Levande historia: kolonialism, exceptionalism och komplicitet. En diskursanalys av svenska historieläroböcker

Sammanfattning: This paper explores discourses about European colonialism and particularly Sweden's colonial legacy in Swedish upper secondary school history textbooks. All three textbooks are currently in use and are based on the latest school curricula from 2011. The theoretical framework used to analyze the textbooks consists of post-colonial feminist theories combined with a post structuralist perspective on language and history. In this discourse analysis, concepts such as eurocentrism, othering, development narrative and colonial complicity help decode the material. Furthermore historical facts are brought in to highlight what is being excluded from the texts. The paper's main finding is that, even though work has been done to clear the texts of explicitly racist stereotypes and prejudices, the three textbooks are still permeated by a colonial mentality, constructed around various discourses of European superiority. When it comes to the role Sweden played in the colonial project the discourse is that of exceptionalism. Sweden is seen as an innocent bystander, a good, peace loving exception from the rest of the European colonial powers. The textbooks' colonial mentality and exceptionalism is lastly connected to a wider context.