Being White in pluralist proximity Concerning postcolonial art, education and research in Scandinavia

Helen Karen Eriksen will defend the thesis Being White in pluralist proximity Concerning postcolonial art, education and research in Scandinavia for the PhD degree Tuesday 26 September 2023.

Summary of the thesis

This study explores the paradox of how the majority of Scandinavians denounce racism while reconciling themselves with the fact that it exists. The analysis discusses postcolonial and critical race theories and the strive towards decoloniality as a collective practice that is ultimately bound to individual actions and behaviour.

The study explores the fields of art, education and research through a process of diffraction inspired by Karen Barad´s theory of agential realism. Rather than taking a more traditional position of the neutral observer or scientist, or subjective artist Eriksen has diffracted racialising moments where White identity is destabilised and challenged.

I would like to consider this thesis a decolonising praxis, as it is hopefully an interven­tion in the context in which it is researched, supervised, and published. The form of the final thesis itself can be seen as an insistence on the right to question what Biggs and Büchler (2010) identify as very different dissemination practices of artistic and academic communities. It is a thesis that bulges in every direction. It describes and analyses how racism is played out in informal and institutional settings despite well meaning intentions of inclusion and diversion by the racialised majority.

In her artist practice with Tenthaus collective Eriksen plays  close attention to how the individual arranges objects in what is described as micro-movements. Natural aesthetic preferences occurred that indicated difference and ultimately led to dialog that challenges the idea of the artist as autonomous or exceptional.

Two concepts emerge from the study in collaboration with the Solmaz Collective, Zahra Bayati and Gry Ulrichsen:

«safe ethical space» whereby seemingly incommensurable fields of art and science use ethical norms and protocols to exclude racialised voices from inclusion in the field

«pluralist proximity» is the process in which individuals with different racialised backgrounds open the seemingly fixed racial categories to explore making of stereotypes. 

Find more information about time and place for the doctoral defense.