Race place shape: a case study of contested racialized boundaries of belonging, embodiment, and gender in Swedish alternative media

Abstract

ABSTRACT When the alternative and separatist media site Rummet (The Room) was launched in 2014, it had immediate echo in Swedish mainstream media. The platform’s founders declared that it was for and by ‘racialized feminists and anti-racists’, and that only non-whites were welcome to participate. Criticism from the elite media focused on the separatist stance and accused the founders of being racists themselves. My discussion in this case study concerns the racialized intersections of body, space, and identity. The data consist of texts posted on Rummet’s website during January 2014, and articles in the Swedish mainstream media published during the first three months of 2014. The founders of Rummet made use of the media space to reverse the white gaze, reframe themselves and their bodies, and re-imagine place-making mediascapes and identities. The polemical debate framed the site’s separatism as a threat to social cohesion and evaded the question of white privilege.