Troubling Solidarity: Anti-racist Feminist Protest in a

Digitalized Time

Linda Berg, Maria Carbin

WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly, Volume 46, Numbers 3 & 4, Fall/Winter

2018, pp. 120-136 (Article)

Published by The Feminist Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/wsq.2018.0035

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/706799

Access provided by Stockholms universitet (19 Jan 2019 11:49 GMT)

Troubling Solidarity:
Anti-racist Feminist Protest in a Digitalized Time

Linda Berg and Maria Carbin

Abstract: Racist hate crimes have increased in Sweden since 2006 when
reports started, but they have also been followed by a variety of protests.
This article analyzes the so-called #HijabUppropet (#HijabOutcry), a call
initiated by Muslim feminist activists in response to a racist attack on a
Muslim woman, which encouraged all “sisters” in Sweden to temporarily
veil themselves in solidarity. The hijab outcry was widely heard and both
celebrated and debated. Drawing on postcolonial feminist theory, this ar-
ticle shows how the initial protest against racism was partly reduced to
a matter of being for or against the veil and the right to choose. Despite
intentions to normalize the veil, the flow of comments and pictures on
social media turned veils into examples of odd, exotic, and beautiful el-
ements that enrich Swedish culture. The white secular subject was again
reinstalled as the ideal and it seemed as though Muslim women could not
pass as agents of Swedish feminist solidarity. Yet, at the same time, the
debate in the aftermath of the hijab outcry had the effect of initiating an
uneasy feeling of not belonging among white non-Muslim participators.
This was a feeling that might affect future acts of solidarity—confronting
a Swedish context of secular pride and whiteness—where Muslim women
must struggle to be recognized as political subjects. Keywords: solidarity,
the veil, whiteness, secularism, Swedishness, feminist politics

For decades, right-wing populist parties have been flourishing and chang-
ing the political landscape throughout Europe. While initially Sweden
seemed excluded from this process, it is becoming increasingly clear that
the debate on Muslim immigration, Islam, and terrorism has moved to the

WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly 46: 3 & 4 (Fall/Winter 2018) © 2018 by Linda Berg and Maria Carbin.
All rights reserved.

120
 Troubling Solidarity 121

center of Swedish political discourse. With a political party with Nazi roots
currently in parliament, Sweden is proving to be no exception. Like else-
where in Europe, racist hate crimes against ethnic minorities in general,
and against Jews and Muslims in particular, have increased, causing the
United Nations Human Rights Council to criticize the Swedish govern-
ment for not taking action against the violence.
In 2013 as a response to a racist attack against a veiled woman in a sub-
urban Stockholm parking lot, the so-called hijab outcry (#Hijabupprop-
et) started. On August 18, 2013, Muslim feminist activists and journalists
Bilan Osman, Fatima Doubakil, Foujan Rouzbeh, Nabila Abdul Fattah,
and Nachla Libre urged all women—in the largest evening paper, Afton-
bladet, as well as published in social media—to jointly show their solidar-
ity with Muslim women:

We hereby declare a hijab-uprising. We encourage all sisters in Sweden

to veil themselves—religious and non-religious—tomorrow 19 August
in order to show solidarity with all Muslim women who too often suffer
harassment and violence.1

The aim was to raise awareness of the types of abuse that Muslim women
face due to their religious identity. The call was announced both in one of
the largest national newspapers and on social media and spread rapidly.
Individual women (and men) uploaded pictures of themselves wearing a
veil2 on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, and some also participated by
wearing a hijab on the streets. The hijab outcry received wide attention
both nationally and internationally and was both celebrated and debated.
Some claimed that the initiative had been appropriated by white, secular
feminists, while others raised critical concerns about the hijab being a sign
of women’s oppression. The hijab outcry can be seen as part of a wider
array of transnational online activism, and is most closely linked with the
#MuslimahPride campaign launched earlier in 2013 by a British activist in
the United Kingdom.
In this article, we take a closer look at the hijab outcry, trying to unpack
challenges within contemporary feminist expressions of solidarity. How
did sympathy and solidarity play out in this wide-reaching and celebrat-
ed protest? What happens when white secular women veil themselves? In
what ways can particularly privileged subjects act in this context? What are
122 Linda Berg and Maria Carbin

the effects of these types of selfies? What forms of political involvement

and identity-work do they contribute to? We are especially interested in
problematizing what it means to claim an identity as a feminist through
this particular act of solidarity.

Following a Digital Campaign

This article is based on digital material from the hijab outcry campaign,
such as the flow of comments on social media, including Twitter, Insta-
gram, and Facebook, as well as newspaper articles. The hijab outcry was
a protest that manifested both on- and offline and we have followed it by
way of hashtag ethnography (Bonilla and Rosa 2015). Contemporary dig-
itization offers new forms and strategies for political mobilization, forms
where the self can be quickly represented, both as a powerful individual
voice and as part of a collective. It is unclear what the political effects of
such rapid movements will be. As Shefali Chandra and Saadia Toor have
pointed out, there is a “widening split between the intention and the effect
of solidarities” (2014, 16), and we thus intend to analyze both the inten-
tions and the effects of these protests.
When analyzing the hijab outcry, we draw on a postcolonial perspec-
tive that problematizes representations of a “we” in solidarity campaigns
and protests speaking for the Other, as laid out by Gayatri Chakravorty
Spivak (1988). We also problematize the protest with the help of Sara
Ahmed’s work (2004a; 2004b) on how emotions circulate, and how the
feelings of doing good and doing right participate in constituting a fem-
inist community as anti-racist. In addition to a feminist postcolonial
perspective, our analytical approach also draws upon theories regarding
whiteness, secularism, and politics, with an emphasis on the particulari-
ties of the Swedish context, but nevertheless with relevance to a broader
geopolitical sphere. Our analysis is related to a very broad field of research
on gender, religion/secularism, and (anti-)racism in different European
countries (see Eze 1997; Goldberg 2008; Lentin 2004; Lentin and Titley
2011; El-Tayeb 2011; Wekker 2016), with a focus on the colorblindness
that is perpetuated throughout Europe. More specifically, we highlight a
myth of secularism that depends on monoreligious and monoracial pop-
ulations and the idea that the Other is “presecular” and “prehumanist” ac-
cording to Fatima El-Tayeb (2011).
 Troubling Solidarity 123

Swedish Exceptionalism and Secular Pride

Sweden provides a specific context in relation to racism because, from

the 1960s to the beginning of the 2000s, the country was considered to
be the leading voice of anti-racism and a major international supporter of
anti-colonialism (Berg 2007; Hübinette and Lundström 2014). In relation
to several other European countries, such as England, France, the Neth-
erlands, and Spain, Sweden does not have a well-known, “successful” his-
tory as a colonizer. This is despite the fact that the country has had small
colonies, built up a world-leading eugenics institute (operating between
1922–1958), and the indigenous Sami population has for centuries en-
dured discrimination from the dominant culture and the Swedish state
(Björkman and Widmalm 2010; Naum and Nordin 2013). This history is
in sharp contrast to the image of a nation that has been seen, and continues
to look at itself, as an outstanding, tolerant, gender-equal, and anti-racist
society. This has been called “Swedish exceptionalism,” referring to the
idea that Sweden stands apart from patriarchal and racist discourse (De los
Reyes, Mulinari, and Molina 2002; Carbin 2014; Dahl 2004; Habel 2011).
Consequently, racism and sexism are discursively located outside of
normative Swedishness. Paradoxically, at the same time, Sweden has also
been dominated by a specific type of hegemonic whiteness influenced by
a strong colorblindness. Both gender solidarity movements and anti-rac-
ist movements have thus been dominated by white people. Moreover,
anti-racism is so closely connected with Swedishness in this discourse
that it operates as a constitutive element in a white, national self-image.
Yet, the last ten years have witnessed a growing mobilization of separat-
ist, anti-racist movements of non-whites such as the National Association
of Afro-Swedes, the Room (a digital platform for discussion by anti-racist
feminists), and various anti-racist digital campaigns affecting the larger
public debate.
Veiling has been widely debated in several European countries, per-
haps most frequently in France (Fernando 2014; Berg and Lundahl 2016).
The Swedish state, like that of France, is very much defined by its secular-
ism. In contrast to countries such as the United States, it is of importance
for the political leaders of the country to demonstrate their secular posi-
tion. The Swedish Royal House is officially bound to Christianity, while
Parliament—intertwined in the idea of democracy—should be free from
124 Linda Berg and Maria Carbin

religion. There is a certain pride in being a very secular state, because a

secular society perceived as neutral includes everyone in an equal way.
Secularism, particularly in the Swedish context, appears to be objective.
To be religious in Sweden, especially Muslim, you are expected to adapt
and reduce your faith, to privatize it. Through this universalistic claim, the
political and normative aspects of secularism become hidden (Asad 2009;
Mahmood 2012; Thurfjell 2015). Secularism has the character of first-
ness; it appears as unmarked and a natural center for those privileged by it.
The secular is represented as normal, rational, and understandable, while
the other, the religious, is presented as irrational, traditional, frightening,
and, as such, abnormal and subordinate (Berg, Martinsson, and Lundahl
2016).
The hijab outcry was one act of solidarity that was not initiated by white
secular Swedes, as had traditionally been the case, but rather by Muslim
activists. However, the outcry was heard by female politicians from the
leading party, the Social Democrats, the leader of the Feminist Party, and
a leader of the Swedish Green Party, which primarily consists of white,
secular, upper-class women. These famous politicians became very visible
by wearing veils both on social media and in the newspapers. The protest
was widely reported by journalists, both nationally and internationally.
One of the leading Swedish papers praised how the hijab outcry had been
recognized around the world in media such as Al Jazeera and BBC News,
and in this way the demonstration became a matter of national contention
in Sweden. The initiators of the petition also managed to arrange a meet-
ing with the minister of justice to discuss Islamophobic hate crimes. The
discrimination ambassador responded and emphasized that women are
discriminated against on the basis of religious clothing.

With the Veil as a Platform

The original call was primarily an appeal to “sisters,” for Muslim women,
where the position of woman was regarded as a platform for solidarity. Or,
rather, it was the “veil” that became the common symbol that everyone
participating could identify with: against discrimination, and for a femi-
nist community across borders.
The established media, however, started up by focusing the debate
around being for or against the veil, even though the initiators of the hijab
outcry were not interested in that discussion. In this debate, veils were
 Troubling Solidarity 125

primarily constructed as a problem, as something to decide upon once

and for all. In colonial discourses, veiling often represents patriarchal op-
pression in which veiled women become those whom Westerners need to
save (Abu-Lughod 2002). The debate is also characteristic of secularism
as firstness in Swedish society, where it is not recognized as it is discourses,
positions, and identities that produce difference (Berg, Martinsson, and
Lundahl 2016).
The protest was clearly part of a larger liberal discourse in which the
main thing to fight for was—and a consensus was constructed around—
the right to choose. “The right to wear a veil is worth defending” states one
of the national newspapers (Lindberg 2013), and one particiant said on
Twitter: “Today I cover my hair for the right to chose.” Thus, veiling was
defined as a political manifestation. But, for devout Muslim women, the
veil is not necessarily political. It can mean so much more, and at the same
time, much less. It can be religious, and it may be political, but it can also
be simply an everyday piece of clothing, like a skirt, that signals feminin-
ity. But, in this debate, the veil quickly became a sign of either individual
rights (optional) or of sacrifice (the oppression of women). A critical voice
emerged from participants in an association against so-called “honor-
related violence” who argued that the hijab outcry was obscuring import-
ant issues concerning oppression. According to them, “We cannot allow
us to wink at the fact that the headscarf is a religious symbol of women’s
oppression” (Hellmark and Mohammad 2013).
This way of focusing on the veil, instead of racism or hate crimes, is
typical of a colonial Christian context. The veil was reproduced as the ulti-
mate symbol of difference, such as that which distinguishes them, Muslim
women, from us, secular Swedes.

Normalization of the Veil?

Several of the non-Muslim women who participated in the hijab out-

cry said that they did not want to discuss pros and cons, but rather that
they temporarily veiled themselves to make visible that any woman can
be a woman with a headscarf. The message was that wearing the veil is
something normal and Swedish. On August 19, 2013, the day of the hijab
outcry, one of its initators said that they wanted to normalize the hijab.
This was also stated by one of the individual non-Muslim participants on
Instagram:
126 Linda Berg and Maria Carbin

If today, it is a sign of my faith in sisterhood to wear a headscarf I will do

so. There is nothing like “my” women’s cause or “your” women’s cause,
it is our common fight. If normalization is demanded in order to reach
acceptance, I will contribute.

Here, the participant clearly states that this is a common cause, “our com-
mon cause.” The individual thus became subordinated to the collective
manifestation. The message is that we are all part of society and we can all
take a stand and defend the values we believe in. This political action, al-
beit an individual posting on Instagram, aimed to include Muslim women
in a broader we, and thus it can be seen as constituting a collective ac-
tion as well. But it is also an erasure of the specificity of Muslim women’s
vulnerabilities.
When analyzing the flood of pictures on social media featuring party
leaders and other famous white, non-Muslim women, it seems as though,
paradoxically, the protest had rather the opposite effect. The veil did not
become normalized as part of Swedishness, it was rather constructed as a
homogeneous object, as something with a fixed and unitary meaning, and,
above all, the veil symbolized deviance. Instead of deconstructing Swed-
ishness, the protests seemed to have the effect of reducing the veil to a
marker of that which is “not Swedish,” as will be discussed in the following.
Veiling is generally defined as a token of otherness, something that is not
a natural part of the modern Western state. Another way would be to see
how Muslim communities invent solutions to be able to participate in a
European society (Berg and Lundahl 2016, 275).
The group of Muslim feminists who started the initiative, however,
contributed in ways that deconstructed the meaning of the veil. They were
presented in the media as Muslim veiled women; however, not all of them
regularly wore the veil. A certain ambivalence and uneasiness could be seen
in the television studios when the journalists assumed (because of names
and looks) that these were “the victims/the women with veils” when they
instead insisted that the hijab outcry was an act of solidarity. Thus, they ap-
peared with veils in solidarity but instead they were read simply as Muslim
women. One of the activists even had to explain to the reporter that not
all of the initators wear the veil in their everyday life (Nyhetsmorgon/Tv4
Morning News 2013). This also shows that in the Swedish imaginary of
white solidarity movements, non-white women are less likely to be seen
as performing solidarity. Instead, Muslim women and non-white women
 Troubling Solidarity 127

were positioned as being the victims of discrimination, as though they

could not act in solidarity with women who wear a veil (see also Bouteldja
2010). This confirms how veiled women have long been understood as
victims of patriarchal structures and, as such, are not recognized as equal
citizens in a liberal, tolerant, and modern society (Braidotti 2008).

Right to Engage

The problems with this type of act of solidarity and with white, secular
women representing others were discussed during and after the campaign.
Sara Yazdanfar, who is active in the Social Democratic youth section, was
critical of the hijab outcry and wrote under the title “you should focus on
anti-racism, not selfies”:

To take on a veil for a few hours will not reform the system—not as long
as we do not see our own role. The veil became cosmetic. One way to
make oneself a subject, rather than focusing on the interaction of hate
crimes, racism, and sexism. (2013)

Yazdanfar also believes that the original petition was taken over by white,
middle-class women posing to win identity-politics credibility. Through
these actions, Muslim women became exoticized, while many of the pro-
testers seemed unaware of their own privilege. Critics highlighted the par-
adox, that the protest was not much more than an egocentric posing, a
minimal effort.
The criticism did not stand unchallenged. Another position was the
voice of the white debaters, announcing their right to speak up. Under the
headline “Shut up, you’re white,” on August 21, the editor of the leading
national newspaper, Dagens Nyheter (Daily News) asked rhetorically what
“buzz words” like exoticizing and racialization really mean. He wrote:

It is difficult to understand why a protest would be worth less if it is

articulated by, among others, people from the white middle class. The
alternative is that they shut up. It is hardly likely, I admit, because we in
the middle class live for this type of solidarity action.

Here the white, middle-class editor defended both the right to protest
and the right to define the political content, i.e., the meaning and effects
128 Linda Berg and Maria Carbin

of racism. Also, one could read this comment as a defense of the white
subject’s right to feel good about herself/himself. The basic assumption
here was also that the larger the community is, the better it is. The more
the merrier, defining a huge “we” against something that can rather easily
be identified. Everyone can be part of this we, if they just become enlight-
ened. Drawing on Sara Ahmed, we can see how this response enables a
pride in white liberal solidarity, “we live for this . . .” It thus becomes a “way
of ‘re-turning’ to the white subject”, as Ahmed describes it (2004a, 33).

Tribute Multiculturalism

Since the campaign was involved posting a picture of oneself wearing a

veil on Facebook, there was an obvious risk that it would become nothing
more than a representation of oneself as someone who is “doing good.” In
many of the Facebook comments, we can read superlatives about how the
person looks but also support like “Heja heja! (Go go!) You’re awesome!”
Supporters from all over the world posted on Instagram: “I’m deeply
touched by the actions you are taking! A lot of love and respect from #al-
geria & #morocco. You are just awesome!!”
During the hijab outcry, interviews presented in national media were
conducted with white, Christian women who had tried to wear a head-
scarf. The questions about how it felt gave the readers information from an
imagined “us” talking about how it feels to be like “them.” If a woman who
does not usually wear a veil had chosen to wear a hijab for a day, the reader
was expected to stop and listen—especially if the woman was blond and
blue-eyed. When someone who did not wear a veil in their everyday life
was giving a testimony, it seemed to be perceived as true. But what does
it mean to be a victim? What do people who temporarily wear the veil
assume they will capture or experience?
In a time where identity construction is of great importance, Gayatri
Spivak’s appeal can be more fruitful than the privileged must realize:
that in her attempt to speak for others, she represents herself at the same
time (1988). The call for solidarity is directed against the haters, the un-
educated, and intolerant, who must be made to see that they are wrong.
And it is precisely this self-representation that Yazdanfar highlights: as
long as “you” do not consider your own privileges, the manifestation is
empty (2013).
 Troubling Solidarity 129

The hijab outcry and the following debate tended to be expressions of a

neocolonial practice in which the multicultural society is being praised. In
the media flow with uncountable images, veils turn into examples of odd,
exotic, and beautiful elements that enrich Swedish culture (for example,
see #HijabUppropet). The responses from the leading national newspaper
(DN, Daily News) and other journalists are also prime examples of white
people’s reactions to criticism coming from black feminists, postcolonial
theorists, and Muslim feminists. They express anger towards criticism, and
perhaps even an unwillingness to understand where the criticism arises
and why.
Spivak offers an answer to statements from the politically correct
“I’m a white middle-class person, so I cannot speak” rhetoric by asking a
counter-question:

“Why not develop a certain degree of rage against the history that has
written such an abject script for you that you are silenced?” Then you
begin to investigate what it is that silences you, rather than take this very
deterministic position—since my skin color is this, since my sex is this,
I cannot speak. . . . I say that you have to take a certain risk: to say “I
won’t criticize” is salving your conscience, and allowing you not to do
any homework. On the other hand, if you criticize having earned the
right to do so, then you are indeed taking a risk and you will probably
be made welcome, and can hope to judged with respect. (1988, 62–63)

Instead of seeking to explore these issues, the answers seem all too
often to fall into a defensive position concerning the right to speak.

Meanings of Solidarity

To approach an understanding of these polarized positions, the meaning

of solidarity needs to be reviewed. During the twenty-first century, expres-
sions and acts of solidarity have experienced a revival via the explosion of
social media. The internet is filled with hashtag campaigns and profiles dis-
playing badges and colors. One example of a campaign with a global im-
pact was Je suis Charlie/I’m Charlie after the 2015 attack on the magazine
Charlie Hebdo in Paris, France. Solidarity has thus gone from being consid-
ered a leftist relic, to becoming almost fashionable as a new form of inter-
national activism—often referred to as “clicktivism” or “slacktivism”—in
130 Linda Berg and Maria Carbin

which almost any cause can become global through the proliferation of
likes and retweets (Chandra and Toor 2014).
Thus, solidarity today is more popular than ever and yet, at the same
time, as a practice, it has become fragile in the face of a growing global,
liberal discourse of rights and in the absence of a strong internationalist
left-wing politics. In these neoliberal times, when individualism is praised
and collectivity becomes questioned, solidarity is up for negotiation; it is
a battleground for political and ideological struggle (Chandra and Toor
2014). In line with U.S. philosopher Richard Rorty, we argue that solidar-
ity should not be interpreted as a common core of all human beings; if
anything, it means to distinguish, to mark out the differences and enclose
them within a broader definition of a “we” (1989). The hijab outcry es-
tablished this broader “we” in the description of a transcultural (feminist)
sisterhood, linked with emotion and insight as “sisters” to take a stand for
all Muslim women. This “we” was constituted partly by articulating the
opponents as hateful “white, Swedish men” and partly by fascism, both
in Sweden and around Europe, and constructing the vulnerable “Muslim
women” in need of support.

To Swear Oneself Free

When Facebook was flooded by the campaign Je suis Charlie/I’m Charlie,

a quick reply came from engaged people on the Left, who did not want to
identify with the racist and sexist content of the magazine, with the decla-
ration “I am not Charlie.” To pose with a veil or to declare “I am not Charlie”
on social media is a way to temporarily show empathy. At the same time,
there is something paradoxical about these mediated solidarity actions.
Selfies in the name of solidarity can be understood as a way for the
committed liberal Westerner to be free from criticism. In the pursuit of the
clean position, the one that is good and non-racist, digital representations
fit well. The technology offers opportunities; it is much easier to take a
solidarity selfie than to put on a veil and go out on the streets. Exposing
the self through selfies reveals a naive posturing that is rightly criticized for
being narcissistic engagement. The critique of the campaign also exposed
the “good liberals” as non-pure, and thus their goodness was questioned.
This exposure of their lack and, hence, vulnerability opened up feelings of
shame and guilt. This is also very obvious in some of the posts on the hijab
outcry—there seems to be a requirement to engage in this campaign, and to
 Troubling Solidarity 131

take a stance. As one participant tweeted during the campaign: “If today is
the day, one should . . .” and another tweeted a statement saying:

I consider it to be a given for me to participate in #hijabuppropet, since

all people have the right to choose what to wear, whether it is a veil, a
low neckline or short skirts. #solidarity with my #sisters <3

The interpellation is strong when when your social media feed is filled with
friends who pose wearing a veil. Thus, anyone who does not show her face
framed by a headscarf on this particular day could be accused of not caring,
of being intolerant or even racist. So, in a sense, the requirement to speak
makes the campaign also about the fear of being exposed as Islamophobic.
Certainly, there were many participants in the hijab outcry who could
be classified as tourists in other people’s feelings, and it is easy to dismiss
them as “low-cost” activists, since many did no more than change their
profile picture on Facebook. White women, who usually do not wear a
headscarf, who pose with a veil while winning identity-politics points at-
tract particular criticism, guilt, and irritation. A risk of this reasoning is
obviously to get stuck in an unproductive circle around “white guilt.” As
Ahmed asks: “But what does declaring one’s bad feeling do?” In allowing
oneself, or the nation, to feel bad, shame also allows the nation to feel bet-
ter or even to feel good as Ahmed describes it (2004a, 21). Thus, shame or
bad feelings are transformed into pride. “Declarations of shame can work
to re-install the very ideals they seek to contest” and in this way, according
to Ahmed, the white subject is once again positioned as the ideal (27).
We would nevertheless like to try to consider whether this temporary
manifestation challenged or repoliticized solidarity, by interrogating the
effects of the protest in a particular white Swedish context and discussing
the pride and guilt involved. Expressions of guilt can also be seen as fric-
tion against secularism, the uncomfortable insights for people who incor-
porate hegemonic norms, which can have violent effects.

Negotiating Swedishness: Pitfalls and Possibilities of Solidarity

From the 1950s onwards, international solidarity movements have been

engaged with questions regarding “rich and poor,” and in Sweden they are
clearly associated with support for people suffering hard living conditions,
whose situation radically differs from their own. In a Swedish context,
132 Linda Berg and Maria Carbin

this has had a racial dimension, where the upper- and middle classes have
been, and still mainly consist of, white Christian or secular citizens who
have been considered the agents of solidarity. Being white forms the cen-
tral core of Swedishness, and ideas about a specific Swedish look affect
whiteness as a crucial component in a more general shared image of na-
tional belonging (Sawyer 2000; Mattsson and Pettersson 2007).
From a postcolonial perspective, one of the obvious problematic parts
of the hijab outcry is how the participants created a feminist community,
a unity, a sense of belonging. The sense of belonging was partly articulated
through a liberal discourse in which the unity has to do with “the right to
choose.” Here, the differences in terms of religion, skin color, and other
signifiers of Swedishness, and ways in which some bodies are excluded,
are not considered. What is striking is that whiteness and skin color are
neglected on one level. Here, one has to remember the narrow conceptu-
alization of whiteness in a Swedish context, where those who do not live
up to the norm of being blond, blue-eyed, and very pale are at risk of not
passing as white, and thus are not “real” Swedes.
This campaign thus clearly highlights the risks of intersectional femi-
nism and the dream that differences can be overcome and everyone can
join in a common project of solidarity (Carbin and Edenheim 2013).
When the issue at stake is reduced to the veil or reduced to the right to
choose, the underlying, and maybe most significant problem, namely rac-
ism, is obscured. Racial thinking was normal when most of the thinking
that we proudly see as defining Western subjects—modernity, secularity,
democracy, human rights—was articulated. And even though Sweden,
like France, has been one of the nations most proud to erase references
to race, this does not free the dominant culture from this heritage of the
Enlightenment (Eze 1997). The non-Muslim, white women in the cam-
paign did not discuss the issue of cultural appropriation, and seemed to be
confident that they were “doing good.”
At the same time, the hijab outcry and the following debates are multi-
farious. In this particular protest, both national and transnational networks
were associated with complex translocal articulations. The hijab outcry has
clear links to both local and translocal events, which, among other things,
constituted a source of inspiration for a similar petition, #WISH, Women
in Solidarity of Hijabis, in Australia a year later. What happened in this
feminist protest and call for solidarity was that the very space for talking,
the public room—usually marked by whiteness and secularism—became
 Troubling Solidarity 133

diversified. On social media, a transnational conversation was initiated,

involving many different voices and faces across Sweden, Australia, and
globally. There were non-white men with beards wearing the veil as well
as numerous non-whites who challenged the idea that the person “doing
solidarity” necessarily has to be white. Paradoxically, the (also problemat-
ic) multicultural traits of the campaign then opened up space for a pub-
lic room in which white, middle-class, secular Swedes did not necessarily
have the final say in the issue, and a postcolonial critique was part of both
the protests and the campaign.
We would also like to argue that, in these debates, white middle-class
women were confronted with themselves, and had to engage with and re-
alize that transnational migration is part of the Swedish public room. They
had to realize that they lack the experience of the suffering that people
who wear the veil in everyday life undergo. As the philosopher Elizabeth V.
Spelman has shown, suffering should not be used by the privileged subject,
but knowledge for others to learn from (1997, 8). Therefore, those who
are not exposed to it every day have to accept that they do not have the
right to define this suffering. This of course also made some of the white
activists uneasy and gave rise to feelings of guilt and shame. The question
is, however, whether there is yet another story to these emotions. There is
something to be learnt from the uneasy feelings of guilt and shame. The
Argentinian philosopher Maria C. Lugones argued that “white feminist
scholars” have much to learn from other categories of women about their
experiences of being a so-called “sister outsider.” Lugones and Spelman
argue that it is important for white women to put themselves in such a po-
sition as to learn not to be intrusive, to be patient until it hurts, and at the
same time to be open to learning every possible lesson—and getting used
to the feeling of not belonging (1986). Spelman writes about guilt and
shame: “I do not see how women who enjoy privileged status over other
women . . . can come to think it desirable to lose that privilege . . . unless
they see it not only as producing harm to other women but also as being
deeply disfiguring to themselves” (1997, 111). Maybe this protest induced
shame in non-Muslim, Swedish women for not really belonging, which
could provide the basis of solidarity acts forged around alliances instead
of seeking a common denominator; a work that acknowledges differences
and acts upon the knowledge of the importance of seeing the other as dif-
ferent from the self, and as heterogeneous.
And yet, we cannot end our story here, and thereby risk reinstalling the
134 Linda Berg and Maria Carbin

white citizen as the self-evident subject of feminist solidarity. The effects

of this campaign clearly reveal the hurdles faced by Muslim women to pass
as agents of Swedish solidarity, which leads us to want to underline the
difficulties of creating alliances, and yet, at the same time, to advocate for
the necessity of trying.

Linda Berg and Maria Carbin work as senior lecturers at Umeå Centre for Gender Stud-
ies, Umeå University, Sweden. They research and teach within the fields of feminism,
anti-racism, and postcolonial studies, and can be reached at linda.berg@umu.se,
maria.carbin@umu.se.

Notes

1. Almost all quotations from social media and established press are in Swedish
translated by the authors of this article.
2. The word veil in the singular was used by the initiators of the protest and is
used by the authors of the article, while acknowledging that there are numer-
ous names for different forms of clothing covering the face, hair, body, etc.

Works Cited

Abu-Lughod, Lila. 2002. “Do Muslim Women really need Saving?

Anthropoligical Reflections on Cultural Relativism and Its Others.”
American Anthropologist 104 (3): 783–90.
Ahmed, Sara. 2004a. “Declarations of Whiteness: The Non-Performativity
of Anti-Racism. borderlands 3 (2). http://www.borderlands.net.au/
vol3no2_2004/ahmed_declarations.htm.
———. 2004b. The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh
University Press.
Asad, Talal. 2009. “Free Speech, Blasphemy, and Secular Criticism.” In Is Critique
Secular? Blasphemy, Injury, and Free Speech, edited by Tala Asad, Wendy
Brown, Judith Butler, and Saba Mahmood, 20–58. Berkeley, CA: Townsend
Papers in Humanities.
Berg, Linda. 2007. InterNacionalistas. Identifikation och främlingskap i Svenska
solidaritetsarbetares berättelser från Nicaragua [Identification and estrangement
in Swedish solidarity workers’ narratives from Nicaragua]. Umea: Hstrom—
Text & Kultur.
Berg, Linda, and Mikela Lundahl. 2016. “(Un-)Veiling the West: Burkini-Gate,
Princess Hijab and Dressing as Struggle for Postsecular Integration.” Culture
Unbound: Journal of Current Cultural Research 8 (3): 263–83.
 Troubling Solidarity 135

Berg, Linda, Lena Martinsson, and Mikela Lundahl. 2016. “Sekulariteter:

förstahet genom religion och kön.” Kvinder, Køn og Forskning 4: 7–19.
Björkman, Maria, and Sven Widmalm. 2010. “Selling Eugenics: The Case of
Sweden.” Notes and Records: The Royal Society of the History of Science 64 (4).
Bonilla, Yarimar, and Jonathan Rosa. 2015. “#Ferguson: Digital Protest, Hashtag
Ethnography, and the Racial Politics of Social Media in the United States.”
American Ethnologist 42 (1): 4–17.
Bouteldja, Houria. 2010. “White women and the privilege of solidarity.”
Translated by May Fechtmann. Decolonial Translation Group, October 22.
http://www.decolonialtranslation.com/english/white-women-and-the-
priviledge-of-solidarity.html.
Braidotti, Rosi. 2008. “In Spite of the Times: The Postsecular Turn in Feminism.”
Theory, Culture & Society 25 (6): 1–24.
Carbin, Maria. 2014. “The Requirement to Speak: Victim Stories in Swedish
Policies against Honour-Related Violence.” Women’s Studies International
Forum 46 (Sep/Oct): 107–14.
Carbin, Maria, and Sara Edenheim. 2013. “The Intersectional Turn in Feminist
Theory: A Dream of a Common Language?” European Journal of Women
Studies 20 (3): 233–48.
Chandra, Shefali, and Saadia Toor. 2014. “Introduction.” WSQ 42 (3/4): 14–24.
Dahl, Ulrika. 2004. “Progressive Women, Traditional Men: The Politics of
“Knowledge” and Gendered Stories of ‘Development’ in the Northern
Periphery of the EU.” PhD dissertation, University of California, Santa
Cruz.
De los Reyes, Paulina, Diana Mulinari, and Irene Molina. 2002. Maktens (o)lika
förklädnader. Stockholm, Sweden: Atlas.
El-Tayeb, Fatima. 2011. European Others: Queering Ethnicity in Postnational
Europe. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Eze, Emmanuel Chukwudi. 1997. Race and the Enlightenment: A Reader. Malden,
MA: Blackwell.
Fernando, Mayanthi L. 2014. The Republic Unsettled: Muslim French and the
Contradictions of Secularism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Goldberg, David Theo. 2008. The Threat of Race: Reflections on Racial
Neoliberalism. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Habel, Ylva. 2011. “Challenging Swedish Exceptionalism? Teaching while
Black.” In Education in the Black Diaspora: Perspectives, Challenges and
Prospects, edited by Kassie Freeman and Ethan Johnson, 99–122. New York:
Routledge.
Hellmark, Virpi, and Sara Mohammad. 2013. “Hijabuppropet är ett hån mot
kvinnoaktivister.” Göteborgs Posten, August 21.
136 Linda Berg and Maria Carbin

Hübinette, Tobias, and Catrin Lundström. 2014. “Three Phases of Hegemonic

Whiteness: Understanding Racial Temporalities in Sweden.” Social Identities
20 (6): 423–37.
Lentin, Alana, 2004. Racism and Anti-Racism in Europe. London: Pluto Press.
Lentin, Alana, and Gavan Titley. 2011. The Crises of Multiculturalism: Racism in a
Neoliberal Age. London: Zed Books.
Lindberg, Anders. 2013. “Rätten att bära slöja är värd att försvara.” Aftonbladet,
August 19.
Lugones, Maria C., and Elizabeth Spelman. 1986. “Have We Got a Theory
for You! Feminist Theory, Cultural Imperialism and the Demand for
‘The Woman’s Voice’.” In Women and Values: Readings in Recent Feminist
Philosophy, edited by Marilyn Pearsall, 19–31. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth
Publishing Company.
Mahmood, Saba. 2012. The Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist
Subject. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Mattsson, Katarina, and Katarina Pettersson. 2007. “Crowning Miss Sweden:
National Constructions of White Femininity.” NORA—Nordic Journal of
Women’s Studies 15 (4): 233–45.
Naum, Magdalena, and Jonas M. Nordin, eds. 2013. Scandinavian Colonialism
and the Rise of Modernity: Small Time Agents in a Global Arena. New York:
Springer.
Nyhetsmorgon/Tv4 Morning News. 2013. August 24.
Rorty, Richard. 1989. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Sawyer, Lena. 2000. “Black and Swedish: Racialization and the Cultural Politics
of Belonging in Sweden.” PhD dissertation, University of California, Santa
Cruz.
Spelman, Elizabeth, 1997. Fruits of Sorrow. Framing Our Attention of Suffering.
Boston: Beacon.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1988. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” In Marxism and
the Interpretation of Culture: Communications and Culture, edited by Cary
Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, 217–313. Houndmills, UK: Macmillan
Education.
Thurfjell, David. 2015. Det gudlösa folket. De postkristna svenskarna och religionen.
Stockholm, Sweden: Molin & Sorgenfrei.
Wekker, Gloria. 2016. White Innocence: Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Yazdanfar, Sara. 2013. ”Fokusera på antirasism, inte på selfies.” Dagens Arena,
August 22.