Date of Award
5-11-2025
Date Published
June 2025
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
Communication and Rhetorical Studies
Advisor(s)
Erin Rand
Keywords
colonial amnesia;Danish national identity;decolonial studies;IUD campaign;postcolonial studies;public memory
Subject Categories
Communication | Social and Behavioral Sciences
Abstract
This thesis explores how colonial amnesia manifests rhetorically in media representations and public discourse about Denmark’s IUD campaign in Greenland. Beginning in the mid-1960s, this state-led initiative systematically targeted Greenlandic Inuit girls and women, fitting them with IUDs as part of a nationwide birth control campaign, some without their consent or knowledge. During the campaign’s most intensive years from the mid-1960s to mid-1970s, approximately 4,500 girls and women – half of the fertile female population – were subjected to this reproductive violence. The spiral campaign was largely forgotten by the Danish public until an investigative podcast, Spiralkampagnen, brought it to public attention in May 2022. Over five episodes, two Danish journalists narrate the campaign’s violence, drawing on archival materials and interviews with Greenlandic Inuit women. Through a rhetorical analysis of the podcast Spiralkampagnen and the public discourse that followed its release, I identify multiple rhetorical strategies of “forgetting” that sustain Denmark’s colonial amnesia by obscuring the campaign’s colonial underpinnings. This amnesia, I argue, is both enabled by and reinforces the national-sentimental narrative of Denmark as a benevolent colonial caretaker – a story that continues to shape the Danish public imagination. These rhetorical strategies, regardless of intent, downplay the colonial logics that enabled the campaign and allow the state to evade accountability for its enduring consequences. By tracing how colonial amnesia manifests in discourse, this thesis shows how contemporary framings of the spiral campaign both reflect and reinforce dominant narratives of national innocence, hindering efforts to confront colonial legacies and address their ongoing impacts.
Access
Open Access
Recommended Citation
Madsen, Cæcilie Paarup, "Resisting (Un)Accountability: Rhetorical Strategies of Forgetting Denmark’s IUD Campaign in Greenland" (2025). Theses - ALL. 934.
https://surface.syr.edu/thesis/934
