Relating with past lives: Cultural historian as a biographer

Abstract

<p>In this chapter, I reflect on my academic journey and analyze the influence of Liz Stanley’s work on it. I focus on the intersection of life-writing studies and historical research, discussing how Stanley’s contributions to the theory of auto/biography and her strong feminist perspective have opened this field to other scholars. I examine the concept of relationality in biographical research, which has been pivotal since Stanley’s influential theory of auto/biopraphy in the early 1990s, and demonstrate how Adriana Cavarero’s ideas on relationality helped shape my understanding. I apply this theory of relational biographical writing to two of my recent biographical works. The book on Finnish artist and writer Tove Jansson led me to expand the idea of relationality to include Jansson’s connection to her natural environment, specifically the Finnish archipelago, and to explore the genre of environmental biography. The other work, on the early 20th century forgotten Finnish poet and writer Aarni Kouta, provides a perspective on cultural oblivion and the ways cultural memory is constructed by omitting certain elements, in this case, for example, the cultural history of esotericism in Finland. In conclusion, I discuss how the relationship between a biographer and their subject evolves when examining something familiar and known in relation to something entirely unknown. The cases of Jansson and Kouta offer valuable examples for exploring the dynamics between a biographer and their subject.<br></p>