Digital media revitalising colonial heritage: the George Floyd video translocalized in Denmark

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this paper, we analyse how the colonial spectrality of the George Floyd video translocalises from the United States to Denmark to form heritage assemblages of solidarity, removal and repression that re-vitalize the colonial past and anti-racist protests in contemporary contexts. Through our analysis, we unfold the affective capacities of the Floyd video and its memetic mutations that mobilize publics against asymmetries inherited from colonialism and invent new forms of activism. We show that while protester tactics following Floyd demonstrate a reflexive distribution of subjectivities and positionalities, minority voices and efforts to remove symbols of colonialism are condemned and suppressed in Denmark. Our main contribution is to include digital media into heritage assemblages as an affective device. A second contribution is presenting digital epidemiography as an affective methodology to remotely study transient and unpredictable global events, through an analysis of digital traces found on the internet. A third contribution is the knowledge of how post-Floyd heritage assemblages in Denmark position this Scandinavian country as a former colonizer in the decolonial turn.