Page - 42 - in Mobile Culture Studies - The Journal, Volume 4/2018

42 Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 4 2o18 Tuulikki Kurki | Border Crossing Trauma appears as being “strange” and even “paradoxical” (Baldwin 2004, 10–11). Literature can func- tion as an instrument through which we can study border and mobility related experiences, and take advantage of the unusual and bizarre viewpoints it provides. In some cases, unusual and estranged viewpoints can be the only possible means through which traumatic experiences can be discussed (Whitehead 2004, 83–84). The theme and viewpoint of the article connect with cultural studies and the multidis- ciplinary field of border studies, where cultural and humanist approaches have gained more visibility over the past decade (Brunet-Jailly 2005; Konrad and Nicol 2011, 74–75). The aspect of trauma has been noted also in the recent border studies (Wilson & Donnan 2012), and also from the point of view of literature and artistic practices (Kurki 2016b; Ristolainen 2014; Ea- ton 2003).The theoretical background of the article is based also on multidisciplinary trauma studies. In the 1990s, the early scholarship of multidisciplinary trauma studies was based on the idea that trauma is something unspeakable and un-representable for the person who expe- riences it. According to literature and trauma researcher Michelle Balaev (2014, 1–2), the idea of un-representability was based on Freud’s theories, and was introduced, for example by theo- rists such as Cathy Caruth. According to the idea of un-representability, trauma is an unsolved mystery to the unconscious, and it illustrates the inherent conflict between the experience and the language. According to Caruth (1991, 187), the traumatic event cannot be experienced or approached at the moment of its occurrence, and can be sensed and observed only in another place and in another time. Michelle Balaev (as well as other recent multidisciplinary trauma researchers) has challenged the idea of the un-representability of trauma (Balaev 2014, 2–6). In these studies, trauma has been defined and studied from various theoretical viewpoints, and the literature research, has focused for example on the semiotic, rhetorical and social dimensions of trauma. The research has also questioned the universality of trauma features, and focuses on the uniqueness of trauma, its connected- ness with societal and cultural contexts, and the relationship between trauma, politics, memory and remembering. Traumatic Borderland as a Context for Writing The Finnish-Russian national border has a long history as being both a porous border that allows mobility across the border, and also as an iron curtain that blocks mobility almost entirely. It has also been a source of various traumas for the people moving across the bor- der and living in the borderland areas. Border shifts have split the borderland area in sever- al different ways during past centuries. The shifting border has thus separated ethnona- tional and language groups on both sides of the national border [see Fig. 1]. Especially, the Fig. 1: Russian and Finnish Karelia (grey area).