“I want us to trade skins and experiences”, proposes the bestselling author Jonas Hassen Khemiri ... more “I want us to trade skins and experiences”, proposes the bestselling author Jonas Hassen Khemiri to Sweden’s Minister of Justice Beatrice Ask in his open letter. The letter, which challenges the Minister to walk through Stockholm’s streets in a non-white, non-Swedish, stereotyped body of an “immigrant”, went viral. It was shared 120,000 times on Facebook, reached nearly each Swedish user on Twitter, and was viewed more than 250,000 times on Dagens Nyheter within 24 hours of publication. This article seeks to explain the letter's particular effect with its complex relation to the concept of Swedish Whiteness. As a performance of immigrant identities Khemiri’s text draws power from the synergy of its socially charged topic, from the iconicity of the writer’s non-white body, and the public discourse on “immigrant literature”. The main claim of the article is to indicate the ways in which perceptions of Swedish whiteness impact the social and cultural fields, and to point out the interaction of the mass media, the “immigrant literature”, and its actors in complex processes of constitution and reproduction of whiteness and non-whiteness. While highlighting the role of the visual appearance, I will analyse mass media ethnicizing representations of Alejandro Leiva Wenger, Johannes Anyuru, and Jonas Hassen Khemiri, and I will argue that the non-white “immigrant author” serves as a framework for extension of white Swedishness and as a source of attention, power, and authority.
“I want us to trade skins and experiences”, proposes the bestselling author Jonas Hassen Khemiri ... more “I want us to trade skins and experiences”, proposes the bestselling author Jonas Hassen Khemiri to Sweden’s Minister of Justice Beatrice Ask in his open letter. The letter, which challenges the Minister to walk through Stockholm’s streets in a non-white, non-Swedish, stereotyped body of an “immigrant”, went viral. It was shared 120,000 times on Facebook, reached nearly each Swedish user on Twitter, and was viewed more than 250,000 times on Dagens Nyheter within 24 hours of publication. This article seeks to explain the letter's particular effect with its complex relation to the concept of Swedish Whiteness. As a performance of immigrant identities Khemiri’s text draws power from the synergy of its socially charged topic, from the iconicity of the writer’s non-white body, and the public discourse on “immigrant literature”. The main claim of the article is to indicate the ways in which perceptions of Swedish whiteness impact the social and cultural fields, and to point out the interaction of the mass media, the “immigrant literature”, and its actors in complex processes of constitution and reproduction of whiteness and non-whiteness. While highlighting the role of the visual appearance, I will analyse mass media ethnicizing representations of Alejandro Leiva Wenger, Johannes Anyuru, and Jonas Hassen Khemiri, and I will argue that the non-white “immigrant author” serves as a framework for extension of white Swedishness and as a source of attention, power, and authority.
What do Jonas Hassen Khemiri from Sweden and Yahya Hassan from Denmark have in common? Apart from... more What do Jonas Hassen Khemiri from Sweden and Yahya Hassan from Denmark have in common? Apart from the visual commonalities – they both have a non-white physical appearance – they share an outstanding commercial and critical success. Using these young, highly hyped, bestselling authors as examples, this paper aims at discussing the iconic function of the 'immigrant writer's' authentic body in the public discourse on 'national' and 'immigrant' identities. The emphasis lies on the marketability of an 'immigrant writer', which derives its commercial value from the ico-nicity based on ethnic visibility, recognizability and exemplarity. I want to draw a connection between the existing fixed iconography of an 'immigrant' in the mass media and the visual ethnicized representations of Khemiri and Hassan in the daily press and put their literary performance into the socio-political context. This paper considers their popular author-images as objected icons of hege-monic normative discourses on national culture, while it simultaneously understands their subversive literary and extra-textual renegotiations of national self-imagery as iconoclasms of traditional order of 'Swedishness' resp. 'Danishness'. Rather than going into deep textual analysis, I focus on the para-texts such as newspaper articles and book covers as iconic performances of the discourse on the ‘immigrant literature’.
“I want us to trade skins and experiences”, proposes the bestselling author Jonas Hassen Khemiri ... more “I want us to trade skins and experiences”, proposes the bestselling author Jonas Hassen Khemiri to Sweden’s Minister of Justice Beatrice Ask in his open letter. The letter, which challenges the Minister to walk through Stockholm’s streets in a non-white, non-Swedish, stereotyped body of an “immigrant”, went viral. It was shared 120,000 times on Facebook, reached nearly each Swedish user on Twitter, and was viewed more than 250,000 times on Dagens Nyheter within 24 hours of publication. This article seeks to explain the letter's particular effect with its complex relation to the concept of Swedish Whiteness. As a performance of immigrant identities Khemiri’s text draws power from the synergy of its socially charged topic, from the iconicity of the writer’s non-white body, and the public discourse on “immigrant literature”. The main claim of the article is to indicate the ways in which perceptions of Swedish whiteness impact the social and cultural fields, and to point out the interaction of the mass media, the “immigrant literature”, and its actors in complex processes of constitution and reproduction of whiteness and non-whiteness. While highlighting the role of the visual appearance, I will analyse mass media ethnicizing representations of Alejandro Leiva Wenger, Johannes Anyuru, and Jonas Hassen Khemiri, and I will argue that the non-white “immigrant author” serves as a framework for extension of white Swedishness and as a source of attention, power, and authority.
“I want us to trade skins and experiences”, proposes the bestselling author Jonas Hassen Khemiri ... more “I want us to trade skins and experiences”, proposes the bestselling author Jonas Hassen Khemiri to Sweden’s Minister of Justice Beatrice Ask in his open letter. The letter, which challenges the Minister to walk through Stockholm’s streets in a non-white, non-Swedish, stereotyped body of an “immigrant”, went viral. It was shared 120,000 times on Facebook, reached nearly each Swedish user on Twitter, and was viewed more than 250,000 times on Dagens Nyheter within 24 hours of publication. This article seeks to explain the letter's particular effect with its complex relation to the concept of Swedish Whiteness. As a performance of immigrant identities Khemiri’s text draws power from the synergy of its socially charged topic, from the iconicity of the writer’s non-white body, and the public discourse on “immigrant literature”. The main claim of the article is to indicate the ways in which perceptions of Swedish whiteness impact the social and cultural fields, and to point out the interaction of the mass media, the “immigrant literature”, and its actors in complex processes of constitution and reproduction of whiteness and non-whiteness. While highlighting the role of the visual appearance, I will analyse mass media ethnicizing representations of Alejandro Leiva Wenger, Johannes Anyuru, and Jonas Hassen Khemiri, and I will argue that the non-white “immigrant author” serves as a framework for extension of white Swedishness and as a source of attention, power, and authority.
What do Jonas Hassen Khemiri from Sweden and Yahya Hassan from Denmark have in common? Apart from... more What do Jonas Hassen Khemiri from Sweden and Yahya Hassan from Denmark have in common? Apart from the visual commonalities – they both have a non-white physical appearance – they share an outstanding commercial and critical success. Using these young, highly hyped, bestselling authors as examples, this paper aims at discussing the iconic function of the 'immigrant writer's' authentic body in the public discourse on 'national' and 'immigrant' identities. The emphasis lies on the marketability of an 'immigrant writer', which derives its commercial value from the ico-nicity based on ethnic visibility, recognizability and exemplarity. I want to draw a connection between the existing fixed iconography of an 'immigrant' in the mass media and the visual ethnicized representations of Khemiri and Hassan in the daily press and put their literary performance into the socio-political context. This paper considers their popular author-images as objected icons of hege-monic normative discourses on national culture, while it simultaneously understands their subversive literary and extra-textual renegotiations of national self-imagery as iconoclasms of traditional order of 'Swedishness' resp. 'Danishness'. Rather than going into deep textual analysis, I focus on the para-texts such as newspaper articles and book covers as iconic performances of the discourse on the ‘immigrant literature’.
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This article seeks to explain the letter's particular effect with its complex relation to the concept of Swedish Whiteness. As a performance of immigrant identities Khemiri’s text draws power from the synergy of its socially charged topic, from the iconicity of the writer’s non-white body, and the public discourse on “immigrant literature”. The main claim of the article is to indicate the ways in which perceptions of Swedish whiteness impact the social and cultural fields, and to point out the interaction of the mass media, the “immigrant literature”, and its actors in complex processes of constitution and reproduction of whiteness and non-whiteness. While highlighting the role of the visual appearance, I will analyse mass media ethnicizing representations of Alejandro Leiva Wenger, Johannes Anyuru, and Jonas Hassen Khemiri, and I will argue that the non-white “immigrant author” serves as a framework for extension of white Swedishness and as a source of attention, power, and authority.
This article seeks to explain the letter's particular effect with its complex relation to the concept of Swedish Whiteness. As a performance of immigrant identities Khemiri’s text draws power from the synergy of its socially charged topic, from the iconicity of the writer’s non-white body, and the public discourse on “immigrant literature”. The main claim of the article is to indicate the ways in which perceptions of Swedish whiteness impact the social and cultural fields, and to point out the interaction of the mass media, the “immigrant literature”, and its actors in complex processes of constitution and reproduction of whiteness and non-whiteness. While highlighting the role of the visual appearance, I will analyse mass media ethnicizing representations of Alejandro Leiva Wenger, Johannes Anyuru, and Jonas Hassen Khemiri, and I will argue that the non-white “immigrant author” serves as a framework for extension of white Swedishness and as a source of attention, power, and authority.