Kjetil Ansgar Jaboksen

Kjetil Ansgar Jakobsen is professor of Intellectual History at Nord University, Bodø. He is PL for "Words and Violence. Literary Intellectuals Between Democracy and Dictatorship 1933-52". He was a visiting professor to the EHESS, Paris in 2024-2025 and the Henrik Steffens professor of Nordic Studies at the Humboldt university, Berlin 2011-2014. 

The project

Title: Words and Violence. Literary intellectuals between democracy and dictatorship 1933-1952

"The Words and Violence research group analyzes the democratic resilience and vulnerability of cultural life in the 1930s and ’40s, using statistical and qualitative approaches drawn from a range of disciplines. This is done by comparing the Norwegian experience with that of other countries under fascist occupation during World War II, notably France. Researchers examine why writers, translators, and intellectuals made the choices they did, faced with censorship and terror, but also with generous public investment in culture, orchestrated by the dictatorship. The study and the narrative start with the so-called culture wars of the 1930s. The endpoint will be the year 1952, when DnF, the Norwegian writers’ association, allowed the NS writers, who had been expelled in 1945, to rejoin. In addition, Knut Hamsun, the key figure of the tragedy, died that same year. The aim is to produce solid knowledge about historical issues that are hotly debated and of obvious contemporary relevance, but that are rarely researched in a systematic way. Writers enjoy a privileged status in questions of Norwegian identity and self-understanding, thus the fascist engagement and "landssvik" (high treason) of Hamsun, Norway’s greatest novelist, remains nothing less than a national trauma."

Selective Bibliography

• 2025 . "Literary practices, capital structures and political position-taking: The Norwegian writers during World War II"  Poetics  2025 Literary practices, capital structures and political position-taking: The Norwegian writers during World War II - ScienceDirect With Hjellbrekke, Halvorsen and Arneberg.
• 2024 "Moralens kunst: Gisèle Sapiro og debatten om ytringsansvar og litteratur" [The art of morality. Gisèle Sapiro and the debate on the responsability of the author”. Norsk Litteraturvitenskapelig Tidsskrift. Gabriel Trade. Fragment av fremtidig historie [Introduction and posgtscript to the Norwegian edition of Tarde’s Fragment d’histoire future.  Oslo: Cappelen Damm.
• 2020 The Cosmopolitics of the Camera. Albert Kahn’s Archives de la Planète, 2020, Bristol UK : Intellect Ltd). (350 pages, coeditor/cowriter Trond Bjorli).
• 2016 Etter Charlie Hebdo. Ytringsfrihetens krise i historisk lys. [Historical perspectives on the Charlie Hebdo massacre and the current Freedom Expression Crisis],  Oslo: Press Forlag. 320 pages.
• 2015 Krigsbilder. Kunst under Okkupasjonen 1940-45. Bomuldsfabrikken, Arendal  Cowritten with Kathrine Lund. 150 pages [Images of War. The Visual Arts in Norway during the World War II Nazi occupation]