1.4. Recording: Noora Vaakanainen "Appropriating Voices: Narratorial Overtness in Laura Lindstedt’s Oneiron"

In 2016, Laura Lindstedt’s novel Oneiron (Oneiron. A Fantasy about the Seconds after Death, 2015) was at the center of a literary debate when blogger and cultural critic Koko Hubara accused the author of cultural appropriation. This was the first time the term cultural appropriation was applied to Finnish contemporary literature, and the case sparked notable and critical discussion in newspapers, literary journals, and social media.

The presentation revisits this debate by analyzing the concept of narrative voice in Lindstedt’s novel. The main focus is on the stylistic strategies of narratorial overtness, such as pronoun alternation and the excessive use of parentheses, and how these strategies contribute to the complex dynamics of voices. Additionally, the presentation proposes that these dynamics and their narrative functions might provide new insights into the discussion about appropriation in literature.