TY - JOUR

T1 - The White Tent of Grief. Racialized conditions of public mourning in Denmark

AU - Nebeling, Michael

AU - Bissenbakker, Mons

PY - 2019/1/2

Y1 - 2019/1/2

N2 - 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.

AB - 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.

UR - https://www.academia.edu/42840275/The_white_tent_of_grief._Racialized_conditions_of_public_mourning_in_Denmark

U2 - 10.1080/14649365.2018.1563708

DO - 10.1080/14649365.2018.1563708

M3 - Journal article

JO - Social & Cultural Geography

JF - Social & Cultural Geography

SN - 1464-9365

ER -