Juha Ridanpää

Laughing at northernness: postcolonialism and metafictive irony in the imaginative geography

This paper examines the role played by literature in constructing regional otherness focusing on a case study of Northern Finland. In the case of the Finnish North the direct connections between literary tradition, cultural imaginativeness and spatial otherness have been distinctive. Literary stereotypes concerning northern exoticism and the romantics have formed an imaginary contrast with the southern culture, a homogeneous region without any contradictions, imagined by the southern culture in a manner that meets its own hegemonic needs. The defining of the North exclusively in terms of a binary opposition between nature and culture has implied a multidimensional exercise of power in which culture and civilization have justified their own existence by excluding their opposites. In this article northern literature is perceived as a ‘tool’ not only for constructing otherness but also for deconstructing and decolonizing it. Northern imagination is viewed from a metafictional perspective, and the focus is on how the postmodern northern irony is self-consciously concerned about its own social discursiveness, i.e. northern marginality. In the present case the metafictive approach also stands for a methodological possibility for geographers to view literary discourses of otherness more from above. Attention is focused on the eccentrically obtrusive northern artist Rosa Liksom, the pseudonym of a novelist/visual artist who has transformed her northern irony into an emancipatory project.

Geopolitics of Humour: The Muhammed Cartoon Crisis and the Kaltio Comic Strip Episode in Finland

Humour and cartoons are commonly perceived as practices of innocent entertainment, but the crisis following the publishing of twelve cartoons of the prophet Muhammed in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten finally proved what serious matters popular culture, cartoons and humour can be. One repercussion of this notorious cartoon crisis was the publication in Kaltio, a minor cultural journal produced in northern Finland, of a comic strip in which various questions concerning the Muhammed cartoon episode and the political hypocrisy of the Finnish government were discussed satirically. This precipitated another, albeit minor, crisis which was noted widely around the world. Through these two interlinked incidences, the present paper discusses how humour functions as a ‘tool’ giving impetus to various forms of geopolitical processes and discussions in a range of contextual circumstances and at different spatial levels, resulting in both politically affirmative and destructive effects. It also discusses how the geopolitical order, discourses and codes can divert the reception and interpretation of humour.

A masculinist northern wilderness and the emancipatory potential of literary irony

There has been an increasing body of critical research in modern literary geography claiming that forms of social oppression and injustice can become established through the institution of literature. It has also been stated that literature can equally well act as an emancipatory ‘tool’ through which subjugated histories are rewritten. This article is concerned with the colonialist history of Finnish northern literature, Lapland romanticism, the exoticism of nature and the interrelations of these with masculinism and sexist oppression. It discusses how northern nature is romanticized through literary stereotypes based on masculinist values and a multidimensional social process of sexism, and how the regional marginalization of northern Finland has been justified at the same time. The primary focus is on the emancipatory potential of untraditional northern literature, on a northern female author, Rosa Liksom, who through her unconventional literary irony has functioned as an emancipatory ‘project’ against the masculinist stereotypes of the northern wilderness. Liksoms literary irony serves as a metafictive ‘method’ working in pursuit of revealing its own discursive structure, as a strategy through which literary conventions and their wider social context become deconstructed.

‘Humour is Serious’ as a Geopolitical Speech Act: IMDb Film Reviews of Sacha Baron Cohen's The Dictator

Humour is a manifold cultural institution through which society and space become politicised. In this paper, the political nature of humour is discussed by dissecting the IMDb film reviews of Sacha Baron Cohens comedy, The Dictator (2012), a parody of democracy in which the topics of racism, political incorrectness and sexism, as well as their relationship to the discourses of Neo-Orientalism and the Global War on Terrorism, are present. The reviews are perceived as speech acts, which establish broader interpretative patterns through which audience may approach the questions related to the serious and political aspects of humour. The analysis focuses on how the ‘humour is serious’ claim and similar arguments are expressed in order to condemn or support the use of ‘immature’ and sophomoric humour within the context of politically sensitive issues. Similarly, the paper scrutinises how IMDb functions as a stage on which opportunity for political participation becomes accessible.

The media and the irony of politically serious situations: consequences of the Muhammed cartoons in Finland

This article discusses the connections between political conflicts and situational irony and their relationship to the media. The focus is on a continuum of ironic events that started from the crisis following the publication of the Muhammed cartoons in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, which led to a satirical comic strip being published on the web pages of Kaltio, a small cultural journal produced in Oulu, Northern Finland, and ended in the dismissal of the journal’s editor. The empirical discussion concentrates on how the newspaper Kaleva, representing the media, functioned as an active participant in the process of making the incidents surrounding the Kaltio comic strip episode appear ironic, even though the matter was in fact politically highly sensitive. The purpose is to illustrate how and with what intentions political discourses and various textual strategies such as explicit and implicit verbal irony are used. The main argument is that making politically sensitive situations appear ironic is a matter of positioning values, in this case raising the value of freedom of speech above religious norms.

Following the plot of Bengt Pohjanen's Meänmaa: narrativization as a process of creating regional identity

This paper discusses the artistic and cultural work of one minority author and regional activist, Bengt Pohjanen, and how it constitutes a means for mediating regional identity narratives, constructing Meänmaa, the region straddling the border between Sweden and Finland in the Tornio River Valley. We will approach narrativization as a creative social action, focusing on the performative, social and political aspects of regional stories, and by this means impugning the division between territorial, bounded, and networked, unbounded, conceptualizations of regions. We will follow the narrative plot of Bengt Pohjanens Meänmaa, pointing out how an artistic and cultural region becomes part of our social reality and how regional consciousness and identity become established and constantly renegotiated within and across national borders.

Pajala as a literary place: in the readings and footsteps of Mikael Niemi

This paper concerns the relationship between literature and tourism, with specific focus on the Swedish novelist Mikael Niemi and his influence on local tourism development in his home municipality of Pajala. Attention is paid to how the success of Niemis breakthrough novel Populärmusik från Vittula has turned Pajala into a well-known ‘literary place’, at the same time increasing tourism in the region. This paper discusses the literary meanings of Pajala by comparing two alternative ways of comprehending the idea of ‘Pajala as a literary place’. Pajala is approached as (1) a stage for the local and regional identities represented in Niemis novel, and (2) a re-produced real-world experience for ‘literary pilgrims’, tourists wandering in the footsteps of Mikael Niemi. This paper also discusses the contradictions and disharmonies between these two literary worlds and the implications that these may have for local development strategies based on literary tourism.

Border guarding and the politics of the body: an examination of the Finnish Border Guard service

In previous studies, the question of the state control over the bodies of people at border-crossing points has been of great interest, while less attention has been given to the bodies that carry out border surveillance and control. This article introduces a new perspective on the study of the state and gender by examining the imaginations and rationalities of state border guarding and the politics of the body in the Finnish Border Guard (FBG) service. By taking the body politics and gendered relations of border guarding as an analytical starting point, this study takes a step forward toward ‘feminizing’ the study of borders and border securitization. The article scrutinizes the depictions, articulations, and conceptualizations of the work competence in border guarding and the performances of female border guards in the official media of the FBG organization, as well as discusses how the interrelations of border guarding and body politics become structured around questions concerning masculine romantics, the (in)capacities of female officers and the embodied nature of border monitoring. The study shows the pervasive, and also controversial, nature of gendered imaginations and rationalities in the domain of border guarding in contemporary societies.

Politics of literary humour and contested narrative identity (of a region with no identity)

The paper concerns the reading of humour, literary imaginativeness, social structures, local identities, as well as their emancipation, and their interconnected nature. Humour is approached here as a tool through which the writer as well as the reader can self-consciously rise above the social and cultural discourses within which the text itself is written. These themes are discussed by investigating how literary humour is used in the process of narrativizing the marginalized histories and identities of the Tornedalen (Torne Valley) region of Sweden. The specific focus is on the humour of novelist Mikael Niemi, a native of the region, and his novel Popularmusik Från Vittula. The paper examines how Niemi’s literary humour is embedded in the questions of spatiality and otherness, and how they are both constructed and contested through irony directed at the common regional stereotypes of Tornedalen, a ‘region with no identity’. The key argument here concerns how perceiving the world through humour, and humour through social criticism, are alternative manners of acknowledging, understanding and interpreting the processes on-going in space and society.

Ethnic representations and social exclusion: Sáminess in Finnish Lapland tourism promotion

ABSTRACT This paper discusses the complexity and multidimensionality of ethnic representations in tourism promotion. In existing studies of indigenous tourism it has been emphasized how the representations of ethnicity are created, implemented and filtered through certain cultural and ideological structures, connected to wider political processes of othering and marginalization. This paper analyzes the representations of Sáminess in Finnish Lapland tourism brochures by counter-reading material against the theoretical viewpoints in which Sámi culture and people are perceived as othered discourses within Finnish Lapland tourism promotion. Through the analyses of Sámi representations it is demonstrated how tourism brochures not only promote places but that they can also produce politically loaded discourses and present power issues that reflect the political structures of the surrounding society. The paper also discusses the social aspects of the prevalent media climate in ethnic and indigenous issues from a wider perspective and, furthermore, ponders in what ways these touristic representations reflect the general discourse of minority and indigenous issues.