Papers by Michael Nebeling Petersen
Social & Cultural Geography , 2019
In 2015, Danish-Palestinian Omar El-Hussein shot and killed two men in Copenhagen, before being k... more 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.
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Based on eight interviews with Danish gay male couples and one gay man, who had or were planning ... more Based on eight interviews with Danish gay male couples and one gay man, who had or were planning to become fathers through transnational commercial surrogacy, I examine the ways the men form family subjectivities between traditional kinship patterns and fundamentally new forms of kinship and family. Arguing that class, mobility, and privilege should also be understood as relational and negotiated positions, I show that gay men engaged in surrogacy must be understood as more flexible and differentiated. Second, I show how kinship as synonymous with biogenetic relatedness is supplemented by notions of kinship as devotion, individual will and determination, and reproductive desire in order to strengthen the men’s affinity to their children. Last, I examine how the men negotiate and work within the given structures of heteronormativity and Whiteness and rework notions of parenthood while at the same time reaffirming old hierarchizations of racialized and sexualized forms of procreation and families.
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(In)Fertile Citizens. Anthropological and Legal Challenges of Assisted Reproduction Technologies
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Gay men are carrying a history as being suspected as potential pedophiles and non-suited parents,... more Gay men are carrying a history as being suspected as potential pedophiles and non-suited parents, and while the reproductive technology of transnational gestational surrogacy makes it possible for gay men to become parents within heteronormative logics, the constructions of families without a mother are looked upon as problematic at best. Through field observations and interviews with gay men, who have been or who are involved in transnational surrogacy I explore how gay men fragmentize the notion of the mother in to several positions. The article argues that the gay men are reproductive vulnerable and are negotiating and fighting for the possibility to become legible as parents inside a heteronormative and homophobic framework. This relies on their ability to diminish the mother. By activating and using misogynic and colonial discourses and strategies, the gay men eradicate the kinship positions of the surrogate and the donor, thus giving discursive and affective life to gay men’s possibility to embody motherhood and parenthood.
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The article presents a reading of two newspaper-articles about the Danish LGBT parade in 2009. Th... more The article presents a reading of two newspaper-articles about the Danish LGBT parade in 2009. The articles represent the dominant discourse about gay and lesbian citizenship. The readings show that the contemporary mainstreaming of gay and
lesbian identity is intertwined with the national narrative about “the special Danish permissiveness”. Using the concept of homonationalism and Gregory’s rethinking of Saids concept of imaginary geographies the readings highlight how homonormative inclusions of gay and lesbian identities into citizenship and recognition – into the national Danish “we” – is being operationalized to construct and exclude a pathologized and suspicious immigrant population – the “them”. This imagined population is casted to oppose the national narrative and thereby is represented as a danger to gay and lesbian citizenship and the national narrative about Danishness.
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Gennem en logik om degeneration og en modsætning mellem nationen og homoseksualitet blev den homo... more Gennem en logik om degeneration og en modsætning mellem nationen og homoseksualitet blev den homoseksuelle konfigureret som ikke-vital i forhandlingerne om lov om registreret partnerskab i 1988. Tyve år senere er denne konfiguration af den homoseksuelle figur presset af nye logikke, der forbinder homoseksualitet med modernitet, fremskridt og danskhed. Og gennem en homonormativ logik forbindes den homoseksuelle nu med ønsket reproduktion og er dermed blevet en vital figur.
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At være medborger er at blive anerkendt og genkendt af staten som et ønsket individ: at kunne sti... more At være medborger er at blive anerkendt og genkendt af staten som et ønsket individ: at kunne stille politiske krav, at blive hørt, og at de politiske systemer og diskurser reagerer på ens politiske krav og livsbetingelser. Men hvordan genkendes nogle mennesker som medborgere, mens andre forbliver illegitime?
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Rosa Morena tells a story about kinship in which a white homosexual Danish man adopts a child bor... more Rosa Morena tells a story about kinship in which a white homosexual Danish man adopts a child born to a black poor Brazilian woman. Using a theoretical framework of biopolitics and affective labor the article highlights how the male homosexual figure is being cast as heteronormative and white in order to become intelligible as a parent and the bearer of liveable kinship. The casting rests on the affective and reproductive labor of the birth mother who is portrayed as an unsuited parent through a colonial discourse steeped in sexualized and racialized imagery. A specific distribution of affect fixates and relegates the birth mother to a state of living dead, and thus she becomes the bearer of an unliveable kinship.
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Transstudier og transteori opstod hovedsagelig i et forsøg på at vriste forskningen i og om trans... more Transstudier og transteori opstod hovedsagelig i et forsøg på at vriste forskningen i og om transkønnethed ud af hænderne på psykiatriske og lægevidenskabelige eksperter, der ikke bare har haft eneret på, men også været bestemmende for, at denne forskning domineres af spørgsmål vedrørende klassifikation, diagnosticering og behandling. Forskningsfeltet vokser ud af levede erfaringer af stigmatisering og usynliggørelse såvel inden for et psyko-medicinsk behandlingssystem som i kønsforskningen og i den brede sociale offentlighed.
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I was awarded the gender research Prize, the KRAKA-prize, in 2013 together with Tobias Raun. In t... more I was awarded the gender research Prize, the KRAKA-prize, in 2013 together with Tobias Raun. In the speech I sum up the arguments of my dissertation and argue for a subjectless queer critique. And how a focus on complicity must be part of this critique.
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The main argument of the dissertation is that the homosexual figure has fundamentally changed fro... more The main argument of the dissertation is that the homosexual figure has fundamentally changed from being a cultural figure related to death (e.g. degeneration, suicide, AIDS, and sickness) to being a figure related to life (e.g. reproduction, national recognition, marriage, and kinship). This reconfiguration is being fueled and made possible by making the figure of the homosexual recognizable inside heteronormative and nationalist formations. Thus the reconfiguration and other forms of exclusions are interdependent.
The main argument is being discussed in three different studies: The first study is an analysis of the discourses of the homosexual figure in parliamentary proceedings and national policies in Denmark 1988-2012. The second study is an analysis of the representations of the homosexual figure in national printed medias, focusing on the LGBT parade and the international event World Outgames in Copenhagen in 2009. The last study contains readings of mainstream gay movies picturing new kinship arrangements involving a homosexual figure.
The theoretical framework of the dissertation is critical race, feminist, and queer theories as well as Foucauldian biopolitical framework redeveloped by rethinking the concept of bio politics with the work of post- and neocolonial thinkers. The queer theoretical framework is developed by rereading classical queer theories in connection with queer of color critiques to make a queer theoretical mode of analysis calibrated to analyze the ways in which different forms of normativity produce and hierarchize racialized, sexualized, and gendered populations and subjects.
Article one: “When the Homosexual Became Suited for Family – a Queer Theoretical Discourse Analysis of the Parliamentary Proceedings regarding Homosexuals’ Access to Adoption 1988-2010” ["Da homoen blev familieduelig - en queerteoretisk diskursanalyse om Folketingsforhandlingerne om homoeseksuelles adgang til adoption 1988-2010"] analyses and expounds on the historical development in the parliamentary proceedings on central ‘gay rights’ from the introduction of the registered partnership (1989) to the introduction of adoption of stepchildren (1999), and to the introduction of regular adoption (2010). The article draws a historical line from the degenerated and non-vital gay figure to the vital gay figure suited for family in the end of the 2000s, arguing that the logics of modernity and homonormativity are fueling the changing discourses.
Article two: “To Change in Order to Maintain – Biopolitical Reconfigurations of the Homosexual” ["At forandre for at bevare - biopolitiske rekonfigurationer af den homoseksuelle", published in Dansk Sociologi] analyses the parliamentary proceedings on gay marriage (2010) together with a TV reality show about a gay wedding. The article concludes that the biopolitical inclusion of homosexuality is made possible by recoding gay kinship inside a paradigm of heteronormativity. A recoding that rests upon a narrative about emancipation and modernity, thus establishing the homosexual figure as a central marker of both geographical and temporal modernity. Hence the homosexual figure is now a part of the biopolitical mandate governing the distinction between the lives that are being optimized and reproduced, and the lives that are not being included in the neoliberal narrative about progress and freedom.
Article three: “”…Holding a Rainbow Flag” – Stories of Homosexual Inclusions and Homonationalisms” ["...med et regnbueflag i hånden - fortællinger om homoseksuelle inklusioner og homonationalime", published in Lambda Nordica] presents two readings of newspaper articles about the Danish LGBT parade and World Outgames in 2009. The two articles illustrate the dominant discourse about gay and lesbian citizenship. The article concludes that homonormative representations of homosexuality are included in a national narrative, geography, and recognition, and that this inclusion is interwoven with an exclusion of national and religious Others, who are made suspicious. This creates an ‘us’, who is liberal and tolerant, and a ‘they’, who is feared and threatens the national coherence.
Article four: “To Belong to the Living – on Queer Kinship and Reproductive Futurism” ["To belong to the living - om queer slægtskab og reproduktiv futurisme", published in Kvinder, Køn & Forskning] presents a reading of the American movie The Kids Are All Right (2010). The reading centralizes the oxymoron ‘a queer family with children’ and is guided by the complex duality transgression/assimilation – not as a dichotomy but as a concurrence. By analyzing without the dichotomy makes an analysis possible that highlights the brutal negotiations of masculinity, which are present in the movie. The article concludes that the homosexual negotiations of livability are related to other classed and racialized hierarchies.
Articles five: “Un/Liveable Kinship – Reading Rosa Morena” ["U/levelige slægtskaber - en analyse af filmen Rosa Morena", published in Kultur og Klasse] is co-written with scholar in transnational adoption Lene Myong (Aarhus University). The article presents a reading of the Danish movie Rosa Morena (2010). A movie about a Danish homosexual man adopting a Brazilian child. The article’s analytical point of entry questions the economies of livability, in which life and death are circulated when one population’s access to livability relies upon other groups’ unlivability. The article shows how the white homosexual man is folded into life through reproduction by taking part in an economy of life, affect, and normality. The price for the white homosexual man’s livability is paid by the racial Other, who in a classical colonial way pays the bill in the shape of affective labor and sexual queering.
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Following Lee Edelman’s polemic argument against reproductive futurism and Sara Ahmed’s thinking ... more Following Lee Edelman’s polemic argument against reproductive futurism and Sara Ahmed’s thinking on queer attachments, this article discuss queer kinship, as it is represented in the American movie The Kids Are All Right (2010). The reading argues that a heteronormative temporal development of the children makes queer kinship recognizable inside a heteronormative kinship paradigm, while simultaneously the one mother and the sperm donor fight about the brutal reconceptualizations of masculinity, kinship, and queerness.
The closing discussion of the concept of reproductive futurism departs from José Estaban Muñoz’ critique of Edelman and from the foucauldian concept of racism as the death function in the economy of biopolitics and argues that race disappears in the thinking of Edelman, but has a significant role in the reconfiguration of kinship in The Kids.
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Co-written with Lene Myong, Aarhus University. The Danish movie Rosa Morena (2010) tells an unusu... more Co-written with Lene Myong, Aarhus University. The Danish movie Rosa Morena (2010) tells an unusual story about kinship in which a white homosexual Danish man adopts a child born to a poor black Brazilian woman. Using a theoretical framework of biopolitics and affective labour the article highlights how the male homosexual figure is being cast as heteronormative and white in order to become intelligible as a parent and the bearer of liveable kinship.
The casting rests on the affective and reproductive labour of the Brazilian birth mother who is portrayed as an unsuited parent through a colonial discourse steeped in sexualized and racialized imagery. A specific distribution of affect, where anger turns into gratefulness fixates and relegates the birth mother to a state of living dead, and thus she becomes the bearer of an unliveable kinship. This economy of life and death constructs transnational adoption as a vital event in a Foucauldian sense. In the same instance as the adoption, a white male homosexual population unfolds into life, and it targets a racialized and poor population as if already dead.
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Papers by Michael Nebeling Petersen
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.
lesbian identity is intertwined with the national narrative about “the special Danish permissiveness”. Using the concept of homonationalism and Gregory’s rethinking of Saids concept of imaginary geographies the readings highlight how homonormative inclusions of gay and lesbian identities into citizenship and recognition – into the national Danish “we” – is being operationalized to construct and exclude a pathologized and suspicious immigrant population – the “them”. This imagined population is casted to oppose the national narrative and thereby is represented as a danger to gay and lesbian citizenship and the national narrative about Danishness.
The main argument is being discussed in three different studies: The first study is an analysis of the discourses of the homosexual figure in parliamentary proceedings and national policies in Denmark 1988-2012. The second study is an analysis of the representations of the homosexual figure in national printed medias, focusing on the LGBT parade and the international event World Outgames in Copenhagen in 2009. The last study contains readings of mainstream gay movies picturing new kinship arrangements involving a homosexual figure.
The theoretical framework of the dissertation is critical race, feminist, and queer theories as well as Foucauldian biopolitical framework redeveloped by rethinking the concept of bio politics with the work of post- and neocolonial thinkers. The queer theoretical framework is developed by rereading classical queer theories in connection with queer of color critiques to make a queer theoretical mode of analysis calibrated to analyze the ways in which different forms of normativity produce and hierarchize racialized, sexualized, and gendered populations and subjects.
Article one: “When the Homosexual Became Suited for Family – a Queer Theoretical Discourse Analysis of the Parliamentary Proceedings regarding Homosexuals’ Access to Adoption 1988-2010” ["Da homoen blev familieduelig - en queerteoretisk diskursanalyse om Folketingsforhandlingerne om homoeseksuelles adgang til adoption 1988-2010"] analyses and expounds on the historical development in the parliamentary proceedings on central ‘gay rights’ from the introduction of the registered partnership (1989) to the introduction of adoption of stepchildren (1999), and to the introduction of regular adoption (2010). The article draws a historical line from the degenerated and non-vital gay figure to the vital gay figure suited for family in the end of the 2000s, arguing that the logics of modernity and homonormativity are fueling the changing discourses.
Article two: “To Change in Order to Maintain – Biopolitical Reconfigurations of the Homosexual” ["At forandre for at bevare - biopolitiske rekonfigurationer af den homoseksuelle", published in Dansk Sociologi] analyses the parliamentary proceedings on gay marriage (2010) together with a TV reality show about a gay wedding. The article concludes that the biopolitical inclusion of homosexuality is made possible by recoding gay kinship inside a paradigm of heteronormativity. A recoding that rests upon a narrative about emancipation and modernity, thus establishing the homosexual figure as a central marker of both geographical and temporal modernity. Hence the homosexual figure is now a part of the biopolitical mandate governing the distinction between the lives that are being optimized and reproduced, and the lives that are not being included in the neoliberal narrative about progress and freedom.
Article three: “”…Holding a Rainbow Flag” – Stories of Homosexual Inclusions and Homonationalisms” ["...med et regnbueflag i hånden - fortællinger om homoseksuelle inklusioner og homonationalime", published in Lambda Nordica] presents two readings of newspaper articles about the Danish LGBT parade and World Outgames in 2009. The two articles illustrate the dominant discourse about gay and lesbian citizenship. The article concludes that homonormative representations of homosexuality are included in a national narrative, geography, and recognition, and that this inclusion is interwoven with an exclusion of national and religious Others, who are made suspicious. This creates an ‘us’, who is liberal and tolerant, and a ‘they’, who is feared and threatens the national coherence.
Article four: “To Belong to the Living – on Queer Kinship and Reproductive Futurism” ["To belong to the living - om queer slægtskab og reproduktiv futurisme", published in Kvinder, Køn & Forskning] presents a reading of the American movie The Kids Are All Right (2010). The reading centralizes the oxymoron ‘a queer family with children’ and is guided by the complex duality transgression/assimilation – not as a dichotomy but as a concurrence. By analyzing without the dichotomy makes an analysis possible that highlights the brutal negotiations of masculinity, which are present in the movie. The article concludes that the homosexual negotiations of livability are related to other classed and racialized hierarchies.
Articles five: “Un/Liveable Kinship – Reading Rosa Morena” ["U/levelige slægtskaber - en analyse af filmen Rosa Morena", published in Kultur og Klasse] is co-written with scholar in transnational adoption Lene Myong (Aarhus University). The article presents a reading of the Danish movie Rosa Morena (2010). A movie about a Danish homosexual man adopting a Brazilian child. The article’s analytical point of entry questions the economies of livability, in which life and death are circulated when one population’s access to livability relies upon other groups’ unlivability. The article shows how the white homosexual man is folded into life through reproduction by taking part in an economy of life, affect, and normality. The price for the white homosexual man’s livability is paid by the racial Other, who in a classical colonial way pays the bill in the shape of affective labor and sexual queering.
The closing discussion of the concept of reproductive futurism departs from José Estaban Muñoz’ critique of Edelman and from the foucauldian concept of racism as the death function in the economy of biopolitics and argues that race disappears in the thinking of Edelman, but has a significant role in the reconfiguration of kinship in The Kids.
The casting rests on the affective and reproductive labour of the Brazilian birth mother who is portrayed as an unsuited parent through a colonial discourse steeped in sexualized and racialized imagery. A specific distribution of affect, where anger turns into gratefulness fixates and relegates the birth mother to a state of living dead, and thus she becomes the bearer of an unliveable kinship. This economy of life and death constructs transnational adoption as a vital event in a Foucauldian sense. In the same instance as the adoption, a white male homosexual population unfolds into life, and it targets a racialized and poor population as if already dead.
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.
lesbian identity is intertwined with the national narrative about “the special Danish permissiveness”. Using the concept of homonationalism and Gregory’s rethinking of Saids concept of imaginary geographies the readings highlight how homonormative inclusions of gay and lesbian identities into citizenship and recognition – into the national Danish “we” – is being operationalized to construct and exclude a pathologized and suspicious immigrant population – the “them”. This imagined population is casted to oppose the national narrative and thereby is represented as a danger to gay and lesbian citizenship and the national narrative about Danishness.
The main argument is being discussed in three different studies: The first study is an analysis of the discourses of the homosexual figure in parliamentary proceedings and national policies in Denmark 1988-2012. The second study is an analysis of the representations of the homosexual figure in national printed medias, focusing on the LGBT parade and the international event World Outgames in Copenhagen in 2009. The last study contains readings of mainstream gay movies picturing new kinship arrangements involving a homosexual figure.
The theoretical framework of the dissertation is critical race, feminist, and queer theories as well as Foucauldian biopolitical framework redeveloped by rethinking the concept of bio politics with the work of post- and neocolonial thinkers. The queer theoretical framework is developed by rereading classical queer theories in connection with queer of color critiques to make a queer theoretical mode of analysis calibrated to analyze the ways in which different forms of normativity produce and hierarchize racialized, sexualized, and gendered populations and subjects.
Article one: “When the Homosexual Became Suited for Family – a Queer Theoretical Discourse Analysis of the Parliamentary Proceedings regarding Homosexuals’ Access to Adoption 1988-2010” ["Da homoen blev familieduelig - en queerteoretisk diskursanalyse om Folketingsforhandlingerne om homoeseksuelles adgang til adoption 1988-2010"] analyses and expounds on the historical development in the parliamentary proceedings on central ‘gay rights’ from the introduction of the registered partnership (1989) to the introduction of adoption of stepchildren (1999), and to the introduction of regular adoption (2010). The article draws a historical line from the degenerated and non-vital gay figure to the vital gay figure suited for family in the end of the 2000s, arguing that the logics of modernity and homonormativity are fueling the changing discourses.
Article two: “To Change in Order to Maintain – Biopolitical Reconfigurations of the Homosexual” ["At forandre for at bevare - biopolitiske rekonfigurationer af den homoseksuelle", published in Dansk Sociologi] analyses the parliamentary proceedings on gay marriage (2010) together with a TV reality show about a gay wedding. The article concludes that the biopolitical inclusion of homosexuality is made possible by recoding gay kinship inside a paradigm of heteronormativity. A recoding that rests upon a narrative about emancipation and modernity, thus establishing the homosexual figure as a central marker of both geographical and temporal modernity. Hence the homosexual figure is now a part of the biopolitical mandate governing the distinction between the lives that are being optimized and reproduced, and the lives that are not being included in the neoliberal narrative about progress and freedom.
Article three: “”…Holding a Rainbow Flag” – Stories of Homosexual Inclusions and Homonationalisms” ["...med et regnbueflag i hånden - fortællinger om homoseksuelle inklusioner og homonationalime", published in Lambda Nordica] presents two readings of newspaper articles about the Danish LGBT parade and World Outgames in 2009. The two articles illustrate the dominant discourse about gay and lesbian citizenship. The article concludes that homonormative representations of homosexuality are included in a national narrative, geography, and recognition, and that this inclusion is interwoven with an exclusion of national and religious Others, who are made suspicious. This creates an ‘us’, who is liberal and tolerant, and a ‘they’, who is feared and threatens the national coherence.
Article four: “To Belong to the Living – on Queer Kinship and Reproductive Futurism” ["To belong to the living - om queer slægtskab og reproduktiv futurisme", published in Kvinder, Køn & Forskning] presents a reading of the American movie The Kids Are All Right (2010). The reading centralizes the oxymoron ‘a queer family with children’ and is guided by the complex duality transgression/assimilation – not as a dichotomy but as a concurrence. By analyzing without the dichotomy makes an analysis possible that highlights the brutal negotiations of masculinity, which are present in the movie. The article concludes that the homosexual negotiations of livability are related to other classed and racialized hierarchies.
Articles five: “Un/Liveable Kinship – Reading Rosa Morena” ["U/levelige slægtskaber - en analyse af filmen Rosa Morena", published in Kultur og Klasse] is co-written with scholar in transnational adoption Lene Myong (Aarhus University). The article presents a reading of the Danish movie Rosa Morena (2010). A movie about a Danish homosexual man adopting a Brazilian child. The article’s analytical point of entry questions the economies of livability, in which life and death are circulated when one population’s access to livability relies upon other groups’ unlivability. The article shows how the white homosexual man is folded into life through reproduction by taking part in an economy of life, affect, and normality. The price for the white homosexual man’s livability is paid by the racial Other, who in a classical colonial way pays the bill in the shape of affective labor and sexual queering.
The closing discussion of the concept of reproductive futurism departs from José Estaban Muñoz’ critique of Edelman and from the foucauldian concept of racism as the death function in the economy of biopolitics and argues that race disappears in the thinking of Edelman, but has a significant role in the reconfiguration of kinship in The Kids.
The casting rests on the affective and reproductive labour of the Brazilian birth mother who is portrayed as an unsuited parent through a colonial discourse steeped in sexualized and racialized imagery. A specific distribution of affect, where anger turns into gratefulness fixates and relegates the birth mother to a state of living dead, and thus she becomes the bearer of an unliveable kinship. This economy of life and death constructs transnational adoption as a vital event in a Foucauldian sense. In the same instance as the adoption, a white male homosexual population unfolds into life, and it targets a racialized and poor population as if already dead.