Hauntology and Affective Encounters with Whiteness in Artful Educational Practices in Denmark

Abstract

Art pedagogical spaces in Denmark con tinue to be haunted by the spectre(s) of whiteness, even as scholars agree that the denial of race as a category and the processes pertaining to its existence are problematic. These oversights have the potential to reinforce racism and facilitate the suppression of discussions surrounding race and racialisation. This article exam ines how whiteness emerges as ghostly matters in artful teaching and learning. The study unfolds through material produced during fieldwork at a University College in Denmark as part of the author's PhD research centring on the use of artful ped agogical practices as interlinked with play and learning in the professional education of social educators. The empirical material consists of observations, reflections on video recordings, and autoethnographic accounts of the phenomenon. The author invokes a hauntological interpretation of the affective event space of a performative pedagogical encounter that is embodied and affective to reveal how whiteness continues to haunt and impact artful peda gogical spaces. This article emphasises the urgent need for active engagement within the Nordic context with the spectre of an occluded but thoroughly entangled history that calls toward a justice to come. dominates.' Gloria Wekker developed the term 'white innocence' to denote a form of racial exceptionalism based on denial of race, racism, and the national colonial history, which ultimately produces colour blind practices. While Wekker takes this conversation to the Netherlands, there are many parallels with the Danish and Nordic context. In Denmark, the prevailing under standing is that we have moved beyond race and racism, and instead it is consid ered more appropriate to talk of cultural, religious, and ethnic differences. Race and racism are viewed as volatile concepts and are associated with the historical era of colonialism, race biology, and Nazism in the Nordic countries. This modernist attitude, together with a lack of acknowledgement of Nordic histories of colonialism, produces an image of Nordic countries as mono cul tural and predominantly white nation states dominated by the norms of unmarked whiteness. Research highlights how the denial of the social existence of race as a category and the processes pertaining to its existence serves to reinforce potential racism, enabling what has been termed as silencing of race and racialisation. In the field of education, there are countless studies revealing how this silencing is in effect. As Hvenegård Lassen and Staunaes note, Denmark continues to be haunted by a spectre of whiteness. Echoing Derrida's concept of hauntology, it seems 'we have to learn to live with ghosts and be accountable to them.