Teaching with the third wave new feminists - MailChimp

of a link to already existing stereotypes to well-known groups of foreigners inAustria. A connection was drawn between Chechen male asylum seekers andviolence, criminality, aggressive masculinity and a lack of civilized behaviour. 30Representations of male Chechens were, in other words, used in a similar wayto images that are usually attached to migrants from the “Balkans”. Here, thepolicy of media representation is supportive of a move to attach an unknowngroup of foreigners to a group with a long historical relation to Austria and isthus able to establish a sense of “security” for the dominant majority society by“taming” the new group through the images of well-known foreigners. 31 As aconsequence of this, Austrian representations of a specific group of foreigners(Chechens) may cause irritation in another context where historical memoriesregarding the group are different (i.e. Scandinavia that has another relationshipwith Chechens – seeing them more as the victims of Russian imperialism).In Austria migrant women from Chechnya have been largely neglectedby media representation policies and as a consequence Islam was not high lightedthrough comments on the visibility of the headscarves or body coverings inpublic. Here it is interesting to notice that although Austria is a very right-wingoriented country, it is one of the few EU-European countries where the debatesconcerning the rules surrounding Muslim attires are absent. In Denmark, onthe other hand, the Muslims’ headscarves and body coverings have been thepredominant signifier of the “other” and undanishness. 32In our research projects, we deal with both exclusion and discriminationwithin groups of white people and within national communities that areimagined as white collectives. On the basis of a dualistic understandingof the world order, “white” or “whiteness” is often considered to require“Black” or “Blackness” as its equivalent or opposite. In contrast, CriticalWhiteness Studies do not support a binary relationship between theterms, nor do they support the idea of fixed or essential identities. CriticalWhiteness Studies emphasize “white” and “whiteness” as referring to theexperience of privilege and superiority. 33 Since the term Black was providedwith meaning by the Black Power Movements in the 1960s and highlightsthe common experience of oppression it is able to embrace the experience of30This example is based on a study examined by Daniela Gronold, “‘Wer denkt an die Opfer?’ – Repräsentationentschetschenischer EinwandererInnen in der österreichischen Mediennation”, in MedienJournal (32:3, 2008), 31–40.31Daniela Gronold, 39–40.32Sevgi Kilic, Sawitri Saharso and Birgit Sauer, 400–1.33Wollrad, Weißsein im Widerspruch, 19–20.64