Redreaming Europe: The Historical Past and the Speculative Present in Jani Saxell’s Europe Series
Sandbacka, Kasimir (2024-12-20)
Avaa tiedosto
Sisältö avataan julkiseksi: 20.06.2026
Routledge
20.12.2024
Sandbacka, K. (2024). Redreaming Europe. In J. Korpua, A.-K. Koistinen, H.-R. Roine, & M. M. Tveit (Eds.), Nordic speculative fiction (1st ed., pp. 149–165). Routledge India. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003561101-14
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in Nordic Speculative Fiction: Research, Theory, and Practise on 20 December 2024, available online: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003561101. It is deposited under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in Nordic Speculative Fiction: Research, Theory, and Practise on 20 December 2024, available online: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003561101. It is deposited under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:oulu-202501071052
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:oulu-202501071052
Tiivistelmä
Abstract
This chapter explores the tension between a historical past and a speculative present in Finnish author Jani Saxell's Europe series, which to date consists of threevolumes: Unenpäästäjä Florian (2010, “Dream Deliverer Florian”), Sotilasrajan unet (2014, “Dreams of the Military Frontier”), and Tuomiopäivän karavaani (2017, “Doomsday Caravan”). It discusses how intersubjective dreaming allegorically implies a historically determined European political unconscious that has both utopian and dystopian dimensions. It interprets the Europe series as a critical exploration of the ethos and praxis of the European project, but also as indicating a desire to rethink the past, present, and future beyond what is conventionally possible. This chapter discusses the series in the context of ontologically pluralistic literature after postmodernism and explores how the series exemplifies metamodernism, a contemporary structure of feeling that oscillates between modern commitment and postmodern detachment. It proposes that the key narrative device the series deploys to represent the tension between realistic historical narration and the speculative present of the story world is dream narration, a form of metamodern in-betweenness that contributes to the reconstruction of historical understanding and utopian imagination after an era of postmodern deconstruction.
This chapter explores the tension between a historical past and a speculative present in Finnish author Jani Saxell's Europe series, which to date consists of threevolumes: Unenpäästäjä Florian (2010, “Dream Deliverer Florian”), Sotilasrajan unet (2014, “Dreams of the Military Frontier”), and Tuomiopäivän karavaani (2017, “Doomsday Caravan”). It discusses how intersubjective dreaming allegorically implies a historically determined European political unconscious that has both utopian and dystopian dimensions. It interprets the Europe series as a critical exploration of the ethos and praxis of the European project, but also as indicating a desire to rethink the past, present, and future beyond what is conventionally possible. This chapter discusses the series in the context of ontologically pluralistic literature after postmodernism and explores how the series exemplifies metamodernism, a contemporary structure of feeling that oscillates between modern commitment and postmodern detachment. It proposes that the key narrative device the series deploys to represent the tension between realistic historical narration and the speculative present of the story world is dream narration, a form of metamodern in-betweenness that contributes to the reconstruction of historical understanding and utopian imagination after an era of postmodern deconstruction.
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