Intersecting Worlds

"Iceland, an independent nation since 1944, has a complex colonial history. As a former dependency of Denmark that endured a US military presence from 1941-2006, Iceland's global positioning invites comparisons to formerly colonized spaces. At the same time, Iceland's history and geopolitical location differ from other colonized nations, which "were brutally subjugated with violence, dehumanizing practices and massacres constituting a part of people's everyday lives." Additionally, Icelanders employed racist stereotypes of colonized people to differentiate themselves from other colonies and claim Whiteness, as explored by Icelandic anthropologist, Kristâin Loftsdâottir. Intersecting Worlds: Colonial Liminality in US Southern and Icelandic Literatures investigates Iceland's colonial liminality and draws connections to the colonial ambiguity of the US South, depicted as colonized by the federal government during Reconstruction and the site of the colonization of the Black population through the slavery and its later iterations. The binaries of postcolonial theory do not accurately represent the intricacy of the Icelandic and US southern situations, flattening the colonial dynamics within and between societies. This book demonstrates that we must read these norths and souths in comparison or risk leaving localized stereotypes, fantasies, and conceptualizations of Whiteness uninterrogated. Exploring the work of US southern writers, like William Faulkner, Gayl Jones, Jean Toomer, and Carson McCullers, alongside twentieth-century Icelandic novelists, including Halldâor Laxness, Svava Jakobsdâottir, Guºbergur Bergsson, and Frâiºa âAslaug Sigurºardâottir on both thematic and aesthetic levels reveals much about each region's history and the complexity of colonial dynamics. For instance, analyzing the repetition of racialized words and phrases in Halldâor Laxness's Atâomstèoºin (1948) or The Atom Station (1961), alongside William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! (1936), demonstrates the ways in which language is used to delimit Whiteness and dehumanize those who are different: small aesthetic features when repeated become emblematic of larger sociopolitical conditions. While these connections may be obscured by the stereotypes and fantasies associated with each locality, they have a significant impact on the fields of US and world literatures, advancing the recent shifts towards exploring coloniality in Nordic cultures. This comparative project centers the layers of Whiteness in both national and transnational contexts, challenges ideas of Nordic and US southern exceptionalism, and exposes the complex impacts of colonialism in the Global North and the Global South, as depicted in twentieth-century literature"--