”Haluan kuulla sinun näkökulmasi, juuri sinun”

Toiselle kirjoittamisen eettiset ulottuvuudet Eira Stenbergin romaaneissa Häikäisy ja Gulliverin tytär

• Riitta Jytilä Turun yliopisto

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30665/av.74877

Abstract

”I Want to Hear Your Perspective, Sincerely”. The Ethics of Addressing in Eira Stenberg’s Novels Häikäisy and Gulliverin tytär

Epistolarity emerged into the Finnish novel writing of the 1980s. Especially women writers deployed this convention of intimate writing that provided a way to consider the process of communication and encountering the other. In this article, I study Eira Stenberg’s novels Häikäisy (1987) and Gulliverin tytär (1993). Stenberg’s novels bring out the themes of writing and reading by incorporating letters, diaries and founded messages and challenge the idea of language as a transparent device representing “the naturally given” voices. The positions between the writer and the reader are in a state of constant transformation. This is illustrated by the problem of the name and naming, for example. These transformations e.g. into a translator or a reader, are ethically important because they deconstruct the monologist and formal concept of the narrative voice, but at the same time, reconstruct new values and mediations between the subjects. The writer and the reader are not subjects totally determined by the structural positions, but active and response interpreters of the texts.