Fun for real! dismantling the “cool colonizer” through the decolonial politics of memes from Kalaallit Nunaat

Abstract

In this article, we suggest that memes produced by Kalaallit Inuit (Indigenous people of Greenland), hereafter, Kalaallit, social media actors can be understood as educative decolonial roadmaps, which expose narrative key elements of Danish colonialism as it is experienced in Kalaallit Nunaat—the Indigenous name for Greenland—such as, Nordic exceptionalism, colonial amnesia, discovery tales, the post-colonial imaginary, and the so-called impossibility of Kalaallit sovereignty. Drawing on memes by meme artists: Julie Edel Hardenberg, xoxolilichemnitz, Inunnguaq Reimer, and Jacob Larsen, we ask what forms of humour and playfulness are at play, and how these devices contribute to changing conversations by offering new modes of self-scrutiny in colonial audiences and by introducing decolonial options within the Kalaallit community. Overall, this article sheds light on the anti-colonial work of Kalaallit social media artists and their political decolonizing endeavours in alliance with Indigenous meme-making on a global scale.