Loving coalitions : seven texts on feminist resistance

In 2021, seven interdisciplinary gender studies scholars of mixed ethnic and racial origins, who have worked/still work in different gender studies centres in Sweden, formed a collective called Loving Coalitions. Our initial aim was to take as a point of departure our different yet intersecting everyday experiences of feeling epistemically, racially, and existentially Othered within Swedish gender studies and society, and start to work towards feminist coalition building. During these years we engaged with creative and artistic modes of knowledge production, such as automatic writing, collective memory-work, poetry, letters, and fiction. In our Loving Coalitions we learnt that by creatively writing about and collectively discussing our experiences and memories of multiple challenging and, at times, impossible border crossings—national, epistemic, racialised, gender, legal, existential—we organically created a safe space in which we can compare notes between our different backgrounds and academic trajectories, and collectively understand and theorize about them in new transformative ways. We are also currently weaving together our discussions, letters, poems, memories, testimonies, and stories into a collective book publication that will celebrate the journey of a beautiful coalition of seven different yet interconnected feminist scholars: Memories that Bridge: Weaving Feminist (Her)Stories in Loving Coalition

The magic of feminist bridging : a mosaic of anti-racist speech bubbles about othering in Swedish Academia

Are feminist coalitions magical enough to survive and endure while questioning and shaking the colonial/racist foundations of Swedish academic knowledge production and the overall Swedish society? Can feminist bridging and collective writing remain a magical process even when grappling with difficult experiences and memories of othering and racialisation? This is a creatively and collectively written article on feminist coalition building, and its importance in thinking, articulating and deconstructing race, racialization and racist structures. More than two years ago, seven interdisciplinary gender studies scholars of mixed ethnic and racial origins, came together to explore our differently situated experiences of disidentifying with Swedish academia and society in a collective we call Loving Coalitions. Against the background of Swedish exceptionalism, historical amnesia of Sweden’s colonial past and present, and the deafening silence on Swedish whiteness and racism, we are sharing our poems, letters, texts and testimonies of racist interactions in Swedish academia and society. While doing so, we discuss how moving away from conventional ways of doing research and experimenting with creative methodological alternatives, such as automatic writing, epistolary formats, poems, fiction, collective memory-work, allow us to acknowledge and embrace our different life backgrounds and academic trajectories as a mode of knowledge production. We hope and believe that our experiences, reflections and ways to resist racism and Othering in Sweden and Swedish academia through alternative coalition building, based on mutual care and love, can be relevant in a Danish context as well

Den tvåfaldiga mångfalden : en postkolonial dekonstruktion av mångfaldsdiskursen

Aims: The purpose of our master's thesis is to study the diversity discourse, used in Sweden, particularly the so-called ethnic diversity at the work place discourse. Our aims are to map and analyze the conceptualization of difference used in the diversity rhetoric. We intend to pursue our aim by studying the rhetoric of diversity, used for diversity promotion in the private and public sectors. Also, we will investigate into what conceptualizations of difference are used in the organizations in the name of "diversity". We will analyze and deconstruct the conceptualizations of difference by looking at their historical and social role in the Western world, Sweden in particular, to show how they pass on and contribute to the ongoing differentiation and exclusion of the immigrant workers within the Swedish labour market, particularly within organizations. Method and theory: Our methodological approach to knowledge and research is critical theory, while our ambition is to produce a reflective and interpretation-based thesis. Our operative method of study is a discourse analysis. The theories we used to analyze our empirical data are the social constructive perspective and the postcolonial theory. We used the postcolonial theory to identify and analyze differentiation and categorization of "the other" by examining social construction of categories such as race, nation, culture, ethnicity, immigrants and Swedes. We used qualitative interviews to gather the empirical data. The data is based on interviews with 13 respondents. We collected data from diversity consultants from the private and the public sector. We also conducted a case study based on four interviews with key-persons at a Swedish company, which has implemented ethnic diversity. Conclusions: Our main conclusions are that the diversity rhetoric used in Sweden is based on a conceptualization of absolute, static and dichotomized differences between "Swedes" and "non-Swedes". The diversity rhetoric refers implicitly to the colonial discourse of the Western world contra "the inferior other". Therefore the conclusion of this thesis is that the diversity discourse in Sweden serves the purpose of disguising the inequality, differentiation and exclusion of the "non-Swedish other". Keywords: Diversity, discourse, postcolonial, critical theory, social construction, "the others", inclusion/exclusion, culture, ethnicity, race, nation, immigration, deconstruction, dichotomy, hermeneutics of suspicion