Transnational sense of place: cinematic scenes of Finnish war child memories

• Main Author: Anna-Kaisa Kuusisto-Arponen
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Taylor & Francis Group 2011-05-01
• Series: Journal of Aesthetics & Culture
• Subjects: sense of place and placelessness; performative repertoires; silence; popular geopolitics; film; memory studies; Finnish war children
• Online Access: http://www.aestheticsandculture.net/index.php/jac/article/view/7178/8528

In this article I discuss the role of popular geopolitics and people's performative repertoires in voicing the social silence. I have selected for close-reading some of the episodes of the film Mother of Mine, which tells the story of a Finnish war child. In my analysis I ask what the transnational memory sites of forced displacement are, how they are depicted, and in general what kind of socio-spatial identity struggles they are involved in. Moreover, in this article I argue that the many forms through which silence becomes expressive need to be studied on the scale of the body and daily performative practices. Thus, I conclude that through several daily practices the Finnish war children unconsciously developed transnational agencies in order to survive and re-create the existential social and spatial ties of belonging.