“Just Look at Sweden!”: Archaeology of a Conditioned Response

Abstract

Ever since the 1930s, the notion of “Swedish exceptionalism” has been a constant in the Western European consciousness. Since the very outset, the image of this nation-laboratory has engendered both fascination and repulsion. Its political and social experiences have been consistently interpreted and transfigured according to two meta-narratives, describing a technical modernity that offers either salvation or a threat. Even the rhetoric surrounding the “exhaustion” of the model turns out to be a topos that is recycled over and over again. The historical development of the role that an imaginary Sweden is called upon to play – as an exemplar of peaceful resolution of class conflict, a prototype of an individualistic society or a technocratic Big Brother – mirrors the relationship that the European collective mind-set of the 20^th century (and beyond?) maintains with its own values, in which it seems that dreams and fears must be embodied in a concrete, “distant” society in order to be represented or exorcised.