Between worlds: discrepancy and resemblance

They do things differently there. Essays on Cultural HistoryEdited by Bruce Johnson & Harri Kiiskinen2011242 pages

Defined by interdisciplinary analysis, cultural history is among the most used method by

historians, philosophers, art historians, anthropologists in reviving and explaining the past. Thought to be

an intermediary between past and present, but also one that attempts to reconciliate different civilizations,

cultural history makes use of the everyday life aspects of common people, their beliefs, social and

political background, a combination of sociology, anthropology and, of course, history.

Therefore, a cultural historian has an important assignment: that of a go-between past/present,

center/periphery and the essential one, of a mediator in explaining customs which may seem odd in the

eyes of the other. And that is the basis of this anthology edited by the Australian professor Bruce Johnson

(Macquarie University, Sidney) and his fellow collegue from University of Turku, Harri Kiiskinen. Part of

a series that brings a new perspective, a northern one, in the field of cultural history, published by the

Department of Cultural History, at the University of Turku, Finland, this collection of essays “may be

regarded as both part of the international discourse of cultural history but contributing in a way that

reflects what is distinctive in the field in Finnish scholarship” (page 8). Both editors come from opposite

and marginal geographies (the far North and the far South-East) and with different influential thought

models, German and Anglo-Saxon, which contributed to the uniqueness of this project.

The articles signed by members and graduates from the University of Turku were selected from a

book called Kultuurohistoriallinen katse (The Gaze of Cultural history edited by one of the authors of the

volume, Heli Rantala) that brought into discussion the principles of cultural history beyond the obvious

question “what is cultural history?”. Divided in two parts combining theory and application, the collection

begins with a range of approaches in defining and examining the way cultural historiography was viewed

and formulated called Essays in Cultural Historiography :

1. Heli Rantala, On the origins of culture

2. Marja Tuominen, Where the world ends? The places and challenges of northern cultural history

3. Asko Nivala, The Chemical Age: Presenting history with metaphors

4. Kari Kallioniemi & Kimi Kӓrki, Tracing the Hegemonic and the Marginal: A Cultural History of

Cultural Studies

and continues with Essays in Cultural History, making significant scientific contributions to the field of

cultural history in using sources like the cultural history of the human body (beauty and disease),

psychoanalysis, language, images as constructions of reality/history:

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1. Marjo Kaartinen, Premodern Breast Cancer and the Abject

2. Kirsi Tuohela, “Dotage without a fever”. Towards a cultural history of melancholia

3. Ritva Hapuli & Maarit Leskelӓ-Kӓrki, The public and private worlds of writing

4. Mervi Autti, The photograph as source of microhistory – reaching out for the invisible

What is most appealing in the first part of the volume features the birth and development of the

Finnish cultural history in Heli Rantala’s On the origin of culture consistent with the initiation of a

national movement away from the Russian occupation. While most of Europe defined its national identity

with the help of historical arguments, the Finnish used the common cultural background as an argument

for their independence. The editor Bruce Johnson also reminds in his introduction the pioneering role

fulfilled by the Finnish scholars in deploying the concept of culture in a broader interpretation embracing

the everyday life. Also, Asko Nivala’s article based on a quote from Schelling’s Fragments introduces the

concept of metaphorical thinking as an alternative to the dispute between organic/mechanical theories

from the second half of the eighteenth century and underlines the importance and role of metaphors in

historical writing (“in this article I have sought to entangle the age of Romanticism by exploring the use

of metaphors. Yet the metaphorical mode not only belongs to the past, but it is also an inescapable feature

of contemporary language”- p. 102). “History cannot present human actions, conceptions, experiences

and feelings using a language that is purified from sensory content and metaphors.”(p. 104)

Dealing with the cultural and geographical identity of the Finnish, Marja Tuominen discusses the

relation between center and periphery created, as the author underlines, by the Finnish regarding the Sami

population. Otherness has been and still is a major issue in historiography and cultural encounters and a

source of conflicts whether it’s about different languages, religions, political views.

Kari Kallioniemi & Kimi Kӓrki seek to “provide an overview of the, primarily British, history of

cultural studies from the perspective of our position as cultural historians” ( p. 110), with the necessary

inclusion of the concept of popular culture as society drifts away from the elites and principles of the

eighteen and nineteen century in the postwar reconfiguration (“one pattern in the development of cultural

studies has involved a cognate shift from a canonical conception of «culture» as a set of elite artefacts, to

an understanding of culture as a general way of life”-p. 110). The authors use the concept culture

formulated by Raymond Williams in his work The Long Revelation (1965) marking the founding of

cultural studies in Britain and Anglo-Saxon world as Heli Rantala traces the history of cultural studies in

Finland in his article On the origin of culture thus illustrating the main theories produced in the northern

and western Europe. “Cultural studies and cultural history might both have the potential to seek out new

creative territories, to redefine and understand old structures of meaning, and alter the directions of

cultural processes.”(p.131).

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Being introduced into the discipline of cultural history with this short theoretical overview the

reader is given a few examples of research in the field starting with the human body and spirit. Marjo

Kaartinen and Kirski Tuohela explore the ways in which the body and the mind have cultural and

historical meaning through their representation and social rejection/acceptance. Marjo Kaartinen uses the

example of a horrid disease as breast cancer to explore the concept of the abject of the human flesh,

especially women bodily decay. Another kind of ailment is the subject of Kirski Tuohela's article, one that

has greater implications and knows no gender, melancholia. “The concept of melanholia is varying and in

“eternal flux”, covering a broad time scale and the whole spectrum of meanings from disease to emotion”.

(p. 159).

Towards the end of the book Bruce Johnson placed two contributions that underline the subjective

nature of cultural history making the reader understand the cultural history is a living and dynamic field.

Language, as the editor and several authors mention, is an cultural act in itself, defining and building

identities, individual or collective, expressing emotions, thoughts, events long before images could tell

“the story”. But with the arrival of photography, its realistic manner of rendering the world, language

began to decline.

They do things differently there is a well structured volume reuniting theory and practice and

providing some interesting insights regarding the evolution of cultural history and cultural studies. The

second part of the book shares examples of what can be considered to be included in this expanding

research of the surrounding environment, reviving the past and understanding the present. The editors

have been really thorough, taking into consideration all the elements necessary for a scientific work, but

without being too uptight. All in all, this volume is an important reading for the ones who wish to explore

the Finnish research regarding cultural history.

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