Preliminary Programme

The collection of Estonian life histories includes more than 3,500 manuscript life stories, which provide a cross-section of changes in both society and mental attitudes over the past 30 years.
In the life stories told in the 1990s, it is rare to see a depiction of intergenerational conflict. The narrators of these stories were mostly born before World War II in the independent Republic of Estonia. As expected, their attention is focused on the conflict of people and political power caused by the establishment of Soviet power in Estonia. Family relationships were portrayed mostly as harmonious. Conflicts within the family were spoken of as misunderstandings, that occurring from time to time, which did not, however, lead to tragic or traumatic consequences.
However, in the stories told in the 21st century, the issue of alienation between parents and children is becoming more and more important. On the one hand, this is due to the separation of children from their parents, either because of the war or political imprisonment, as well as because of the way of life after the war. Often parents left their young children with their grandparents to somehow organize their own lives. But next to it, it is obvious that the understanding of the family and the organization of internal relations inside of the family has changed radically in the second half of the 20th century.
Based on some examples chosen from the life stories’ collection, the questions will be ask: (1) what manifestations and the factors that cause them come to light when daughters talk about the conflicts between themselves and their mother; (2) why in some cases we can talk about the daughter's accusations, but in other cases we see how the narrator tries to understand the mother; (3) what changes in the relationship between mother and children that took place in Estonian society in the second half of the 20th century can be highlighted based on the observed stories; (4) how the rules of storytelling have changed when the topic of conversation is family relationships. (Show less)

Ella Ojala (1929–2019) wrote three memoirs and published a book of family photographs at the turn of the 1990s in Finland. Born in the Soviet Union, in the historical area of Ingria located around the city of Leningrad, Ojala belonged to a group called Ingrian Finns. During her childhood she experienced Soviet deportation and German occupation of her home village. In 1943, Ojala and her family were relocated to Finland where she lived the rest of her life. In her books, she reflects on her growing up in the midst of these continuous uncertainties, and dispersal of her family through a family photographs that travel with her across national borders, political regimes, and times. In 2020, Ojala’s family photographs were archived at the Finnish Literature Society’s archives as part of an oral history and data collection project focusing on memories and heritage related to Ingrian Finns.

In this presentation, I will contribute to the discussions on memorability through a theoretical notion of mnemonic affordance. As a case study, I will analyze Ojala’s family photographs’ multiple becomings and their affordances in the mediation of the memory of Soviet repression, forced migrations, and the dispersal of family on multiple scales. My analysis consist of three parts. I will explore affordances of photographs in the mediation of 1) the memory of dispersed family, 2) Ojala’s life story, and 3) the memory of Ingrian Finns’ past more generally. My aim is to highlight analytical benefits of the notion of mnemonic affordance in theorizing memorability and its preconditions on the scales of personal, family, and public memory and to develop novel methodological tools for research of oral histories, life stories, and memory in culture. (Show less)

What is the role of the senses in remembering past events? How can sound, smell, taste or touch help us to recollect our family pasts? Which kind of memories do they reveal? The case of the scent and taste of a little crumb of madeleine dredging up a long-lost memory in Proust´s case is well known but what sounds, smells, tastes or touches can be remembered when recollecting one´s own childhood? The presentation is based on interviews held with three generations of thirteen families in the Czech Republic. During semi-structured interviews, all three generations - of grand-parents, parents and adult children - were challenged to recollect sounds, smells, tastes and touches of their infancy and youth. Were there generational differences in recollecting the senses? How are these recollections connected to family functioning and family relations? Similar questions will be explored and answered profiting from the findings of family psychology and cognitive neuroscience of remembering. The results point to a social construction of sensory memories, to generational differences in case of the scents and sounds of outdoor experiences and to a different character of the memories of sound and smell. Sensory memories should not be omitted when doing oral histories. (Show less)