Decolonising the "Great White North", Subalternity, Otherness, and Nordic Whiteness

Abstract

This report offers an analytical overview of the interdisciplinary conference »The ›Great White North‹? Critical Perspectives on Whiteness in the Nordics and its Neighbours«, held at the University of Helsinki in August 2019. It considers how the conference scrutinised the relational dynamic of »whiteness and otherness« in the Nordics, engaging with complex questions of identity, belonging, and linguistic/cultural difference, from a »decolonial« vantage point. The report thus examines how a decolonial interrogation of whiteness opens up an alternative sub-altern scope for re-evaluating the colonial-racial hierarchies of the »Great White North« via the marginalised nar-ratives of its indigenous, migrant and »non-white« ethnicities.