Security Dialogue
44(3) 241­–258
© The Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/0967010613485871
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485871 44310.1177/0967010613485871Security DialogueAgius: The Danish cartoon crisis
2013
Corresponding author:
Christine Agius
Email: cagius@swin.edu.au
Performing identity: The Danish
cartoon crisis and discourses of
identity and security
Christine Agius
Faculty of Life and Social Sciences, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia
Abstract
The Danish cartoon crisis, which attracted international media attention in 2006, has largely been debated
as an issue of freedom of speech, feeding into broader debates about the ‘clash of civilizations’.This article
aims to explore the dominant discourses that performed a seemingly stable and consistent Danish identity
at the domestic and external levels.Domestically,the discourse of a progressive Danish identity under threat
from unmodern others was performed via discourses of a ‘culture struggle’ and a restrictive immigration
policy designed to keep intact a narrow definition of Danishness. Externally, Danish identity and security
was performed and defended via participation in the ‘war on terror’, democracy promotion and overseas
development assistance, which became tools that were not simply associated with security in the liberal
sense but also contained a spatial dimension designed to keep consistent the image of the complete nationstate.
By adopting a discursive approach, the article aims to explore the performance of Danish identity that
animated the cartoon crisis in order to highlight the complexities and contestations that animate ideas of self.
Keywords
identity, security, Denmark, cartoon crisis, discourse, performance, intervention, foreign policy
Introduction
In September 2005, the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten published 12 cartoons under the headline
‘The Faces of Mohammed’.1
The accompanying editorial by the newspaper’s cultural editor,
Flemming Rose, outlined the growing problem for democracy of self-censorship, accusing ‘some
Muslims’of rejecting ‘the modern, secular society’, demanding ‘a particular position’and insisting
that ‘special considerations’2
be made with regard to their faith. Rose argued that such a position
was ‘incompatible with a secular democracy and freedom of speech’, where ‘insult, mockery and
ridicule’ must be accepted (cited in Rytkønen, 2007: 90). While not all the published images
reflected a visual clash of civilizations, the images that received the most attention were those that
Article
242		 Security Dialogue 44(3)
invoked themes of violence, radicalism, censorship and gender subjugation, with the most controversial
image, drawn by Kurt Westergaard, being that of the Prophet with a lit bomb in his turban.
In a letter to the then Danish prime minister of the centre–right coalition government, Anders
Fogh Rasmussen, the ambassadors of a number of Muslim countries raised concerns about an
‘ongoing smear campaign’against Islam.3
Rasmussen refused to meet with the ambassadors, citing
freedom of the press.4
An attempt by Muslim organizations to take the matter to court as blasphemy
failed in October, and the event soon became ‘internationalized’ as a delegation of imams took the
issue abroad, European and Middle Eastern newspapers reprinted the images, and initially peaceful
protests turned violent. Danish embassies in Syria and Iran were attacked, along with the country’s
consulates in Beirut and Jakarta, and over 100 died in riots and related protests in countries such as
Nigeria, Libya and Afghanistan. Death threats were issued against the cartoonists, and Danish
goods were boycotted in many Muslim countries. The controversy was revived in February 2008
when the cartoons were republished in response to a plot to kill Kurt Westergaard,5
and the Danish
embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, was attacked by a car bomb in June that same year. With a second
attempt on Westergaard’s life in January 2010, and arrests in Norway, Germany, Sweden and
Denmark in connection with plots related to the cartoons, the crisis appears to be ongoing.
Throughout the crisis, freedom of expression has been upheld as a specifically Danish value,
one that enjoyed not only constitutional protection6
but was the ‘driving force of enlightenment,
education and development ... that has generated progress in Denmark’ and other ‘free societies’
(Rasmussen, 2007). Accordingly, the crisis was largely framed as a broader civilizational clash,
with scholarly analysis focused mainly on multiculturalism and Islam,7
and on media discourse and
journalistic ethics.8
Critical accounts of Danish immigration and integration policy9
and nonWestern
perceptions of the crisis10
constitute a smaller portion of the debate. With the exception of
Hansen’s (2008, 2011a,b) innovative work on visual securitization, however, the cartoon crisis has
largely been bypassed by international relations theory and security studies. This article aims to
explore the impact of the crisis in terms of identity and security, with a view to highlighting themes
of performance and rupture. Rather than framing the crisis as a purely civilizational clash, it is
interested in the discourses of Danish identity at work, along with their limits and possibilities.
Informed by a series of semi-structured elite interviews conducted in Denmark in 2008 with Danish
parliamentarians and officials,11
it starts out from Connolly’s (1991: 64) premise that ‘identity
requires difference in order to be’, and explores the dominant articulation of a seemingly fixed and
stable Danish identity that developed over time and animated, or performed, the crisis at the boundaries
of domestic and external policy. At the domestic level, Danish identity was asserted through
the discourse of a ‘culture struggle’(kulturkamp) and an immigration policy that reiterated identity
in hierarchical and exclusionary terms. Externally, Danish identity and security was performed and
defended via participation in the ‘war on terror’, democracy promotion and overseas development
assistance, which became tools that were not simply associated with security in the liberal sense
but also contained a spatial dimension designed to keep consistent the image of the complete
nation-state. Yet, as Connolly suggests, discourses of identity that require difference are inherently
insecure, and the final section of the article explores contestations of identity that were obscured
by the discourses that underscored the cartoon crisis.
Performing Danish identity
The ‘turn to identity’ in contemporary international relations and security theorizing – most notably
through constructivism – has reshaped how the discipline conceptualizes international
Agius:The Danish cartoon crisis	 243
politics. Identity matters, and can explain cooperation (or lack thereof) between states, foreign
policy choices, and the rise of security problems or threats beyond purely rationalist paradigms
(Katzenstein, 1996; Wendt, 1992, 1999; Hopf, 1998; Ruggie, 1997). Yet, the treatment of identity
often presumes it to be an essential attribute of states, nations or individuals (Kuus, 2007: 91).
This approach tends to assume that identity is static and complete. Reading identity in such a
manner pursues the binary logic that competing identities are a disruption and challenge to the
consistency of the self, making identity an inherently insecure concept, as it ‘requires difference
in order to be, and it converts difference into otherness in order to secure its own self-certainty’
(Connolly, 1991: 64).
Critical scholars have mostly addressed this problem by reading identity in discursive terms,
which opens up space for multiple and alternate identities and possibilities of being rather than
presuming a singular and consistent identity (Fierke, 2001; Bialasiewicz et al., 2007; Zehfuss,
2002; Onuf, 1989; Milliken, 1999; Doty, 1998; Campbell, 1998). Discourses are systems of representation,
but they are more than the intersection of words and things, or a confrontation between
reality and language: discourses are ‘practices that systematically form the objects of which they
speak’ (Foucault, [1972] 1992: 48–49), producing and reproducing social relations and meanings
that include representations and practices. Discourses are powerful because they set the limits of
reality; it is the discursive mode through which ontological effects – such as the idea of the preexisting
state or national identity – are established (Bialasiewicz et al., 2007: 406–408). The cartoons
can be said to represent a visual discourse (Hansen, 2011a), performing a particular idea of
‘Danish’ and ‘Muslim’ identity and security that is presumed to be settled and complete, yet the
cartoons themselves contain ambiguity (Hansen, 2011a; Alhassan, 2008; Becker, 2008). Rather
than read them as an independent event, which lends a temporality to them that often reverts to
framing the crisis as a manifestation of civilizational clash, this article aims to explore the discourses
of identity that underpin them, reading the crisis against the practices and contexts that
produce, sustain and give meaning to specific discourses of identity. Viewed in this way, the cartoons
are merely an effect of identity, performing identity or giving expression to a particular discourse
of Danishness. Here, the concept of performativity points to the constructed and contested
nature of identity. Performativity refers to the citational practices by which discourse produces the
effects it names (Butler, 2011: xii, 140; Kuus, 2007: 92; Weber, 1998). Identity (be it gender identity
or national identity) is ‘performatively constituted by the very expressions that are said to be
its results’ (Butler, 1999: 33). Identity is the effect of performance, not the other way round (Bell,
1999: 1). This unsettles the notion of a naturally existing subject.12
But, as Kuus (2007: 93) makes clear, this is not to deny identity claims, nor to forget that discourses
of identity have an internal consistency and real effects. Indeed, the performance of ‘Danish
identity’ produces specific policy actions and outcomes – which, in turn, reiterate ‘Denmark’ –
which this article explores across the domestic and external realms. But, what are the discourses
that underpin ‘Denmark’ and ‘Danish identity’? If identity is a citational performance, what is
being cited? And how? Adding to the existing literature on identity performance, the case of
Denmark provides a complex reading of the struggle between dominant and contested identities. In
particular, this article focuses on how narrow discourses of identity became pervasive, obscuring
alternative modes of inclusion and being, but also conditioning them through the very categories
that garnered consensus, such as gender equality, welfarism, democracy and progressiveness. It
then examines how these discourses operated through policy. Here, the article expands empirically
upon Campbell’s (1998: 73) distinctions between practices that can affirm more than refute, or
contain rather than constitute. The defence of identity in foreign and domestic policy employed the
244		 Security Dialogue 44(3)
same norms and values that provided a very different policy profile at other times. Yet, as much as
the cartoon crisis appeared to perform one consistent account of Danish identity, it also brought to
the fore the tensions and limitations of that account. The repetitional and citational practices that
constitute identity draw on the same discourses and artefacts that reproduce the self. Accordingly,
the discourses that perform identity can become sedimented (Butler, 2011) and inflexible, obscuring
the potential for dynamic or alternative forms of identity that can be included in the repertoire
of citational practices that constitute the self.
What defines ‘Danishness’?
Throughout the cartoon crisis, the dominant discourse of Danish identity relied on a series of discursive
hooks, or what Laclau and Mouffe (1985: 112) would call nodal points (privileged discursive
points that partially fix meaning), that constituted ideas of the self. Denmark’s self-identity is
that of a modern and progressive state, characterized by a strong commitment to welfare, gender
equality and open democracy. The approach to the domestic realm also translated to its international
profile as a ‘good state’– an expression that, in Lawler’s (2005: 441–442) definition, invokes
the idea of a moral and purposeful approach to the responsibilities of statecraft in the international
state system. Denmark’s postwar foreign policy was typified by its rejection of power politics and
pursuit of peaceful initiatives in the form of overseas development assistance, promotion of gender
equality, peacekeeping, mediation and commitment to international law.
Yet, this discourse of Danish identity becomes far more complex on closer reading and is the
result of struggles over the ‘true’nature of what it means to be Danish. In the 18th century, Denmark
was a ‘conglomerate’ or ‘composite’ state that included the duchies of Schleswig and Holstein,
Iceland, Norway, the Faeroe Islands and Greenland, and comprised several different nationalities.
Fears of German dominance fuelled competing discourses about Danish identity; ideas of patriotism
saw national romanticism (which viewed society as organic and innate, based on genealogy)
compete with cosmopolitan ideas that patriotism can be ‘learned’through education and enlightenment;
enemies were not other nationalities but ‘false’ patriots or those who were ‘anti-patriotic’
(Engelhardt, 2007: 209–214; Hansen, 2002; Østergård, 2004, 2006). In the carving out of these
contested self-definitions, the ideal of the folk (‘people’) became central and developed an intricate
link to the nation. Under the influence of N. F. S. Grundtvig (1783–1872), priest, philosopher,
educator, politician and poet, folk schools promoted organic notions of belonging, combining individual
enlightenment and a holistic view of identity linked to blood, birth and language,13
which
became crucial elements of Danish identity. As a larger, multinational entity, Denmark faced not
only ethnic and cultural tensions between Danes and Germans but also social struggles between the
‘upper class’ and the folk – the ‘real’ Danes – with the latter positioned in anti-elitist terms against
the state (Engelhardt, 2007: 212). Authenticity became a powerful discourse in the construction of
Danish identity, a theme that re-emerges in recent debates about ‘new Danes’.
The reduction of the Danish conglomerate state in 1864 and the loss of Schleswig-Holstein and
southern Jutland represented a seismic shift in the physical and psychological idea of ‘Denmark’
itself. One of the first effects was cultural, with the loss of a heterogeneous mix of peoples, reducing
the Danish population in numbers but also in ethnicity, making ‘Denmark’ more homogenous.
As Denmark moved from a multinational, civic state to an ethnic state, Danish identity became an
ethno-linguistic-religious-cultural concept (Kærgård, 2010: 473). A folkish democracy or ‘peasant
enlightenment’ (folkeoplysning) emerged, combining a libertarian form of social solidarity mixed
with modernity (Østergård, 2006, 2004; Witoszek, 1997: 75–87). As the Social Democrats became
Agius:The Danish cartoon crisis	 245
a potent political movement at the turn of the 20th century, they recognized the importance of
appealing to the folk, incorporating the working class into this ideal and promoting a more inclusive
society under the banner of ‘Denmark for the people’ (Korsgaard, 2006: 150–151; Østergård,
2004: 37). Ethnic and cultural homogeneity allowed core values such as solidarity, consensus,
egalitarianism, rationalism, individual freedom and a progressive ideal of a collective historical
destiny (den danske vej) to be firmly cemented. Danish nationalism is closely tied to the state and
is ‘implicit and elusive, a low-key ideology of everyday discourse rather than a matter of organized
politics’(Jenkins, 2008: 163–166). The welfare state came to represent internal unity and solidified
a popular nationalism akin to ‘democratization from below’ (Hansen, 2002: 58–60; Korsgaard,
2006: 144–146). Folkstyre (‘rule by the people’) forms an important part of Danish political discourse
and policy, and this folkish individualism/independence can be seen in the terms of
Denmark’s membership of NATO and the EU, which are conditioned by a number of restrictive
clauses (Lawler, 2007: 107–109; Hansen, 2002). The Grundtvigian notion of Denmark as a small
power under threat from external influence has remained a powerful idea (Wren, 2001: 149).
Immigration policy:Threats to societal security and institutions
The idea of Lille Danmark (Little Denmark) as the small state imbued with humanitarian and progressive
values, where the folk is central is, nonetheless, not without its tensions. Immigration –
specifically non-Western14
– has presented a challenge to cultural homogeneity, which Ulla Holm
(2006) claims is the most important definitional element in the construction of Danish identity.
Non-Western immigration in Denmark increased from 1.1% in 1982 to 3.7% in 1996 (a growth of
16.2%) (Ministry of Refugee, Immigration and Integration Affairs, 2007: 5, 15). Immigrants and
their descendants constitute 9.8% of the Danish population, of which some 6.6% are from nonWestern
countries (Statistics Denmark, 2011: 5). According to one interviewee,
What we didn’t realize at the time was that even a relatively small level of immigration of people of very,
very different backgrounds, different norms, different religions would create [such] heavy integration
problems as we have experienced. We didn’t foresee that. We were a very homogenous nation.15
As Doty (1998: 78–79) reminds us, homogeneity is unproblematic when no threat appears to it. For
a nation whose identity has been largely defined by language and ancestry – the ‘Danish tribe’ is a
common reference (Andersen, 2006) – immigration can challenge such ‘complete’ discourses of
identity. In the 1960s and 1970s, government reports indicated that ‘visitors’ or guest workers
(gæsterarbejdere) were not expected to settle or cope with life in Denmark (Wren, 2001: 148).
‘The strangers’(de fremmede) were seen as outsiders whose spatial and cultural practices disrupted
ideas of the Danish homeland and inspired fears of attempts to create a ‘new homeland’ in the
space owned by Danes (Diken, 1998: 135, 38).
The rise in immigration in the 1980s due to family reunifications and refugees saw a tightening
of the Aliens Act in 1986, making citizenship or asylum harder to obtain, and deportations easier.
Increased numbers of refugees from Somalia and Kosovo arrived in the 1990s. The automatic right
to family reunification was removed in 1992, and unemployment politicized the issue of immigration
in the 1990s, providing fertile ground for the rise of the anti-immigration Danish People’s
Party (Dansk Folkeparti, DF) in 1995. The minority Liberal–Conservative coalition government of
Anders Fogh Rasmussen gained power in 2001; and, in exchange for parliamentary support, the
246		 Security Dialogue 44(3)
DF played a central role in immigration policy under the Rasmussen administration. In terms of
policy measures, a legislative package passed in 2002 saw significant restrictions placed on immigration,
most notably in the form of increased requirements for permanent residency from three to
seven years, and the ‘24 years’ rule, which meant non-resident spouses could not live with their
partners in Denmark until both were 24 years old, justified as an effort to control arranged marriages
(supported by the Social Democrats) and ensure ‘proper integration’.16
Legislative amendments
included deportations for relatively minor crimes such as vandalism and tax evasion
(Ministry of Refugee, Immigration and Integration Affairs, 2005: 4). These and other measures
attracted criticism domestically from the Socialist People’s Party and the Danish Institute for
Human Rights, and externally from the European Parliament, the European Commission and the
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. In 2010, the government of Lars Løkke
Rasmussen (who succeeded Anders Fogh Rasmussen when the latter became Secretary-General
of NATO in 2009) introduced a points-based system for family reunification, whereby non-EU
spouses of Danish residents and citizens would be able to stay in Denmark if they had enough
‘points’for language, higher education, work and other categories. This proved so restrictive that
it resulted in a 70% drop in approvals for residence permits (Copenhagen Post, 2011b).
Naturalization is determined and approved by the Danish parliament, requiring language and
citizenship tests,17
the renunciation of one’s former nationality, and the signing of a declaration
of loyalty to Denmark. Funding for many ethnic-minority organizations was withdrawn, while
initiatives such as the ‘cultural canon’ were promoted to bolster Danishness (Sheikh and Crone,
2012: 188).
Societal integration is made difficult because immigrants face significant obstacles to citizenship,
employment and access to key institutions such as the welfare state. Immigrants are expected
to be self-sufficient and not rely on the state (Lawler, 2007: 113; Rasmussen, 2006). Non-Western
immigrants in particular have higher unemployment and more reliance on welfare – a point consistently
highlighted in media and research reports (Andersen, 2006; Ministry of the Interior, 2001:
3–4; Schmidt, 2009: 43) and exploited by the DF, which now claims to defend the welfare state
rather than critique it. As a central institution in Danish society, the welfare state constitutes and
performs societal security and solidarity – something ‘we’ actively create through work and taxation
(Koefoed and Simonsen, 2007: 319). Hedetoft’s (2006) observation that the Danish welfare
state is based on ‘culturally similar citizenry’suggests limits to its supposed universality.According
to one interviewee, the Danish model works against the integration of low-skilled workers from
outside Europe, who are seen by the Danish working class to be the ‘new proletariat’.18
Accordingly,
there is a ‘lack of solidarity with newcomers’ because the welfare state is built on ‘a high level of
felt solidarity, the sense of solidarity. It is not a formula, it is a feeling’.19
Kulturkamp and authentic identity
These institutional barriers to integration rely on a particular discourse about identity and belonging
that structures a hierarchical understanding of self and other. Since the 1990s, the DF has used
its political leverage to ‘monopolize’ and ‘own’20
the debate on immigration by claiming to speak
on behalf of ‘the people’ (Folket), which is a rhetorical device that ‘inhabits a superior position’ in
domestic discourse (Hansen, 2002: 58; Koefoed and Simonsen, 2007: 321). The DF appealed to
the anti-elitist sentiment of ‘ordinary Danes’, in contrast to ‘internationally oriented’ intellectuals
who were more likely to be pro-globalization/pro-EU and happy to dilute Danish specificity.
Furthermore, this discourse was not confined to the DF and spread across most of the political
Agius:The Danish cartoon crisis	 247
spectrum as political parties tried to demonstrate affinity with the interests of ‘real Danes’.
Rasmussen earlier set the tone in his 2002 New Year Address, declaring that policy would not be
decided by ‘so-called experts’and ‘arbiters of taste’, and that the population ‘knew best’(Jørgensen,
2011: 94). The power to speak on behalf of the people also forced other political parties to reposition
themselves ideologically and rhetorically, making it impossible to speak about immigration in
terms other than as a problem or threat, either to gain votes, to avoid appearing ‘soft’ on immigration
or simply to participate in debate.21
Subsequently, the public and elites have ‘grown deaf’ to
the rhetoric and language used by prominent politicians and intellectuals who openly equate Islam
with the ‘dark ages’, a ‘cancer’ or an infection of the body politic, or suggest it is inferior or
unequal to Danish culture.22
Before the cartoon crisis hit its apex, a ‘cultural struggle’ had been
declared by Conservative Culture Minister Brian Mikkelsen (2001–2008), against a ‘medieval
Muslim culture’ that could not co-exist with modern democratic Danish values, where it was
claimed that ‘cultural shielding is the best vaccination’.23
Rasmussen (2003a) had already signalled
a firm rejection of cultural relativism and political correctness, claiming that Denmark had been
‘too gullible’ in the past and too ‘reluctant to state that one thing is better than another’. Such discourse
promoted an ‘absolute’ and hierarchical understanding of culture and core values, which
came to define the debate on immigration and identity,24
limiting the possibility for multiculturalism
and favouring assimilation to Danish values and the subordination of immigrants’ value and
culture systems.25
Against this discourse, Muslims are largely seen to be different subjects within the Danish state:
easily susceptible to extremism and radicalization and unable to separate their private (religious)
and public (rational) lives.26
As a visual discourse, the crisis replicated this divide via the different
types of visual representations at play. The cartoons were seen to represent opinion, a form of critique
against authority, free speech and satire, contrasted against factual photographic depictions
and video footage of violent protest (Hansen, 2011a: 60; Becker, 2008: 123). The perceived (over)
reaction to the ‘drawings’27
and depictions of violent protest marked clear boundaries between the
irrational, threatening and emotive Muslim subject (Blom, 2008) and the peaceful, rational and
modern Danish self. Yet, this binary of the private/public and rational/irrational is not so secure: the
Lutheran Church (Folkekirken) has a privileged status in Danish society and is state funded
(Klausen, 2007: 92, 146), and images of the Danish flag (which itself performs identity through its
repeated appearance in everyday life) being burned featured as one of the most emotive aspects of
the cartoon crisis for the Danes.28
The concept of the ‘Danish Muslim’or ‘new Danes’– a term used to refer to those who originate
from outside Denmark – complicates the discourse of authentic or true Danishness when identity
is discursively framed by language, values and ancestry. The Danish imams’trip to the Middle East
was described by Pia Kjærsgaard (leader of the DF until 2012) as landsforræderi (‘country betrayal’
or ‘treason’)29
by a ‘fifth column’ or ‘Islamic mafia’ who were not truly Danish (Andersen, 2007:
108; Hansen, 2008: 56). Media attention on radical imams and minority pan-Islamic organizations
such as Hizb ut-Tahrir (which supports uniting Muslims under the caliphate and rejects the category
of ‘Danish Muslim’, which it regards as a contradiction to be resisted) works to reinforce
perceived incompatibility between Islam and democracy (Jacobsen et al., 2012; Kvaale, 2011).
Within this discursive field, the subjectivity of Danish Muslims is inscribed by caricatures that
serve as points of reference; even ‘moderate’ Muslim political figures or political party candidates
are questioned over their loyalty to the state and Danish values (Sheikh and Crone, 2012; Schmidt,
2009: 48–49). Islam is seen as a ‘competing logic’ to the sovereign state, rejecting its boundaries
and authority (Mendelsohn, 2005: 54–55). The concept of the ummah, the global community of
248		 Security Dialogue 44(3)
Muslim believers that functions as a source of identity that transcends the fixed nation-state
(Saunders, 2008), is contrasted against the institutions and sovereign logic that constructs Danish
identity. This obscures the possibilities of alternate readings of Danishness that are inclusive and
accommodating, pursued by Danish Muslims who have formed organizations based on dialogue,
such as the Forum for Critical Muslims and Muslims in Dialogue network (Schmidt, 2009: 44).
The idea of the ‘enemy within’ can also be directed towards Danes, referring to betrayal by
‘natural’ members of society. Around 3,000 Danes are converts to Islam and, according to Jensen
(2007), are regarded as national traitors or contradictory individuals who produce confusion and
anxiety about identity. These subversive or ‘interior others’ threaten the neat idea of the nationstate
and national identity: a true or authentic identity must reject difference in order to exist
(Connolly, 1991: 67, 206; Campbell, 1998: 3; Huysmans, 2006: 75). Likewise, a ‘soft’ approach to
immigration invokes accusations of ‘enemy sympathy’ and a betrayal of the folk. This ‘battle’ also
draws on the past, recalling previous threats to ‘Danishness’, played out historically in the formation
of identity in the composite state and as a form of ‘modern resistance fighters’, drawing parallels
with the Nazi occupation (Ström Melin, 2006). The discourse of the DF has appropriated the
defence of core progressive liberal values in opposition to perceived Muslim intolerance, a move
that many political parties find difficult to oppose lest they be seen not to be defending freedom of
speech, women and gay rights, for instance. The DF has positioned itself as representing ‘real
Danes’ against elites who allow foreigners to infiltrate the country, bringing external problems to
Danish soil, thereby committing a form of treason, risking not only Denmark’s ethnic homogeneity
but also its ‘historical destiny’(Hedetoft, 2003). This presumption of a neat divide between internal
and external is also played out in Danish foreign policy, which the next section explores.
Securing the state: Performing the external dimension of
identity
The domestic realm is not the only site of the state’s performative constitution of identity, and the
construction of the ‘foreign’ is made possible by practices that also constitute the ‘domestic’. Yet,
the domestic and international realms are not independent, and each exerts influence over the other.
They are intricately linked boundary-producing practices and performances that instantiate the
identity of that in whose name they operate (Campbell, 1998: 62, 73). This section focuses on military
intervention and development assistance as key sites where identity and security are reiterated
and performed. These two areas of foreign policy are of particular significance to Danish selfidentity,
as the country’s profile as a humanitarian international actor has been carved out in these
areas. Humanitarian intervention forms the core of Denmark’s commitment to conflict resolution,
and development assistance has long enjoyed consensus as a necessary tool for tackling structural
inequalities in the international system, such as poverty.
As part of the ‘coalition of the willing’, Denmark has contributed to military operations in Iraq30
andAfghanistan in the ‘war on terror’.Although the government and the DF only narrowly secured
the vote in parliament for action in Iraq (supported only by Venstre and the Conservatives), most
parties came to support the action because they see Denmark as playing an important role abroad
in terms of democracy promotion and ‘teaching democracy’.31
In contrast, almost all political parties
supported Danish intervention in Afghanistan from the start. By helping to promote democracy
and rebuild these countries, Denmark is exporting its constitutional and democratic values, as well
as core values such as gender equality. The promotion of progressive values and practices abroad
may be viewed in the vein of a particular form of Nordic active internationalism, based on peaceful
Agius:The Danish cartoon crisis	 249
methods of addressing global problems and the exporting of domestic norms and values to the
international realm. This progressive activism, however, may have more to do with ‘preserving a
distinctive identity and way of life’rather than the classic Nordic ‘moral imperative’to export solidarity
(Lawler, 2007: 103–104, 118), coinciding with a significant change in Danish active internationalism.
Holm (2002: 19–22, 40) observes this shift taking place in the early 1990s, when a
Danish White Paper put forward the idea that international cooperation should be shaped according
to Danish interests and attitudes, defining security in terms of universal values combined with a
willingness to use military power as an instrument of foreign policy. The ‘militarization’of Danish
post-Cold War foreign policy has meant important shifts away from peace support operations to
war-fighting, representing a move from a cosmopolitan discourse of security (seeing security as a
broad concept, stressing conflict management, non-military aspects of security and structural
sources of conflict) to a ‘defencist’ view that sees Denmark as no different from other countries in
terms of how it should seek security (accompanied by a more positive attitude towards the USA
and a less critical one towards NATO) (Rasmussen, 2005: 73–76; Jakobsen, 2000: 64). Post-9/11,
Denmark’s foreign policy profile has shifted away from a ‘civilian actor’ profile to that of a ‘strategic
actor’, based on the notion that Denmark had direct enemies and needed to reform and use its
military force to defeat them, even without UN authorization (Ringsmose and Rynning, 2008;
Rynning, 2003: 30). In 2003, the Danish government revised its foreign policy priorities, stating
that its primary goal was
to promote Denmark’s security and prosperity based on a set of fundamental values; values that also
constitute the backbone of Denmark’s open society. The core values are the individual and the community,
freedom, democracy and security (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2003a: 6, 22–24).
Danish involvement in the conflicts in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq were about defending and
securing values – freedom, democracy and respect for the individual: ‘Strong international involvement
must take its point of departure in strong awareness of Danish history, Danish culture and
national consciousness’ (Rasmussen, 2003b; Holm, 2006). Weber (1998: 93) illustrates how military
intervention enacts or (re)iterates the sovereignty of the intervening state as much as it ‘brings’
sovereignty to bear on the target state. In this respect, a more robust form of intervention performatively
enacts one reading of Danish identity inasmuch as previous, more cosmopolitan and ‘good
state’ values informed another reading of the self, with different outcomes and approaches to the
external realm.
In the same way, Danish identity was performed through development assistance. Denmark’s
progressive development assistance profile was characterized by a commitment to humanitarianism
coherent with Nordic solidarism, with generous aid and a rejection of ‘strings attached’donor–
recipient relationships. Since 2002, Danish development aid principles have altered, and the
country’s aid budget for multilateral and bilateral programmes has been cut by 10%. Aid became a
foreign policy instrument, a tool for promoting Denmark’s values abroad. The relationship with aid
recipients has become tied to goals and targets; donations to sub-Saharan Africa were reduced
owing to a lack of improvement in good governance (Olsen, 2003: 85). Most striking has been the
revision in Danish aid priorities in 2003 towards more security-oriented outcomes. Alongside poverty
reduction, human rights, democratization and good governance, environmental and social and
economic development, new ‘threats and challenges’ have been included as a priority of Danish
development assistance. These include humanitarian assistance, stability, security and the fight
250		 Security Dialogue 44(3)
against terrorism, which aims to tackle radicalization. A new flank also focuses on refugees under
an initiative called ‘Regions of Origin’. Initiated in 2003 and commanding a budget of DK 1 billion
between 2004 and 2008, this aims to ‘help refugees and internally displaced people as close to their
homes as possible, thus making it easier for them to return home while at the same time reducing
political problems in the host countries’. Of note is an adjacent strategy aimed at ensuring ‘maximum
coordination with the repatriation efforts for refugees resident in this country’ (Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, 2003b: 9). Although this approach coheres with a liberal view of security – the
spread of democracy and the stability of states bring wider security payoffs – it mirrors a form of
‘cultural shielding’designed to protect the state and coheres with domestic anxieties over immigration.
Danish foreign policy as a performance of identity has become more overtly tied to projecting
values (outwardly in the case of intervention); and, despite its external projection, development
assistance is more closely tied to securing the Danish state by attempting to limit outsiders from
entering. Both promote Danish security from afar, bringing a complex distancing to the performance
of identity.
Points of contestation and rupture:The limits of the
performative
Throughout the cartoon crisis, the performance of a narrow Danish identity premised on authenticity
and modernity was defined against a threatening other that was its exact opposite. The possibility
of plural forms of Danishness was not only obscured but ruled out by the very standards and
norms that were central to constructing ‘Danishness’, which the above sections outline. The inherent
insecurity of identity discourse that seeks to define identity negatively is nonetheless open to
limitations as much as other interpretations are malleable. Discourses of identity are multiple,
overlapping and engaged in a constant struggle for hegemony (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985: 110–
115). Debates about inclusion and Danishness predate the event of the cartoon crisis, which brought
into sharp focus one particular discourse that became stabilized over time. The discourses that
animated the cartoon crisis aimed to perform a consistent idea of identity but also produced
contestation.
At the domestic level, ruptures to dominant discourses were present. Mikkelsen’s kulturkamp
speech was critiqued in the Danish press, and Rasmussen’s refusal to meet with the Muslim ambassadors
was publicly criticized by 22 former Danish diplomats in the Danish broadsheet Politiken.
Prominent Danish writers rejected the populist reading of Danish identity, and opinion polls
showed a decline in support for freedom of speech at the expense of offending others (Klausen,
2009: 156–161). Over half the Danish public did not approve the reprinting of the cartoons in 2008
(Brun and Hersh, 2008: 20). Increased dialogue within society has also aimed to acknowledge a
deeper historical relationship between Denmark and Islam that predates recent waves of immigration,
as well as recognizing the lack of uniformity of Danish identity between towns and regions
and the differences within the ‘Muslim’ community, which is comprised of many different nationalities,
ethnicities and religious groupings (Schmidt, 2009: 40–45). The red–green coalition government
of the Social Democrats, Social Liberals and the Socialist People’s Party, led by Social
Democrat Helle Thorning-Schmidt, which won office in September 2011, has demonstrated a different
reading of Danish identity that appears more inclusive in its approach to foreigners and
immigrants. The new government has signalled plans to remove the points system (Buley, 2012),
work towards better integration and treat immigrants with respect; it is currently debating the possibility
of dual citizenship and removing the citizenship test.
Agius:The Danish cartoon crisis	 251
Externally, the government has also signalled a shift in its approach to the EU, promising to
abolish the longstanding Danish opt-outs in the areas of justice, home affairs and defence. In development
assistance, the new priorities for 2013–2017 see an increase in aid and a commitment to
returning to 1% of gross national income, less emphasis on Regions of Origin, and more on dialogue
initiatives and multilateralism (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2012). A new security policy
also sees emphasis on ‘soft’ military operations and more parliamentary approval for deploying
troops in international military operations (Thorning-Schmidt, 2011). The establishment of a commission
to investigate Denmark’s involvement in Iraq has also been announced, and it will examine
the justifications for going to war and the treatment of Iraqi and Afghan prisoners of war who
allegedly faced torture when handed over by Danish forces to detention facilities.32
Conclusion
By examining the discourses that performed identity in the context of the cartoon crisis, this article
has attempted to bring a more complex reading of identity practices into focus. At the level of
domestic and external policy, it is possible to see identity performed with an underlying incentive
of maintaining a consistent idea of self. Yet, in performative analyses of identity, careful attention
must be paid to the ability of discourses to appropriate and co-opt ideas of self from a shared or
consensual stock of values and institutional practices. In many ways, this has been part of the success
story of the securitization of Danish identity, because the discourse of difference was predicated
on norms and values that were broadly consensual. By arguing that threats exist to the welfare
state and Danish progressive values, the performance of a narrow exclusionary identity was able to
guide the discourse that allowed elites and others to participate in identity claims.
Narrow and inflexible conceptualizations of identity fail to accommodate change and
acknowledge dynamism. Brubaker and Cooper (2000: 2) observe a key challenge to understanding
identity, that of ‘permanence amidst manifest change’ and ‘unity amidst manifest diversity’.
Danish identity discourses had been struggling with this challenge long before the cartoon crisis
broke. But, it is important to not allow the civilization clash to dominate our understanding of
the crisis. A discursive approach to identity goes some way towards opening up identity practices
to self-reflexivity. In order to understand the performance and contextualize the event, we need
to explore the discourses on which it relies and how such discourses are threaded through the
fabric of domestic and external practice and being. These echoes or reiterations of identity are
more than a reassertion – they are also normative in that the citational practices establish what
qualifies as ‘being’, through reiteration and also exclusion (Butler, 2011: 140). As discourses
perform identity, they constitute it; yet, Danishness relies on historical tropes and shared understandings
that can be made oppositional not simply to ‘outsiders’ but also to ‘insiders’. This
makes the Danish case far more complex than a caricature of civilizational clashes. This is not
to suggest that debates about values and belonging are not central: they clearly remain important
issues requiring serious public reflection and academic investigation. Yet, closer inspection of
the ideas of identity that animated the discourse also suggest that theorizing identity is an inherently
‘slippery, insecure experience’ (Connolly, 1991: 64). As a discourse in itself, the cartoon
crisis provides a way to consider the performance of identity and security beyond the drama that
accompanied the event, providing numerous avenues in which to further explore questions of the
ontology of identity, the emotive construction of self and other, the broader international dimensions
of the crisis and questions of international security, and the interplay between the universal
and the particular.
252		 Security Dialogue 44(3)
Acknowledgements
The author gratefully acknowledges the support of the British Academy Small Research Grant scheme, which
provided fieldwork support and financial assistance. Thanks are also due to the interviewees, particularly
Anne-Sofie Allarp. I am also grateful to Kirsten Hvenegård Lassen and colleagues at the Department of
Culture and Identity, University of Roskilde; Ulla Holm and academics at the Danish Institute of International
Affairs (DIIS); and those from the Copenhagen Business School and Odense University. I am also grateful to
colleagues who commented on earlier versions of this article, including Anne-Sofie Allarp, Luke Ashworth,
Annika Bergman-Rosamond, Paul Copeland, Karen Devine, Helen Dexter, Matt MacDonald, Simon Philpott
and Ben Rosamond, and in particular for the feedback from participants at the 2009 ‘World Politics and
Popular Culture’conference at Newcastle University. I am also grateful to the editors and anonymous referees
of this journal, whose constructive feedback helped strengthen the article. Any errors remain my own.
Funding
This research was supported by the British Academy Small Research Grant scheme (‘Immigration and
Security in Post-9/11 Scandinavia’, SG-47120).
Notes
	 1.	 Rose invited members of the union of newspaper illustrators to draw Mohammed ‘as you see him’ after
the writer Kåre Bluitgen claimed he could not find an illustrator for a children’s book he was writing
about Mohammed. See Rose (2006) and Klausen (2009: 14–27) for a detailed account of this ‘experiment’.
Klausen (2009: 30) argues that the newspaper’s defence of free speech was disingenuous, as it
rejected a satirical cartoon of Jesus, claiming it would not go down well with its readership.
	 2.	 The words ‘particular’ [særstilling] and ‘special’ [særlig] are, in Rytkønen’s translation, interpreted as
‘odd’ or ‘out of sorts’, an important observation in the context of Huysmans’ (2006: 7) point that language
is able to mobilize specific meanings.
	 3.	 The UN’s Special Rapporteur on Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance,
Doudou Diène, regarded the cartoon crisis as ‘the most serious manifestation’ of Islamophobia (United
Nations Economic and Social Council, 2006: 7–9). See Alhassan (2008) for an in-depth analysis of the
images.
	4.	 Rasmussen later met with the ambassadors and reiterated Jyllands-Posten’s apology for offence to
Muslims. He did not apologize for the publication of the cartoons. Klausen (2009: 32, 151) notes the
public regarded an apology as an admission of guilt.
	 5.	 Seventeen Danish (and three Swedish, Dutch and Spanish) newspapers reprinted the cartoons ‘in
solidarity’ with Jyllands-Posten in response to the threat of ‘terror’ against the cartoonist (Ryan,
2008).
	 6.	 Section 77 of the Danish constitution (1849) states that ‘censorship and other preventive measures shall
never again be introduced’. Censorship had been a particularly sensitive issue under the Danish-German
monarchy and German-enforced censorship of the press during World War II. I thank Jacob Christensen
and Flemming Juul Christiansen for this clarification.
	 7.	 SeeAmmitzbøll and Vidino (2007); special issues of Ethnicities (2009) and International Migration (2006);
Khader and Rose (2007); Lægaard (2007); Lindekilde (2008); Shearmur (2006); Asad et al. (2009).
	8.	 See Eide et al. (2008); Berkowitz and Eko (2007); Hervik (2006); Holmström et al. (2010); Hussain
(2007).
	9.	 See Brun and Hersh (2008); Hedetoft (2006); Holm (2006); Klausen (2007, 2009); Lawler (2007);
Rostbøll (2010); Rytkønen (2007).
10.	 See Blom (2008); Douai (2007); Hakam (2009); Soage (2006).
11.	 As part of a wider project covering Swedish immigration and security, eight Danish parliamentarians and
officials were interviewed from the Social Democratic Party, the Liberal Party, the Social Liberal Party
and the Danish Refugee Council. All interviewees were sent written transcripts of their interview for
verification and approval.
Agius:The Danish cartoon crisis	 253
12.	 By extension, performativity implies that identity itself is an empty category, containing no ontological
status apart from the acts that constitute its reality (Butler, 1999: 173). This has significant implications
for debates about the ontological status of identity. Kuus (2007: 93–98) in particular challenges us to
abandon the search for a pre-existing subject in order to unsettle the link between the individual and the
state and erode the reliance on the national. This is a worthwhile venture, but one that is unfortunately
beyond the scope of this article.
13.	 Language was crucial to the ‘natural’ foundation of socio-political unity (Korsgaard, 2006: 137–138;
Østergård, 2004: 38; 2006: 85) and remains central today to Danish identity (interview with Danish
parliamentarian, Copenhagen, 28 April 2008).
14.	 ‘Foreigners’ include the descendants of immigrants and immigrants with residency. Distinctions are also
made between foreigners from Western, non-Western and non-Nordic countries. Demographic trends predict
an increase of 7.1% in 2017 and 9.1% in 2050 of immigrants and their descendants from non-Western
countries, compared with 3.3% and 4.1% for Western immigrants respectively (Ministry of Refugee,
Immigration and Integration Affairs, 2007: 6). Given Denmark’s aging native population, anxiety over
reproductive rates is a common theme in the discourse of the right (Bialasiwicz, 2006;Alhassan, 2008: 51).
15.	 Interview with Danish parliamentarian, Copenhagen, 24 April 2008.
16.	 Hedetoft (2006); interview with official from the Danish Refugee Council, Copenhagen, 21 April 2008;
interview with Danish parliamentarian, Copenhagen, 24 April 2008; interview with Danish parliamentarian,
Copenhagen, 28 April 2008; interview with political consultant, Danish Social Liberal Party,
Copenhagen, 28 April 2008.
17.	 In 2005, the naturalization rules were reshaped to include a formal exam, which Klausen (2009: 153)
argues only highly educated second-generation immigrants could pass.
18.	 Interview with Danish parliamentarian, Copenhagen, 24 April 2008.
19.	 Interview with official from the Danish Refugee Council, Copenhagen, 21 April 2008.
20.	 Interview with official from the Danish Refugee Council, Copenhagen, 21 April 2008.
21.	 Hervik (2006: 226); interview with Danish parliamentarian, Copenhagen, 24 April 2008; interview with
Danish parliamentarian, Copenhagen, 28 April 2008; interview with Danish parliamentarian,
Copenhagen, 30 April 2008; Lindekilde (2008: 16).
22.	 Interview with political consultant, Danish Social Liberal Party, Copenhagen, 28 April 2008; interview
with Social Democratic Party officer, Copenhagen, 29 April 2008; interview with Danish parliamentarian,
Copenhagen, 30 April 2008; Klausen (2009: 12–14); Lægaard (2007: 489); Schmidt (2009: 46).
23.	 See Mikkelsen (2005). I thank Katja Lindskov Jacobsen for the translation.
24.	 Hedetoft (2003); Østergaard (2006: 85); Diken (1998: 40–41); interview with Danish parliamentarian,
London, 13 November 2007; interview with political consultant, Danish Social Liberal Party,
Copenhagen, 28 April 2008.
25.	 One interviewee explained that parallel communities blocked solidarity: ‘We don’t like to go to a little
Italy or a little Somalia where they speak their own language. I am sure that’s unacceptable to 90% of the
Danish population.’The UK is cited as an example to avoid: ‘We think that it’s scary that you guys don’t
own your country anymore’ (interview with official from the Danish Refugee Council, Copenhagen, 21
April 2008). Søren Pind (immigration minister under the cabinet of Lars Løkke Rasmussen, March–
October 2011) publicly stated that foreigners should not come to live in Denmark unless they ‘want to be
Danish’. A poll supported his position, with an overwhelming majority of respondents preferring to see
foreigners adopt Danish norms and values (Copenhagen Post, 2011a).
26.	 Koefoed and Simonsen (2007: 314–317); interview with Danish parliamentarian, Copenhagen, 28
April 2008.
27.	 The description of the cartoons as ‘drawings’ – a less loaded meaning – was prevalent in Denmark and
the Western press (Hakam, 2009: 43) and may appear less offensive. I thank Katja Lindskov Jacobsen for
this observation.
28.	 Interview with political consultant, Danish Social Liberal Party, Copenhagen, 28 April 2008; Wren
(2001: 149).
29.	 The phrase has strong connotations, likened to siding with the enemy in times of war (TV2 News, 2005).
My thanks to Katja Lindskov Jacobsen for this translation.
254		 Security Dialogue 44(3)
30.	 Denmark’s military presence in Basra province ended in 2007, but there was an increase in troops sent
to Afghanistan. Some personnel remained in Iraq in order to contribute to police training.
31.	 Interview with Danish parliamentarian, Copenhagen, 23 April 2008; interview with Danish parliamentarian,
Copenhagen, 24 April 2008; interview with Danish parliamentarian, Copenhagen, 28 April 2008.
32.	 It should be noted that, in the 1990s, Denmark undertook a major historiographical reassessment of its
role during World War II. This challenged the established narrative of Danish resistance and the rescue
of the Danish Jews, which had formed an important strand in the country’s self-image as a good international
actor (Østergård, 2006: 93). I thank the editor for highlighting this point.
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Christine Agius is Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at Swinburne University of Technology,
Melbourne. Her research interests include critical approaches to identity and security and the Nordic states.
Email: cagius@swin.edu.au.