Affects

In the social and cultural sciences, what is known the “affective turn” has proved extremely productive, often in combination with narrative analysis or discourse analysis. Rather than regarding emotions as individual psychological states, the social sciences view emotions as cultural practices: that is, as something located in the interaction between people, underscoring the sociality of emotion. The affective turn has proven useful as a method for analyzing the political effects of emotional practices in asymmetric power relations. The chapter demonstrates how Sara Ahmed’s concept of “affective economies” opens up a deeper understanding of the emotional relations between Denmark and Greenland, established during the colonial era. The desire to secede from Denmark and create an independent Greenlandic nation-state has led the country to a transition into a nation-as-investment destination (Kaur in Brand new nation. Capitalist dreams and nationalist designs in twenty-first-century India. Standfort University Press, 2020). Various pride strategies are used to encourage the Greenlanders to identify themselves as modern and competent people, ready to enter the global competition. While the political system is trying to decolonize Greenland by promoting its economic and political independence, Greenlandic artists process the social, epistemological and affective consequences of colonialism. Using art as an affective methodology, they open up a space for feeling—and thus thinking, acting and knowing—differently.