturalness, environmentalism, and food that comes from the wild. The fact that the policeman is well-groomed, stylish, well-built, and handsome reinforces the notion that Scandinavia is a place of style and taste, where the good Viking gene pool produces fit and beautiful people.It makes sense that in a place with a focus on togetherness and the common good, refugees are also treated well. Just as the French image of a dark-skinned boy saluting the French flag sent out messages of French superiority, this image sends out messages of inherent Nordic goodness in a time where positive images of the European refugee crisis are few and far between.In a discursive discussion, one asks not only what meanings does this image convey, but why is this image chosen, distributed, shared, tweeted, and promoted over other images? What purpose does its proliferation serve? What is the historical context in which it is popularised? What is the cultural imagination/narrative that is served? In the current often depressing socio-political situation in Europe, people like to know that there is a place where compassion and play exists.Among other news stories of death, despair, and border protection, depictions of an idealised North can help calm anxieties by implying the existence of a place that is free of conflict. Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen writes:The flood of journalistic and popular ethnographic explorations of the Nordic region in the UK is an expression, perhaps, of a search for a lost sense of identity, a nostalgic longing for an imagined past society more in tune with pre-Thatcherite welfarist values, by way of consuming, appropriating and exoticising proximate cultural identities such as the now much hyped Danish or Nordic utopias. (Nordic Noir, 6)In The Almost Nearly Perfect People, British writer Michael Booth wonders: “one thing in particular about this new-found love of all things Scandinavian … which struck me as particularly odd: considering all this positive PR, and with awareness of the so-called Nordic miracle at an all-time high, why wasn’t everyone flocking to live here [in Denmark]?” (7).In actuality not many people in the West are interested in living in the Nordic countries. Rather, as Barbara Goodwin writes: “utopias hold up a mirror to the fears and aspirations of the time in which they were written” (2). In other words, in an age of anxiety, where traditional norms and stabilities are shifting, to believe that there is a place where contemporary societies have found a way of living in happiness and togetherness provides a sense of hope. People are not flocking to live in Scandinavia because it is not in their interests to have their utopian ideals shattered by the reality that, though the North has a lot to offer, it is inevitably not a utopia (Sougaard-Nielsen, The Truth Is).UnderbellyParadoxically, in recent years, Scandinavia has become well known for its “Nordic Noir” crime fiction and television. In the documentary TV series Scandimania, British TV personality Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall travels through Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, exploring the culture, scenery, and food. He finds it curious that Denmark has become so famous for its sombre crime series, such as The Killing and The Bridge, because it seems so far removed from the Denmark he experiences riding around the streets of Copenhagen on his bike.Fearnley-Whittingstall ponders that one has to look hard to find the dark side of Denmark, and that perhaps it does not actually exist at all. This observation points to something essential. Even though millions of viewers worldwide have seen shows such as The Killing, which are known for their dark story lines, bleak urban settings, complex but realistic characters, progressive gender equality, and social commentary, the positive mythologising of Scandinavia remains so strong that it engenders a belief that the underbelly shown in Nordic Noir is perhaps entirely fictional.Stougaard-Nielsen (see also Pitcher, Consuming Race) argues that perhaps the British obsession with Nordic Noir (and this could be applied to other western countries) can be attributed to “a more appropriate white cosmopolitan desire to imagine rooted identities in an age of globalisation steeped in complex identity politics” (Nordic Noir, 8). That is to say that, for a segment of society which feels overwhelmed by contemporary multiculturalism, there may be a pleasure in watching a show that is predominantly populated by white Nordic protagonists, where the homes and people are stylish, and where the Nordic model of welfare and progressive thinking provides a rich identity source for white people as a symbolic point of origin.The watching/reading of Nordic Noir, as well as other preoccupations with all things Nordic, help build upon a mythological sense of whiteness that sets itself apart from our usual notions of race politics, by being an accepted form of longing for the North of bygone ages: a place that is progressive, moral, stylish, and imbued with aspirational ways of living, thinking, and being (Pitcher, Racial Politics).The image of the Danish police officer and the refugee girl fits this ideal of a progressive society where race relations are uncomplicated. The policeman who epitomises the Nordic ideal is in a position of power, but this is an authority which is benevolent. The girl is non-threatening in her otherness, because she is a child and female, and therefore does not fit the culturally dreaded Muslim/terrorist stereotype. In this constellation the two can meet beautifully.The reality, of course, is that the race relations and issues surrounding immigration in Denmark, and in other Nordic countries, are as complicated and often messy and hateful as they are in other countries. In Sweden, as Fearnley-Whittingstall touches upon in Scandimania, there are escalating problems with integration of the many new Swedes and growing inequalities in wealth. In Norway, the underlying race tensions became acutely topical in the aftermath of the 2011 massacre, where right-wing extremist Anders Breivik killed 77 people. Denmark has one of the harshest anti-immigration laws in Europe, laws that are continuously being tightened (Boserup); and whenever visiting Denmark I have been surprised to see how much space and time discussions about immigration and integration take up in the news and current affairs.If we contrast the previous image with the image above, taken within a similar timeframe on the same Danish highway, we can see the reality of Danish immigration policies. Here we are exposed to a different story. The scene and the location is the same, but the power dynamics have shifted from benign, peaceful, and playful to aggressive, authoritarian, and conflict ridden. A desperate father carries his daughter, determined to march on towards their destination of Sweden. The policeman is pulling his arm, attempting to detain the refugees so that they cannot go further, the goal being to deport the Syrians back to their previous place of detention, just over the border in Germany (Harticollis). While the previous image reflects the humanity of the refugee crisis, this image reflects the politics, policies, and to a large extent public opinion in Denmark, which is not refugee-friendly. This image, however, was not widely distributed, partly because it feeds into the same depressing narrative of an unsolvable refugee crisis seen so often elsewhere, and partly because it does not fit into the narrative of the infallible North. It could not be tweeted with the hashtag #Humanity, nor shared on Facebook with a smiley face and liked with an emoji heart.Another image from Denmark, in the form of a politically funded billboard, shows that there are deep-seated tendencies within Danish society that want to promote and retain a Denmark which adheres to its traditional values and ethnic whiteness. The image was displayed all over the country, at train stations, bus stops, and other public spaces when I visited in 2016. It was issued by Dansk Folkeparti (the Danish People’s Party); a party which is anti-immigration and which was until recently the country’s second largest party. The title says “Our Denmark”, while the byline cleverly plays with the double meaning of passe på: it can mean “there is so much we need to take care of”, but also “there is so much we need to beware of.” In other words, the white working-class family needs to take care of their Denmark, and beware of anyone who does not fit into this norm. Though hugely contested and criticised (Cremer; see a counter-reaction designed by opponents below), the fact that thinly veiled anti-immigration propaganda can be so readily distributed speaks of an underbelly in Danish society that is not made of the dark murder mysteries in The Killing, but rather of a quietly brewing distain for the foreigner that reigns within stylishly designed living rooms. ConclusionMyths are stories cultures tell and retell until they form a belief system that becomes a natural part of our collective narrative. For Barthes, these stories were intrinsically connected to our understanding of language and our ability to read images, films, artifacts, and popular culture more generally. To later cultural theorists, the notion of discursive formations expands this understanding, to see myth within a broader network of socio-political discourses placed within a certain place and time in history. When connected, small narratives (images, advertising, film, music, news stories, social media sharing, scientific evidence, etc.) come together to form a common narrative (the myth) about how things are and should be in relation to a particular topic. The culminating popularity of numerous Nordic themes (Nordic television/film, interior design, fashion, cuisine, architecture, lifestyle, sustainability, welfare system, school system, gender equality, etc.) has created a grand narrative of the Nordic countries as a type of utopia: one that shows the rest of the world that an egalitarian society of togetherness and progressive innovation is possible. This mythologisation serves to quell anxieties about the flux and uncertainty of contemporary times, and may also serve to legitimise a yearning for a simple, benign, and progressive whiteness, where we imagine Nordic families sitting peacefully at their beechwood dining tables, candles lit, playing board games. This is a projected yearning which is otherwise largely disallowed in today’s multicultural societies.ReferencesAnderson, Elizabeth. “The Most Prosperous Countries in the World, Based on Happiness and Financial Health.” The Telegraph, 2 Nov. 2015. <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11966461/The-most-prosperous-countries-in-the-world-based-on-happiness-and-financial-health.html>.Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. London: Vintage, 2000 [1957].———. “Myth Today.” Mythologies. London: Vintage, 2000 [1957].Booth, Michael. The Almost Nearly Perfect People. London: Jonathan Cape, 2014.Boserup, Rasmus Alenius. “Denmark’s Harsh New Immigration Law Will End Badly for Everyone.” Huffington Post. <https://www.huffingtonpost.com/rasmus-alenius-boserup/denmark-immigration-law_b_9112148.html>.Bridge, The. (Danish: Broen.) Created by Hans Rosenfeldt. Sveriges Television and DR, 2013-present.Cleary, Paul. “Norway Is Proof That You Can Have It All.” The Australian, 15 July 2013. <http://www.theaustralian.com.au/life/norway-is-proof-that-you-can-have-it-all/news-story/3d2895adbace87431410e7b033ec84bf>.Colson, Thomas. “7 Reasons Denmark Is the Happiest Country in the World.” The Independent, 26 Sep. 2016. <http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/7-reasons-denmark-is-the-happiest-country-in-the-world-a7331146.html>.Cremer, Justin. “The Strangest Political Story in Denmark Just Got Stranger.” The Local, 19 May 2016. <https://www.thelocal.dk/20160519/strangest-political-story-in-denmark-just-got-stranger>.Dregni, Eric. “Why Is Norway the Happiest Place on Earth?” Star Tribune, 11 June 2017. <http://www.startribune.com/the-height-of-happy/427321393/#1>.Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality: The Will to Knowledge. London: Penguin Books, 1998 [1976]. Gaiman, Neil. “Neil Gaiman Retells Classic Norse Mythology.” Conversations. Radio National 30 Mar. 2017.Goodwin, Barbara, ed. The Philosophy of Utopia. London: Frank Cass, 2001.Hall, Stuart, ed. Representation: Cultural Representations and Signifying Practices. London: Sage, 1997.Hartocollis, Anemona. “Traveling in Europe’s River of Migrants.” New York Times, 9 Sep. 2015. <https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/projects/cp/reporters-notebook/migrants/denmark-refugees-migrants>.Helliwell, J., R. Layard, and J. Sachs. World Happiness Report 2017. New York: Sustainable Development Solutions Network, 2017.Kale, Sirin. “Women Are Now Pillaging Sperm Banks for Viking Babies.” Vice, 2 Oct. 2015. <https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/3dx9nj/women-are-now-pillaging-sperm-banks-for-viking-babies>.Killing, The. (Danish: Forbrydelsen.) Created by Søren Sveistrup. DR, 2007-2012.Kolff, Louise. “Part III: The Hunk & the Refugee.” Perspectra, 3 Dec. 2015. <https://perspectra.org/2015/12/03/danish-police-and-refugee-girl/>.Oxford Dictionaries. “Hygge.” <https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/hygge>.Oxford Dictionaries. “Myth.” <https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/myth>.Pitcher, Ben. Consuming Race. London: Routledge, 2014.———. “The Racial Politics of Nordic Noir.” Mecetes, 9 April 2014. <http://mecetes.co.uk/racial-politics-nordic-noir/>.Scandimania. Featuring H. Fearnley-Whittingstall. Channel 4, 2014.Sougaard-Nielsen, Jacob. “Nordic Noir in the UK: The Allure of Accessible Difference.” Journal of Aesthetics & Culture 8.1 (2016). 1 Oct. 2017 <http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.3402/jac.v8.32704>.———. “The Truth Is, Scandinavia Is Neither Heaven nor Hell.” The Conversation, 19 Aug. 2014. <https://theconversation.com/the-truth-is-scandinavia-is-neither-heaven-nor-hell-30641>.Warren, Rossalyn. “The Touching Moment a Policeman Sat Down to Play with a Syrian Refugee.” BuzzFeed News, 15 Sep. 2015. <https://www.buzzfeed.com/rossalynwarren/the-adorable-moment-a-policeman-sat-down-to-play-with-a-syri?utm_term=.qjzl2WEk7#.kgZXOp76M>.

In this thesis I examine the contemporary nexus between White women and the raced and classed institution of White womanhood. More specifically, I focus on White Australian women who are middle class, rich in cultural capital, and generally consider themselves to be progressive; that is race privileged women but women who are not usually associated with overt racism. My analysis unfolds White Australian women in the discursive context of the ideologies of feminism and feminist-influenced anti-racist politics, as well as the ideologies of femininity. The thesis shows how this nexus is enacted through a vision of White women as Good as expressed in the political commitments, mentalities, relationships, narratives and corporeality of such women. The research problem that I identified and worked through in the thesis is as follows: for middle class White women, (who can be seen and see themselves as generic 'women'), Whiteness has been seen and played out as Goodness. Further, in the playing out of this Goodness White women accumulate and defend the prestige and privileges of Whiteness. Specifically, I argue that Whiteness is reproduced in some of the discourses and practices of White feminism, by the progressive White women involved in anti-racist politics, and in the femininity industry and the ways it is taken up. The nub of the problem I identify is that White women's involvement in the structures and narratives that support Whiteness is often grounded in the very qualities of character and conduct that emerge from the colonial and class-constructed ideal of White womanhood and which have historically distinguished them from denigrated others. These qualities- notably virtue, innocence and self-restraint- whilst differently nuanced in other contexts are an ongoing expression of the uses made of White womanhood as the visible sign of race and class superiority. The work examines four key periods: the Australian colony of PNG during the decolonising 1960's and 1970's; the high years of 1970's and 1980's feminism; the race debates of the 1990's; and the bodily practices of present day White women gripped by fears of fat and aging. I explore the ways in which White women's Whiteness is played out in benevolent Black/White relationships, the over-reach of difference feminism, particular kinds of anti-racist identities and activism, and body-improvement practices. In all these cultural sites, White women's Whiteness is often represented as a kind of moral being and deployed as moral authority in ways that are consonant with the raced and classed construction of White women as moral texts. My research approach was determined by the research problem I identified. Given my argument that White women mis-recognise Whiteness as Goodness in a race-structured society, then the collecting of data through interviews or surveys would have yielded material subject to this blindness. Instead, I explored sites and material where moral claims were being pressed, and case studies where 'women' were enacting themselves or being represented or interpellated as moral texts. My selection of primary source material ranges from feminist newsletters, women's and other magazines, literature, film, event programs and flyers, radio and television broadcasts, newspapers and websites, as well as reflections on my own experiences. Secondary source material includes feminist theoretical texts as well as texts drawn from a range of other disciplines, and other historical background materials. I lay out and support my arguments using a technique not dissimilar to collage, aiming to construct a picture that is compelling in its detail as well as coherent in its overall effect. This thesis is a contribution to the de-naturalisation of Whiteness. Navigating a course between the opposing hazards of essentialising Whiteness and understating its effects in contemporary Australian society, I have brought into clearer view some of the strategies which maintain the authority of Whiteness.

In this thesis I examine the contemporary nexus between White women and the raced and classed institution of White womanhood. More specifically, I focus on White Australian women who are middle class, rich in cultural capital, and generally consider themselves to be progressive; that is race privileged women but women who are not usually associated with overt racism. My analysis unfolds White Australian women in the discursive context of the ideologies of feminism and feminist-influenced anti-racist politics, as well as the ideologies of femininity. The thesis shows how this nexus is enacted through a vision of White women as Good as expressed in the political commitments, mentalities, relationships, narratives and corporeality of such women. The research problem that I identified and worked through in the thesis is as follows: for middle class White women, (who can be seen and see themselves as generic 'women'), Whiteness has been seen and played out as Goodness. Further, in the playing out of this Goodness White women accumulate and defend the prestige and privileges of Whiteness. Specifically, I argue that Whiteness is reproduced in some of the discourses and practices of White feminism, by the progressive White women involved in anti-racist politics, and in the femininity industry and the ways it is taken up. The nub of the problem I identify is that White women's involvement in the structures and narratives that support Whiteness is often grounded in the very qualities of character and conduct that emerge from the colonial and class-constructed ideal of White womanhood and which have historically distinguished them from denigrated others. These qualities- notably virtue, innocence and self-restraint- whilst differently nuanced in other contexts are an ongoing expression of the uses made of White womanhood as the visible sign of race and class superiority. The work examines four key periods: the Australian colony of PNG during the decolonising 1960's and 1970's; the high years of 1970's and 1980's feminism; the race debates of the 1990's; and the bodily practices of present day White women gripped by fears of fat and aging. I explore the ways in which White women's Whiteness is played out in benevolent Black/White relationships, the over-reach of difference feminism, particular kinds of anti-racist identities and activism, and body-improvement practices. In all these cultural sites, White women's Whiteness is often represented as a kind of moral being and deployed as moral authority in ways that are consonant with the raced and classed construction of White women as moral texts. My research approach was determined by the research problem I identified. Given my argument that White women mis-recognise Whiteness as Goodness in a race-structured society, then the collecting of data through interviews or surveys would have yielded material subject to this blindness. Instead, I explored sites and material where moral claims were being pressed, and case studies where 'women' were enacting themselves or being represented or interpellated as moral texts. My selection of primary source material ranges from feminist newsletters, women's and other magazines, literature, film, event programs and flyers, radio and television broadcasts, newspapers and websites, as well as reflections on my own experiences. Secondary source material includes feminist theoretical texts as well as texts drawn from a range of other disciplines, and other historical background materials. I lay out and support my arguments using a technique not dissimilar to collage, aiming to construct a picture that is compelling in its detail as well as coherent in its overall effect. This thesis is a contribution to the de-naturalisation of Whiteness. Navigating a course between the opposing hazards of essentialising Whiteness and understating its effects in contemporary Australian society, I have brought into clearer view some of the strategies which maintain the authority of Whiteness.
Thesis (PhD Doctorate)
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
School of Arts, Media and Culture
Full Text

This chapter examines white people’s deep investment in what the author describes as white innocence, defined as the desire by whites to present themselves as morally good and racially enlightened in relation to race and racism. Drawing on studies of white college students’ perceptions and attitudes, the author’s interactions with white students in the classroom and in service learning settings, and the author’s self-reflection, the chapter explores behaviors and attitudes that reflect white attachment to innocence and understandings of race and whiteness. The author, Zak Foste, highlights factors that support investment in racial innocence, such as the racial isolation of white people, the lack of historical connection to centuries of white privilege and supremacy, and the surface-level assessment of diversity-related educational efforts. After exploring the consequences of white people’s investments in innocence for communities of color and coalitions working for racial justice, Foste offers strategies that might challenge white people to divest from their desires for goodness and engage in sustained critical reflection about their personal complicity in white supremacy.