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Once again someone in the news today commenting on the Mohammed drawings said something about how surprising it is that Denmark are losing its good reputation in the world, as a helpful and tolerant country, since Denmark is considered as one of the most tolerant countries in the world. Danes loves to say this to one another, usually the argument is that since we were the first country in the world to allow publishing of pornography, we are also supposed to be the most tolerant and liberal. That is a total joke (one could even argue a very fascist one) since pornography is one of the most stereotypical things in the world, so it is very hard for me to see that allowing pornography is an act of tolerance. It is not that I have anything against pornography at all, but using it as an argument for tolerance, is like saying that the Israelis by building a wall around the Palestinian areas, are showing respect and acceptance for their culture, because the want to preserve it!

PS: Lets also not forget that Denmark ususally is regarded as one of the most racist countries in the world - now where is the tolerance in that?

The Mohammed drawings are an excellent example of the problem of context. According to theorists such as Lawrence Grossberg and Bruno Latour context is never stable and has to be created through analysis. This point is nicely illustrated by the fact that the drawings show that context also can be used as a weapon in what ever agenda you might have. The Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten used Kaare Bluitgens book as a context for publishing the drawings, the Danish muslims who went to the Middle East to travel around telling people about the drawings used a picture from a French pig festival depicting a man posing as a pig, and told people he were posing as Mohammed – and so on – the list of examples are endless. And what do people say when confronted with this? They often use a very modern saying, stating that “this is out of context”. I would say that this statement surely is out of context! Because, in the world today – call it postmodern, amodern, latemodern or whatever you will – there is not such a thing as “out of context” (some would say that this saying never has made any meaning, for instance Bruno Latour). Context is continually constructed and cannot be used any more as a counter argument, because argument equals context. What should we do instead? Perhaps ground our arguments on ideas or opinions, and not on an old reference to context as something warranting reality and truth – there is no such thing as truth, only ideology, ideas and religion used for creating mediated contexts! So lets drop context and talk about the real thing instead - it’s there anyway.