Degrees of Intersectionality : Male Rap Artists in Sweden Negotiating Class , Race and Gender

“Intersectionality” has become a highly influential concept in gender research over the last 25 years. Debates have focused on differences and power asymmetries between women, in terms of race but also addressing class, age, sexuality, ability and nation. However, intersectional paradigms have been used to a much lesser extent in gender studies on men. This article seeks to contribute to an emerging discussion about intersectionality and masculinity by analyzing rap lyrics in Swedish songs. The data consists of a broad sample of rap lyrics by male artists 1991-2011, which is analyzed through poststructuralist discourse analysis and queer phenomenology. The analysis shows how classed discourses can be described in terms of orientation and flow, how racialization is articulated in terms of place, and the role of normative notions of gender and sexuality in antiracist discourses. It is argued that this interconnectedness – class being related to race, which in turn is profoundly gendered – is neither well captured by the prevailing notion of “masculinities” in gender studies on men, nor by the “constitution” vs. “addition” dichotomy in intersectionality debates. Instead, it is suggested that degrees of intersectionality might be a more fruitful way of theorizing intersectionality in relation to men.


Introduction: "True Mommy's Fag Cowards"
he is paid to arrest criminals but harasses poor workers who are nice […] ainaziz [cops] are true mommy's fag cowards see me downtown and label me a dealer all guys in the block are not criminals but if you mess with us we'll strike back (The Latin Kings, "Ainaziz", 2000) han får betalt för att gripa kriminella men trakasserar fattiga knegare som är snälla […] ainaziz är riktiga mammas bög bangare ser mig i centrum och stämplar mig som langare alla grabbar i betongen är inte kriminella men jiddrar ni med oss så kommer det att smälla Race, gender and class have been prominent themes in Swedish hip hop since its public breakthrough in the mid-1990s.In their 2000 hit "Ainaziz", the pioneering group The Latin Kings challenged the institutional racism of the Swedish police force a decade before it appeared in national news broadcasts, following the release of a film sequence where police officers described non-white young men as "fucking monkeys" (Stiernstedt 2009).The lyrics critically describe how police officers come to the racialized förort (literally "suburb", but commonly used to refer to urban spaces dominated by non-white Swedes), harassing decent but poor workers and treating them as drug dealers and criminals.Class and race intersect here, but also gender.The anti-racist counter-discourse draws on established elements of heteromasculinity: a disposition towards violence is displayed in conjunction with the abject figures of the mommy's boy, the faggot and the coward.Ironically, the anti-racist critique of the police is thus itself policing the boundaries of gender and sexuality.
This interconnectedness of class, race and gender calls for an intersectional analysis of how different categories or dimensions of power are intertwined.Yet, while intersectionality has become a central concept in gender research, its status within gender studies on men is still rather unclear.Similarly, while race and gender have been explored in hip hop studies in the USA, hip hop research in other contexts has been less concerned with issues of gender and intersectionality.In this article I try to address this gap in the research by conducting an intersectional discourse analysis of rap lyrics.My approach is grounded in intersectionality theory, queer phenomenology, and poststructuralist discourse analysis, and the data consists of Swedish rap lyrics.I argue that drawing on intersectionality theory in studying men can move us beyond some problematic aspects imbued in the concept of "masculinities", while a focus on men also entails rethinking the "additive" vs. "constitutive" dichotomy in intersectionality debates, in favor of a notion of degrees of intersectionality.

Intersectionality in Hip Hop Studies
Hip hop has grown into a worldwide genre of popular culture in recent decades.Research now covers many aspects of hip hop culture and expressions in a variety of contexts.Questions about gender, race and intersectionality have primarily been addressed in the USA.In her influential article on intersectionality, Crenshaw analyzed the public debate on obscenity charges against rap artists, arguing against reductive analysis of hip hop that limits attention to either race or gender (Crenshaw 1991).Similarly, Rose addressed both the politics of race and questions of gender and sexuality in her pioneering study of hip hop culture (Rose 1994).Questions about the roles and status of women and men and the importance of hip hop culture for black communities have remained central to US hip hop studies (e.g.Hill Collins 2006;Pough et al. 2007;Jeffries 2011).International hip hop research, however, has been more concerned with questions about local adaptations of hip hop as an international genre, and with sociolinguistic aspects, such as rap artists' abilities in "code-switching" among multiple languages (Mitchell 2001;Basu & Lemelle 2006;Alim, Ibrahim & Pennycook 2009;Terkourafi 2010).Although racial or ethnic aspects are often addressed in their shifting contexts, questions of gender and/or intersectionality have been given limited attention in the international hip hop literature available in English.
In hip hop research in the Nordic countries, topics such as music production and local-global relations have been explored (Krogh & Stougaard Pedersen 2008).In Sweden, hip hop has primarily been analyzed in terms of informal learning, popular education and postcolonial criticism, and has been studied with the use of ethnographic methods (Sernhede & Söderman 2010, 2012).While hip hop research in Sweden has not focused primarily on gender, research on gender and popular music in Sweden has focused on other genres than hip hop (Ganetz et al. 2009).An exception is Bredström and Dahlstedt's article on the intersections of gender and ethnicity in the public reception of Swedish hip hop (Bredström & Dahlstedt 2002).The present article expands their focus on race and masculinity, while more explicitly addressing intersectionality in relation to masculinity theory.

An Intersectional Approach to Masculinity
While the concept of intersectionality has been very influential in many areas of gender research, it has been comparatively little discussed in relation to gender studies on men.For instance, Beasley criticizes the "still overwhelming whiteness of Masculinity Studies" and Bilge makes an attempt at "smuggling intersectionality into the study of masculinity" (Beasley 2005: 220;Bilge 2009).Conversely, intersectional studies encompassing black men do not always engage with the literature on masculinity (e.g.Wright 2004).Consequently, Lewis speaks of "the [192] Culture Unbound, Volume 5, 2013 absence of men and masculinities in the intersectionality literature and the impoverishment of theory and research for both intersectionality scholarship and that on men" (Lewis 2009: 209 original emphasis).In this section, I will first discuss some of the drawbacks of the most influential conceptualization of multiple power asymmetries in relation to men, Connell's theory of "hegemonic masculinity" (Connell 1995;Connell & Messerschmidt 2005).Then, I will present how I instead make use of intersectionality in studying men.
Connell's adaptation of Gramscian hegemony theory has long been the most influential theory of masculinity (e.g.Hearn et al. 2012).Its popularity is largely due to its combination of a clear take on men's power and its recognition of differences between men.Although there has been much critical discussion of Connell's theory, intersectionality has not been at the center of these debates (e.g.Beasley 2008;Demetriou 2001;Wetherell & Edley 1999).How does the question of multiple and intersecting social divisions figure in this theory?Connell proposes that there is not just masculinity, but masculinities.Her model differentiates between a dominant patriarchal "hegemonic masculinity" and a less explicit "complicit masculinity".Furthermore, sexual minorities are described in terms of a "subordinated masculinity", while the category "marginalized masculinity" encompasses men facing racial and/or class discrimination.Compared to earlier, more unified theories of masculinity, Connell's theory has opened up a space for examining power not only between genders, but also considering other differences and power hierarchies.A problem with this conceptualization, however, is that the suggested categories of "hegemonic", "subordinated" and "marginalized" masculinities seem to imply a sense of mutual exclusivity.This can make it difficult to give an account of men who are, for instance, both gay and sexist, both patriarchal and racialized, or both working class and queer.If intersecting categories of belonging are acknowledged within this framework, we are left to describe a black gay sexist man in the somewhat clumsy terms "marginalized and subordinated hegemonic masculinity", collapsing the very categories used to describe difference in the first place.Furthermore, in their revisiting of the theory, Connell and Messerschmidt describe racialized and sexist men in terms of the psychoanalytic concept of "protest masculinity" rather than the more consistent construct "marginalized and hegemonic masculinity" (Connell & Messerschmidt 2005).However, this only raises the question of why accounting for this particular group of men should require psychoanalysis when other men are analyzed with a complex sociological theory.In short, while Connell's theory usefully opened up a space for thinking about multiple power asymmetries in relation to men, her conceptualization nevertheless runs into problems in accounting effectively for intersecting identities.
There is, however, solid work on men from broadly intersectional perspectives, some of which are inspired by Connell.Topics addressed include social work, crime, schooling, fatherhood and feminism (Pringle 1995;Messerschmidt 1997;Culture Unbound, Volume 5, 2013 [193] Frosh, Phoenix & Pattman 2002;Gavanas 2004;Pascoe 2007;Hurtado & Sinha 2008).There is also some work on ethnicity and masculinity in Sweden (e.g.Jonsson 2007; León Rosales 2010).There has been less theoretical and conceptual discussion on intersectionality in relation to masculinity, though, and when this has been done it has sometimes been in a way that downplays its inherent race critical potential (e.g.Hearn 2011).I understand "intersectionality" to be a key concept for approaches that critically address multiple and intersecting power asymmetries, and which stems primarily from race-critical approaches to gender in different contexts, including US black feminism, postcolonial feminism, and theorization of gender and racialization in Europe (e.g.Lorde 1984;Spivak 1988;Hill Collins 1990;Crenshaw 1991;Mohanty 2003;de los Reyes & Mulinari 2005;Yuval-Davis 2011).On a general level, I define an intersectional approach as acknowledging the existence of several power dimensions or social divisions.This entails a) rejecting attempts to turn any one of them into a master category such as Patriarchy or Capitalism, b) acknowledging that there is some "specificity" to social divisions in that they cannot simply be collapsed into one another, while at the same time, c) it is not possible to isolate in advance any category for separate study, since any social division intersects with the others.
If these aspects can be said to summarize what intersectional approaches have in common, there have been varying ways of accounting for their differences (Makkonen 2002;McCall 2005;Hancock 2007).I would suggest distinguishing between three aspects here, namely what I call "ownership", "constitution", and "power".The "ownership" dimension refers to whether intersectionality belongs primarily to race-critical feminisms (focusing on race and gender), or to feminist research in general (focusing on gender in conjunction with any other category of inequality)."Constitution" is about whether intersectionality denotes a specific amount of interconnectedness between categories (as opposed to "additive" approaches) or if instead it is about not excluding central power dimensions from analysis (as opposed to mono-categorical approaches)."Power", finally, indicates differences ranging from structural analysis, via a notion of different ontological grounds, to deconstructive methodologies.While acknowledging that categories such as age and ability should also merit scholarly attention, in this article I nevertheless focus on the classic dimensions: class, race, gender and sexuality.I treat intersectionality more as an urge to ask critical questions about these inequalities than as a specific quality of their interconnectedness, but will return to the question of "degrees of intersectionality".In terms of power, I work with a poststructuralist approach: On the one hand, one of the insights of post-structuralism is that identity categories (gender, "race", etc.) cannot be understood in an essentialist way, but at the same time the power effects generated by these categories are profoundly inscribed in historical and societal terms and […] form the basis for the hierarchisation of groups and the formation of unequal social relations.(Lutz, Herrera Vivar & Supik 2011: 8) [194] Culture Unbound, Volume 5, 2013

Discourse Analysis of Rap Lyrics
The analysis in this article is based on a broad sample of Swedish rap lyrics including about 40 artists from 1991 to 2011.The data thus covers the first two decades of publically known hip hop in Sweden, including the public breakthrough in the 1990s, the boom around 2000, and the more diversified character of recent years.Artists have been selected to ensure diversity -in terms of discourses and articulated subject positions but also regarding temporal and geographical distribution.However, the analysis does not aim to map discourses onto specific artists or time of appearance, but rather treats the lyrics as a web of discourse where intersecting identities are performed, negotiated, reproduced, subverted and challenged.There has been little discussion on the pairing of intersectionality and discourse analysis, despite some of the classical intersectional analyses having a discourse analytic character (Spivak 1981;Mohanty 1988).In my view, a poststructuralist approach to discourse analysis fits best with intersectionality, since it recognizes both that power is central (which is not always the case in Discursive Psychology), and that power is complex and shifting (as opposed to the dominant vs. dominated group assumption underpinning Critical Discourse Analysis) (Baxter 2003).Developing a Feminist Poststructuralist Discourse Analysis (FPDA), Baxter argues that a poststructuralist approach can still make use of tools from different traditions of discourse analysis (Baxter 2008).
Hence, I have drawn on some of Fairclough's practical suggestions for conducting discourse analysis (Fairclough 1992: 230).Thus, the lyrics have been collected, transcribed and analyzed in a two-step procedure.In the first step I code songs, verses and expressions in broad categories, looking for how different power dimensions are created, sustained and challenged.Since gender turned out to be highly significant in the data, artists culturally recognized as "male" and "female" have been analyzed separately.This article thus draws on the material coded as being about class, racialization and (male) masculinity.In the second stage I analyze a selection of extracts more closely.Here I draw on Ahmed's poststructuralist (or queer) reading of phenomenology, which adds a spatial understanding of how bodies inhabit space, and which sees discursive and bodily dimensions as intertwined (Ahmed 2006(Ahmed , 2010)).
Song lyrics represent a special kind of material for discourse analysis since lyrics are made to be performed (Frith 1996).As Frith points out: "Take them out of their performed context, and they either seem to have no musical qualities at all, or else to have such obvious ones as to be silly" (Frith 1996: 182).Further losses are introduced through translation, where rhythm and rhyming are inevitably compromised.Thus, I cannot claim to do justice to the artistic qualities of the lyrics I offer in transcribed and translated form, although original lyrics in Swedish have been included, where applicable, to increase transparency.All analysis has been done on the original lyrics to avoid translations impacting on the analysis.
Culture Unbound, Volume 5, 2013 [195] Despite these reservations, the content of rap lyrics is still a useful source of research material, as evidenced by the large number of sociolinguistic analyses of rap lyrics (Alim et al. 2009;Terkourafi 2010).
In the following sections, I will offer a step-by-step analysis of some examples of constructions of class, race and gender in my sample, in order to demonstrate how they are interconnected but still have some degree of specificity.First, I analyze discourses of class, including politics, and the part played by race in these constructions.Then, racialized discourses are considered, particularly emphasizing place, which shows how racial discourse intersects with gender and sexuality.In the concluding section, these threads are drawn together, underscoring the advantages of intersectional analysis, compared to the standard "masculinities" conceptualization.

Flow as a Phenomenology of Class
we should be affirming, not holding back […] want the nation to take care but without restraint […] if you're enterprising, come on and run something […] if you have the will, you will succeed (Crafoord, Schmidt & Talvik, "Flyter", 2010) vi bör bejaka, inte hålla tillbaka […] vill ha ett land som tar hand om utan att hålla fast […] om du är driftig, kom igen och driv nåt […] om du har viljan så kommer du att bli nåt It is not unusual that class questions are addressed in relation to politics in my sample (which is not to say that other power dimensions are not political).This song, "Flyter" (Flowing), was composed by the two white male rap artists, Wille Crafoord, formerly of the pioneering group Just D, and Mange Schmidt (together with singer/songwriter Sofia Talvik) as part of the 2010 election campaign for the conservative-liberal party Moderaterna.The lyrics promote common tropes of neo-liberal politics: the welfare state should not "hold back" people through regulations, but instead encourage individuals' spontaneous entrepreneurialism.Success is understood as an effect of will, implying that allocation of status and wealth is dependent on individual characteristics rather than influenced by structures of privilege and oppression.The chorus continues: if it flows -let it flow if it works -let it work (ibid.)om det flyter -låt det flyta om det funkar -låt det funka What works should be allowed to work and should not be restrained by regulations; what flows should be allowed to flow without interruption.Ahmed interrogates the notion of flow, popularized by best-selling psychologist Csíkszentmihályi (Ahmed 2010: 12).While flow is often thought of as a mental state when [196] Culture Unbound, Volume 5, 2013 things seem to work by themselves, Ahmed suggests we should think of flow in terms of bodies inhabiting space.Contrasting Fanon's description of the black body experiencing restriction and blockage to Merleau-Ponty's "successful" body phenomenology, Ahmed argues that the capacity to extend into space, to flow, is connected to bodily forms of privilege (Ahmed 2006: 139): What if to flow into the world is not simply understood as a psychological attribute?What if the world "houses" some bodies more than others, such that some bodies do not experience that world as resistant?(Ahmed 2010: 12) While Ahmed is primarily concerned with race, gender and sexuality, I suggest that it might also be useful to think of class in those terms.Flow could be considered an experience of the "entrepreneurial" position, whose inhabitance requires a certain amount of material and embodied forms of capital (Bourdieu 1984) The starting point of this song is not so much a view from nowhere, but the situated experience of a "working class" position: poorly paid and a sense of being "stuck" -as opposed to the experience of flow.This extract explicitly questions the ideology of the free choice of the individual by invoking working-class experiences, which are portrayed as a "subaltern" knowledge that can hardly be heard ("all I hear is the right going on…", "can you hear me?", "I'd like to hear some-thing…") (Spivak 1988).The class critique interestingly addresses both economic exploitation ("poorly paid"), and embodied class dispositions, which Bourdieu calls "habitus".Offering a more elaborated phenomenology than Bourdieu, Ahmed discusses orientation (Ahmed 2006).Bodies are orientated towards some things more than others so that some objects are within reach, while others are not.In this sense, our orientations inform our actions, whether they appear as "choices" or not.In being oriented, we follow paths or lines: Culture Unbound, Volume 5, 2013 [197] Lines are both created by being followed and are followed by being created.The lines that direct us, as lines of thought as well as lines of motion, are in this way performative: they depend on the repetition of norms and conventions, of routes and paths taken, but they are also created as an effect of this repetition.(Ahmed 2006: 16) In this way, we can understand the class critique of the different paths implied in "following in daddy's footsteps".One route leads to the wealth and privilege of the stock market, while the other leads to jail.It is not so much about the free choice of the individual as about how bodies are directed and oriented in class terms.While a discourse of flow permeates the party campaign song "Flyter", it is certainly not uncontradicted in Swedish rap lyrics more generally, as seen in the class phenomenology at work in "Fri".However, the flow discourse is not only about class: build a mosque, baby build three if you like, baby don't let anybody crush your idea, baby (Crafoord, Schmidt & Talvik, "Flyter", 2010) bygg en moské, baby bygg gärna tre, baby låt ingen annan krossa din idé, baby The only concrete case addressed in "Flyter" is interestingly an invitation to build mosques.Inviting the construction of mosques supposedly affirms diversity, and also constructs the subject as tolerant.Yet, we should also ask: why is it that the building of mosques figures as the ultimate sign of tolerance?According to Brown, the positive spirit of the concept of "tolerance" often conceals that it is usually only what is unwanted that can be tolerated (Brown 2006).Thus, while the flow discourse posits success as an effect of individual will, the mosque example suggests that some wills and "ideas" are more vulnerable to becoming "crushed" than others.It seems to invoke the vulnerability of Muslims as Europe's racialized Others, who are often constructed as alien in popular discourse.However, this is coupled with the use of "baby", an expression that could be interpreted as a slightly patronizing form of address.In this way, flow is extended even to that which is seen as most alien.Paradoxically, though, the very possibility of extending flow to a project commonly associated with non-whiteness betrays that this project was already outside the stream of flows, and by implication that the experience of flow already belongs to the inhabitance of privilege, in this case whiteness (i.e. the privileged position in race relations, see Hübinette et al. 2012).[198] Culture Unbound, Volume 5, 2013

Orientations Towards Social Democracy
Despite its circulation in society, the flow discourse is definitely outnumbered in Swedish hip hop by various critiques of societal inequalities.In these critiques, the historically dominant Social Democratic party is frequently addressed.Timbuktu's "Ett brev" (A letter) takes the form of a letter to the then prime minister, Social Democrat Göran Persson.The lyrics critique topics such as the increased racism in Europe, criminalization of drugs, and as seen in this excerpt, US global power.While critical, the letter format requests a dialogue (to which the Social Democrats replied), and the tone also expresses a certain admiration for power ("if you are the leader, lead us right").This is in stark contrast to the anarchism of LoopTroop's early "Jag sköt Palme" (I shot Palme): one man lost his life and we have a national scandal ok he won a couple of elections, but people die in thousands due to immoral weapons sales a politician is slick but also replaceable just new personnel for them, who run the country a new arsenal for them, who run the business Here, the Social Democratic party, with its leaders Palme and Persson, is described as just replaceable marionettes in a capitalist system run by industry.The Culture Unbound, Volume 5, 2013 [199] death of "one man" is rhetorically contrasted to the death of "thousands" as a result of the Swedish export of weapons, and party politics is cast as a theater that the ruling elites put in place just for show.It is clear that male rap artists in Sweden give voice to a variety of political views, ranging from the flow discourse via a dialogue with power, to an uncompromising anarchism.I would like to contrast this anarchist position with the following account: Here we see a diasporic perspective on social democracy in Sweden.The role played by Palme in international politics is praised, particularly in relation to Sweden's policies at the time of the military coup that overthrew Allende in Chile 1973.However, Persson is not seen as fulfilling Palme's politics, as he did not confront the UK's sheltering of Pinochet.Thus, foreign policy is not seen as representing Sweden's Chilean diaspora.This example indicates that orientations towards social democracy can be shaped not only by class but also by migration and diaspora.However, while the concept of diaspora has been useful in highlighting transnational processes beyond the boundaries of nation-states, it has the drawback of being used primarily for non-whites, and thus functions to some extent as a euphemism for race: "In other words, if we draw attention to the diasporic nature of a population, does that serve as an excuse not to think of them as belonging to the settler nation, which then falls into the same trap as calling a group 'immigrant'?"(Kalra, Kaur & Hutnyk 2005: 14).In this way, one could say that race can also be a factor in shaping political orientations.If Advance Patrol's position emerges out of a non-white experience, one might speculate that Loop-Troop's attack on Palme is more likely to come from a white, non-diasporic position, from which it is easier to think in class-only terms.Since class and race intersect to varying degrees in relation to both the flow discourse and to social democracy, class analysis must be widened to include race.

The Comforts of Racialized Place
Despite the geographical and intellectual origin of the very concept of race in Europe, not to mention the explicitly race-based policies that characterized both its fascist regimes and its colonial empires, the continent often is marginal at best in discourses on race and racism, in particular with regard to contemporary configurations (El-Tayeb 2011:xv) As El-Tayeb notes, the importance of race is often not acknowledged in Europe (with the exception of the UK).This sustains an image of race being an issue anywhere but in contemporary Europe.However, race is very much alive in shaping notions of who belongs to European nations, in which non-white Europeans are repeatedly cast as foreigners regardless of their citizenship and where they were born: The national often is the means by which exclusion takes place; minorities are positioned beyond the horizon of national politics, culture and history, frozen in the state of migration through the permanent designation of another, foreign national identity that allows their definition as not Danish, Spanish, Hungarian, etc.A look at various European countries indicates however that this in itself is a continentwide pattern, based on beliefs and strategies that cannot fully be explained within the national context.(El-Tayeb 2011:xx) The importance of race is increasingly recognized in the Swedish and Nordic context by postcolonial, critical race and whiteness scholars (de los Reyes, Molina & Mulinari 2002;Mattsson 2005;Lundström 2007;Hübinette et al. 2012).Rap artists frequently address both the racialization of Swedishness and various forms of discrimination: I'm ashamed to be Swedish wish it was known that I was more foreign [---] but believe it or not, we love Sweden we are Sweden, and we are the Swedish future (Advance Patrol, "Vi ladder", 2007) jag skäms över att vara svensk önskar att det var känt att jag vore mer utländsk [---] men tro det eller ej, vi älskar Sverige vi är Sverige, och vi är den svenska framtiden Here, the non-white group Advance Patrol describes some ambivalence towards Swedishness.On the one hand, popular racism and the rise of the Sweden Democrats make them ashamed to be Swedish.On the other hand, they also challenge the racist discourse that places non-white Swedes outside of the nation, by writing themselves into the present and future of Swedishness: "we are the Swedish future".The discourse that equals whiteness and Swedishness is simultaneously resisted and resignified.doormen asking "do you have a member's card?" just say you don't want me here, don't take me for an idiot vakter som frågar "har du nåt medlemskort?"säg bara att du inte vill ha mig här, ta mig inte för idiot Culture Unbound, Volume 5, 2013 [201] (Ison & Fille, "Dum jävel", 2004) people are struggling hard to earn a living still it is said that we're exploiting the system (The Latin Kings, "Rötter", 1997) folk sliter hårt för att tjäna levebrödetmen ändå det snackas att vi suger ut systemet These are just a few examples of racial discrimination described in my sample, ranging from everyday racist encounters such as not being let into a club, to racialization in the labor market.The club example can perhaps also be read as a metaphor for the status of racism in contemporary Sweden: it exists on a routine basis but is often concealed, making it hard to acknowledge race as a category of durable inequality.The last extract comments on non-whites being relegated to low-paid, low-status work, which is consistent with Kamali's work on structural discrimination: "Discrimination is thus not an exception in working life, but a foundational principle for the organization, distribution and rewarding of work" (Kamali 2006: 188 my translation).It also makes visible how the discrimination faced by non-whites is returned to them as an accusation.From a psychoanalytical point of view, Kilomba describes this logic as a perverse interpretation on behalf of colonizers: "The original information -'We are taking what is Theirs' or 'We are racist' -is denied and projected onto the 'Others': 'They come here and take what is Ours', 'They are racist'."(Kilomba 2010: 22) Perhaps the most prominent aspect of racialization dealt with in Swedish hip hop is place.In this early song, the 1995/96 hit "Tre gringos" [Three gringos] by white male group Just D, the notion of "gringo" -denoting white men in foreign, particularly Latin American, territory -is drawn on when describing race and place in contemporary Sweden.Although this is an exception in a hip hop context, it nevertheless expresses a more widely circulated discourse: we saw an ad for a cool saxophone and we ended up on a trip so far from home we took the blue metro line from Fridhemsplan it felt as if it took at least half a day [---] oh-ooh three gringos, three gringos ah-aah in the suburb-jungle, in the jungle we ended up someplace where we felt lost though there were both Konsum, McDonalds and a post office there were strange people in weird clothes almost as if it the weather was warmer we were like strangers in a foreign land shipwrecked, lost on a foreign shore everybody stared at us (Just D, "Tre gringos", 1995/1996) vi såg en annons om en schysst saxofon sen blev det en tripp till så långt hemifrån vi tog blå linjen nere från Fridhemsplan det kändes som om det tog minst halva dan [---] oh-ooh tre gringos, tre gringos ah-aah i förortsdjungeln, i djungeln vi hade hamnat nånstans där vi kände oss lost fast det fanns både Konsum, McDonalds och post det var konstiga människor i lustiga kläder och nästan som om det vart varmare väder som främlingar var vi i främmande land skeppsbrutna, vilse på främmande strand alla stirrade på oss [202] Culture Unbound, Volume 5, 2013 The narrative depicts how the "we", prompted by a saxophone advert (-music transcends all barriers), undertake a trip from white inner-city Stockholm (Fridhemsplan) to a racialized suburb.Research has demonstrated the convergences and contrasts of urban marginality in different contexts (Wacquant 2008).Critical race scholars in Sweden speak of a racialized geography (Molina 2005;Lundström 2007).This is clearly revealed in the song.The narrative constructs a difference between white inner-city Stockholm and the Other place.The "we" is represented as belonging to the former, which has taken on a comfortable character.Comfort, according to Ahmed, is about some bodies more than others "fitting" into certain places: To be orientated, or to be at home in the world, is also to feel a certain comfort: we might only notice comfort as an affect when we lose it -when we become uncomfortable.The word "comfort" suggests well-being and satisfaction, but it also suggests an ease and an easiness.(Ahmed 2006: 134) The "we" of the song leave their white place, and at once become uncomfortable, uneasy and disoriented (feel lost, shipwrecked, stared at).Despite the similarity of grocery stores (Konsum), fast food (McDonalds) and post offices, the suburb is presented as marked by a profound difference.The trip, which in reality takes no more than 15-20 minutes, is exaggerated into "at least half a day", and the destination portrayed as "so far from home".What causes this imagined distance is apparently the otherness of the people and place: "strange people in funny clothes", "foreign land" with "warmer weather".In this way, an exoticizing discourse is established where the suburb becomes a place not quite belonging to the Swedish nation, as Molina puts it: It is not just a stigmatization of the people associated with these places, but that the places themselves are turned into the Other.The places are identified as "problem areas", "vulnerable areas", "segregated areas".What is expressed through these designations is that these places are not really possible to identify, they do not belong to the Swedish nation and exist in the margin.(Molina 2005: 100 my translation) Furthermore, the suburb is described as a "jungle".Drawing upon a distinction between white civilization and wild savages, a colonial imagination is mapped onto today's racialization of people and places (Molina 2005).Thus, in "Tre gringos", we find a very clear manifestation of the Swedish racialization of people and places.A racialized discourse draws on colonial imagery and is also materialized in the allocation of housing resources along racial divides.It is in relation to this racialization that the sustained theme of place in Swedish hip hop becomes intelligible.
While the anti-racism in Swedish hip hop contains several elements, expressing affinity with one's place of belonging is prevalent.For instance, The Latin Kings named their albums "Välkommen till förorten" (Welcome to the suburbs) in 1994, "I skuggan av betongen" (In the shadow of the concrete) in 1997, and "Mitt kvarter" (My hood) in 2000, and today's artists include Adam Tensta, who takes Culture Unbound, Volume 5, 2013 [203] on the very name of his suburb.This is in line with the widespread emphasis on "representing" one's "hoods" in hip hop culture, as a response to racialized stigmatization of places (Forman 2002).
Ahmed describes how social norms become affective by being associated with happiness, which simultaneously constructs the others -women, queers and nonwhites -as unhappy in various ways (Ahmed 2010).In such situations, the subordinated can sometimes advance by disavowing that which is regarded as unhappy: passing as heterosexual by not coming out, passing as white by changing names.A more thorough approach, however, involves challenging the discursive and affective distribution of happiness.For instance, LGBTQ pride marches operate by claiming happiness for that which is normatively deemed unhappy and shameful.I would argue that the insistence of many hip hop artists in Sweden on celebrating their suburbs works in a similar way.In claiming pride for their suburban belongings, they refuse to share whiteness as a "happiness-object" and see little reason to conceal or escape their racialized place of belonging.In this way, I would argue that over the last 20 years, many rap artists (but not all, as we have seen) have made a significant anti-racist intervention in the racialized geographies of contemporary Sweden.

Gender: Masculinized Resistance
We have now seen, through the song "Tre gringos", how processes of racialization shape urban place in contemporary Sweden.Through the use of colonial imagery suburbs are understood as a "jungle", which is contrasted to the white civilization.By proudly representing "the hood" in public, many rap artists refuse to accept the association between racialized suburbs and unhappiness.Consequently they have been portrayed as street-style postcolonial organic intellectuals (Sernhede 2007: 19,146).While there is some truth to this image, it might not be the whole truth.In this section, I would like to complicate the celebration of racial resistance by focusing on how discourses on gender and sexuality are drawn on when contesting racism: Countering stereotypical representations can be done in several ways, according to Hall, including reversing stereotypes and promoting positive images of the subordinated group (Hall 1997).A more complex strategy, however, involves elaborately playing with stereotypical representations and thereby, so to speak, contesting them from within.Thus, rather than simply rejecting the discourse on suburbsas-jungle, in this song black male rap artist Ayo uses the stereotype for his own purposes, invoking the Disney "Jungle Book" film.This is interesting in itself, since parts of this film are broadcast each Christmas on Swedish public service television, and watching the film has almost become an attribute of Swedishness.However, while the white subjects in "Tre gringos" were lost and disoriented in the jungle, the subject here declares his love for the place and cannot imagine moving elsewhere.Comparing himself to Baloo the bear, the subject inhabits the dangerous jungle with ease.The "wild jungle" thus allows him to present himself as a competent survivor, navigating the dangers and traps.The subject possesses both knowledge and a force that allows him to occasionally knock down his pupils.Foucault notes that "discourse can be both an instrument and an effect of power, but also a hindrance, a stumbling-block, a point of resistance and a starting point for an opposing strategy" (Foucault 1990: 101).I would argue that the racist discourse on suburbs-as-jungle is not only parodied and resignified here, but also works as such a starting-point for an opposing strategy: it becomes a resource for constructing masculinity.If the jungle is wild and dangerous, then the non-white masculine subject turns out to be its master.In this extract we see a similar strategy.Rather than rejecting the stereotype of the overly sexual black man, the stereotype is used to mock the racist accusation that immigration deprives white men of "their" women.But if such resignification is subversive in terms of race, it also provides an opportunity for constructing the subject as heterosexually successful.The articulation reinscribes cross-sex sexual conquest as a masculine virtue, and buys into a discourse where relations between Culture Unbound, Volume 5, 2013 [205] men are central, and women are used as pawns in the game between men (although a queer reading complicates the straightness of such male homosocial desire, see Berggren 2012).
ainaziz are true mommy's fag cowards see me in the center and label me a dealer all guys in the block are not criminals but if you mess with us we'll strike back (The Latin Kings, "Ainaziz", 2000) revenge, revenge, that's what I said [---] shoot the racists, and the area turns red! (Infinite Mass, "Area turns red", 1995, lyrics originally in English) ainaziz är riktiga mammas bög bangare ser mig i centrum och stämplar mig som langare alla grabbar i betongen är inte kriminella men jiddrar ni med oss så kommer det att smälla We have seen how normative notions of gender and sexuality are reproduced when racist discourses are parodied and resignified.This also turns out to be the case when racism is combated more explicitly.In the first of these extracts, the institutional racism of the police is called into question.The repeated homogenization of young non-white men as criminals and drug dealers is exposed and challenged.However, this important anti-racist intervention is co-articulated with certain notions of gender and sexuality.First of all, the focus on the stereotype of the criminal young man rather than, for example, the stereotype of the vulnerable young woman restricted by male relatives, makes the racism described a gendered experience.Furthermore, while countering the racism of the police, the song itself polices gender.The well-known figures of the mommy's boy, the faggot and the coward are ascribed to the police in order to deprive them of their masculinity.The insult presumes that the police force is strictly male, which makes the presence of female police offers invisible.It also relies on and reinforces the norm that "masculinity" consists of heterosexuality, distancing oneself from the "feminine", and non-cowardliness, as well as the idea that deviations from this norm should be attacked.We also see a willingness to engage in violent behavior, a readiness to strike back, which is even more pronounced in the second extract.Here, racism is combated through violent revenge: "shoot the racists".
Even if we agree that (some) rap artists in some sense are postcolonial intellectuals on the street, an intersectional analysis reveals the importance of gender and sexuality to this project.The racism described and countered is largely based on masculine experiences, while the means of challenging racism frequently mobilizes elements of "masculinity" whether in playing with stereotypes or in more explicit forms of combat.Masculine norms and the policing of gender and sexuality boundaries thus serve to make this anti-racism an exclusive practice: certainly [206] Culture Unbound, Volume 5, 2013 challenging racism, but also circulating a discourse that marginalizes women and is degrading to non-normative men.To some degree, race intersects with gender and sexuality.

Degrees of Intersectionality -Beyond "Masculinities" and "Addition/Constitution"
This article has addressed negotiations about class, race and gender in Swedish rap lyrics between 1991 and 2011 by male artists.First, it was shown how discourses on class varied.They ranged from a flow discourse from a privileged position, via an anarchist critique of the ruling elites, to invoking working-class experience and perspectives.Classed discourses were not independent of discourses on race -they intersected to varying degrees -and the more privileged ones were shaped by the inhabitance of whiteness.Focusing on race and place in the next section, I showed how suburbs are racialized and described through colonial discourses that contrast white civilization with the jungle of the Other.Many rap artists challenge this sort of racialization by "representing" their "hoods" and thereby refusing to comply in territorial stigmatization.However, resistance against racialization is not independent of discourses on gender and sexualitythese categories intersect to some degree.In many cases, but not always, the challenging of racialization is co-articulated with discourses that draw on gendered experiences and police the boundaries of gender and sexuality in normative ways.This interconnectedness of class, race and gender calls for an intersectional analysis -which has not been sufficiently discussed in gender research on men.But how can we account for the way class, race and gender intersect here?
In gender studies on men, the standard way of acknowledging differences is in terms of "masculinities" in the plural.This conceptualization, however, is unfortunate in evoking an image of a plurality of different gender configurations.While this may sometimes be the case, it does not accurately describe cases where there are differences in terms of class and racial positions, but where gendered discourses more or less cut across such divides.As we have seen, there are very real differences in my sample between positions shaped by class and race, in terms of flows, orientations and comforts.At the same time, normative notions of gender and sexuality are often shared across racial and class divides.I would therefore hesitate to describe these intersections in terms of different "masculinities".This would be a conceptual move which would risk converting differences in race and class positions into a gender difference, as well as sustaining what Pascoe calls an industry of cataloguing "types" of masculinity: gay, black, Chicano, working class, middle class, Asian, gay black, gay Chicano, white working class, militarized, transnational business, New Man, negotiated, versatile, healthy, toxic, counter, and cool masculinities, among others.(Pascoe 2007: 8) Culture Unbound, Volume 5, 2013 [207] In intersectional debates, on the other hand, the question of universality and particularity is usually framed in terms of the opposition between "additive" and "constitutive" approaches.Whereas "additive" means that power dimensions can be separated or drawn together as one wishes, "constitutive" implies an entangled relationship where it is not possible to simply isolate one axis of oppression.The latter defines an intersectional approach.Let me quote from two classic texts: As a Black lesbian feminist comfortable with the many different ingredients of my identity, and a woman committed to racial and sexual freedom from oppression, I find I am constantly being encouraged to pluck out some one aspect of myself and present this as the meaningful whole, eclipsing or denying the other parts of self.(Lorde 1984: 11) Race, gender and class cannot be tagged on to each other mechanically for, as concrete social relations, they are enmeshed in each other and the particular intersections involved produce specific effects.(Anthias & Yuval-Davis 1983: 62, my emphasis) Here we see how an intersectional perspective is contrasted to approaches that privilege one identity category or power dimension at the expense of a more complex understanding.While these formulations share a commitment to challenging mono-categorical analyses, there is also a difference in nuance that seems to linger on today.For Lorde, the "constitutive" or intersectional call lies primarily in acknowledging the importance of several power dimensions.For Anthias and Yuval-Davis, there is also a stronger claim involved, namely the production of specific effects."Constitution" is thus somewhat ambiguous: it can mean refusing to disavow important dimensions, or alternatively that particular locations generate specific effects.My purpose in drawing attention to this distinction is to ask just how specific these effects are in different situations, and by implication to consider thinking in terms of degrees of intersectionality.Just as it has been important to challenge mono-categorical analyses for intersectional scholarship on women, when we talk about men it is perhaps equally important to resist the prevalent discourse that displaces men's oppressive gender practices onto some "Other men" (Gottzén & Jonsson 2012).It is thus of importance that we are able to account for the cases of mutual shaping as well as the instances where gender and race do not intersect to the degree that they produce specific effects -in short, we should be able to account for the varying degrees of intersectionality.
While a notion of degrees of intersectionality seems called for by the focus on men, it is also consistent with some recent conceptual discussions on intersectionality.Discussing intersectionality in relation to political science, Hancock considers the relation between categories to be an empirical question (Hancock 2007: 64).Writing from a critical realist perspective Walby, Armstrong and Strid describe the addition/constitution dichotomy as mistaken, since "the concept of mutual constitution is too simple and insufficiently ambitious to grasp the varying and uneven contribution of sets of unequal social relations to the outcome" (Walby, Armstrong & Strid 2012: 235).From a legal perspective Makkonen distin- [208] Culture Unbound, Volume 5, 2013 guishes between three forms of intersectional discrimination (in a wide sense) depending on the amount of interconnectedness (Makkonen 2002).Hence, multiple discrimination occurs when a person is discriminated against on different grounds, independently of each other, compound discrimination occurs when a person faces the combined effects of different and distinct forms of discrimination, while intersectional discrimination (in a restricted sense) takes place when it is not possible to determine on which specific ground a person was discriminated against.Other writers introduce concepts such as "saturation" and "interference" (Staunaes 2003;Moser 2006).However, I would suggest that a common thrust of these discussions is in fact an attempt to account for the varying degrees to which categories of inequality intersect.While we always need to be careful about geometrical metaphors, I find the notion of degrees of intersectionality helpful in avoiding the problems of lining up social divisions in terms of "masculinities" as well as the dichotomous view of "addition" vs. "constitution".Rather, inequalities shape, inform, contradict and intersect with each other to different degrees in different contexts.