Paper Short Abstract:

The presentation examines political dissidents and their memoirs as instruments for dewriting and reframing the meaning of hostile borders and borderlands in Finnish and European contexts in 20th and 21st centuries.

Paper Abstract:

The paper examines borderland writing cultures as an instrument for dewriting European borderlands. It asks, how borderland writing cultures address adverse realities of the so-called ‘dark borders’(Auerbach 2011) – hostile social, cultural, and physical borderland environments, borders, and bordering processes – and function as an instrument for reframing their meaning.

The presentation focuses on writings of political dissidents who represented radical political left in the 20th century Finland. The dissident writers had political connections across the Finnish-Russian border, and they were perceived politically dubious by the State Police of Finland. In the presentation, dissident writing is analyzed through the lens of ‘politics of memory’ and with a concept ‘vernacular memory’. The study reveals the vernacular memory of survival, identity, and agency deeply affected by dark borders and bordering processes in the Finnish society and culture. The study forms one historical context for dark borders in contemporary Europe that are activated by the present political tensions.

The presentation analyzes memoirs of political dissidents published 1920s-2010s. The materials also include authors’ ego-documents and official documents concerning political dissidents and left-wing activists in Peoples’ Archive, Labour Archive, and National Archive in Finland.