Post-colonial gaslighting and Greenlandic independence: When ontological insecurity sustains hierarchy
| Published date | 01 December 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00108367231163816 |
| Author | Emil Sondaj Hansen |
| Date | 01 December 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/00108367231163816
Cooperation and Conflict
2023, Vol. 58(4) 460 –484
© The Author(s) 2023
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DOI: 10.1177/00108367231163816
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Post-colonial gaslighting and
Greenlandic independence:
When ontological insecurity
sustains hierarchy
Emil Sondaj Hansen
Abstract
This article proposes the concept of ‘post-colonial gaslighting’ to analyse subtle forms of
colonialism and domination in international relations and the persistence of hierarchies in the
international system. It asks why Greenland, despite electoral majorities for independence,
remains a part of the Kingdom of Denmark. Going beyond existing materialist explanations
focusing on lack of economic development, the article deploys the framework of ontological
insecurity to show how Danish elites through techniques of gaslighting challenge the post-colonial
status of Greenland and prevent agency. The Greenlandic colonial experience is rejected and
delegitimised, in turn providing the foundation for blaming Greenlanders for failing to live up to
the criteria of statehood. The article thus breaks with widespread assumptions of voluntarism
in the literature on non-sovereignty, as well as introducing mechanisms of contestation to the
literature on ontological security. The theoretical contribution of the article is the conceptual
marriage of the hierarchy and ontological security literatures through the concept of post-
colonial gaslighting.
Keywords
Greenland, hierarchy, non-sovereignty, ontological security, post-colonial
Introduction
In 2021, 300 years after the arrival of the Danish missionary Hans Egede and 100 years
after the first visit of the Danish monarch, Greenland remained a part of the Kingdom of
Denmark.1 Behind the veil of what is portrayed as an equal relationship between Denmark
and Greenland, one finds forcibly removed children, hidden American nuclear weapons
and the world’s highest suicide rate (Hersher, 2016). Despite Greenland’s colonial status
formally ending in 1953 (Alfredsson, 2004), the colonial legacy in contemporary
Corresponding author:
Emil Sondaj Hansen, Independent Scholar, Warthestraße 16, Berlin, 12051, Germany.
Email: emilsondaj@gmail.com
1163816CAC0010.1177/00108367231163816Cooperation and ConflictHansen
research-article2023
Article
Hansen 461
Greenland is ever-present. This has led to a strong and vibrant independence movement
and widespread consensus in Greenland about the goal of independence and statehood.
After achieving ‘Home Rule’ in 1979, the Greenlandic government achieved ‘Self-Rule’
in 2009. The Greenlandic government can therefore gradually take over responsibilities
from the Danish government and unilaterally declare independence. Yet the achievement
of statehood remains an elusive and distant goal. This article asks why this unequal rela-
tionship, understood in the International Relations (IR) literature as a formal hierarchy,
has proven so durable and why independence has not materialised despite widespread
domestic support (Skydsbjerg and Turnowsky, 2016).2
The Danish–Greenlandic relationship is nonetheless a ‘most-likely’ case for contrac-
tualist accounts of hierarchy since it can be exited at will.3 If sovereignty is the ‘prize’
that much of IR theory assumes, why does Greenland voluntarily subordinate to (or at
least stay in) a ‘narrow’ hierarchical relation with Denmark? This article uncovers a more
enduring and sticky ‘narrow’ hierarchical relationship between Greenlandic and Denmark
that is kept at bay through ontological insecurities and interactions with ‘broader’ hierar-
chies of the international system, namely the tension between indigenousness and moder-
nity. ‘Narrow’ hierarchies are understood as mutually beneficial and functional
relationships in which ‘super-ordinate and subordinate alike have some material, func-
tional and/or social interest’ in contrast to ‘broader hierarchies’ understood as ‘deep
structures or organized inequality’ (Zarakol, 2017: 7). I thus follow Zarakol’s (2017) call
to investigate how various ‘hierarchies interact’ (p. 4). The article ultimately complicates
both functionalist and rationalist explanations of hierarchy, as well as claims of a permis-
sive international system offering ‘choices’ rather than ‘imperatives’ to materially weak
actors and micro-states as ‘hierarchy à la carte’ (Sharman, 2017: 559, 572).
This article argues that the Greenlandic non-sovereign status is less of a ‘choice’ than
assumed in the rationalist literature on hierarchy. Bringing together two strands of what
Mantilla (2020) labels a ‘new generation of IR scholarship’ encompassing ‘ontological
security, stigmatization, stratification, status and hierarchies in world politics’ (p. 11), I
show how ontological insecurities sustain the hierarchical relation. To this effect, I
develop the theoretical concept of ‘post-colonial gaslighting’. Through this gaslighting,
Danish elites challenge Greenland’s status as a former colony and reject Greenlanders’
distinct post-colonial experience of reality. Drawing on psychological and sociological
work on gaslighting, I highlight how the mechanisms of ‘postcolonial gaslighting’ desta-
bilise perceptions of reality and thereby impede agency. When there is no objective way
to resolve competing claims about the inherent value of independence or the extent of
Danish post-colonial responsibility, the competing claims must be resolved in a different
way. The concept of post-colonial gaslighting shows that one vision of reality is por-
trayed as less legitimate than the other. This destabilising challenge to Greenlandic expe-
riences of the reality of the relationship contributes to ontological insecurity and prevents
action to be taken towards the realisation of independence.
The article begins by reviewing the existing literature on non-sovereignty, demon-
strating a common assumption of voluntarism in the literatures on Island Studies and
contractualist work on hierarchies. It then proceeds to outline the concept of ‘post-colo-
nial gaslighting’ and how this fills an important gap in the literature on ontological secu-
rity. This post-colonial gaslighting is then demonstrated empirically in two main sections.
The first section explores the encounter between different conceptions of what it means
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