- Ylva Habel, Ph. D
CEMFOR, Centre for Multidisciplinary Research on Racism
(Centrum för mångvetenskaplig forskning om rasism), Uppsala University
Box 511
751 20 Uppsala
Sweden - 0046-18-471 00 00
Ylva Habel
Uppsala University, Department of Theology, Department Member
Sweden imagines itself as a race-less, tolerant country, purportedly less affected by postcolonial relations than other nations, by virtue of its welfare politics, and its democratic, egalitarian principles. This national self-image,... more
Sweden imagines itself as a race-less, tolerant country, purportedly less affected by postcolonial relations than other nations, by virtue of its welfare politics, and its democratic, egalitarian principles. This national self-image, which is situated within a regional discursive framework of Nordic exceptionalism, has been contested by intersectional, postcolonial, critical race and whiteness studies; yet there is a widespread conviction that Sweden has had no real part in the imperial adventure, and therefore remains untouched by colonial and postcolonial social dynamics. These persistent claims to political innocence are often forcefully reproduced as three forms of positioning: sanctioned ignorance, normative colorblindness, and white liberal doubt. Working as a Black scholar and teacher within a postcolonial curriculum in this context involves several challenges. The article adresses the pedagogical challenges I face as a Black film and media studies scholar in pedagogical situ...
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”Förändringar i samhällen lämnar alltid avtryck i olika utbildningssammanhang, så även inom universitetsvärlden. Därför inger det hopp att så många studenter, lärare och forskare anser att akademin är värd att kämpa för”, skriver Irina... more
”Förändringar i samhällen lämnar alltid avtryck i olika utbildningssammanhang, så även inom universitetsvärlden. Därför inger det hopp att så många studenter, lärare och forskare anser att akademin är värd att kämpa för”, skriver Irina Schmitt, Ylva Habel och Adrián Groglopo apropå att samtida debattörer ifrågasätter kvinnors lämplighet i akademin.
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Ceylon Africans are an Afrodiasporic community in Sri Lanka and are the descendants of enslaved Africans brought to the island from the 16th-20th centuries. This article focuses on the deployment of Ceylon African mānja performances as an... more
Ceylon Africans are an Afrodiasporic community in Sri Lanka and are the descendants of enslaved Africans brought to the island from the 16th-20th centuries. This article focuses on the deployment of Ceylon African mānja performances as an embodiment of memory and Afrodiasporic identity both in private and public spheres. I argue that Ceylon African mānja performances extend beyond an expression of identity and functions as an Africana aesthetic praxis that facilitates memory-keeping work among African-descended peoples in South Asia. Combining theories of Africana aesthetics, memory, and performance with ethnography, I illustrate how mānja performance is a catalyst for individual and communal African identity. This study reveals how mānja performances are not merely limited to enactments of unique cultural practices for the education or admiration of an audience but also about acknowledging the significance of memory, remembering, and remembering to their life worlds, Africanity, and futurity.
Research Interests: Cultural Studies, Demography, Anthropology, Ethiopian Studies, Agrarian Studies, and 15 moreBrazilian Studies, Immigration, African Diaspora Studies, Identity politics, Brazil, Diaspora Studies, Indigenous Peoples, Africana Studies, Blacks and Jews, Direitos Humanos, Immigrant integration, African American Foodways, Afrikanistik, Food and Music, and Black Hebrews
Research Interests: Sociology and Humanities
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More to come. The publication has begun to be less and less accessible, and I will contact the Swedish Film Institute about it.
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Say milk, say cheese! : Inscribing public participation in the photographic archives of the national milk propaganda’s promotional photography
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su.se. ...
In this essay I discuss the racial discourse underlying the regulation of space, actor movement, and gesture inThe Rose of Rhodesia (1918), whose animation and restraint of black characters, by communicating a message of interracial... more
In this essay I discuss the racial discourse underlying the regulation of space, actor movement, and gesture inThe Rose of Rhodesia (1918), whose animation and restraint of black characters, by communicating a message of interracial brotherhood and reconciliation, appear to address real-life tensions between colonial masters and subjects. Shaw’s film is inflected by local as well as global discourses on race and imperialism, and scholars have noted that his South African productions—first and foremost in De Voortrekkers / Winning a Continent(1916)—were stylistically influenced by D. W. Griffith’s epic The Birth of a Nation (1915). My discussion initially focuses upon the similar, yet subtly different, racial thematics of these melodramas, which I situate in two contexts: the regulatory aspects of Sub-Saharan film production; and what I call an imperial ethics of care, a global discourse on race linked to the late-Victorian British media. I then examine the striking way in which the ...
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Beside myself with looking : The provincial, female spectator as out of place at the Stockholm Exhibition 189
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sh.se. Publications. ...
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The dissertation straddles the interface of mass media, social engineering and advertising in 1930s Stockholm. Its twofold objective is firstly to outline their cultural output, targeting predomina ...
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sh.se. Publications. ...
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sh.se. Publications. ...
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In this essay I discuss the racial discourse underlying the regulation of space, actor movement, and gesture inThe Rose of Rhodesia (1918), whose animation and restraint of black characters, by communicating a message of interracial... more
In this essay I discuss the racial discourse underlying the regulation of space, actor movement, and gesture inThe Rose of Rhodesia (1918), whose animation and restraint of black characters, by communicating a message of interracial brotherhood and reconciliation, ...
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sh.se. Publications. ...
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sh.se. Publications. ...
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Drawing on the intellectual work of Black and afro- pessimist scholars such as Frank B. Wilderson III, Christina Sharpe, Saidiya Hartman and Denise Ferreira da Silva, I want to elucidate the ways in which blackness and black life have... more
Drawing on the intellectual work of Black and afro- pessimist scholars such as Frank B. Wilderson III, Christina Sharpe, Saidiya Hartman and Denise Ferreira da Silva, I want to elucidate the ways in which blackness and black
life have become contested, unfathomable ‘objects’ in Swedish mainstream
media debates. I locate my discussion at the interface between those debates, afro- pessimist legacies and my position as a black film and media scholar before, during, and after the release of the animated children’s film Liten Skär och Alla Små Brokiga [Little Pink and The Motley Crew] (Stina Wirsén, Sweden, 2012). My aim is to examine the ways in which the film’s pickaninny figure, Little Heart, and the hurtfulness of this stereotype were discussed and contested in the debate around the film. I argue that the debate ended up producing a sense of white fragility as a priority instead of dealing with anti- black racism, its consequences for black people, and its ongoing maintenance through cultural production and debate.
life have become contested, unfathomable ‘objects’ in Swedish mainstream
media debates. I locate my discussion at the interface between those debates, afro- pessimist legacies and my position as a black film and media scholar before, during, and after the release of the animated children’s film Liten Skär och Alla Små Brokiga [Little Pink and The Motley Crew] (Stina Wirsén, Sweden, 2012). My aim is to examine the ways in which the film’s pickaninny figure, Little Heart, and the hurtfulness of this stereotype were discussed and contested in the debate around the film. I argue that the debate ended up producing a sense of white fragility as a priority instead of dealing with anti- black racism, its consequences for black people, and its ongoing maintenance through cultural production and debate.
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Chapter in the anthology The Josephine Baker Critical Reader: Selected Writings on the Entertainer and Activist (2017) , by Mae G. Henderson (Author), Charlene B. Regester (Author, Editor), Mae G Henderson (Editor)
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I denna artikel diskuteras Föreningen Mjölkpropagandans, som sommaren 1937 turnerade mellan en rad städer för att bjuda allmänheten på mjölk, schlagers och upplysning. Med teoretisk avstamp i Michel Foucaults tänkande om... more
I denna artikel diskuteras Föreningen Mjölkpropagandans, som sommaren 1937 turnerade mellan en rad städer för att bjuda allmänheten på mjölk, schlagers och upplysning. Med teoretisk avstamp i Michel Foucaults tänkande om styrningsrationalitet, erbjuds en microhistorisk inblick i organisationens flermediala kampanjstrategier. Bevarat bildmaterial visar att det fanns ett övergripande manuskript för olika mjölkevenemang, där orkestreringen av publikens entusiastiska deltagande var en central komponent. På ett variationsrikt sätt upprepades avbildandet för att tydligt skriva in allmänhetens entusiasm för mjölk – så även under denna rullande mjölkbars turné.
Mjölkpropagandans buss ingick i ett kretslopp av bussburna enheter för spridning av samhälleliga nyttigheter och frågeställningar. Under 1920- och 1930-talet kombinerades många gånger mötet mellan flera medieformer och motoriserad mobilitet för att frramställa olika samtida fenomen som nya och angelägna. Strategin att föra ut något i samhllet via en medieriggad buss, innebar att det som satts i rörelse bokstavligen aktualiserades genom att vara 'på väg' genom landet.
Mjölkpropagandan omskrev tidigt sina framgångar i att omvandla svenskarna till ett mjölkdrickande folk som ett nationellt erövrings- och kartläggningsprojekt; genom att låta en rullande mjölkbar åka genom landet gav man materialitet åt sina anspråk.
Mjölkpropagandans buss ingick i ett kretslopp av bussburna enheter för spridning av samhälleliga nyttigheter och frågeställningar. Under 1920- och 1930-talet kombinerades många gånger mötet mellan flera medieformer och motoriserad mobilitet för att frramställa olika samtida fenomen som nya och angelägna. Strategin att föra ut något i samhllet via en medieriggad buss, innebar att det som satts i rörelse bokstavligen aktualiserades genom att vara 'på väg' genom landet.
Mjölkpropagandan omskrev tidigt sina framgångar i att omvandla svenskarna till ett mjölkdrickande folk som ett nationellt erövrings- och kartläggningsprojekt; genom att låta en rullande mjölkbar åka genom landet gav man materialitet åt sina anspråk.
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In this essay I discuss the racial discourse underlying the regulation of space, actor movement, and gesture in The Rose of Rhodesia (1918), whose animation and restraint of black characters, by communicating a message of interracial... more
In this essay I discuss the racial discourse underlying the regulation of space, actor movement, and gesture in The Rose of Rhodesia (1918), whose animation and restraint of black characters, by communicating a message of interracial brotherhood and reconciliation, appear to address real-life tensions between colonial masters and subjects. Shaw’s film is inflected by local as well as global discourses on race and imperialism, and scholars have noted that his South African productions—first and foremost in De Voortrekkers / Winning a Continent (1916)—were stylistically influenced by D. W. Griffith’s epic The Birth of a Nation (1915). My discussion initially focuses upon the similar, yet subtly different, racial thematics of these melodramas, which I situate in two contexts: the regulatory aspects of Sub-Saharan film production; and what I call an imperial ethics of care, a global discourse on race linked to the late-Victorian British media. I then examine the striking way in which the principal black actor, Yumi, appears to have been directed to use a histrionic mode of acting which had been largely abandoned by Hollywood directors. This return to what Roberta E. Pearson has dubbed the “eloquent gestures” of film melodrama, I argue, can be related to two linked problems for white settlers: the supposed inability of Africans to comprehend cinema; and the risk of black insurgency. In directing his African actors to use an antiquated, histrionic style comprised of unambiguous poses and extravagantly courteous gestures, Shaw sought to fix the film’s meaning for black and white audiences alike.