"Trött på vithet". Intersektionalitet i Dan Anderssons Kolarhistorier och Chi-mo-ka-ma
Dan AnderssonExistential phenomenologyIntersectionalityIntersektionalitetWhiteness studiesWorking-class literature
Although Dan Andersson (1888-1920) is considered perhaps the most important of the early Swedish workingclassauthors, there has not been much research on his work. Through a perspective based on critical whitenessstudies, intersectionality and existential phenomenology, this thesis performs a close reading of Andersson?sKolarhistorier (1914) and Chi-mo-ka-ma (1920) in order to map the discursive formations of whiteness andblackness in the texts, as well as to expose how these formations interrelate with that of humanhood.Since an underprivileged situation of oppression and poverty is the point from which the fictional worldunfolds in both Kolarhistorier and Chi-mo-ka-ma, whiteness is not an existential style within close reach for thecharacters. In Kolarhistorier the charcoal-burners claim themselves as ?weary of whiteness? and accordingly thetext establishes what the thesis reads as a realm of blackness where the black, male body becomes a locus ofpleasure instead of despair. In Chi-mo-ka-ma some of the characters turn white through colonial practices ofwhich the most important is the ownership of land. In the end they lose the land and accordingly their whiteness.While the bodies in Kolarhistorier are being filled with meaning within a discourse of blackness, the bodies inChi-mo-ka-ma are being filled with ambiguous meaning within a discourse of white trash.The reading of the texts points to the fact that whiteness, as well as blackness, should be understood asintersectionally constructed discursive formations through which it is possible to map the multiple andsimultaneous relations of power that a single life is entangled in. Since the discourse of white masculinity isidentical with that of humanity in the modern world, it simultaneously functions as both the site of humanhoodin the texts and as an obstacle to the humanification of those lives that can?t be filled with meaning within thatdiscourse.