Peeking through the Iron Curtain: Memories of Watching Finnish Television in Estonia during Soviet Occupation

The present study analyses the memories of watching Finnish television in Estonia during the last decades of the Soviet occupation from the late 1960s until the beginning of 1990s. The study stems from a culturalist approach, perceiving television as a relevant aspect in the audiences’ everyday lives. It explores the significance of Finnish television on the society of occupied Estonia from the point of view of its historical audiences. The literature review concentrates on concepts such as the power of television, transnational media, historical audience reception and memory as an object of research. It also explains the concept of spillover, which refers to the unintentional bilateral flow of television signals from one country to another. Despite the numerous efforts of the Soviet authorities to prevent the viewing of the "bourgeois television", there still remained a small gap in the Iron Curtain. The study describes the phenomenon of watching Finnish television in Estonia. It provides understanding about the significance of watching Finnish television in Soviet Estonia through the experiences of its former audience. In addition, it explores what do people remember about watching Finnish television, and why. The empirical data was acquired from peoples’ personal memories through the analysis of private interviews and written responses during the period from February 2010 to February 2011. A total of 85 responses (5 interviews and 83 written responses) were analysed. The research employed the methods of oral history and memory studies. The main theoretical sources of the study include the works of Mati Graf and Heikki Roiko-Jokela, Hagi Šein, Sonia Livingstone, Janet Staiger and Emily Keightley. The study concludes that besides fulfilling the role of an entertainer and an informer, Finnish television enabled its Estonian audiences to gain entry into the imaginary world. Access to this imaginary world was so important, that the viewers engaged in illegal activities and gained special skills, whereby a phenomenon of "television tourism" developed. Most of the memories about Finnish television are vivid and similar. The latter indicates both the reliability and the collectiveness of such memories, which in return give shape to collective identities. Thus, for the Estonian viewers, the experience of watching Finnish television during the Soviet occupation has became part of their identity.

Liminal Belonging: West African male asylum seekers’ narratives of the asylum experience whilst in Finland

The dominant discourses on the issue of asylum have placed it on a uniquely higher level of scrutiny as a politically very sensitive area for social research. Today, member states within the EU have implemented stricter policies to control new arrivals, whilst instituting statutory procedures to manage the existing asylum claims. In 2010, the number of applicants for asylum in Finland totalled 5988, out of which 1784 were given positive decisions. This thesis endeavour to highlight asylum seekers in the discourses about them by adding their voices to the discussions of them in contemporary Finland. Studies, which has concentrated on asylum seekers in Finland, uses the living conditions within asylum reception centres to assess the impacts of structural barriers on asylum seekers’ efforts to deal with the asylum process. By highlighting the impacts of the entire asylum process, which I believe starts from the country of origin; I focus on examining narratives of dealing with the experience of liminality whilst waiting for asylum, and then explore areas of possible participation within informal social networks for West African asylum seekers in Finland. The overall aim is to place the current research within the broader sociological discussion of ‘belonging’ for asylum seekers who are yet to be recognized as refugees, and who exist in a state of limbo. Methodologically, oral interviews, self-written autobiographical narratives, and ethnographic field work are qualitatively combined as data in this thesis for an empirical study of West African male asylum seekers in Finland. Narrative analysis is employed to analyze the data for this thesis. The ethnographic research data for the study began in May 2009 and ended in August of 2010. Altogether, ten interviews and four self-written narratives were collected as data. In total seven hours of audio recording were made, along eleven pages of hand-written autobiographical narratives. Field observation notes are employed in the study to provide contexts to the active interactional processes of interpretation throughout the analysis. Findings from the study suggest that within the experience of liminality, which surrounds the entire asylum process, participations within informal social networks are found to be important to the process of re-making place and the sense of belonging. My study shows that this is necessary to countering the experience of boredom, stress and social isolation, which permeate all aspects of life for West African asylum seekers, whilst they wait for asylum decisions in Finland.

Divergencies of Perception : The Possibilities of Merleau-Pontian Phenomenology in Analyses of Contemporary Art

Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) has been known as the philosopher of painting. His interest in the theory of perception intertwined with the questions concerning the artist s perception, the experience of an artwork and the possible interpretations of the artwork. For him, aesthetics was not a sub-field of philosophy, and art was not simply a subject matter for the aesthetic experience, but a form of thinking. This study proposes an opening for a dialogue between Merleau-Pontian phenomenology and contemporary art. The thesis examines his phenomenology through certain works of contemporary art and presents readings of these artworks through his phenomenology. The thesis both shows the potentiality of a method, but also engages in the critical task of finding the possible limitations of his approach. The first part lays out the methodological and conceptual points of departure of Merleau-Ponty s phenomenological approach to perception as well as the features that determined his discussion on encountering art. Merleau-Ponty referred to the experience of perceiving art using the notion of seeing with (voir selon). He stressed a correlative reciprocity described in Eye and Mind (1961) as the switching of the roles of the visible and the painter. The choice of artworks is motivated by certain restrictions in the phenomenological readings of visual arts. The examined works include paintings by Tiina Mielonen, a photographic work by Christian Mayer, a film by Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno, and an installation by Monika Sosnowska. These works resonate with, and challenge, his phenomenological approach. The chapters with case studies take up different themes that are central to Merleau-Ponty s phenomenology: space, movement, time, and touch. All of the themes are interlinked with the examined artworks. There are also topics that reappear in the thesis, such as the notion of écart and the question of encountering the other. As Merleau-Ponty argued, the sphere of art has a particular capability to address our being in the world. The thesis presents an interpretation that emphasises the notion of écart, which refers to an experience of divergence or dispossession. The sudden dissociation, surprise or rupture that is needed in order for a meeting between the spectator and the artwork, or between two persons, to be possible. Further, the thesis suggests that through artworks it is possible to take into consideration the écart, the divergence, that defines our subjectivity.