A masculinist northern wilderness and the emancipatory potential of literary irony

Abstract

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. Liksom's 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.

Narrativizing (and laughing) spatial identities together in Meänkieli-speaking minorities

“…Humor thus contains the potential to work as a device through which dominant discourses, i.e. "normal", hegemonic narratives, regional stereotypes and insulting preconceptions directed at ethnic minorities, can be contested (Ridanpää, 2007, Mascha, 2008Ridanpää, 2010). In addition it has been argued that with globalization, and the digitalization of communication, the nature of stereotyping has changed from explicit towards a wider variety of stances (Boxman-Shabtai and Shifman, 2015).…”

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

“…27 Along the lines of the postcolonial perspectives, geographical research of literature has focused more on questions such as how literature functions as a guidebook for the ideologies of imperialism, 28 how literature, as a socio-cultural institution, constructs geographical discourses of otherness, 29 and how social institutions rooted in literature function as moral and ideological gatekeepers. 30 Similarly, in recent years, the socially critical approach to literary geography has started to pay increasing attention to women's position in society, especially from the viewpoint of how the usage of space is directed and delimited by gender, 31 as well as how certain spaces such as gardens 32 and wilderness 33 are sexually charged.…”

Geographical Studies of Humor

“…For instance, Gibson () discusses how place identity, politics of class, and social processes such as ethnic marginalization become negotiated through humor in unexpected, ambiguous, and creative manners. In geographical studies, it has been discussed how humor and sarcasm work as narrative tools through which prevailing regional stereotypes and insulting preconceptions directed at ethnic minorities can be contested and rewritten (Ridanpää , , ). In the case of national minorities, this accessory function of humor is crucial, for instance, with respect to how self‐mocking works as a tool for reflecting group self‐identities (Davies , ).…”