PART I:

KEY CONCEPTS AND THEORETICAL

REFLECTIONS

NATIONAL, TRANSNATIONAL AND ENTANGLED LITERATURES:

METHODOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS FOCUSING

ON THE CASE OF FINLAND

MIKKO POLLARI, HANNA-LEENA NISSILÄ,KUKKU MELKAS, OLLI LÖYTTY,

RALF KAURANEN AND HEIDI GRÖNSTRAND

Abstract: This article scrutinises the benefits of and possibilities raised bythree broadly defined conceptual lenses through which literature’sembeddedness in a world marked by transnational relations andconnections can be analysed: the national, the transnational and finally, theentangled. To illustrate the different perspectives, a number of empiricalexamples, stemming mostly from the Finnish, or, to be more precise, thetransnational-Finnish, literary field are presented. The article shows thatwhereas the application of the transnational and even the national lenshave clear benefits for answering questions of literary research, bothperspectives centre, albeit in very different ways, on the category of thenation. In this context the concept of entanglement liberates analysis fromthe national category on the level of explicit discourse whilst notexcluding it from scrutiny. Entanglement as a concept proposes that thenational category and transnational networks can be studied in relation toother categories and networks forming the literary field and its variouscomponents, from texts to authors and institutions. The “entanglementapproach” to literature not only deconstructs the relationship betweenliterature – or any cultural texts, for that matter – and the national order ofthe world but also reaches beyond the binarism of nationalism andtransnationalism.

Keywords: methodological nationalism, transnationalism, entanglements,literary studies, Finland

Transnational Literature1, The Location of Transnational Literature2,Contemporary Transnational Literature3, Transnational Women’sLiterature in Europe4, TRANS (The Centre for Transnational Literaryand Cultural Studies)5, Beyond Boundaries: Transnational andTranscultural Literature and Practice6, Routledge TransnationalPerspectives on American Literature7,...and so forth.

This brief selection of titles, comprised of an e-journal, two conferences,a course, a research centre, a dissertation, and a book series, listed abovestands as a testament to the overwhelming interest in things transnationalwithin the study of literature at the moment. This shift in focus, dubbed“the transnational turn in literary studies” by Paul Jay (2010), signifies achange in which methodological nationalism – the nation and the nation-state as a way of delimiting the analysis of literature – has become widelychallenged. The rise of postcolonial studies, border studies, diasporastudies, cosmopolitanism and globalization alongside feminism and thediscourse of multiculturalism have provided new perspectives and playeda role in shifting literary studies beyond the national frame. All of thesehave resulted in renewed ways of connecting and positing literature in theworld. And truly, the interconnectedness, fluidity and mobility ofphenomena over national borders have in recent years together beenaccepted as something of a new paradigm in the study of literature, as wellas within the humanities and social sciences in general.

Analyzing literature from a genuinely post-national perspective mayrequire new or at least reformulated concepts (Seyhan 2001), and indeed,the critique and abandonment of methodological nationalism has led toattempts at new formulations. Instead of defining their object of study asfitting into neat, fixed categories such as “national literatures”, scholarsnow describe it by adding prefixes such as “cross-border”, “entangled”,

1� E-journal, http://fhrc.flinders.edu.au/transnational/.

2� Conference in Toronto, Canada, April 2013, http://www.acla.org/acla2013/the-location-of-transnational-literature/.3� Course at Columbia University, New York, the United States, http://english.columbia.edu/contemporary-transnational-literature.4� Conference in Budapest, Hungary in May 2013 (http://femtranslit.eu/).

5� A collaborative interdisciplinary research centre, University of Surrey, UK,http://www.surrey.ac.uk/englishandlanguages/research/TRANS%20Research%20Centre/).6� Dissertation by Maria-Theresia Holub, State University of New York atBinghampton, 2007.7� Book series, Routledge: http://www.routledge.com/books/series/SE0701/.

“shared”, and “transnational”. Of these, “transnational” has attained thestatus of a keyword, bringing together like-minded scholars from differentfields. Judging from the popularity of the concept, literary and culturalscholars alike (as well as many others) seem to have a need to replacemethodological nationalism with something that might be calledmethodological transnationalism.

The phrase “transnational turn” implies a paradigmatic shift in thetheorizing of literature. A “shift” and a “turn” furthermore suggest theexistence of an evolution in scientific reasoning, an idea that research overtime becomes more up-to-date and more enlightened. Consequently,previous research comes to seem lacking, inadequate or even faulty in itsfocus, problematisations or conclusions. This is more or less aconsequence of the rhetoric of how new ideas and perspectives areproposed in scholarly discourse. Nevertheless, a perspective sensitive totransnational connections must not underestimate the significance of thenational framework or the nation state when describing the dynamics ofliterature as a cultural and societal phenomenon (e.g. Amelina et al. 2012,3–4).

In the following, we will continue the discussion on transnationalism,nationalism and literature. We posit ourselves amidst the transnationalturn, but want to further develop the theoretical-methodologicalframework for understanding literature in this context. We will scrutinizethe benefits and possibilities of three broadly defined conceptual lensesthrough which literature’s embeddedness in a world marked bytransnational relations and connections can be analyzed: the national, thetransnational and finally, the entangled. In terms of developmentalthinking, this would suggest the kind of evolution described above, wherenationalism as a framework for research would present itself as obsolete,transnationalism as a halfway position, and a perspective highlightingvarious entanglements as the end of a trajectory of development. However,we will try to avoid this description, which owes much to the literaryconventions of the Bildungsroman or coming-of-age story, by focusingexpressly on the productive aspects of each “phase” or line of thinking andshowing the ways they are intertwined. Still, on a more conventional noteour mapping of these perspectives will begin with a focus on the critiqueof methodological nationalism.

To illustrate the different perspectives, we present a number of variousempirical examples stemming mostly from the Finnish, or, to be moreprecise, the transnational-Finnish literary field. In the next section, we willgive a brief introduction to the critique of methodological nationalism,demonstrating how a methodologically nationalistic approach is indeed an

inadequate way of examining literature, and then, in something of anabout-face, argue that even after a transnational turn, the national categorymay still be relevant and useful in the study of literature. From there, wemove on to the concept of the transnational, appraising the way it has thusfar been utilized in the study of literature and pondering its potential andlimitations. In the fourth section, we deal with the concept ofentanglements, its relationship with the transnational and its possiblebenefits for literary studies.

Critique of Methodological Nationalism

Methodological nationalism, which assumes the national category as aself-evident frame and context for research and the nation as the primaryunit of study, has been a strong tendency in different disciplines of thesocial sciences, humanities and cultural studies (See e.g. Wimmer & GlickSchiller 2002; Amelina et al. 2012). As an approach, it has included aninclination to see nations as bounded, homogeneous, and static entities, aninclination which its critics have illustrated by means of a containermetaphor (Beck 2000, 23–6; Wimmer & Glick Schiller 2002). Nation-states have, in this perspective, come to be seen as naturalized entities,affixed within territorialized limits (Wimmer & Glick Schiller 2002, 305;Amelina & Faist 2012). According to its critics, methodologicallynationalist research has shown a proclivity to examine nations as self-sufficient, autonomous systems changing only from within (Chernilo2006b, 8; 2006a, 130; 2010, 89 & 2011, 101). It has meant a delimitationof the study of social phenomena, as society has been equated with thenation state. Another of its limitations has been its inability to payattention to nationalism and nation-building as central to the developmentof modern society (Wimmer & Glick Schiller 2002; Amelina & Faist2012). All in all, the use of the nation as a natural starting point hasdirected research in such a way as to disregard other possibly significantframings and categorizations.

Sociologist Daniel Chernilo has outlined an account of the development ofthe critique of methodological nationalism in sociology, dividing it intothree separate waves (Chernilo 2010, 88–91; see also Chernilo 2006a,130–1 & 2006b, 6–13). According to Chernilo, the theorists of the firstwave did not question the nation-state’s status as the main organizingprinciple of the modern world but criticised the lack of attention given to itas a theoretical concept. The second wave differed decisively from the firstwave, in that it was based on an assumption of profound change inhistorical circumstances, its key claim being that the world was goingthrough an epochal change, globalization, which was undermining the

position and importance of the nation as a frame of thinking. The currentthird wave consists of a rethinking of the first two waves: It rejects theconcept of the nation state as a self-evident representation of society andincludes a more careful stance on the hypothesis of the decline of thenation-state and also on the actual presence of a methodologicallynationalistic approach in previous research. The second and third waves,in Chernilo’s description, constitute what has been coined as thetransnational turn in various fields of research (Levitt & Nyberg-Sørensen2004; Jay 2010; Pease 2011).

National literary histories provide illustrative examples of the consequencesof methodologically nationalist approaches. By focusing on the nationalrepresentativeness of authors and works of literature, they tend toemphasise the uniqueness of the literary traditions of the nation in questionand ignore and obliterate the differences within it. Because literaryhistories have served as building materials for the master-narrative of thenation, they have turned a blind eye to, for example, the questions ofshared histories, colonialist tendencies, border cultures and in-betweenphenomena. In their readiness to divide the literature of the world intonational sectors, literary histories often fail to recognize and identify theauthors that function in two or more countries or write in two or morelanguages.8

Indeed, the notion of a world divided into isolated, self-contained nationalentities and literatures is inconsistent with all the detectable cross-borderphenomena affecting the world and the literary field. Seeing the world asconsisting of “national containers” is intuitively incompatible withphenomena such as transnational migration and travel, as well as theinternational communication evident in ever-increasing quantities allaround us. Cross-border mobility, which is spilling and mixing thecontents of the containers, or even breaking their rims, is ubiquitous. Anillustrative example of the manifold seepage occurring between nationalcontainers is offered by the most important literary prize in the Finnishcontext, the Finlandia Literary Prize. It is not only framed nationalisticallyby name; it constitutes a nationally renowned institution, which plays amajor role in both the marketing and the canonization of Finnish novels.The prize is given out yearly by the Finnish Book Foundation, the aim ofwhich (according to its rules) is to promote and support domestic literaryart. However, the Finnish nomination of the Slovak-born author AlexandraSalmela’s novel 27 eli kuolema tekee taiteilijan [27 or Death Makes an

8� This was the case with Zenta Maurin, a German-speaking Latvian writer wholived in Sweden. See Ronne 2011. About this discussion, see also Eysteinsson2009 and Olsson 2010.

Artist] in 2010 called into question the national framing of the prize. Afterthe nomination, it was noted that Salmela did not have Finnish citizenship,which presented a problem, as according to the rules of the prize, it couldonly be given to a novel written by a Finnish citizen. However, theinstitution showed notable flexibility, as the rules were changedimmediately so that Finnish citizenship was no longer required. Now, theprize may be awarded to “a meritorious Finnish novel” (“Finnish” hereunderstood in a national, not linguistic sense). Thus Finnishness came tobe understood as something that is not inextricably connected to thepassport of the author – something of a transnational phenomenon.

The claimed “Finnishness” of the Finlandia Literary Prize is ambiguous inanother sense, too. The Finnish Book Foundation responsible for givingout the prize was established in 1983 by two institutions, the FinnishMinistry of Education and the Finnish Book Publishers Association.However, when one takes a look at the long list of member publishers ofthe latter, next to traditional local publishing houses such as The FinnishLiterary Society, Gummerus and WSOY, one finds such names as EgmontKustannus (a publishing house owned jointly by Egmont, an internationalmedia group based in Copenhagen, and Sanoma, an international mediagroup based in Helsinki) and BTJ Finland (a part of the Swedish-basedBTJ group). And even the aforementioned WSOY, with a tradition ofpublishing within the Finnish borders reaching back to 1878, is presently apart of the international Swedish media company Bonnier. Thus, thesupposedly national nature of the prize is given a transnational twist. Aninstitution that at a superficial glance seems essentially Finnish at a closerlook serves to dismantle an essentialist concept of Finnish literature. Thisis telling of the fact that even the seemingly most Finnish of institutionsdoes not fit within national borders.

The example above is indicative of the fact that the contemporary realitiesof cultures, literatures and people do not follow national borders. Duringthe last few decades, the container metaphor implied by methodologicalnationalism and thinking through the category of the nation has beenincreasingly questioned. The nation as a framework is inadequate forunderstanding current developments in the literary field and in society ingeneral. There is, and indeed has been, a continuous flow of ideas andmaterials between the assumed containers, creating various more or lesspermanent connections and interactions. The insufficiency of the nationallens has also become apparent with regard to the historical development ofliteratures. As Robert Dixon argues in an Australian context, the field ofliterary studies is ready to “explore and elaborate the many ways in whichthe national literature has always been connected to the world” (Dixon2007, 20). In other words, methodological nationalism is an insufficient

approach regarding not only contemporary literary phenomena, but thehistory of literature, as well.

The Potential Value of a Nationalist Reading Strategy

Even though the nationalist approach involves evident risks andshortcomings, it is difficult to write about, discuss or even understandliterary culture without nation as one of the most significant of the social,cultural and political categories that structures our conceptions ofourselves and others. The category of nation has implied and continues toimply the existence of borders and barriers, and through these we haveframed the world in order to conceive, understand and discuss it. As acategory, nation can hardly be stripped from the research agenda, evenwhen research is deliberately trying to reach out beyond the confines of agiven nation and analyze the cultural flows and connections that existindependent of national borders. The analysis of the transnationalconnections of literature in Finland, for instance, requires balancing textsand literary phenomena with the national order of the world. However, thisdoes not merely mean that nation is taken into consideration in the designof the research, but rather that it is seen as instrumental in the structure ofthe research question; a discussion on border-crossings presupposesborders, and an analysis of transnationalism necessarily reproduces theidea of nation.

In Finland, literature and nation-building have been inseparably intertwined.The value of literature, both the genres of epic poem and novel, as asymbol of modern society was recognised in the mid-nineteenth century.Literature formed a significant part of national culture and the differencebetween “us” and “them”, establishing Finnish literature as distinct fromother national literatures, was of great importance (e.g. Varpio 1986, 21–30). Ever since, the category of nation has offered a strong frame forinterpretation in the discipline of literary studies. It has been customary tosee literature as bounded by national borders, which have been seen asconverging with cultural, ethnic, linguistic, and geographic borders. Thisframe has produced information about entities generally known as nationalliteratures. National history has even been a “default narrative” (Jay 2010,5) in the study of literature. In spite of the fact that Finland is a bilingualcountry, with Finnish and Swedish as the official languages, the divisionof the literary and cultural field into separate literary institutions andtraditions defined by language has taken place since the end of the

nineteenth century, when Finnish became the language of administrationand education along with Swedish.9

The idea of national literatures lives on in the academic division ofnational literature departments (Meltzer 2009). In the Finnish universitysystem, the study of literature is divided into disciplines of Finnishliterature and Comparative (or literally “General”10) literature.11 In recentyears, pressures have increased to merge the two disciplines, mostlybacked by arguments referring to the economics of higher education andthe intensification of curricular activity and knowledge production. Thereare obvious problems in maintaining such a nationalistically motivateddivision, but the debates on easing that division have also highlighted thepossible value of a nationalist strategy: a nationalist division can bemotivated by the needs or even demands (of a specific community) forknowledge concerning locally, geographically, historically, or sociallydelimited forms of culture (Meltzer 2009, 56).

Therefore, despite the obvious benefits and wide range of possibilitiesoffered by the extensive, “general” or comparative points of departure, asimplied, for example, in the ideals of “world literature” (see e.g. Damrosch2003 & 2014; Rosendahl Thomsen 2008), the basis for disciplines such as“Finnish literature” can be justified simply by referring to a division oflabour in academia: If literary scholars want to do justice to the diversityof the literary cultures in the world, it is worthwhile to pay attention toprevailing cultural and linguistic differences between, say, nationallydefined entities. For this, scholars certainly need categories that imply theexistence of national literatures. In order to maintain sensitivity to theheterogeneity of multicultural and multilingual world literature and to theparticularity of regional cultures – of which national cultures are perhapsthe most dominant – the use of such categories is well-grounded.

9� For a brief overview of Finland’s linguistic situation in the past and present, seeSalo 2012, 26–8.10� Deriving from the German Allgemeine Literaturwissenschaft.

11� This division of national or domestic and general literature in Finnish highereducation is complicated by the fact that at the University of Helsinki literaturewritten in Swedish, even if written and published within the Finnish context, istaught under the heading Scandinavian Literature (in Swedish, “Nordisk litteratur”,or Nordic Literature).

Still Life. David Teniers the Younger, c. 1645–1650. Royal Museums of Fine Arts,Belgium. Public domain.

Furthermore, a comparative perspective based on “national authors” or“national literatures” may prove fruitful, depending, of course, on theresearch in question. A comparison of objects of analysis, e.g. “Finnish”and “Swedish” literature, can reveal differences and similarities betweenthe given entities: In order to perceive the special characteristics of thechosen objects, it is necessary to compare them with each other. As acomparison of two entities may also highlight their commonalities, thecomparative method can help uncover the shared history of the objects ofcomparison. Basically, however, comparison is not necessarily sensitive tocultural features common to other similar objects outside the comparison(such as stylistic models originating from shared classic texts), thus failingto acknowledge the original hybrid nature of literary traditions and thetransfer of influences between the compared objects (Sapiro 2011, 231–2).

The argument to be made for the study of national literatures as adisciplinary endeavour and the benefits of comparisons of national entitiespoint to the value of national as an epistemological and methodologicalframework for research. Furthermore, nationalism as an empiricalphenomenon of the literary field provides yet another incentive for literaryscholars to pay attention to nationalism and the nation state. For example,nationally delimited state actors continually make their presence felt in theliterary field. The activities may be both regulative and promotional. Inmany countries, strikingly so in a Nordic context but also elsewhere,

cultural and arts policies bound by national borders promote nationalliterary cultures through various measures, for example, by directingsupport to local authors, publishers, literary associations and libraryrequisitions. In the Finnish context, the National Council for Literature, apart of the Arts Promotion Centre Finland – the names of the bodiesconvincingly illustrate the endurance of the national category – is thecentral organ for arts policy in the literary field. One of its central policymeasures for supporting individual authors builds on a tradition of viewingauthors as representatives of the nation (“national authors”).

Another apt example of the presence and importance of the nationalcategory is, yet again, the aforementioned Finlandia Literary Prize, whichshows how the interests of a local cultural field and internationalcommercial actors can coincide within the framework of the national. Theinstitution that awards the prize, the Finnish Book Foundation, is a jointventure of two organizations, one governmental (the Finnish Ministry ofEducation) and the other commercial (the Finnish Book PublishersAssociation). As a result, the Finlandia Literary Prize holds both acultural-political and commercial value, both of which are connected tothe perceived positive connotations of the national category. On one hand,the Finlandia Prize serves the interests of national cultural politics bypromoting and strengthening a cultural entity named “Finnish literature”.On the other, it markedly boosts the sales of certain novels – thecandidates and especially the winner – every year.

As the nominees for the Finlandia Literary Prize are announced at thebeginning of November and the winner in December, references to theFinnish nation and Finnishness are useful not only in promoting valuedliterature for readers but also in increasing Christmas sales. Thus, thesignificance of the “nation/national” for the literary field and in the mindsof the reading public can be grasped by asking this: Would the favourablebusiness impact of the prize be the same without the connection to thenation or under a different name and without the connotation of “our”literature that it implies? This question highlights the importance of andneed for the “nation” and the “national” as analytical concepts in the studyof literature.

From the perspective of the so-called “national minorities”, the national isa significant yet often complex and ambivalent category. When a group ina minority position tries to receive recognition and gain its own “voice” inthe established literary field, the national category is inevitably intertwinedwith questions of identity and identity politics. An example of the use ofthe national category are the efforts to define a Sámi literature in which

nationalism can serve as an empowerment strategy in the struggle for therights of an oppressed and colonised group of people.12

For example, the author Nils-Aslak Valkeapää (1943–2001) participated inthe construction of Sámi history and cultural identity, and at the same timecreated new ways of expression that gained him a global audience. He wasborn in Finland, and his debut work, the pamphlet Terveisiä Lapista[1971; Greetings from Lapland] was in Finnish, but he is best known forhis Sámi language poems. He was awarded the Nordic Council LiteraturePrize in 1991 for his collection of poems Beaivi, áhčážan [1988; The Sun,My Father]. His earlier work, Ruoktu váimmus [1985; Trekways of theWind], had already been proposed as the Sámi candidate for the prize, andthe nomination helped to increase interest in Sámi literature in the Nordiccountries. This interest only grew when Valkeapää finally won theprestigious prize in 1991.13 His status as a representative of Finnishliterature is furthermore complicated by the fact that since 1996 he lived inSkibotn, Norway. Valkeapää’s career and oeuvre demonstrate the differentlayers in the transnational texture of literature: local (Sámi), national(Finnish, Norwegian), regional (Nordic) and global – as well as theirinterconnectedness. On the other hand, his success provides an example ofanother kind of tendency that an author representing both local and globalcultures may face. While Valkeapää has been praised as a representativefor Sámi culture, the celebratory pursuits include the risk of making anindigenous artist appear as a token in a national context, serving thepurpose of showing that there is no discrimination and that national orregional literatures are inclusive.

The examples above illustrate the importance and various uses of thecategory of the nation in the literary field. Despite the transnational turnwithin the study of literature, the national still occupies a central role inthe way literature is produced and consumed, as well as conceptualizedand presented. Therefore, it cannot be left out of the research agenda ofliterary studies. This does not, however, mean advocating a hasty u-turnback toward methodological nationalism; instead, we should focus criticalattention on how the national category is applied and understood in theliterary field. But the relevance of nationalism and the nation state to theliterary field is not the only reason for literary scholars to pay attention tothe category of the nation. A case can also be made for the use of thenation as an epistemological and methodological tool and framework, aform of “enlightened methodological nationalism” (Pries and Seeliger

12� About this discussion see Hirvonen 1999/2008.

13� See Harald Gaski: http://www.utexas.edu/courses/sami/diehtu/siida/reindeer/valk.htm

2012, 234). Framing research in disciplinary terms as focused onnationally delimited literatures is at least in a strategic sense defensible,despite the fact that literary cultures in many ways, or even predominantly,are formed transnationally. Also, comparative research may gain fromtaking the national category as a starting point. Thus, the conscious use ofmethodological nationalism appears as a possibly useful, rather than astraightforwardly dismissible, distorted reading strategy. In fact, thisstrategy may be used as one undercurrent in literary studies aiming at anunderstanding of the transnational connections within the literary world.

Towards Transnational Literary Studies

Although the transnational turn and, before that, the globalization debateshave come to accentuate the relations between entities defined as national,cross-border cultural diffusion and global flows did not go unnoticed inearlier scholarly debates. For example, within literary studies, in thetradition following the ideas of J. W. Goethe, all literatures of the worldhave been considered as part of Weltliteratur, a concept describing theinternational circulation and reception of literary works, predominantly inEurope but also including texts of non-Western origin (e.g. Damrosch2014, Rosendahl Thomsen 2008, 2–20; Damrosch 2003).

In the social sciences, previous analysis framed cultural exchange throughthe concepts of cultural imperialism, homogenization and hegemony(Tomlinson 1999, 79). The spread of cultural products was seen as largelyunidirectional, based on and reproducing international power relationsshaping the world in, for example, geopolitical centres and peripheries, orfirst, second and third worlds. In national contexts, “foreign” elementswere seen as a threat to local cultures and literatures. What later on wouldbe dubbed as transnationalism was rather understood in the framework ofinternational relations, where the national category was still the norm,although the cultural exchange under critique was not necessarily drivenby nation states or state actors but by various kinds of actors, such asmedia and publishing houses.

Transnationalism as a concept has come to highlight cross-border socialand cultural relations that are upheld by other kinds of actors than thosebased on the nation state. Steven Vertovec’s well-established definition oftransnationalism states the following:

When referring to sustained linkages and ongoing exchanges among non-state actors based across national borders – businesses, non-governmentorganizations, and individuals sharing the same interests (by way ofcriteria such as religious beliefs, common cultural and geographic origins)

– we can differentiate these as ‘transnational’ practices and groups(referring to their links functioning across nation-states). The collectiveattributes of such connections, their processes of formation andmaintenance, and their wider implications are referred to broadly as‘transnationalism’. (Vertovec 2009, 3; see also Hannerz 1996, 6)

This definition serves to separate transnational relations from internationalrelations, drawing a line between different kinds of actors and theirrespective forms of action. This separation is in many ways useful andinformative of the dynamics of the literary field, but it needs to becomplemented by the assertion that the study of the transnational by nomeans rules out attention being paid to the meanings of nationalism andthe role of the nation state. As Ulrich Beck proposes in his definition of acosmopolitan perspective for research, the national and the transnationalare not in opposition to each other. Instead, the national needs to beunderstood as something continually formed by transnational processes.(Beck 2004, 147; 2006, 6–7.)

Whereas Vertovec’s definition above accentuates the role of differentactors, Arjun Appadurai’s analysis of a globalized world through various“scapes” and “flows” has offered a much-referred-to point of view thathighlights diverse aspects of the transnationalism of the literary field. Hisanalysis delineates five dimensions in the global flows that form people’s“imagined worlds”: ethnoscapes, technoscapes, financescapes, mediascapesand ideoscapes. Rehearsing these reminds us of the various means throughwhich transnational connections, and, indeed, as Appadurai highlights,“disjuncture and difference in the global cultural economy”, have beengenerated. Appadurai’s description points to a broad spectrum of bothmaterial and ideational flows, and makes literary studies’ predominantfocus on the transnational as a literary theme appear limited (Appadurai1996, 27–47).

The questions of migration (transnational and internal), cultural exchange,social mobility and rootlessness are certainly not novelties in literature, butone can safely claim that transnational issues – the name of thephenomenon may vary – have become a dominant cultural theme incontemporary literature (Ponzanesi & Merolla 2005; Frank 2010). And astransnational issues have come to the fore, literary scholars have paidsubstantial attention to novels that discuss global changes and their localconsequences in one way or another. The oeuvre of the Finnish novelist-playwright Sofi Oksanen presents an example of literature that isthematically tied to a transnational world and migrant experiences, anaspect of her work that has been variably noted in its reception (Tuomarla2013). Oksanen’s treatment of Estonian history and, more broadly, the

blind spots of Western historiography, have been praised by readers aswell as critics. The theme is present even in Oksanen’s debut novelStalinin lehmät [2003; Stalin’s Cows], which can be read as a migrationstory or migration literature (e.g. Grönstrand 2010).

Neil Lazarus’s critical comment on postcolonial criticism also applies toresearch on transnational literature: “To read across postcolonial literarystudies is to find, to an extraordinary degree, the same questions asked, thesame methods, techniques, and conventions used, the same conceptsmobilized, the same conclusions drawn – about the work of a remarkablysmall number of writers [...].” Lazarus actually states, “for the purpose ofillustration”, that there is only one author in the postcolonial literarycanon, Salman Rushdie, whose novels are “endlessly and fatuously citedin the critical literature as testifying to the imagined-ness – that is to say,ideality – of nationhood, the ungeneralisable subjectivism of memory andexperience, the instability of social identity, the volatility of truth, thenarrational constructedness of history, and so on” (Lazarus 2005, 424).The eagerness of literary scholars to focus on either very few authors or onthe thematic dimensions of literary works disregards a majority of thevarious cross-border flows in a transnational, global society.Consequently, the whole question of transnationalism and literature isexcluded to its own hermetic sphere.14

Although the attention to thematic trends in literature highlights socialchanges, it does not destabilize the understanding of literatures as national.What it does do is essentially to show that the thematic scope of nationalliterature has broadened to cover new topics reflecting and constructingcontemporary (transnational) society. Literary studies obviously need toaccount for such shifts on the level of literary works, but the transnationalperspective on literature delineates many other ways in which a localliterature is not only national but is constructed in relation to otherliteratures.

In addition to focusing on depictions and thematisations of a world formedby globalization and transnational connections, a methodologicallytransnationalist study might concentrate on the ways that texts themselvesmove across both geographic and linguistic borders. Texts travel both as

14� Søren Frank’s definition of “migration literature”, drawing on Georg Lukács’sliterary theory, broadens the scope from a thematic viewpoint to an understandingof literature’s material characteristics as equally important aspects of literature ofthe age of increased migration, globalization and transnational contacts. As Frank(2010, 48) proposes, “through its form, the migrant novel sets out to express thecontent of our experiences of interculturalism and globalization [...] and, at thesame time, resolve the problems posed by these same experiences [...]”.

physical forms, including tangible objects, such as books as well as digitaltexts, and as textual phenomena, such as influences, adaptations,intertextualities and translations. As part of the transnational mediascapes,translations, for example, display how books, ideas, and ideologies movefrom one place to another and suggest new kinds of reception andinterpretations. Traditionally, literary scholars have had difficultiesaccommodating translations in literary histories and their areas of study(see e.g. Kovala et al. 2007 and Eysteinsson 2009). Translations have notalways been valued for their aesthetic qualities, and there is a longtradition of seeing translations as inauthentic and misleading copies of theoriginal. Another reason for the absence of translations in literary historiesis the nation-orientedness of the genre, its function seen as presenting thecharacteristic features of “national” literature and literary culture, which isdone by guarding the borders and keeping them clean of “foreign”influences (see e.g. Eysteinsson 2009, 57).

For a number of years, however, there have been signs indicating a changein attitudes. Astradur Eysteinsson (2009) suggests that instead of regardingtranslation as a threat that ruptures the context and continuity of nationalliterary history, it provides means to explore the context of these literaryhistories, showing them to be constructions rather than natural entities.The “foreign” is present within the literary system in many different ways,not only as foreign authors or literary works. Despite his positive attitudetowards translation, Eysteinsson sees that we are still far from a literaryhistory based on dialogues between the local and the foreign. For him, aseparate volume of a history of literary translations, such as the history ofFinnish translations of fiction (Riikonen et al. 2007a & 2007b), is only onenecessary step in the process towards a more versatile history of literaryculture, in which the focus is on hybridity and cross-cultural dialogue(Eysteinsson 2009).

The case of Sofi Oksanen’s novel Puhdistus (2008; Purge 2010) isexemplary of a text that crosses geographical and linguistic borders, andthus a fitting subject for a methodologically transnationalistic study.Translated into more than 30 languages with a largely positive reception,Purge has been an international success. It has not only been read as ahistorical novel dealing with Estonian history but also as a thriller, a crimenovel, a melodrama, and women’s fiction, and it has been compared toworks by, for example, Bertolt Brecht, Christa Wolf and Hertha Müller(Lappalainen 2013). On the one hand, the themes and genres that itdiscusses are not bound to any specific national or cultural context, but onthe other hand, as literary scholars have pointed out, the reception of thenovel varies depending on the historical and cultural contexts of thecountry in question (Laanes 2012; Lappalainen 2013). In Estonia,

Oksanen’s way of representing the country’s history has come undercritical debate. Oksanen has been accused of using elements of popularculture and thus sensationalizing and commercializing the sufferings of theEstonian people. Moreover, the critical views about Purge have also hadto do with the memory politics concerning the Soviet era: The depiction ofthe totalitarianism of the Stalin period clashed with some readers’ positivememories of the later Soviet period and its everyday life. Many reviewerswere also dissatisfied with how Oksanen portrayed Estonians (seeLappalainen 2013 and Laanes 2010 and 2012) So, although most of theinternational reviewers of Purge did not highlight Oksanen’s nationality,in Estonia it was discussed, and her right, as a foreigner, to write aboutEstonian history was questioned.

The manifold reception of Purge demonstrates that even when literatureseems to move relatively easily from one cultural context to another,questions concerning nationality may still appear highly relevant. Thisserves as a reminder of Ulrich Beck’s (2004 and 2006) notion that thetransnational and the national should not be conceived as binary oppositesbut rather as co-existing and mutually beneficial conceptual lenses. Athorough grasp of the various aspects of the cross-border reception ofPurge requires the use not of either a national or a transnational lens, butof a national as well as a transnational one. Thus, a methodologicallytransnationalist approach might reach beyond the very binary oppositionof separation and interaction as well as of their conception as mutuallyexclusive categories. Instead, from this point of view, they form acontinuum.

A methodologically transnationalistic study may also concentrate on howliterary objects – for instance, books – cross borders and how they areaffected by the process. The circulation of books has always been closelylinked with economy and markets, but in the globalized world the book’srole as a commodity has become even more important than before. In stepwith the decreasing barriers of trade, the commercialization of literaturehas increased. It is expected that the author will actively participate in themarketing of his/her works, and information about copies of novels sold aswell as the interest shown in authors and their works abroad, in the form oftranslation rights, positive reviews, and prizes, has become an integral partof the value attached to literature (Kantokorpi 2013, 201–205; Arminen2013, 165–176). These processes also have an impact on the contents andinterpretations of literature. Hanna Kuusela’s study of the controversiessurrounding Norwegian journalist Åsne Seierstad’s novel Bokhandleren iKabul (2002; The Bookseller of Kabul 2003) is illustrative of a literarystudy focusing on the circulation of books as global capitalist

commodities, which are diffused cross-culturally and produce variouslocal responses (Kuusela 2011; 2013a; 2013b).

Kuusela focuses on the material aspects of literature and the book as acommodity with effects on social reality. Rather than engaging in aninterpretation of the contents of the book she uses as a case study, Kuuselafollows the book through a transnational network15 formed by itstranslations and local publications. In this series of transfers, the book’sform and paratexts – covers, prefaces, back cover descriptions, andadvertisements – change, which has consequences for the interpretiveframework and reception of the book. In its various guises, the book formsalliances or articulations with other kinds of actors and consequently haseffects for how, for example, Afghan women’s lives and stories areinterpreted and formed cross-culturally and transnationally. Kuusela’sstudy also illustrates how goods such as books as transnational actors canbe much more effective than people, as the constraints that people face inthe globalized world may be much more intense than those faced bycommodities. While their story could enter the Norwegian public spherewithout problems, it was much harder for Shah Muhammed Rais, themodel for the bookseller of Kabul, and his family to leave Afghanistan orenter Norway (Kuusela 2011).

The Bookseller of Kabul provides one example of how literary objectsgenerate power effects. It also exemplifies Appadurai’s proposition aboutglobal media flows, enabled by technological and financial processes. Thecase also makes visible the significance of authors on the move intransnational space. The changing ethnoscape appears in parallel with theflows of literary texts, ideas and interpretations. To understand thesevariegated flows, a radically different frame of interpretation is requiredfor literary research. The life and career of Iraqi short story writer andfilmmaker Hassan Blasim exemplifies the incongruent relationshipbetween literatures and nation states. Blasim, whom a critic in theGuardian referred to as “perhaps the best writer of Arabic fiction alive”(Yassin-Kassab 2010), has lived in Tampere, Finland, since 2004. Hiscollection of short stories, The Madman of Freedom Square (2009), hasbeen translated into, for example, English, Italian, Spanish, Polish andFinnish; a heavily edited version of the book was finally published inArabic in 2012, only to be immediately banned in Jordan. Whendiscussing Blasim’s location in a transnational atlas, it is necessary toconsider that Blasim’s first channel for publishing has been the internet,16

15� Kuusela speaks of actor-networks, as her materialist study is heavilyinfluenced by actor-network theory.16� Iraq Story, www.iraqstory.com.

a forum that has had a significant transnational effect on literary culture allover the world and is an especially convenient publishing platform forliterature in transnational languages such as Arabic, with possible readersscattered all around the world. The example of Blasim illustrates how theliterary field is affected by the movement of people, among them authors,and the dissemination of texts through various media. To use Appadurai’s(1996) terminology, a manifold of scapes form the transnational literaryfield, all of which are of significance for the research agenda of the studyof literature.

Literary Entanglements

Although “methodological transnationalism” opens up new avenues forthe understanding of the literary field and the national category, the termtransnational already on the level of phrasing preserves the nationalcategory. A focus on transnationalism is tied by the precise borders – andthe entities separated by these borders – that are questioned or pointed outto be the place of crossings or leakages.

As a spatial metaphor, the transnational refers and gives preference to oneaspect of the mapping of the world, one based on nations. In a studyconcerning migrants’ networks, Ruben Gielis (2009) claims that fixatingon the transnational obstructs research from perceiving other possiblysignificant social networks, such as those based on family, kin or workrelations. Gielis suggests that a focus on networks, such as transnationalones, should be complemented by an attention to place. The “place lens” –taking the places where the various networks forming a migrant’s lifeintersect as the starting point of research – would allow the researcher tosee how multiple social networks interact in a specific case. Gielis evensuggests that it would be better to use the term trans-social rather thantransnational to describe migration, since migrants move along many othernetworks in addition to the transnational. From this point of view,“methodological network-ism” (Gielis 2009, 283), a focus on one specificnetwork, and consequently “methodological transnationalism”, presentsitself as a problem. In Gielis’s view, place not only allows us to see the interaction of multiplenetworks in one setting but also helps the researcher grasp the translocalityof social life. Drawing on Appadurai, Gielis defines the migrant place astranslocal, meaning that it is a site from which “transmigrants reach out topeople in other places” (Gielis 2009, 278), for example, throughcommunication technologies or even imagination. According to Gielis,“[s]tudying migrant places in their capacity as translocalities means that,

conceptually, we can no longer regard places as separate from each other”(Gielis 2009, 282), that is, place becomes a continuum and locality, a formof in-between-ness.

Despite this effort to rewrite the concept of place as something other thana space clearly separate from other spaces, the concept of translocalityobviously carries the same connotations as the transnational. Instead of anetwork built along the category of nations, we end up with a network oflocales, and as Angelika Epple notes with reference to redefinitions ofspace, “the local reintroduces the notion of a fixed container. The localbecomes the last refuge of traditionally defined space” (Epple 2012, 169).The prefix “trans-” creates a border between the containers defined by theprefix, simultaneously producing these containers. The change of the levelor scale – from the local, national, regional, to continental and back – doesnot alter this.

A third alternative to be placed alongside the national and transnationalanalytic gazes is the perspective offered by the concept of “entanglement”,perhaps best known from historians’ development of alternatives tomethodological nationalism under the umbrella term “entangled history”.17

In comparison with the other two viewpoints highlighting the nationalcategory and transnational connections, entanglement has specialcharacteristics, which makes it useful for the study of literature.

The concept of entanglement is not altogether new to literary studies. It is,for example, present in Suman Gupta’s Globalization and Literature(2009). Borrowing the concept from Susie O’Brien and Imre Szeman’sintroduction to the “The globalization of fiction/The fiction ofglobalization” special issue of South Atlantic Quarterly, Gupta states hiswish to move his study “away from considerations of ‘how globalization isreflected thematically in fiction’ and towards understanding a‘fundamental entanglement’ between literature and globalization” (Gupta2009, 62; O’Brien & Szeman 2001). A quote from the final paragraph ofGupta’s study illustrates what literature’s entanglement with globalizationimplies: “(U)ltimately the relationship between globalization and literatureis arguably most immediately to be discerned not in terms of what isavailable inside literature and within literary studies, but in terms of themanner in which globalized markets and industries act upon and fromoutside literature and literary studies” (Gupta 2009, 170).

17� According to Angelika Epple (2012, 163), the term originates from SebastianConrad and Shalini Randeria (2002).

Another instance of the use of the concept “entangled” in literary studiescomes from Gisèle Sapiro, a scholar of the sociology of literature, whostresses the necessity of comparison as a research method (Sapiro 2011,228) but also highlights the methodological nationalism intrinsic to it as itscentral limitation (Sapiro 2011, 231). Sapiro suggests the study of culturaltransfers and literary exchanges as a way of “denationalizing” the method.According to her, such a study should concentrate on the flows oftranslations through which literary works circulate and on the reception ofthe translated texts. However, such a study requires, as Sapiro remarks,that “we scrupulously reconstitute the relevant spaces” (Ibid., 233–4). Bythis she apparently means taking into account the specific socio-historicalconfigurations where the transfers take place. Sapiro dubs this approach“an entangled historical sociology of literature” (Ibid., 226, 235).

An approach based on entanglements breaks down a strictly nationalperspective in a similar way as that of the concept “transnational” does: Itabandons the notion of isolated, self-sufficient national containers anddirects attention to the connections and interactions between them.However, while “transnational” carries with it the term “national”, whichimplies a connection to the concepts of the nation or the nation-state andtheir significance, “entangled” lacks this connection and directly allowsthe examination of any given entities (Epple 2012, 163).

In literary studies, one may take as a starting point any of the variousforms of literary culture (a text, a literary work, a literary institution orsome dimension of it) and study it as a national phenomenon or aphenomenon produced through uses of the national category. One mayalso approach it as transnational, as a result of border-crossing flows andconnections of various sorts. However, both of these approaches tieliterary culture to the nation. This approach, connecting literature to thenational, may be and often is highly relevant, but caution should always betaken not to let it overshadow other relevant categories or networks thatmay have explanatory power when attempting to understand literaryculture. The national and transnational networks that literary phenomenainvoke do not act without the infusion of effects of other networksfunctioning along other categories and concepts demarcating both thinkingand being in the world.

As the debates on super-diversity (e.g. Vertovec 2007) or intersectionalityremind us, identities and forms of belonging – inclusion as well asexclusion – are formed in a mix of variables of intertwining axes, in whichnation(ality) and transnationality interact with the dimensions of gender,class, race or ethnicity and sexuality, to name only those most commonlysummarised as effective in an intersectional ensemble. But there are also

other aspects of people’s lives that form their biographies – family andkinship relationships, working life experiences, and educational careers,among others. An author’s work and presence in the literary field can beplaced along manifold different combinations of axes. And specifically inthe literary field, nationally and transnationally formed authors, texts andinstitutions develop in other relations central to the literary field. Thereare, for example, the literary or textual traditions and conventions ofwriting, in operation both in the writing of fiction and in criticism in mediaand academia. These traditions have been formed within histories of bothnational, transnational and other relations and trajectories.

As the reception of Sofi Oksanen’s Purge, discussed in the previoussection, indicates, her authorship and body of work offer a revealingexample of various entanglements that stretch beyond the national ortransnational networks. Whereas the transnational Finnish-Estonianconnection is productive when trying to describe Oksanen’s productionand its reception, a fuller picture is received when the effects of the(trans)national networks are related to other networks. For example,gender (as network) plays a crucial role in the authorship of Oksanen. Notonly can Oksanen be ascribed to two nationally defined literary traditionsbut to a tradition of “women writers” as well. On the one hand, Oksanencan be aligned with a tradition following Finnish-Estonian women authorsAino Kallas (1878–1956) and Hella Wuolijoki (1886–1954), twocontroversial figures who in their large oeuvres dealt with history, placingwomen in its centre. On the other hand, Oksanen’s case also shows howthe transnational networks interact and are entangled with gender networksand networks of literary conventions, where nationality and nationalborders are of little importance. From this perspective, she appears notonly as a transnational actor but also as a part of a continuum of long-standing historical entanglements involving several intertwined networks.

Moreover, Oksanen’s creative navigation in the capitalist economy ofbook publishing illustrates how transnationalism and economic networksare interrelated. Purge has been a remarkable success. It was a bestseller inFinland and Estonia, and it has sold very well also, for example, in Franceand the United States (see Lappalainen 2013). Her latest novel, Kunkyyhkyset katosivat [2012; When the Doves Disappeared], has so far notbeen a similar economic success, but the media circus, which alsopreviously surrounded the author and her works, has been more extensivethan before. Economic interests, skilled marketing strategies, mediarelations and transnational networks were intricately intertwined as therelease of the Finnish-language book was organised in Estonia,accompanied by huge media interest. The occasion also combined therelease of the new book with the launch of the film version of Purge. In

this transnational event, the multi-dimensional entangledness of theliterary field and its actors is highlighted. It carries evidence ofentanglements with linguistic networks, various media networks (activatedboth in the coverage of the event and in the inter- or multi-medialcharacter of the release party) and, as a consequence, with multipleeconomic networks.

All in all, whereas the application of the transnational and even thenational lens has clear benefits for answering questions of literary research(as we have aimed to show in this article), both perspectives centre, albeitin very different ways, on the category of the nation. It is precisely in thiscontext that the concept of entanglement becomes useful. It liberates usfrom the national category on the level of explicit discourse, whilst notprecluding attention to it. Thus entanglement as a term enables anacknowledgement of both the lessening significance and the persistence ofthe national category and the nation state in a globalized world. Inaddition, entanglement as a concept proposes that the national categoryand transnational networks can be studied in relation to other categoriesand networks forming the literary field and its various components, fromtexts to authors and institutions.

The “entanglement approach” to literature not only deconstructs therelation between literature – or any cultural texts, for that matter – and thenational order of the world, but also reaches beyond the binarism ofnationalism and transnationalism. Literatures do not have to beconceptualized as either national or transnational but, depending on theinterest of the study, may be considered as both – or neither. Shifting thenation from the status of a compulsory structural component of research tothat of one category among others creates an open terrain in which torecognize, choose and make use of any relevant categories – includingnation – or relevant entanglements between those categories.

Mikko Pollari (University of Tampere), Hanna-Leena Nissilä (Universityof Oulu), Kukku Melkas, Olli Löytty, Ralf Kauranen and HeidiGrönstrand (University of Turku) are members of the research project“The Transnational Connections of Finnish Literary Culture” (2012–2013, funded by the Kone Foundation).

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