In Memory of Hanna Behrend

2011-07-09T07:24:00.000-07:00

Hanna Behrend - born in Vienna, 1922

and passed away in Berlin, 2010

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2011/jan/03/hanna-behrend-obituary

http://www.hanna-behrend.de/index-e.html

Recent Publication (selection)

2009-10-21T04:41:00.000-07:00

Vieten, U. M. (2011) ' The conceptual order of multiple discrimination: situating different and difficult genealogies of race and ethnicity,' in Dagmar Schiek & Anna Lawson (eds.) European Union Non-Discrimination Law and Intersectionality, Farnham: Ashgate, 63-76

A sequence of the introduction to this chapter:

In this chapter it is argued that 'the EU’s anti-discrimination policy produces paradoxical consequences. These result from its adoption of a critical discourse on racism and race steeped in the Anglo-American tradition, on the one hand, and the taboo concerning any public debate on race in many parts of continental Europe, on the other. In these countries, discussion tends to focus instead on culturalised and gendered notions of ethnic and religious minority identities. Thus, in a European context, it appears necessary to explore the extent to which the placing of a taboo on critical debates on skin colour ignores the post-colonial meaning of race. This chapter aims, first, to follow up some classic approaches developed by scholars seeking to understand notions of race and ethnicity. Both terms contain essentialized meanings of social order. This is not to deny, however, that certain minority groups and individuals who identify politically may act with a liberating intent in attempting to name a historically constructed systematic power hierarchy between different ethnicities and an ascribed race of Blackness. Second, having established some insights into the phenomenology of ethnicity and ascribed race[1] the social power axes of ethnicity, gender and class will be scrutinized in the context of some examples of research into (im-)migration and cultural difference. This will be done while considering how group ascriptions are differently pronounced in some continental European countries when attempting to talk about immigration, national boundary and gender. Contemporary feminist social analysis takes Crenshaw’s (1989) analytical model of ‘intersectionality’[2] on board while interrogating complex structures of oppression cutting across boundaries and national borders (for example, Yuval-Davis 1997, 2004, 2006) and, at the same time, addressing EU institutional anti-discrimination issues (Verloo 2006). After all, intersecting[3] features of gender and ethnicity; gender and race; and gender, ethnicity and race matter in the anti-discrimination context as they may articulate national integration and equality projects differently. Hence, in a further section, the implications of statistical measurements of populations, minorities in particular, are discussed with a focus on the UK. In a final section, the symbolic salience of racial whiteness will be tackled. Whiteness as a ‘contingent hierarchy’ (Garner 2006: 264) creates its meaning while constructing Blackness as non-Whiteness in a colonial context. What is particularly evident when looking at ‘Mixed-Race’ Studies, for example, is the persistence of the hegemonic white gaze towards others. Racializing the Other in terms of her identifying and to be identified[4] body unfolds as a ‘What are you? encounter’ (Haritaworn 2009: 122). Systems of oppression are characterised by asymmetry and, in this regard, white majorities, who declare ‘race’ as unspeakable avoid the deconstruction and problematisation of whiteness. Accordingly, the prominence or lack of attention towards certain dimensions of intersecting social categories and identities poses dilemmas for a comparative approach addressing European patterns of race and ethnicity. This chapter aims to trace the difficult and different genealogies of ethnicity and ascribed race and capture what arguably is characteristic to the ways gendered group difference is targeted in certain European countries. This is intended to encourage further debate on how to undo specific histories of racisms and institutionalised racial discrimination in all EU member states.'

[1] I am using ‘ascribed race’ here to highlight its ideological construction and will later on use the term without inverted commas in order to refer to the racialised experience of being black in predominantly white societies.
[2] Confronted with concepts unsupportive of a critical understanding of the unfair treatment of black women and, thus, inadequate to grasp different social complexities, black feminist and academic Crenshaw (1989, 1991) initiated a theoretical debate on the intersections of different layers of social identities and group belonging in the United States.
[3] I am not going to repeat my critical analysis of feminist methodology, class divisions and the method of intersectional approaches in this contribution, for details see Vieten (2009).
[4] This happens frequently when, in asking curious questions regarding place of birth, parents, and nationality, etc., white people intrude on the individual privacy of people who look non-white or ‘exotic’. Notwithstanding the likely polite individual reflex to respond to this with a sufficient explanation, the direction of this inquiry is shaped by asymmetric power structures as whites are gazing at the message of the other body.'

for further info:

http://www.ashgatepublishing.com/default.aspx?page=637&calctitle=1&pageSubject=3048&sort=pubdate&forthcoming=1&title_id=9917&edition_id=12766

cosmopolitanism beyond borders

'Living together in Diversity', Conference in Budapest, 21-22 May 2012

Lecture on the 8th of February at the University of Leeds

Monograph forthcoming May 2012! Gender and Cosmopolitanism in Europe: A Feminist Perspective

In Memory of Hanna Behrend

'old' feminist kid on the blog

Link to the 'Inclusive Thinking' Research Group

Recent Publication (selection)