I will not attempt to address all the debates implicated in raising the issue of IVF and DNA research in the Nordic region. While realising that the issue of origin latches indeterminately and continuously on to other issues – of which some came up in the previous case study and some will return in the following case studies. In this case study I nonetheless restrict myself to following one strand of two intersecting
discourses. They are the strands of biotechnological reproduction and its entanglements with the myth of (the somewhat civilised) Viking origin. Taking as a starting point and as an example an article from The New York Times (2004), which reports on the world’s largest sperm bank, I apply a genealogical approach to the article and the derivative journalistic and public narratives of origin and reproduction.
This approach additionally draws into question the journalistic cultural memories and narratives of these appropriations in present Danish social imaginary as I outlined the concept in chapter 2. I will, thus, analyse the article according to its object of reporting: the sperm bank, Cryos International, and in terms of the iconic symbolism that the article draws on in order to outline the journalistic cultural memories on which the idea of Scandinavian Viking identity is based. I will expand on these issues using in-depth analysis of Cryos International’s American website and a BBC television documentary production, The Blood of the Vikings, to elaborate further on the myth of origin following the narratives about these Nordic pirates. This approach is situated in a discursive tradition which is structured around power and power relations making up public and private discourses. Though my focus is on journalistic practices, in this case study I am using the term ‘mediated’ production in the sense which resembles what Chouliaraki (2006) lays out and in which ‘mediation’ calls on an ethical response by deferral. ‘[M]ediation is about the (re)production of the social relationships of viewing and so it begs for an analysis of power that focuses specifically on the articulation of the medium with its visual and linguistic texts’
(Chouliaraki 2006:60). However, I do not follow Chouliaraki’s structured outline of language and image modalities, time-space continuum and agency. Rather I present a number of debates that challenge the claimed universality and objectivity of ‘white’
‘western’ culture and politics as well as to relate these debates to the societal and productive context of contemporary European and ‘western’ globalised and mediated culture and politics. As defined in chapters 1 and 2 in these case studies I work with a re-definition of journalism as theory and practice of production of cultural memory and social imaginaries of gendered, ethnic, religious, national and racial differences.
The case studies portray certain aspects of this journalistically mediated self-other relation and through them I argue for a creatively productive turn in journalism based in new journalistic subjectivities.
2.1.1 Structure of analysis
In the first part of the analysis I am mainly drawing on discourse analysis and genealogical analysis linking the expression of the newspaper article and Cryos International’s website to politico-historical events and the social imaginary of Denmark. The second part of the analysis deals with visibility and phenomenological perceptions (in both meanings of the word) and I therefore additionally draw on semiotic analysis of iconographic usage of the Viking. This is, then, a reading of a contemporary journalistic production and practices on the issue of sperm banking and genetic relations with which I want to suggest that the myth of origin of man and the ideas of eugenics and controlled (racialised) reproduction is not merely a historical (arte)fact, but is implicitly represented today in our ways of construing and constructing ourselves in a common social imaginary. This construction is affected and emphasised by journalistic cultural memories as I outlined the concept in chapter 2. The New York Times, the BBC documentary and the website of Cryos International are to be taken as examples of general impressions about the Danish social imaginary concerning origin. I attempt to shed light on this issue, so that we may change the myth of the homogeneous North and thus create space for diversity.
I do not intend to argue that genetic research and scientifically-assisted reproduction is always already racist or implicated in a wish to reproduce the same. I do want to argue that awareness of an implicit but often-ignored genealogy of ‘whiteness’ is a necessary step towards breaking down the myth of homogeneity in the Nordic social imaginaries. I will therefore draw the readers’ attention to the ‘whiteness’ of the Nordic norm and to level a critique of unquestioned assumptions, which circulate in more or less explicit degrees in the Nordic and wider western societies. Nordic journalism is a major exponent of this myth. In order to enable a journalism of relation – along the lines I sketched in the previous chapters – a new focus needs to be directed at ethical accountability. First and foremost, for journalists situated at the centre of European culture, such as Danish journalists, a critique of a number of culturally embedded assumptions needs to be developed. These are assumptions, for instance, about what counts as a subject of knowledge within journalistic practice, that are usually left implicit. Applying the insights of gender, ‘race’ and postcolonial studies I recommend that whiteness, implied Christian values, objectivity and
universality are especially targeted for awareness and criticism. Through this method the practice of Nordic journalism could evolve away from its colonial implicitness and assumptions into a renewed cosmopolitan approach. My guiding question in the following genealogical analysis is, then, in which ways do local and European historical narratives, representations of genetic research, and visual representations of Vikings in journalistic and other mediated productions help (re)produce a ‘white’ and homogeneous social imaginary in Denmark? I will argue that The New York Times article, the Cryos International website and the documentary, The Blood of the Vikings, analysed here provide a way to understand where this question may lead.
Moreover the case study allows me to situate the iconographic and journalistic production in a ‘global’ space of interaction and affectivity. The analyses call attention to a long and morally repulsive history of colonial and intra-European usages of scientific methods and categories that worked in favour of classifying people racially and controlling reproduction of undesirable others through eugenics, forced sterilisations and medical and scientific manipulations of human beings. The intersections of the genetic discourse and the discourse of origin are not merely a picture in a passport. They are concretely embedded social practices with profound implications for human interaction. It is also strikingly represented and conflated within a culturally based ‘western’ social imaginary, which are analysed in this and in the following two case studies using journalistic and other mediated productions.