Spridningen av rasistiska stereotyper i politisk satir i Finland
Fyrens karikatyr av Madagaskars sista drottning 1901
Abstract
“The reach of racist stereotypes in political satire in Finland: The queen of Madagascar caricature in Fyren 1901”
This article addresses a caricature of queen Ranavalona III, which was copied to the Swedish language political satire publication Fyren from a contemporary French satire magazine. Regarding this type of political cartoon as a historical source allows for analysis of nationalist discourse and race as an ideological concept.
The purpose of this article is to highlight the ideological participation of Finland in colonialism during the end of the 19th century. By applying discourse analysis on political cartoons, the caricature of Ranavalona is placed in a nationalist Finnish context and the accompanying racial features and discourses are analyzed.
The analysis shows that racialized cartoons in general and the caricature of Ranavalona in particular are part of building and maintaining a colonial worldview, which in turn defines nationalism as based on race and visual race markers. The Finnish satirical press contributed to constructing this worldview in order to cement a national and explicitly civil Finnish identity.
