Under det senaste decenniet har samtidshistorien blivit radioaktiv. Det går idag att påstå vad som helst om historiska händelser på sociala medier utan att bli motsagd. Som att Förintelsen i själva verket var Sveriges ansvar. Eller att Ukraina överföll Ryssland 2022. Den sortens propaganda får själva verkligheten att svaja. Och historieförfalskningen har blivit ett politiskt vapen. Som flera historiker och specialister på psykologisk krigföring återkommer till är målet med desinformationen inte att i första hand propagera för en viss ideologi eller politisk linje utan att underminera tilltron till fakta över huvud taget. Om inget är sant kan vad som helst vara det. Sverigedemokraternas ihärdiga och tyvärr mycket framgångsrika försök att smutskasta socialdemokraterna i sociala medier och Trumps återkomst till Vita Huset är väl de mest aktuella och mest talande exemplen på det. Vad är då sant? Finns det ens något som heter ”objektiv sanning”? Jodå, det finns gott om viktig historisk forskning, och det går att skilja agnarna från vetet. Om historikerna själva får komma till tals. Men hur ska sådana röster skära genom bruset? Hur ska den ”vanliga läsaren” kunna slå fast vad som faktiskt har hänt? I den här volymen möter vi några av Sveriges mest kända historiker som resonerar om just detta. Vad gör historieförfalskningen med oss? Och vilket är historikernas eget ansvar?

Traditions of religious and philosophical thought teach that the universal cannot be represented. Since universality is universal, any effort to bring it into form and language, to make it concrete, put a face on it or name it, will inevitably betray its very universality. Literature and aesthetic practices more generally have ways to evade the impossibility of representing universality by instead capturing or conjuring forth its emergence, so as to make it appear to the reader, viewer or audience as a transient event or effect. This chapter explores the ability of literary and aesthetic works to perform and present universality in the context of collective political protest. It first delineates a trajectory of historical, political and aesthetic statements and performative actions in which universal values are made concrete through collective embodiment. Subsequently, the chapter turns to the poet and artist Amira Hanafi’s Dictionary of the Revolution. A digital hypertext, Hanafi’s work exemplifies contemporary electronic literature and non-linear writing, and is characterized by compelling ambiguities: authorship is both individual and collective, contents are at once sociological and conceptual, and the work itself is circular rather than linear, so as to traverse or reiterate the Egyptian Revolution associated with Tahrir Square, from evermore narrative and experiential perspectives. As I will argue, universality here emerges through multiplicity, a multiplicity that transgresses artificial boundaries and constraints that seek to pin it down in code, language and form, and one that ultimately offers an idea of the mysterious sovereignty of the people and perhaps of universality as such.

Panelsamtal från TfL-dagarna ”Kanon och nation”, 28 november 2024. Samtalsledare: Frida Beckman, panelister: Carin Franzén, Stefan Helgesson och Stefan Jonsson

This article analyzes the 2022 Swedish governmental initiative to establish an official state-sponsored canon of Swedish culture. The initiative is discussed in relation to organic canon formations as occurs in the writing of literary history. It is analyzed in relation to three conceptual clusters: 1) aeshetic infrastructures; 2) cultural politics of nationalism; 3) Roland Barthes's concept of contemporary myth and ideologies. By relating the political initiative to these contexts and concepts, the article is able to demonstrate the political and ideological program that presents itself in the guise of a national canon, and it exposes the contradiction between such a project and serious scholarship in the humanities and literary studies.   

Based in part on interviews and fieldwork, this article analyzes how artworks produced during the Ukrainian Revolution (2013–2014) present the political emergence of the Ukrainian people as a collective fused by bonds of solidarity. At first characterized by a strong universal thrust, presenting a boundless democratic anticipation, this solidarity was subsequently contained by religious-political traditions and specific forms of self-sacrificing and masculinist nationalism, often projected as a revolutionary utopia in its own right, which has been operationalized in the defense against Russia’s invasion. To substantiate the argument, the text analyzes numerous artworks from the Ukrainian Revolution. These interpretations demonstrate how aesthetic acts contribute to the production of bonds of solidarity that transcend existing modes of political and cultural representation of Ukraine.

Can collective democratic protest and rightwing authoritarianism and populism be distinguished as interdependent movements of political emergence, i.e. movements emerging outside democratic institutions and portending profound reorganizations of political order, but not yet fully recognizable as political entities as they own weak political representation? This essay argues that contemporary social sciences are often unable to comprehend or register political emergence, whereas, by contrast, contemporary art, art activism, literature and film – from the postcolonial novel and arts biennales to banlieue rap music and street actions for refugees – have in recent years produced profound insights into the nature of collective mobilizations and protests of all kinds. We thus observe that there exist parallel paths for intellectual inquiry into the same urgent issues of collective protest and populism. But we also observe a lack of methodological rapport and dialogue. Against this background, I argue that we stand to gain from an effort to study collective democratic protest and populist authoritarianism as converging issues with far-reaching implications for democratic society, and that we undertake such research by conjoining social scientific research and aesthetic analysis. To substantiate this claim, the essay turns to two cases of political emergence from the 1930s, in which we find mirrored our current condition, as well as the contrast between populist aesthetics and democratic aesthetics.