Samaan aikaan toisaalla. 1910-luvun siirtolaiskuvaukset toisin kuvittelemisen tilana
Abstract
Simultaneously Elsewhere. Imagining Migrancy in Early 20th Century Finnish Literature
The article discusses the functions of early 20th century Finnish language fiction on FinnishAmerican migrancy. The author suggests that fiction depicting migrant life served its contemporary readership as a utopic ”elsewhere” where mobility, gender and agency could be articulated differently from what could be done in literature depicting life in Finland. The argument is developed through readings of three reoccurring tropes articulating migrant subjectivity in fiction: the family (or, rather, its absence), the tramp and the urban housemaid.
From a transnational perspective, the article engages with, even if respectfully distances itself from, earlier research on FinnishAmerican migrant literature with its strong emphasis on reading fiction as representing reallife migrant. Instead, it is proposed that it might be fruitful to approach migrant literature and Finnish literature depicting life in Finland as a diffuse whole, where ideological investments are to an extent bound to locations but not explained causally by them.
