Essentiaalisten kategorioiden koettelua : performatiivisuus saamelaisten poliittisen identiteetin ja subjektiuden analyysissa

Authors

• Sanna Valkonen

Abstract

In the analysis of different ethnic groups and their political action, there often arises the problem of essentializing these groups, in other words, analytical groupism. The problematic consequence of this tendency is that the groups in question and their assumed substance are taken as given. In this article, the theory of performativity is applied to avoid analytical groupism in the analysis of the political identity and subjectivity of one ethnic group, the Sámi. The task is carried out by investigating Sámi ethnopolitical and discursive practices that produce and maintain coherent Sáminess. On the collective level, the Sámi identity is based largely on the recognized position of the Sámi as a people, more precisely, as an indigenous people. The practices of constructing and maintaining the Sámi as a people and an indigenous people are examined as questions of productive and reiterative power, i.e. as performative. Thus, performativity refers to the reiterative power of discourse to produce the phenomena it names and regulates. It is argued that Sámi ethnopolitical and discursive practices of performing the Sámi as a people and an indigenous people are performative acts in which power functions performatively within relatively established discourses.