About the project
Project manager
Åsa Nilsson Skåve
Participating organisations
Linnaeus University
Financier
Linnaeus University Centre for Concurrences and Postcolonial Studies
Timetable
1 jan 2018–31 dec 2021
Subject
Comparative literature (department of film and literature, faculty of arts and humanities)
More about the project
The novels analysed take place in the northern parts of Sweden, as for example Mikael Niemi's Fallvatten (2012) and Per Hallström's Döda fallet (1902). What is focused, from a combined ecocritical and postcolonial perspective, is what depictions of historical course of events, as the effects of industrialization in the north of Sweden, that are expressed in the texts, what societal and interpersonal power structures that are manifested, and how these relate to antropocentrical and ecocentrical approaches. The concept of concurrences is important, both according to how language and narrative structure in a specific work underlines the thematisation of power relation and its consequences, and how the intertextual dialogues mirror larger historical lines. A special kind of concurrences is also the parallel between what happens to nature and what happens to human beings at a certain time and place, and this is where the synthesis between postcolonial and ecocritical theory is productive.
