Academic courses on interculturality have become a rapidly growing discipline in the West, where supranational bodies such as the European Union and UNESCO promote intercultural education as a path towards improved global cultural relations. Through interviews with students who completed a university course on interculturality, this essay investigates the tenets of interculturality and problematises whether this discourse merely reproduces a classificatory logic embedded in modernity that insists on differences among cultures. The argument put forward is that in the analysed context, interculturality tends to reproduce the very colonial ideas that it seeks to oppose. In doing so, interculturality reinforces the collective ‘we’ as the location of modernity by deciding who is culturally different and who is in a position that must be bridged to the mainstream by engaging in intercultural dialogue.

This essay seeks to wean interculturality from its comfort zone of flat substitutability across cultural differences by pushing for the possibility of other ways of thinking about the concept depending on where (the geopolitics of knowledge) and by whom (the bodypolitics of knowledge) it is being articulated. In order to make a case for the importance of always considering the geopolitical and bodypolitical dimension of knowledge production within interculturality, this essay shifts focus away from policies of the European Union and UNESCO to the Andean region of Latin America. In that part of the world the notion of interculturalidad – translation: interculturality – is not only a subject on the educational agenda, it has also become a core component among indigenous social movements in their push for decolonization. With reference points drawn from a decolonial perspective and the concept of “colonial difference”, this essay makes the case that interculturalidad, with its roots in the historical experience of colonialism and in the particular, rather than in assertions of universality, offers another perspective on interculturality bringing into the picture other epistemologies. It concludes by arguing for the requirement to start seeing interculturality as inter-epistemic rather than simply inter-cultural.

The present article focuses on problematizing the European Union’s claim that intercultural dialogue constitutes an advocated method of talking through cultural boundaries based on mutual empathy and non-domination. More precisely, the aim is to analyze who is being constructed as counterparts of the intercultural dialogue through the discourse produced by the EU. To answer the question, European policy documents on intercultural dialogue are analyzed drawing on a postcolonial perspective. As an interpretation, the EU appropriates historical symbols and colonial figures of thought to authorize its current objectives. Within the realm of the EU, Europeans are portrayed as having an a priori historical existence, while the ones excluded from this notion are evoked to demonstrate its difference in comparison to the European one. The results show that subjects not considered as Europeans serve as markers of the multicultural present of the space. Thus, intercultural dialogue seems to consolidate differences between European and Other - the ‘We’ and ‘Them’ in the dialogue - rather than, as in line with its purpose, bringing subjects together.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the indigenous people and the culture in Latin America is represented in Swedish high school schoolbooks in comparison with their equals in Colombia. The aim is to discover whether there are any differences or similarities between the reproductions in both countries. The theoretical part discusses the difficulties involved to determine both a Latin-American identity as well as a Colombian one. This is due to the fact that identity in Latin America is a product of colonization, which is to say that it came into being through the people who conquered the region because, prior to their arrival, Latin America didn’t exist as we know it. Multiculturalism within the region complicates this construction since different groups and nations construct their memory and ‘wear’ these concepts from which they get their proper sense of the past in function with the present and how it aspires to identify itself with the future. This means that not just one Latin America exists, but many. Part of the problem is, according to some scholars (cf. Díaz Geniz 2004), Latin Americans desire to identify themselves with the ‘other’, meaning the white, the European or the North American. The study concludes that there exists a European point of view in the books of both countries in their way of representing the history of the region.

The thrust of this essay is to study how interculturality, as a path to decolonization, is being articulated and understood among indigenous alliances in the Andean region of Latin America. Empirically, the analysis is based upon interviews with students and teachers from local academic courses on interculturality in Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru. Although interculturality and intercultural education are common features also in Western educational rhetoric, the imposition to learn from indigenous movements have failed to attract any substantial interest in the West (cf. Deere & Leon 2003; Patrinos 2000). To illustrate this further, Robert Young (2012) argues that indigenous struggles seldom are regarded as a central issue even within postcolonial studies, a disjunction related to the use among indigenous movements of paradigms not easily translated to the Western theories and presuppositions commonly used in this scholarship (Young 2012). Given this picture, there are strong reasons for engaging seriously in a discussion about the proposition for interculturality to break out of the prison-house of colonial vocabulary – modernity, progress, salvation – as it lingers on in official memory; and there are also good reasons to problematize the universalizing claims that have characterized Western philosophy in the implicitly assumed epistemological hierarchies.

In this paper, I will focus specifically on visions of decolonization in terms of retrieved languages, reinscribed histories, production of knowledge; beginning the essay with an elaboration of the logic of domination as rooted in the modern/colonial world – here referred to as coloniality. Shortly thereafter, with reference points drawn from the work of Walter Mignolo and his notion of delinking, I introduce the theoretical backdrop that guides my analysis. In the major part of the paper, I develop an argument for interculturality to be understood as inter-epistemic based on knowledge produced beyond the discursive order of Western educational systems.

If the production of knowledge in Latin America has long been subject to imperial designs and disseminated through educational systems, recent interventions —from liberation theology, popular education, participatory action research, alternative communication and critical literacy to postcolonial critique and decolonial options—have sought to shift the geography of reason. The central question to be addressed is how, in times of historical ruptures, political reconstructions and epistemic formations, the production of paradigms rooted in ‘other’ logics, cosmologies and realities may renegotiate and redefine concepts of education, learning and knowledge.

In this article we compare how the native population of Latin America and their culture is represented in History schoolbooks both in Sweden and in Colombia. The aim was to find out if there are differences and similarities in the reproduction of the native community in both countries. The study shows that Colombian schoolbooks give information more thoroughly, describing and explaining the facts, however, both countries consistently show the trend to represent the natives as being different and inferior, especially when describing their way of living and their knowledge. We find explanations about what they owned and what they did not own, what they knew and did not know, all focused from a Eurocentric perspective.

The present article focuses on problematizing the European Union’s claim that intercultural dialogue cons- titutes an advocated method of talking through cultural boundaries based on mutual empathy and non-do- mination. More precisely, the aim is to analyze who is being constructed as counterparts of the intercultural dialogue through the discourse produced by the EU. To answer the question, European policy documents on intercultural dialogue are analyzed drawing on a postcolonial perspective. As an interpretation, the EU appropriates historical symbols and colonial figures of thought to authorize its current objectives. Within the realm of the EU, Europeans are portrayed as having an a priori historical existence, while the ones excluded from this notion are evoked to demonstrate its difference in comparison to the European one. The results show that subjects not considered as Europeans serve as markers of the multicultural present of the space. Thus, intercultural dialogue seems to consolidate differences between European and Other – the ‘We’ and ‘Them’ in the dialogue – rather than, as in line with its purpose, bringing subjects together.

In this article we compare how ‘slavery’, among Indian population during the colonization in Latin America, is represented in History schoolbooks both in Sweden and in Colombia. The aim of the subject is an intent to point out similarities and differences in the reproduction in both countries. The study shows that Colombian schoolbooks transmit more profound information and give more space to the facts. However, in the schoolbooks of both countries, the connection between the hard work burden which the slavery ment and the change for the worst of the immunsystem in the explinations of the diminishing of the Latin-American indigenous population.

Ville Ranta’s homepage offers links to two distinct comics blogs: one in Finnish, one in French. These choices are logical. Few other Nordic cartoonists have embraced the French comics scene with the same persistence as Ranta. In the autobiographical wing of his body of work, three books from a catalog of many more, Ranta expresses a constant longing for France. In the first two memoirs—2006's Papa est un peu fatigué ("Daddy’s a Little Bit Tired") and 2014's La Jérusalem du pauvre ("The Poor Man’s Jerusalem")—which focus on his struggles to balance an artistic career with family life, this theme serves predominately as a sidetrack. Ranta satisfies his yearning for France with the familiar accoutrements of a young Francophile: red wine, Serge Gainsbourg records and Breton striped shirts. But he also visits French comics festivals and attends drawing retreats in Paris. The third book, published in French by Edition Rackham in 2021, is fully devoted to his dream of making a name on the French comics scene. Succès, mode d’emploi ("Success: A User Manual"), known in Finnish by the even bolder title “How I Conquered France,” documents a challenging journey from humiliating experiences courting arrogant publishers and their broken promises to collaborating with Lewis Trondheim and having a book accepted into the Official Selection of the Angoulême International Comics Festival in 2011.

An increasing number of educational policies, academic studies, and university courses today propagate ‘interculturality’ as a method for approaching ‘the Other’ and reconciling universal values and cultural specificities. Based on a thorough discussion of Europe’s colonial past and the hierarchies of knowledge that colonialism established, this dissertation interrogates the definitions of intercultural knowledge put forth by EU policy discourse, academic textbooks on interculturality, and students who have completed a university course on the subject. Taking a decolonial approach that makes its central concern the ways in which differences are formed and sustained through references to cultural identities, this study shows that interculturality, as defined in these texts, runs the risk of affirming a singular European outlook on the world, and of elevating this outlook into a universal law. Contrary to its selfproclaimed goal of learning from the Other, interculturality may in fact contribute to the repression of the Other by silencing those who are already muted. The dissertation suggests an alternative definition of interculturality, which is not framed in terms of cultural differences but in terms of colonial difference. This argument is substantiated by an analysis of the Latin American concept of interculturalidad, which derives from the struggles for public and political recognition among indigenous social movements in Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru. By bringing interculturalidad into the picture, with its roots in the particular and with strong reverberations of the historical experience of colonialism, this study explores the possibility of decentring the discourse of interculturality and its Eurocentric outlook. In this way, the dissertation argues that an emancipation from colonial legacies requires that we start seeing interculturality as inter-epistemic rather than simply inter-cultural.

This paper scrutinises the ways in which students who have completed a university course on interculturality distinguish between sameness and otherness in attempts to integrate, relate to and build a bridge to those deemed culturally different. It makes use of interviews to analyse the factors that shape the interpretation of otherness and difference in the students’ definitions of interculturality, as well as their statements about the relationships between us and them, and descriptions of instances of learning and teaching that have taken place between parties in different parts of the world. Theoretically, the paper is based on a postcolonial framework, highlighting the continuing influence of colonialism and Eurocentric ways of reasoning inside as well as outside the classroom in today’s society. One of the main conclusions of the paper is that in the process of transferring knowledge, there is a risk that the history of modern Europe will be sanctioned as the historical trajectory for the rest of the world to follow, with the accompanying supposition that this can only be made possible by extending a helping hand to the Other.

The thrust of this essay is to study how interculturality, as a path to decolonization, is being articulated and understood among indigenous alliances in the Andean region of Latin America. Empirically, the analysis is based upon interviews with students and teachers from local academic courses on interculturality in Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru. Although interculturality and intercultural education are common features also in Western educational rhetoric, the imposition to learn from indigenous movements have failed to attract any substantial interest in the West (cf. Deere & Leon 2003; Patrinos 2000). To illustrate this further, Robert Young (2012) argues that indigenous struggles seldom are regarded as a central issue even within postcolonial studies, a disjunction related to the use among indigenous movements of paradigms not easily translated to the Western theories and presuppositions commonly used in this scholarship (Young 2012). Given this picture, there are strong reasons for engaging seriously in a discussion about the proposition for interculturality to break out of the prison-house of colonial vocabulary – modernity, progress, salvation – as it lingers on in official memory; and there are also good reasons to problematize the universalizing claims that have characterized Western philosophy in the implicitly assumed epistemological hierarchies.

In this paper, I will focus specifically on visions of decolonization in terms of retrieved languages, reinscribed histories, production of knowledge; beginning the essay with an elaboration of the logic of domination as rooted in the modern/colonial world – here referred to as coloniality. Shortly thereafter, with reference points drawn from the work of Walter Mignolo and his notion of delinking, I introduce the theoretical backdrop that guides my analysis. In the major part of the paper, I develop an argument for interculturality to be understood as inter-epistemic based on knowledge produced beyond the discursive order of Western educational systems.

Jean-Christophe Menu is a cartoonist, an editor, a critic, but is best known as co-founder of the seminal alternative publishing house L'Association in 1990. Formed by Menu, Lewis Trondheim, David B., Mattt Konture, Patrice Killoffer, Stanislas Barthélémy & Frédéric "Mokeït" Van Linden, L'Association not only breathed new life into a moribund French comics culture, but has been credited with redefining the very medium of comics. And the combative ideologue Menu is often described as the primary driving force - to a certain extent, the captain who steered the ship.

Robert Aman skriver om ett svenskserietidningsäventyr som avslöjande rutade in ett mörkt kapitel i svensk och östgötsk historia.

Denna rapport är resultatet av ett ettårigt forskningsprojekt som Folkbildningsrådet finansierat. Projektet har genomförts av en grupp forskare vid Linköpings universitet: Lisbeth Eriksson, Martin Lundberg, Thomas Winman och Robert Aman.Forskarna undersöker hur olika religiösa och etniska gruppers skapande av “egna” folkbildande verksamheter kan förstås. I rapporten beskrivs de processer som lett fram till etablerandet av Kista folkhögskola, Agnesbergs folkhögskola, studieförbundet Ibn Rushd samt Samernas utbildningscentrum.

Hur kan en amerikansk superhjälte i blå trikåer, som har anklagats för både rasism och sexism, bli en svensk nationalhjälte?

Seriefiguren Fantomen dyker upp i svensk press redan i början på 1940-talet, men det är först på 1970-talet, ett decennium när en kraftig vänstervåg sköljer över Sverige, som Fantomen på allvar blir ”svensk”. Tidningen får då ett svenskt redaktionsråd, ”Team Fantomen”, som låter Fantomen ägna sig åt allt från kolonial befrielsekamp till jämställdhet och till att öppna ett Konsum i djungeln. Och mitt i alltihop är Fantomen förstås en närvarande pappa, fattas bara.

Fantomen-gestalten förkroppsligar kort sagt ambitionen bakom svensk utrikespolitik och det faller uppenbarligen både gamla och unga läsare i smaken. Under 70-talet är det faktiskt fler som läser om hans kamp mot sociala orättvisor än som läser Expressen. I sin bok undersöker Robert Aman – kulturskribent, serieforskare och biträdande professor i pedagogik vid Linköpings universitet – hur detta var möjligt och hur seriens dialog med det omgivande samhället mer konkret såg ut.

Hans bok låter oss möta både superhjälten i trikåer och ett Sverige i en politisk och social brytningstid.

This chapter focuses on certain limitations of the desire for intercultural dialogue. It relies on data gathered through interviews with teachers and students from a pan-Andean educational initiative on interculturality. The representation of the Ayoreos at the beginning of the chapter is an apt illustration of how certain spaces and bodies are perceived as modern in relation to others that are deemed as not. The chapter discusses that there are seemingly few exceptions to the conceptual and terminological premises to interculturalidad, in contrast to interculturality, privileged enough to pass as universal. Interculturalidad, explains a middle-aged female student interviewed in Urubamba, a small town in the Peruvian highlands, allows different indigenous cultures to view and interpret the world through the lens of their own beliefs in their own languages. The differences between the concepts become even more apparent when focusing on the practical role of language as part of an intercultural dialogue.

Som en Bruce Springsteen-låt. Serieforskare Robert Aman skriver om Frank Santoros hyllade "Pittsburgh" som i veckan släpps i svensk översättning.

This article analyses the works of Olivier Schrauwen with a particular focus on his comic Arsène Schrauwen, which plays out in the colonial context of the Congo. It argues that Schrauwen’s comics exploit the formal qualities of the colonial adventure genre that is frequent in traditional European comics as a way of subverting and satirising them. It further argues that through a constant reliance on meta-references to other works and tropes recognisable from adventure tales, in combination with the adoption of a strict colonialist world view, Schrauwen humorously ridicules the asymmetrical binaries between coloniser and colonised.

The eponymous protagonist of Tumac, a comic book published monthly in Sweden between 1978 and 1980, is a young indigenous boy who in contemporary times becomes emperor of a hidden Inca empire. After attempting to create a society where all social hierarchies have ceased to exist, Tumac leaves this hidden location in the jungle to help bring about a revolution in Latin America. This essay argues that Tumac is a prime example of what can be classified in broad terms as a wave of international solidarity in Sweden infused with New Left politics. During this period, colourblindness was elevated to a governing norm and antiracist vision, symbolised here by an indigenous hero fighting for social justice in a part of the world that increasingly took centre stage in the national political debate. In short, Tumac is a leading example of how Sweden wanted to be seen and saw others.

Hälsan sviker och nu säljer Peter Andersson sitt livsverk Seriebörsen, den lilla butiken i Tannefors som försett Linköping med serietidnings- och spelkultur i 35 år. Robert Aman träffade honom för ett samtal om tecknade serier och om ett liv som inte alls blev så kalkylerat som han hade tänkt sig, utan så mycket, mycket roligare!

Under 80-talet förändrades den svenska seriekulturen i grunden. Ingen symboliserar denna förändring mer än den excentriske Horst Schröder och hans förlag Epix. I Epix, Pox, Tung Metall och en rad andra tidningar introducerade Schröder svenska läsare till tidens mest betydelsefulla serier från hela världen. Allt tydligt märkt med ”Serier för vuxna” i ena hörnet på omslagen för att markera att det rörde sig om ett innehåll väsensskilt från Kalle Anka eller Fantomen. Under en period på tio år fick Epix uppleva både triumfer och skandaler. Nu berättar alla inblandade för första gången hela historien om det mytomspunna förlaget som var en adrenalinspruta rätt i hjärtat på serie-Sverige. 

Robert Aman – kulturskribent och serieforskare – har inte bara intervjuat Schröder och Epix-redaktionens mångtaliga medarbetare, utan även svenska och internationella seriestjärnor som publicerat sig i Epix tidningar, konkurrenter som gått i klinch med Schröder (eller tvärtom), journalister som rapporterat om förlagets förehavanden, kritiker och aktivister som helst av allt önskade att tidningar som Epix och Pox inte existerade. Och många fler. 

Serier för vuxna berättar ett stycke vild och lätt osannolik litteraturhistoria. Kokain gömt i kopieringsmaskinen, åtal för olaga våldspornografi och en kidnappning av en femåring är endast några av de ämnen som berörs. Men framför allt är det en berättelse om en grupp unga eldsjälar, övertygade om att seriekonsten är ämnad för något större. Denna bok slungar läsaren tillbaka till 80-talet och innanför väggarna hos redaktionen på Frejgatan 19 i Stockholm, där luften var tjock av stora förhoppningar, brinnande entusiasm, gnisslande konflikter – och svart rök från Horsts pipa. 

Boken är rikt illustrerad med omslagsbilder, utdrag från serier, pressklipp och fotografier, varav flera aldrig tidigare har publicerats.

Att teckna serier är ofta en ensam sysselsättning. Men är det bra eller dåligt? Den frågan går Robert Aman, biträdande professor i pedagogik på Linköpings universitet, till botten med i sin andra artikel om stadens serieskapare.

Med champagne i glasen utväxlade den tidigare och nya ägaren en skål. Seriebörsen i Tannefors var under fredagskvällen full av besökare som ville ta avsked av butikens grundare Peter Andersson.

”Provokatör”, ”snuskgubbe”, ”geni” – ja, författaren och förläggaren Horst Schröder har genom åren blivit kallad många saker. Som excentrisk och kompromisslös har han varit avskydd av vissa men omhuldad av andra. Mindre osäkerhet råder det kring Horst Schröders och hans förlag Epix betydelse för den svenska seriescenen. Under 1980-talet introducerade han svenska läsare till tidens mest betydelsefulla alternativa serier från hela världen. Robert Aman har träffat mannen som gjorde serietidningen vuxen för den svenska publiken.

Bland livetsordare i Norrköping, en superhjältinna i Linköping och fascister i Mjölby. Robert Aman berättar om östgötarna i serierutorna.

När hemmagjorda serier utgivna i fanzines hade sin guldålder satte några tecknare Linköping på seriekartan. Robert Aman berättar deras historia. 

Imagine George H. W. Bush referring to Bill Clinton as the White House’s own Fritz the Cat, or Jimmy Carter calling Ronald Reagan the fourth Freak Brother. This highly unlikely scenario came true during a debate on energy politics in the Swedish parliament in 1990. Prime Minister Ingvar Carlsson, a state bureaucrat with the charisma of a rock, called Carl Bildt, the leader of the Conservative Party, the opposition’s own Socker-Conny ["Sugar-Conny"], after the alternative cartoonist Joakim Pirinen’s brusque antihero. Given that Carlsson, close to 60 years old at the time, was not known for his deep knowledge of popular culture in general and alternative comics in particular, it seems fair to say that his choice of insult was rather surprising. At the same time, it speaks volumes of how deeply Pirinen’s character had established itself in the public consciousness only a few years after its debut. The album Socker-Conny, published in 1985 under the auspices of the magazine Galago, was not only Pirinen’s breakthrough, it was something rarer: a commercially successful alternative comic.

During the last few years, the European Union has put an increased focus on culture as a phenomenon both within and outside of the Community. In 2007 the European Commission published its first policy on culture and this document informs that globalization has increased the contact and exposure of other cultures around the world and, consequently, questions about “Europe’s identity and its ability to ensure intercultural, cohesive societies” (CEC 2007: 2) has emerged. Thus, the purpose of the agenda is to use the growing awareness about the EU’s “unique role to play in promoting its cultural richness and diversity, both within Europe and world-wide” (CEC 2007: 3). The acknowledged main instrument is the intercultural dialogue, a term that has become almost a prestige word and its presence in policy document of the European Union has been growing at an exponential rate, according to some scholars (cf. Dewey 2008). An arena where the intercultural dialogue is encouraged is education because these “institutions play an important role in fostering intercultural dialogue, through their education programmes, as actors in broader society and as sites where the intercultural dialogue is put in practice” (CEC 2008: 31).

My overarching objective of this paper is to map and analyse the discourse of the “intercultural dialogue” as it evolves in EU policies. The reason for doing this is that the importance of the intercultural dialogue when dealing with other countries and regions outside of the Union is emphasised. Within such rhetoric there is an idea that other countries and regions may benefit the European legacy.  This could from a postcolonial perspective be seen as interlinked with a colonial legacy, where something is promoted to someone who has experience of being subjected by the very same product. The reason why this is even a possibility in the first place is due to Colonialism, since without it the “language links” between Europe and the rest of the World would not have existed.

Thus, in this paper I will develop a postcolonial perspective, drawing on scholars such as Edward W. Said (1978, 1993), Anibal Quijano (2000, 2007) and Stuart Hall (1997), on those ingredients, definitions and meaning that are attached to the intercultural dialogue in EU policy documents. The purpose of the chosen theory is to investigate how ideas of Europe’s colonial past are part of the discourse of the intercultural dialogue. Through this it can be possible to conclude that the world system is asymmetrical structured as centre-periphery, where the others opposed to Europe are marginalised to its outer edges.

This paper scrutinizes how the discourse on interculturalism unfolds in the rapidly growing discipline on the subject by analyzing how it is produced in a local context – a university course. Interculturalism refers to interaction between cultures and the importance of fostering and guiding such relations, whereby educational courses on interculturalism becomes the primary instance to fulfill the ambition of governing bodies (e.g. EU, UNSECO) by shaping subjects with desired competences to enact in a culturally diverse world. Based on an empirical material comprised of semi-structured interviews with an ensemble of students who successfully have completed one of these courses on interculturalism, the paper develops a critical interrogation of those core ingredients, meanings and definitions which the students attaches to interculturalism. With interculturalism presupposing cultural diversity, I will illustrate the ambivalent nature of executing cultural boundaries and the risk of appropriating coloniality in the quest to rhetorically legitimize interventions in the name of modernization and social development.

This paper explores the ways in which boundaries of estrangement are produced in the academic literature assigned for courses on interculturality. As the existence of interculturality is dependent on the ascription of content to culture – since the notion, by definition, always involves more than one singular culture – this essay seeks to provide an answer to the question of what this literature, implicitly or otherwise, defines in terms of sameness vis-à-vis otherness, and thereby to chart the conditions for becoming intercultural. This question is especially important because the self in interculturality has to be, in principle, generalizable: it should signify a position available for occupation by anybody with proper training in this approach. Starting from the assumption that different experiences, languages and identities, already intersect and are indeed already intercultural before being subjected to study under the auspices of ‘interculturality’ as an educational topic, the essay goes on to problematize the way in which interculturality tends to construe sameness and difference along national lines and does little to cater for multiple, as opposed to national, or other unified, identities.

The present essay focuses on problematizing the European Union’s claim that interculturaldialogue constitutes an advocated method of talking through cultural boundaries—inside as wellas outside the classroom—based on mutual empathy and non-domination. More precisely, theaim is to analyze who is being constructed as counterparts of the intercultural dialogue throughthe discourse produced by the EU in policies on education, culture and intercultural dialogue.Within the Union, Europeans are portrayed as having an a priori historical existence, whilethe ones excluded from this notion are evoked to demonstrate its difference in comparison to theEuropean one.The results show that subjects not considered as Europeans serve as markers of themulticultural present of the space. Thus, intercultural dialogue seems to consolidate differencesbetween European and Other—the‘We’ and ‘Them’ in the dialogue—rather than, as in line withits purpose, bringing subjects together.

This book is about the Phantom in Sweden, or more correctly: about Sweden in the Phantom. Socialist Superhero uncovers how a peripheral American superhero – created in 1936 by author Lee Falk and artist Ray Moore – that has been accused of both racism and sexism has become a national concern in a country that several researchers have labelled the most antiracial and gender equal in the world. When a group of Swedish creators set up their official production of licensed scripts to The Phantom comic in 1972, the character is redefined through the prism of New Left ideology where the plots, besides aiming to entertain readers, also inform the reader about the righteousness and validity of the dominant ideological doctrine among the Swedish public at the time, which also impacted on the government’s foreign policy.

Through a series of close readings of the comic books, alongside fan writing, cultural criticism, political documents, and interviews with creators and editors of The Phantom comic book, The Phantom Comics and the New Left’s various thematic chapters discuss how topics such as foreign aid and poverty elimination, guerrilla warfare and postcolonialism, socialism and equality are expressed on the pages of the comic book, along with the fight against apartheid, the construction of a cooperative society in the jungle and the Phantom’s self-affirmed role as spokesperson for then Prime Minister Olof Palme. What will be seen is how the common denominator is ideology: the Phantom reflects values, and embodies a dominant political point of view, of how Sweden sees itself and its role in the world.

This essay argues that although The Phantom is an American comic about a superhero of British heritage set in a fictional African country filled with colonial nostalgia, it is a leading example of antiracist politics and anti-apartheid protest literature. Since 1972 the Swedish-based scriptwriters of “Team Fantomen” have regularly supplied officially licensed adventures to the Phantom comics around the world. This essay suggests that this shift in the scripts’ geographical origin also altered the politics of the comic: the Swedish creators added social commentary and political thought to the storylines, as the Phantom was redefined in line with New Left ideology. Southern Africa, with societies benighted by institutionalized racism, is inscribed into the plots, which function to inform the reader about the righteousness and validity of the dominant Swedish foreign-policy doctrine of the time. This essay contends that The Phantom played an important part in shaping Swedish public discourse on apartheid, while also helping to establish Sweden as a leading international antiracist voice.

Thierry Van Hasselt is a Belgian cartoonist, painter, and publisher. He is renowned not only as an artist but also as a co-founder of Fréon, which later merged with the Parisian publishing house Amok in 2002 to become Frémok, often abbreviated as FRMK. Since the early 1990s, Frémok has been one of the most influential actors in the realm of alternative comics. Within this sphere, Frémok stands out for its innovative approach to graphic literature, breaking away from conventional norms and blurring the boundaries between comics and other art forms. This ethos has shaped a distinctive collection of avant-garde publications where comics intersect with the aesthetics typically associated with fine arts.

Born in 1969, Van Hasselt studied comics at the École supérieure des Arts (Saint-Luc) in Brussels. It was during his time at Saint-Luc that he connected with a group of fellow art students, forming the collective known as Frigoproduction. In 1991, they released the inaugural issue of the anthology Frigorevue as part of a comics-themed exhibition. By 1994, Frigoproduction had evolved into Fréon, launching a new anthology titled Frigobox to widespread acclaim. Published quarterly, Frigobox predominantly featured serialized comics by its core members, including the twins Denis and Olivier Deprez, Vincent Fortemps, Dominique Goblet, and Jean-Christophe Long. Additionally, it showcased works by invited guests such as Alberto Breccia, Éric Lambé, and Alex Barbier, alongside photographs and insightful theoretical articles on the history and contemporary landscape of comics as an art form.