Emotions, finances and independence. Uranium as a “happy object” in the Greenlandic debate on secession from Denmark

• Published in: Polar Record
• Main Author: Thisted, Kirsten
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Cambridge University Press (CUP) 2019
• Subjects: Greenland; greenlander*; greenlandic; Polar Record
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s0032247419000433; https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0032247419000433

Abstract Analysing the Danish-Greenlandic debate on Greenland’s plans to extract and export uranium, the article advocates bringing the fields of extraction studies and cultural studies into dialogue. Drawing on discourse analysis, critical theory and the “emotional turn” in social sciences, the article demonstrates how the current discussion about secession is linked to a Danish-Greenlandic affective economy instituted during the colonial era. Conceived as the antithesis to the unhappy condition of present postcoloniality, independence has become the ultimate political goal for the Greenlandic nation. The reasoning is that history has made the Greenlanders citizens in a foreign nation, which has left them in a state of alienation. In order to lock colonialism away firmly in the past and attain future happiness, the Greenlanders must attain statehood. Uranium is supposed to promote this goal and is thus circulated as a “happy object”, positioning opponents of uranium mining as “affect aliens” or “killjoys” in the independence discourse. In Denmark, the Greenlandic detachment has led to “postcolonial melancholia” – and to a greater receptiveness to the Greenland desire for equality. In Greenland, disappointed expectations of rapid economic progress and growing distrust of large-scale projects have sparked a discussion about the significations of the concept of “independence”.