Opiskelijaliike kertomuksena

Authors

• Matti Hyvärinen

Abstract

The concept of social movements is as such a narrative concept and a metaphor-in-time. The cause, the development of the hero, the quest, the plot and the peripeteia, the decisive turn of the story, guide our conception of the development of social movements as well. Sharing the narrative of a movement means a kind of ’membership’ in this movement. It is maintained, then, that social movements have a need to monopolize the narrative told about themselves. This was especially obvious in the Finnish student movement of the 1970s. Traces of this monopoly can still be seen in the ’confessional’ literature of the 1980s and in the autobiographical interviews conducted by the writer in the late 1980s and in the first months of 1990. It is argued that comparing the ’official’ stories of movement organizations with the ’private’ autobiographical stories will help to understand both the movement and the ways of remembering it.