TY - JOUR

T1 - The white tent of grief

T2 - Racialized conditions of public mourning in Denmark

AU - Nebeling Petersen, Michael

AU - Bissenbakker, Mons

PY - 2019/1/2

Y1 - 2019/1/2

N2 - In 2015, Danish-Palestinian Omar El-Hussein shot and killed twomen in Copenhagen, before being killed himself by the police.Danish media immediately classified El-Hussein’s actions as ‘aterrorist attack’, and they became the object of extreme concernto the Danish public. In the following days, the two murder siteswere momentarily turned into public memorial spaces. When thesite of the killing of El-Hussein also became a site of mourning,however, it prompted a negative reaction from politicians and thewhite majority public. While the mixed reactions to publiclymourning a murderer are understandable, they also reveal somethingabout the racialized conditions of public mourning. Readingthe different acts of publicly mourning El-Hussein, the articleinvestigates the ways in which public sites of grief are outlinedby racialized economies. This article builds upon Butler’s argumentthat public mourning forms as indicative of which lives are consideredlives at all. However, we argue that such an analysis mustconsider the racialized logics of the performativity of publicmourning: Thus, while non-white grief seems not to be recognizedas grief at all, white grief tends to reiterate the racialized processesthat outline white lives as grievable at the expense of non-whitelives.

AB - In 2015, Danish-Palestinian Omar El-Hussein shot and killed twomen in Copenhagen, before being killed himself by the police.Danish media immediately classified El-Hussein’s actions as ‘aterrorist attack’, and they became the object of extreme concernto the Danish public. In the following days, the two murder siteswere momentarily turned into public memorial spaces. When thesite of the killing of El-Hussein also became a site of mourning,however, it prompted a negative reaction from politicians and thewhite majority public. While the mixed reactions to publiclymourning a murderer are understandable, they also reveal somethingabout the racialized conditions of public mourning. Readingthe different acts of publicly mourning El-Hussein, the articleinvestigates the ways in which public sites of grief are outlinedby racialized economies. This article builds upon Butler’s argumentthat public mourning forms as indicative of which lives are consideredlives at all. However, we argue that such an analysis mustconsider the racialized logics of the performativity of publicmourning: Thus, while non-white grief seems not to be recognizedas grief at all, white grief tends to reiterate the racialized processesthat outline white lives as grievable at the expense of non-whitelives.

UR - https://www.academia.edu/42840275/The_white_tent_of_grief._Racialized_conditions_of_public_mourning_in_Denmark

U2 - 10.1080/14649365.2018.1563708

DO - 10.1080/14649365.2018.1563708

M3 - Journal article

VL - 20

SP - 1

EP - 19

JO - Social & Cultural Geography

JF - Social & Cultural Geography

SN - 1464-9365

ER -