Page - 51 - in Mobile Culture Studies - The Journal, Volume 4/2018

Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 4 2o18 Tuulikki Kurki | Border Crossing Trauma 51 and cultural traumas. Thus, novels can also be understood in the context of ‘trauma fiction’, which often emulates the traumatic experience and its further processing and narrativization (Whitehead 2004). Traditionally, trauma narratives stress the idea of witnessing. A witness can be seen as some- one who has observed an event with his or her own eyes, and speaks out and gives testimony (Nünning 2008, 137). In Perttu’s novels, witnessing is not an elementary question, although his historical novels apply documentary material, and he himself has lived through the disin- tegration of the Soviet Union and moved to live in another country. However, as cultural re- searcher, and literature researcher Vera Nünning suggests (2008, 137), the traditional definition of a witness may be too narrow when applied to trauma fiction or artistic works representing traumatic events. Nünning (2008, 123–125) also suggests that works of popular culture that are not based on eyewitness narratives can still have a significant impact on remembering and processing collective traumas. According to Nünning (ibid.), the representations provided and repeated by popular culture can strengthen the role and significance of some trauma represen- tations, as part of the collective and cultural memory. Fiction can also be understood as the narratives of secondary witnesses (LaCapra 1999, 699) and as post-memory (Hirsch 2008). In this context, works of fiction can be understood as emphatic expressions and reactions to the past occurrences they feature (LaCapra 1999, 699). Fiction can also provide more multifaceted understandings of traumas and their consequenc- es. In Perttu’s novels, hyper-natural elements, grotesque and surreal elements form narrative strategies that Perttu uses to create confusion, in order to illustrate the perplexities of the trau- matizing events that are seldom cognizable in a coherent manner. The repulsive and confusing elements in Perttu’s novels also diversify the dominant and standardized narratives and under- standings of various well-known historical traumas and their consequences in Finnish-Russian territorial and symbolic borderlands. Often, these standardized documentary narratives (for example about the civil war) are based on the detailed accounts of places, people and listings of events, based on external observations. The worlds depicted in Perttu’s novels follow the scheme of using hyper-natural prose and its violent, gloomy, and pessimistic worlds, that show the indi- vidual’s struggle for survival. Hyper-natural prose was introduced in Russian postmodernism in the 1990s, and depicts for example the everyday cruelty, the horrors of prisons, the life of dere- licts and prostitutes, and the corporeality of people, in ways that are often despised (Lipovetsky 2011, 179). According to literature researcher Mark Lipovetsky (2011, 179–180), the purpose of hyper-natural prose is to open past traumas to discussion, by introducing shocking and sometimes repulsive depictions. Readers’ critical reactions indicate that the use of hyper-natural prose has touched the traumas that have been previously buried in the collective consciousness. This possibility to shock and create confusion is also inherent in the reception of Perttu’s works. Ultimately, the shocking and repulsive, as well as, grotesque and surreal elements of his novels offer the possibility to influence the construction and processing of the collective and cultural memory of traumatic events that occurred in the Finnish-Russian borderlands. Perttu’s novels provide unique perspectives on events and life in the Finnish-Russian bor- derlands. His unique perspective is possible because his works can be understood as being multi-dimensional texts that are typical of border writing (Hicks 1991). This multi-dimen- sionality means that Perttu’s works connect with various writing traditions on different sides