ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the necrogeopolitics of the Danish welfare state as a privileged global player. Danish welfare, reserved for the few, is dependent on suffering and death elsewhere, and the chapter explores how Denmark got rich and stays rich by taking advantage of global systems of inequality and exploitation. Drawing on Slavoj Žižek’s psychoanalytical concept of a “national Thing,” the chapter analyzes how Danish nationalism is tied to particular fantasies and ways of enjoying. The Danish “national Thing” produces and upholds an idea that Danes are entitled to Danish enjoyment, which conceals necrogeopolitical aspects of Danish affluence and legitimates xenophobia and racism. Placing Danish affluence in a global context inserts a call for taking responsibility for the suffering one causes, even from a distance, and the trauma of this responsibility crystalizes the limits of liberal universality.
