Another little trip

Well well, I kind of went into hiding after last week's publishing of this report. My thesis topic is now backed up by so many organisations that I'm worried I won't be able to say anything of interest. The most interesting thing about this is the fact that before the report, I thought I was a genius :-) Anyway, the work is progressing - especially after I spent this weekend in Ioannina where my supervisor lives. He's very good at getting me to structure my thoughts and he's got just as many ideas as me, so by the time we finished working on Saturday we had enough material for a PhD thesis...
This place, Ioannina, was a much needed getaway for me (even though I have hardly been here the past month, hmm...). The city is in the North West of Greece fairly close to the border to Albania and the sea (which I obviously forgot the name of but it is - surprise surprise - on the west coast of Greece), and it's located in a sort of hole in between the mountains leaving room for a huge lake. Really, this place is as beautiful as I have ever seen one... Sunday I spent working for some hours and then venturing out to explore in the afternoon. I soon realised that I had not left my stereotypes and Northern European ideas at the hotel when I walked around the city's castle in search of what I thought was the 'main church' of the city - and found two open-air museums, one around the mosque (not church, me felt ignorant) of Ali Pasha who ruled the city in the 18th century, and another around the Its Kale Citadel which has been in use since 1084 (!!!) as fortress of the city. This place was amazing, showing signs of all kinds of people - Christian, Muslim, kings and queens... I must admit it was a great experience for me for the first time to see remnants of the Ottoman Empire.

I also made friends with the man running the ferry from the city to its little island where according to the local youngsters "we don't have television and make sex to our wives every day"... Hmm, that sort of fits a few stereotypes of mine about Greek men and testosterone... The island is peaceful and quiet which I very much appreciated, and it houses 6 monasteries scattered along the shoreline. I couldn't find any information about these places - but that didn't stop me from enjoying the utter bliss of being all alone walking from one spectacular monastery to the next, feeling the serenity of people who used to get closer to God here. This is the first time I have seen simple and modest buildings of religion in Greece - they are usually ornamented into obscurities and not awe inspiring at all.

Anyway, I just felt like sharing a bit of this soul's journey that brought me well-deserved peace of mind, sitting in the shadow of a big tree, listening to the wind moving them and looking out over the magnitude of the mountains and the lake. For once the constant challenges of my brain was silenced by the fact that I couldn't really think of anything to think of. Skønne timer var det...

Thought I had no words left...

I am so ashamed. And sad. I really felt my whole being drop to the floor when I read the new report from the ECRI about the situation of racism and intolerance in Denmark. How the f*** did we let this happen to our beautiful country? How did we let this government and their companions through everything, the Danish People’s Party, undermine and castrate the entire belief system that served as the foundation under our constitution? I am so ashamed. Of my own ignorance and apathy. Of the silent majority. Of the total lack of compassion reflected in the report, regardless of the fact that it is not representative of the population as a whole. Of not being able to do anything. Of being tired of fighting the same stereotypes, battling with a machine of a “welfare” system supposedly based on the idea of equality, struggling to convince myself that there is still good and will left in the Danish people to rage against the machine. Of wanting to change my citizenship thereby relinquishing my heritage as a Dane. I am ashamed of the way I let myself get upset about this. I am ashamed of wanting to stay away. I don’t care about a fragment of the Muslim population being fundamentalists (but not necessarily terrorists). I don’t give a rat’s ass about the so-called ‘crime of ethnic youth’. In perspective, I would probably react the same way if I was living in a country where it is publicly justified to engage in verbal abuse of people you don’t know and gross generalisations that guard the fortress of the liberal and so incredibly self-f******-righteous traditions and ‘culture’ (what a laugh!). Denmark has become a mockery of its ideals, it has become the rotten state that it was once feared it would become. Call me a traitor, tell me that I’m not being civilised in my rage and that arguments which include swearing and uncontrolled rants are not valid in a political discussion. I don’t care. I haven’t heard a single intelligent uttering on this issue from our government in the past 5 years. I’m so immensely and fundamentally ANGRY about what has happened to the country I call my Fatherland. Of what we – all of us – have let happen to it. Where is Grundtvig, where is Kierkegaard, where are the people that invented LEGO? Where is our pride? What is left to be proud of? If this is the Danish-ness we are supposed to protect, I’m signing out, giving up all my social benefits, erasing my CPR. number, changing my mother tongue. I do not want part in this anymore, not even by linguistic association.

Søs, for your birth

Today is the birthday of my dear friend, Pernille, who lives in Herning, Denmark. Every year I get confused and wish her happy birthday on the 16th of April instead. I apologise for this... In my defense, it is the Queen's birthday on this date and I know there's something I have to remember. Anyway, as this is your day, Søs, I want to wish you a very very happy one; I want to extend aaaall my warm thoughts for you and my admiration for your courage in taking up a job in the 'real world' (she works in a bank) and sincerely hope you find all the happiness you need in these new circumstances. I miss you and apologise for not being there to celebrate the day with you...

Rainy day i Salonika

Yesterday Salonika was turned into a massive version of 'The 4 Seasons'. In 5 minutes the weather went from sunshine and too hot to this... Imagine! All the water from the hills surrounding the city ended up in our street. It was absolutely awesome and free entertainment for about half an hour. Then just as suddenly as it began, it stopped and the sun came out, betraying our minds, making us believe that the weather had been fantastic all day... What a weird place this is!

a love so strong

Dearest mother of mine,

on this day when we celebrate all the mothers of the world, I must single you out and thank you for being who you are. I cherish your being and your love and don't know what I would do without it or you. I hope we will keep growing together, laugh and cry together, learn from each other in mutual respect as we have done so far - and that we will grow stronger in our beliefs in the goodness of humans and the esteem for ourselves.

I love you always...

Sunday morning yaaaaawn with political content

Trying to avoid my captivating book about London's East End this morning - because when I start I can't stop - I turned on the computer to read the news while having breakfast.
Jyllands-Posten (http://www.jp.dk/dkmuslim3/) claims this morning, under the headline 'Everybody's talking about them, but nobody's talking with them', to be the first Danish newspaper to ask Danish Muslims about their opinion, today on their positions on the many forms of headscarves and dress that Muslim women can wear. The paper has, ever since the infamous drawing-incident, taken it upon themselves to educate the Danish public about the Muslim minority, their cultural and religious practices and their attempts to integrate into society.
According to the Rambøll Management who has conducted the poll, 66,6 % of Danish Muslims do not believe that teenage girls should wear the hijab when outside the home. Furthermore, the poll has a detailed section on the characteristics of the interviewees such as age, gender, occupation and how many times a day the interviewee pray. Apparently, people that pray more often have the highest percentage of yes-sayers to the question - but still, it's only half of the persons asked.
My immediate thoughts when reading this was that Jyllands-Posten is courting the Danish Muslims by giving them a voice through this kind of initiative. That they are trying to make up for their big boo-boo with the drawings. But then I thought to myself that I'm no better than the paper anyway because I assume automatically that there's a 'hidden agenda' of a negative kind behind the initiative. I must either be very naïve or very stupid because I can't see how that would be the case here - the poll is disproving the ideological strategy, the paper has been employing for years, namely gross generalisations about certain groups in the Danish society (not just Muslims) and legitimising voices of antagonists of a plural society that is already a reality and not realistically up for discussion.
The only discoursive space I see occupied still by a biased view on Danish Muslims (and perhaps even Muslims in other places as well) in this specific context is the fact that they have become a 'subject of public research'; of course teaching the public about the life of Muslims in the country - but also singling them out and putting their 'different-ness' under a microscope. Even if the poll shows that the differences are not as big and discouraging as 'we' thought, it still draws the attention of the reader to the fact that humans of Denmark are diverse and this presents a potential problem.
Besides, it would be much more interesting to ask the non-Muslim Danish what they think Danish Muslims think. And honestly, why does Jyllands-Posten never print anything about people like me, people that don't think that all Danish Muslims suppress their teenage daughters and make them wear hijab?! I never understood how this became the center of attention for debates about integration and co-existence - since when did a liberal welfare state like the Danish have anything to say about what people wear?! There are much more serious problems to address; problems which do are not analyzed thouroughly by investigating the minds of Danish Muslims alone but solely from looking at the relation between them and the non-Muslim majority of the Danish population. As the paper itself says - 'we' are talking about 'them', not engaging in active exchange of viewpoints and ideas about solutions. This initiative does nothing to dismantle the prevalent idea of insurmountable differences, rather it cements it and at the same time legitimizes it.

More weddings - and tigers...

*ARGH* I've been trying for a while now to come up with something witty and smart to say about this - but really, I just wanted to brag about the fact that my brother travelled all the way to Thailand to attend the traditional Thai wedding of his good friend Claus AND had the courage to ride on an elephant in the river Kwai and... Well, take a look at this!
...and congratulations, Claus, may you have much happiness in the married life...

...and they lived happily ever after (or at least the few days I've been here)...

Wedding is over and I must say I enjoyed it despite my natural dislike for official and church involving happenings. The wedding was modelled after Laetitia's (the beautiful bride) childhood dream and it was a pleasure to be part of it... Done French style, the festivities involved a magnificent 7 course dinner, the traditions of the bride and groom waltzing with their respective parents and the younger siblings seizing the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to ridicule their "elders" in public and with everyone's undivided attention... Ils ont fait l'école du rire, bien sûr... At the end of the day, I had a tendency to zone out of conversations as understanding French requires constant concentration and deliberation. Sunday morning, my wonderful brain had imploded and I walked around like a zombie all day, not able to communicate in any of my half-languages...


Now, it's back to work - today is a national holiday in France (celebrating the end of WWII, I've been told), but I'm desperately trying to focus on my preparations for my meeting at the Council of Europe tomorrow - AND I promised to speak French all day!

a happy traveller

After spending only a day and a half in Salonika after coming back from Denmark, I'm now getting ready to leave again. This time an old friend has requested my presence at his wedding - yey :) In a couple of hours I'll be flying to Stuttgart and after that on a train to Strasbourg. The wedding is tomorrow - and I'm excited! However, the trip there will serve me good as I have now in my head transformed this happy event for my friend and his girlfriend into an event about me. It baffles me how this always happen... I worry about my clothes, my being there all alone and no fancy degree to show for myself (yet, he he...) - and obviously my infamous 'franglais'. Oh lord, is that going to be painful...
Anyway, packing still needs to be done... Au revoir and so on...

Shared with Danish speaking friends

Just thought of something my friend Ditte wrote in an email last week. It's worth sharing, she's a very smart lady... Unfortunately it only works in Danish - sorry for the apartheid treatment all non-Danish speaking people...

"Livet er for kort til drenge og citronmåner. Det må kunne lade sig gøre at finde mænd og flødeskumskager"

I intend on marrying August, her son (in the picture) as soon as he realises that I'm actually a person and not just a colourful blob - although I must admit sometimes it's very refreshing just to be an animate object and not a human with responsibilities and lots of thinking to do.

My 'artsy fartsy' dissertation project

So, my friend Lars (http://lgp.smartlog.dk) called my dissertation 'artsy fartsy' - wonder what that means? Anyway, this is what it is...

The “but…” of Denmark
A portrait drawn through discourse: metamorphoses of racism seen through the controversy over the drawings of the Prophet Muhammed
The transformation of content in ‘racist’ discourse and the need for a conceptual change in dealing with discriminatory speech and practices in a European context.

Content.

Racism is not what it used to be. However successful Europe was in quelling racist practices after WWII, the narrative of qualitative differences as constituting insoluable problems between groups in society is still dominating the discourse of coherence, coexistence and stability of European societies.
This thesis will concentrate on
i) The transformation of classical racism into a more subtle, but just as powerful version of verbal degradation concentrating on cultural characteristics rather than racial ones
ii) The substance of a ‘new’ narrative of differences and its relation to collective identity construction

iii) The acceptance of the narrative in politics, constituting in effect the ‘institutional racism’ of our day

Broad recognition is given in public discourse to the contention that the glue keeping society together is the existence of an ‘us’ (inside) fundamentally different from ‘them’ (outside). As ‘them’ moved into the space inhabited by ‘us’ in European societies, a dominating negative discourse of differences emerged.
The growing support for right-wing parties is disquieting because their political agendas are in fact promoting feelings of hate and ideas of unequal human worth (on other grounds than race) thereby undermining basic human rights principles. We need to name the phenomenon in the right proportions, i.e. as fundamentally destructive as racism, to address the challenge it poses to democracies throughout the Continent.

That's it! Must admit that I'm very excited about the project - but also surprised that this fact doesn't necessarily mean that I'm working harder on it...

Week 1 in Salonika, February 2006... where was I...

stopped in the midst of my everyday
didn't really decide anything or make a choice
just got here

i didn't really give myself the right
to hold all the door handles
or open any of the frames
but as contemporary as this is
here i am

welcome to me