Material Memories: Narrating and Reconstructing Experiences about Displaced Childhood during World War II

IF 0.2 0 HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY

Narrative Culture Pub Date : 2022-03-01 DOI:10.1353/ncu.2022.0005

Eerika Koskinen-Koivisto

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Abstract:During World War II, about 70,000 Finnish children were evacuated to Sweden and other Nordic countries to stay in foster homes to ease the situation of Finnish families. In this article, I analyze narratives of a former Finnish child evacuee who was evacuated to Sweden and who lived in Swedish foster homes during two different periods. I scrutinize her experiences, stories, and personal documents about evacuation and everyday life in foster homes from the perspective of affective and material memories. I approach the retrospective reminiscence of displacement as a mixture of a child’s perspective and an adult’s reflection. During the interview, the narrator read letters she had written to her mother, which bring out everyday life experiences in the midst of conflict that anchor in the material world. The written documents, as well as the sensory and material elements of the oral storytelling, function as keys for rendering complex affective experiences. In this text, I analyze the process of reconstructing narratives of displaced childhood and transnational family history as part of personal memory work.

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物质记忆：讲述和重建二战期间流离失所儿童的经历

摘要：第二次世界大战期间，约有7万名芬兰儿童被疏散到瑞典和其他北欧国家，住在寄养家庭，以缓解芬兰家庭的处境。在这篇文章中，我分析了一位被疏散到瑞典的前芬兰儿童的故事，他在两个不同的时期住在瑞典的寄养家庭。我从情感和物质记忆的角度仔细审视了她关于撤离和寄养家庭日常生活的经历、故事和个人文件。我将流离失所的回顾性回忆视为儿童视角和成人反思的混合。在采访中，叙述者阅读了她写给母亲的信，这些信讲述了她在物质世界冲突中的日常生活经历。书面文件，以及口头故事的感官和物质元素，是呈现复杂情感体验的关键。在本文中，我分析了作为个人记忆工作的一部分，重建流离失所的童年和跨国家族史叙事的过程。

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来源期刊

Narrative Culture HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY-

CiteScore

0.50

自引率

0.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： Narrative Culture is a new journal that conceptualizes narration as a broad and pervasive human practice, warranting a holistic perspective that grasps the place of narrative comparatively across time and space. The journal invites contributions that document, discuss and theorize narrative culture, and offers a platform that integrates approaches spread across various disciplines. The field of narrative culture thus outlined is defined by a large variety of forms of popular narratives, including not only oral and written texts, but also narratives in images, three-dimensional art, customs, rituals, drama, dance, music, and so forth. Narrative Culture is peer-reviewed and international as well as interdisciplinary in orientation.