The aim of the article is to analyze how the national framework structured to literary life has affected the position of transnational literature in Finland in the early 2000s – time when Finnish society has become more multicultural due... more
The aim of the article is to analyze how the national framework structured to literary life has affected the position of transnational literature in Finland in the early 2000s – time when Finnish society has become more multicultural due to increased immigration and growing mobility of people. It discusses what challenges nationalism presents to writers with migrant backgrounds and to those who often write in languages other than Finnish, Swedish or Sami. Literary life is studied through the observations of other researchers and through mediatexts from which the experiences of transnational writers and the voice of literary institutions are construed. The methodological basis of the article come from the transnational approach which is conscious of the critique of methodological nationalism and pays attention to movements and sociocultural existence across national, cultural and linguistic borders in literary life. The article argues that, part of the structures built in literary culture do not respond to the current realities and needs of transnationalization, multilingualization and multiculturalism in the Finnish literary field. Both the naturalized mo-nolingual paradigm and the national defined literary field generate nationalistic and exclusive positions, and the authors writing in other than dominant languages may be excluded from literary institutions, canonization and even literary life.
