Kaisa Kortekallio | University of Turku (original) (raw)

Books by Kaisa Kortekallio

Tieto Ihmisen jälkeen, 2024

Finnish translation of Rosi Braidotti's book Posthuman Knowledge (2019). Transl. Kaisa Kortekalli... more Finnish translation of Rosi Braidotti's book Posthuman Knowledge (2019). Transl. Kaisa Kortekallio.

Tieto Ihmisen jälkeen esittää kriittisen posthumanistisen näkemyksen ihmistieteiden paikasta teknologian, kapitalismin ja ympäristötuhon läpäisemässä yhteiskunnassa. Feministisestä ja uusmaterialistisesta ajattelusta ammentava teos tarjoaa vision ihmistieteistä, joissa sekä tiedon subjektit että tietoa tuottavat instituutiot saavat voimaa moninaisuudesta ja monilajisuudesta.

Kokoelmassa eri alojen tutkijat ja taiteilijat tarkastelevat ympäristömuutoksen esteettisiä ulott... more Kokoelmassa eri alojen tutkijat ja taiteilijat tarkastelevat ympäristömuutoksen esteettisiä ulottuvuuksia oman alansa näkökulmasta tai monialaisesti. Artikkeleita ohjaavina taustaoletuksina on, että laaja-alainen ympäristömuutos vaikuttaa merkittävästi inhimilliseen kokemusmaailmaan ja arvoihin ja että estetiikalla ja sen tutkimuksella on vastaavasti tärkeä rooli kestävyyssiirtymissä.

Toim. Jukka Mikkonen, Sanna Lehtinen, Kaisa Kortekallio & Noora-Helena Korpelainen

"Kaisa Kortekallio's book develops an innovative blend of posthumanism, narrative theory, and ena... more "Kaisa Kortekallio's book develops an innovative blend of posthumanism, narrative theory, and enactivist philosophy. Kortekallio's prose foregrounds choreographic metaphors, and that's no coincidence: the moves contained in her readings of "mutant narratives" offer unique affective training for reimagining the human in times of ecological crisis" Marco Caracciolo, Associate Professor of English & Literary Theory, Ghent University "What are eco-narratives for? Mutant Narratives develops the best case we have for literature's power to attune readers' minds and bodies to the unsettling realities of the Anthropocene. Interweaving virtuoso close readings and bold theorizing, its argument that the experience of literature trains us for posthuman life is as brilliant as it is urgent."

Peer-reviewed articles and book chapters by Kaisa Kortekallio

Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Planetary Well-Being, 2024

Culture covers myriad aspects of human life. Most often it is understood as intellectual or artis... more Culture covers myriad aspects of human life. Most often it is understood as intellectual or artistic practices, but in a broader view, culture covers the habits, lifestyles, traditions, beliefs, values, and worldviews that shape human lives and societies. Culture also undergoes continuous change and is affected by human actions. Current ecological and well-being crises caused by destructive cultural practices and actions pose an existential risk to both humans and nonhumans. This chapter argues that when challenging, preventing, and changing such destructive human practices and actions, the role of culture is indispensable. Building on and rethinking cultural sustainability, the chapter outlines how culture could be transformed into and regarded as planetary well-being—a process in which culture shifts towards more sustainable practices and actions that enable well-being for humans and nonhumans alike. The chapter focuses on the potential of contemporary art in fostering this kind of transformation.

Extrapolation 64 (3), 2023

This essay introduces recent speculative novels written by Finnish authors, and discusses the veg... more This essay introduces recent speculative novels written by Finnish authors, and discusses the vegetal agency that permeates them. In Johanna Sinisalo's The Core of the Sun and Emmi Itäranta's The Moonday Letters, plant life entices, intoxicates, and transforms human bodies and minds. Sinisalo experiments with ideas about the coevolution of plants and humans, and Itäranta explores the significance of plants in the contexts of space colonies and ecosabotage. The essay suggests that the novels gesture toward an emerging Planthroposcene. Anthropologist Natasha Myers has proposed "Planthroposcene" as a modification to Anthropocene, the era of global human impact on the Earth. As an "aspirational episteme", the

Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas, 2022

Drawing on feminist, enactivist and posthumanist theories of reading, the essay develops theoreti... more Drawing on feminist, enactivist and posthumanist theories of reading, the essay develops theoretical and methodological tools for bodily and reflective reading of fictional figures. It introduces the notion of “readerly choreography,” which stands for the iterative experiential patterns that fictional narratives suggest. The primary purpose of the notion is to provide a better grasp of readerly dynamics typical to genre-derived works of fiction — including the cases in which generic frames of expectation and experience are estranged and reconfigured. The essay’s contribution to theory is presented on the basis of a reading of Paolo Bacigalupi’s “The People of Sand and Slag” (2004). This short story plays on the conventions of action-adventure, exaggerating the toughness and physical capabilities of technologically enhanced, posthuman action heroes. Owing to this exaggeration, it becomes difficult for readers to continue to perform the habitual experiential patterns of excitement, action-derived pleasure, and identification with the heroic protagonist. In other words, “The People of Sand and Slag” estranges the readerly choreography of action-adventure narratives.

Ympäristömuutos ja estetiikka, 2022

Ympäristömuutos haastaa kirjallisuudentutkimuksen merkitysperustaa. Kaisa Kortekallion artikkeli ... more Ympäristömuutos haastaa kirjallisuudentutkimuksen merkitysperustaa. Kaisa Kortekallion artikkeli esittelee ympäristömuutosta haasteena ekokritiikin, antroposeenin, posthumanismin ja postkolonialismin sekä kirjallisuuden käytäntöjen näkökulmista. Erityisesti Kortekallio pohtii sitä, kuinka ympäristömuutoksen kirjallisuus haastaa moderneille kertomuksille tyypillisen keskushahmon eli antropoksen asemaa. Hän tulkitsee Antti Salmisen kokeellisia teoksia Lomonosovin moottori (2014) ja MIR (2019) ympäristömuutoksen kirjallisuutena, jossa antropoksen varmuutta murennetaan ei-inhimillisillä elementeillä ja kerronnallisilla keinoilla.

Viite:

Kortekallio, Kaisa 2022. Lahoava antropos Antti Salmisen Lomonosovin moottorissa ja MIRissä. Teoksessa Ympäristömuutos ja estetiikka, toim. Jukka Mikkonen, Sanna Lehtinen, Kaisa Kortekallio ja Noora-Helena Korpelainen. Helsinki: Suomen Estetiikan Seura, 354 - 391.

Koko teos (open access): https://helda.helsinki.fi/handle/10138/343564

Narrating Nonhuman Spaces: Form, Story, and Experience Beyond Anthropocentrism, 2022

This chapter considers the affective experience of reading Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl dur... more This chapter considers the affective experience of reading Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl during seasonal depression. The approach draws on Matthew Ratcliffe's account of mood as well as enactive and New Materialist perspectives, bringing together the material forces of weather, human embodiment, and literature. The chapter demonstrates how descriptive and narrative techniques, such as kinaesthetic and spatial language, generate bodily feelings of tension, weight, and constraint, amplifying the experiential patterns of seasonal mood. This intentionally affective argument develops a nuanced sense of the material dynamics of bodily reading.

Kirjallisuudentutkimuksen aikakauslehti Avain, 2020

Kartoitamme lähilukemisen vähemmälle huomiolle jäänyttä historiaa, jossa keskitytään tekstin ja l... more Kartoitamme lähilukemisen vähemmälle huomiolle jäänyttä historiaa, jossa keskitytään tekstin ja lukijan väliseen vuorovaikutukseen: I.A. Richardsin, Virginia Woolfin ja Louise Rosenblattin kautta päästään feministisiin, uusformalistisiin ja ruumiillisen mielen näkökulmiin. Annamme myös esimerkkejä tuoreista lähilukemisen sovelluksista: lähilukemista on käytetty menetelmänä lääketieteellisessä humanismissa (kerronnallinen lääketiede) ja ympäristöhumanistisessa tutkimuksessa (posthumanistinen ja ekokriittinen tutkimus).

Esittelemässämme tulkinnassa lähilukeminen on luovaa kriittistä toimintaa. Lähilukemisessa yhdistyvät subjektiivisuus ja objektiivisuus, affektiivisuus ja reflektiivisyys, kriittisyys ja herkkyys. Samalla se on vääjäämättä intersubjektiivista ja ympäristöllistä. Taitavan ja herkän lukemisen oppiminen voi olla henkilökohtaisen ja yhteiskunnallisen muutoksen keino. Lukemisen mahdolliset vaikutukset syntyvät aina suhteessa muuhun maailmaan, tiettyyn tilanteeseen ja kontekstiin: lukeminen on vaikuttumista ja limittymistä.

niin & näin: Filosofinen aikakauslehti, 2020

Arkikokemus ei helposti saa kiinni kaukana sulavista jäätiköistä tai kapitalistisista tuotantoket... more Arkikokemus ei helposti saa kiinni kaukana sulavista jäätiköistä tai kapitalistisista tuotantoketjuista päivittäisten appelsiiniemme takana. Antroposeenikeskustelussa kuuluu usein väitettävän, että tällaiset ilmiöt ovat ruumiillisen kokemuksen "tuolla puolen", liian suuria, hitaita, hajaantuneita tai kaukaisia. Mutta entä jos kokemuksen heikkous onkin vain yrityksen puutetta? Entä jos oleellinen kysymys ei olekaan "mitä kokemukselle tapahtuu" vaan "mitä kokemukselle voidaan tehdä"? Spekulatiivinen fiktio, vaikkapa Paolo Bacigalupin The Windup Girl, voi auttaa tekemään kokemuksesta oudompaa ja siten auttaa pääsemään kiinni antroposeenin ilmiöihin.

Reconfiguring Human, Nonhuman and Posthuman in Literature and Culture, 2019

This chapter, “Becoming-instrument: Thinking with Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation and Timothy Mort... more This chapter, “Becoming-instrument: Thinking with Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation and Timothy Morton’s Hyperobjects”, considers first-person narration and empathic enactment of fictional experience from posthumanist and enactivist perspectives. It introduces a new methodological device called “becoming-instrument”, which opens the reader’s experience to nonhuman influences. Building on Marco Caracciolo’s (2014) claims about empathic engagement with first-person narratives and Merja Polvinen’s (2012) notion of self-aware readerly engagement, the chapter’s author Kaisa Kortekallio argues that engagement with estranging first-person narratives, such as Annihilation and Hyperobjects, can work toward dissolving the certainty of the human subject and develop in its stead a model of subjectivity as “multiple and always-in-progress” (Sherryl Vint 2005).

Annihilation (2014) and Hyperobjects (2013) both invite the reader to enact the affective experientiality of their first-person narrators, but they also foreground the fictionality of those narrators. The chapter argues that affective experientiality and awareness of fictionality can intertwine in the readerly experience, and that the combination of affectivity and self-referentiality is characteristic of the “dark” or “weird” ecology VanderMeer and Morton advance in their texts. Finally, Kortekallio suggests that the dynamic of enactment applies not only to explicitly fictional narrative techniques but also to the rhetorical devices employed in non-fiction texts – such as the rhetorical “I” in Hyperobjects.

Fafnir – Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research, Volume 1, Issue 2, pages 23–40., Jun 15, 2014

This article analyzes two novels by the British writer Simon Ings, Hot Head (1992) and Hotwire (1... more This article analyzes two novels by the British writer Simon Ings, Hot Head (1992) and Hotwire (1995), from perspectives provided by second-order systems theory, philosophy of neuroscience and posthumanist philosophy. In Ings' cyberpunk fiction, the use of a particular novum, a programmable cerebral tissue called “datafat”, enables elaborate experimentation on different theories of mind and matter. Due to this experimentation, Ings’ work is able to convey a conception of cognition as an emergent effect produced in material processes that are both human and non-human. Ings’ work asserts the human subject as a complex system in a complex technological ecology and, consequentially, presents us with a model for subjectivity that might be called “posthuman”.

Ph. D. Dissertation (monograph) by Kaisa Kortekallio

Reading Mutant Narratives, 2020

'Reading Mutant Narratives' explores how narratives of environmental and personal transformation ... more 'Reading Mutant Narratives' explores how narratives of environmental and personal transformation in contemporary ecological science fiction can develop more-thanhuman modes of embodied experience. More specifically, it attends to the conflicted yet potentially transformative experientiality of 'mutant narratives.' Mutant narratives are viewed as uneasy hybrids of human-centered and posthumanist science fiction
that contain potential for ecological understanding. Drawing on narrative studies and empirical reading studies, the dissertation begins from the premise that in suitable conditions, reading fiction may give rise to experiential change. The study traces and describes experiential changes that take place while reading works of science fiction.
The bodily, subjective and historical conditions of reading are considered alongside the generic contexts and narrative features of the fictional works studied.
As exemplary cases of mutant narratives, the study foregrounds the work of three American science fiction authors known for their critiques of anthropocentrism and for their articulations of more-than-human ecologies: Greg Bear, Paolo Bacigalupi, and Jeff VanderMeer. While much of contemporary fiction naturalizes embodied experience and hides their own narrative strategies, mutant narratives have the potential to defamiliarize readers’ notions of bodies and environments while also
estranging their embodied experience of reading fiction. As a theoretical contribution to science fiction studies, the study considers such a readerly dynamic in terms of 'embodied estrangement.'
Building on theoretical and practical work done in both embodied cognitive and posthumanist approaches to literature, the study shows how engagements with fictional narratives can, for their part, shape readers’ habitual patterns of feeling and perception. These approaches are synthesized into a method of close reading, 'performative enactivism,' that helps to articulate bodily, environmental, and more-thanhuman aspects of readerly engagement. Attending to such experiential aspects integrates ecological science fiction more deeply into the contemporary experiential situation of living with radical environmental transformation.

Essays (not peer-reviewed) by Kaisa Kortekallio

This paper concentrates on Carl Sagan's use of conceptual metaphor in his popular science book Co... more This paper concentrates on Carl Sagan's use of conceptual metaphor in his popular science book Cosmos (1980). Written in semi-academic Finnish.

niin & näin, 2016

Tieteisfiktio kuvittelee toisia maailmoja, ja siksi sitä pidetään yleensä leimallisesti ei-realist... more Tieteisfiktio kuvittelee toisia maailmoja, ja siksi sitä pidetään yleensä leimallisesti ei-realistisena. Hyvin usein tieteisfiktiivisten kertomusten vaikuttavuus kuitenkin nojaa realistisen kerronnan keinoihin – se luo toden vaikutelmaa siinä missä realismikin. Mitä tieteisfiktio sitten todellisuuksillaan tekee?

Book Reviews by Kaisa Kortekallio

Kirjallisuudentutkimuksen aikakauslehti Avain, 2021

Kirja-arvio/book review (in Finnish): N. Katherine Hayles, Unthought

European Journal of Women’s Studies 26/2, 2019

Donna Haraway is known for her figurations - the cyborg, the companion species, and the Modest_Wi... more Donna Haraway is known for her figurations - the cyborg, the companion species, and the Modest_Witness, just to list the most well-known examples. In Staying With the Trouble, she foregrounds 'compost' as a figuration that articulates life in complex more-than-human ecologies. The collection of eight essays, all recently published elsewhere as well, continues on the lines of When Species Meet (2008), telling stories of multispecies engagements: the work and play of humans and other critters, often bundled in assemblages saturated with modern technologies. She contextualizes the telling of these stories as SF-"science fiction, speculative fabulation, string figures, speculative feminism, science fact, so far" (2). The political potential of storytelling emerges as one of the major themes of the book, along with the evocative theoretical ideas of string-figuring, tentacular thinking, sympoiesis, kin-making, and the titular staying with the trouble.

European Journal of Women's Studies

Tieto Ihmisen jälkeen, 2024

Finnish translation of Rosi Braidotti's book Posthuman Knowledge (2019). Transl. Kaisa Kortekalli... more Finnish translation of Rosi Braidotti's book Posthuman Knowledge (2019). Transl. Kaisa Kortekallio.

Tieto Ihmisen jälkeen esittää kriittisen posthumanistisen näkemyksen ihmistieteiden paikasta teknologian, kapitalismin ja ympäristötuhon läpäisemässä yhteiskunnassa. Feministisestä ja uusmaterialistisesta ajattelusta ammentava teos tarjoaa vision ihmistieteistä, joissa sekä tiedon subjektit että tietoa tuottavat instituutiot saavat voimaa moninaisuudesta ja monilajisuudesta.

Kokoelmassa eri alojen tutkijat ja taiteilijat tarkastelevat ympäristömuutoksen esteettisiä ulott... more Kokoelmassa eri alojen tutkijat ja taiteilijat tarkastelevat ympäristömuutoksen esteettisiä ulottuvuuksia oman alansa näkökulmasta tai monialaisesti. Artikkeleita ohjaavina taustaoletuksina on, että laaja-alainen ympäristömuutos vaikuttaa merkittävästi inhimilliseen kokemusmaailmaan ja arvoihin ja että estetiikalla ja sen tutkimuksella on vastaavasti tärkeä rooli kestävyyssiirtymissä.

Toim. Jukka Mikkonen, Sanna Lehtinen, Kaisa Kortekallio & Noora-Helena Korpelainen

"Kaisa Kortekallio's book develops an innovative blend of posthumanism, narrative theory, and ena... more "Kaisa Kortekallio's book develops an innovative blend of posthumanism, narrative theory, and enactivist philosophy. Kortekallio's prose foregrounds choreographic metaphors, and that's no coincidence: the moves contained in her readings of "mutant narratives" offer unique affective training for reimagining the human in times of ecological crisis" Marco Caracciolo, Associate Professor of English & Literary Theory, Ghent University "What are eco-narratives for? Mutant Narratives develops the best case we have for literature's power to attune readers' minds and bodies to the unsettling realities of the Anthropocene. Interweaving virtuoso close readings and bold theorizing, its argument that the experience of literature trains us for posthuman life is as brilliant as it is urgent."

Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Planetary Well-Being, 2024

Culture covers myriad aspects of human life. Most often it is understood as intellectual or artis... more Culture covers myriad aspects of human life. Most often it is understood as intellectual or artistic practices, but in a broader view, culture covers the habits, lifestyles, traditions, beliefs, values, and worldviews that shape human lives and societies. Culture also undergoes continuous change and is affected by human actions. Current ecological and well-being crises caused by destructive cultural practices and actions pose an existential risk to both humans and nonhumans. This chapter argues that when challenging, preventing, and changing such destructive human practices and actions, the role of culture is indispensable. Building on and rethinking cultural sustainability, the chapter outlines how culture could be transformed into and regarded as planetary well-being—a process in which culture shifts towards more sustainable practices and actions that enable well-being for humans and nonhumans alike. The chapter focuses on the potential of contemporary art in fostering this kind of transformation.

Extrapolation 64 (3), 2023

This essay introduces recent speculative novels written by Finnish authors, and discusses the veg... more This essay introduces recent speculative novels written by Finnish authors, and discusses the vegetal agency that permeates them. In Johanna Sinisalo's The Core of the Sun and Emmi Itäranta's The Moonday Letters, plant life entices, intoxicates, and transforms human bodies and minds. Sinisalo experiments with ideas about the coevolution of plants and humans, and Itäranta explores the significance of plants in the contexts of space colonies and ecosabotage. The essay suggests that the novels gesture toward an emerging Planthroposcene. Anthropologist Natasha Myers has proposed "Planthroposcene" as a modification to Anthropocene, the era of global human impact on the Earth. As an "aspirational episteme", the

Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas, 2022

Drawing on feminist, enactivist and posthumanist theories of reading, the essay develops theoreti... more Drawing on feminist, enactivist and posthumanist theories of reading, the essay develops theoretical and methodological tools for bodily and reflective reading of fictional figures. It introduces the notion of “readerly choreography,” which stands for the iterative experiential patterns that fictional narratives suggest. The primary purpose of the notion is to provide a better grasp of readerly dynamics typical to genre-derived works of fiction — including the cases in which generic frames of expectation and experience are estranged and reconfigured. The essay’s contribution to theory is presented on the basis of a reading of Paolo Bacigalupi’s “The People of Sand and Slag” (2004). This short story plays on the conventions of action-adventure, exaggerating the toughness and physical capabilities of technologically enhanced, posthuman action heroes. Owing to this exaggeration, it becomes difficult for readers to continue to perform the habitual experiential patterns of excitement, action-derived pleasure, and identification with the heroic protagonist. In other words, “The People of Sand and Slag” estranges the readerly choreography of action-adventure narratives.

Ympäristömuutos ja estetiikka, 2022

Ympäristömuutos haastaa kirjallisuudentutkimuksen merkitysperustaa. Kaisa Kortekallion artikkeli ... more Ympäristömuutos haastaa kirjallisuudentutkimuksen merkitysperustaa. Kaisa Kortekallion artikkeli esittelee ympäristömuutosta haasteena ekokritiikin, antroposeenin, posthumanismin ja postkolonialismin sekä kirjallisuuden käytäntöjen näkökulmista. Erityisesti Kortekallio pohtii sitä, kuinka ympäristömuutoksen kirjallisuus haastaa moderneille kertomuksille tyypillisen keskushahmon eli antropoksen asemaa. Hän tulkitsee Antti Salmisen kokeellisia teoksia Lomonosovin moottori (2014) ja MIR (2019) ympäristömuutoksen kirjallisuutena, jossa antropoksen varmuutta murennetaan ei-inhimillisillä elementeillä ja kerronnallisilla keinoilla.

Viite:

Kortekallio, Kaisa 2022. Lahoava antropos Antti Salmisen Lomonosovin moottorissa ja MIRissä. Teoksessa Ympäristömuutos ja estetiikka, toim. Jukka Mikkonen, Sanna Lehtinen, Kaisa Kortekallio ja Noora-Helena Korpelainen. Helsinki: Suomen Estetiikan Seura, 354 - 391.

Koko teos (open access): https://helda.helsinki.fi/handle/10138/343564

Narrating Nonhuman Spaces: Form, Story, and Experience Beyond Anthropocentrism, 2022

This chapter considers the affective experience of reading Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl dur... more This chapter considers the affective experience of reading Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl during seasonal depression. The approach draws on Matthew Ratcliffe's account of mood as well as enactive and New Materialist perspectives, bringing together the material forces of weather, human embodiment, and literature. The chapter demonstrates how descriptive and narrative techniques, such as kinaesthetic and spatial language, generate bodily feelings of tension, weight, and constraint, amplifying the experiential patterns of seasonal mood. This intentionally affective argument develops a nuanced sense of the material dynamics of bodily reading.

Kirjallisuudentutkimuksen aikakauslehti Avain, 2020

Kartoitamme lähilukemisen vähemmälle huomiolle jäänyttä historiaa, jossa keskitytään tekstin ja l... more Kartoitamme lähilukemisen vähemmälle huomiolle jäänyttä historiaa, jossa keskitytään tekstin ja lukijan väliseen vuorovaikutukseen: I.A. Richardsin, Virginia Woolfin ja Louise Rosenblattin kautta päästään feministisiin, uusformalistisiin ja ruumiillisen mielen näkökulmiin. Annamme myös esimerkkejä tuoreista lähilukemisen sovelluksista: lähilukemista on käytetty menetelmänä lääketieteellisessä humanismissa (kerronnallinen lääketiede) ja ympäristöhumanistisessa tutkimuksessa (posthumanistinen ja ekokriittinen tutkimus).

Esittelemässämme tulkinnassa lähilukeminen on luovaa kriittistä toimintaa. Lähilukemisessa yhdistyvät subjektiivisuus ja objektiivisuus, affektiivisuus ja reflektiivisyys, kriittisyys ja herkkyys. Samalla se on vääjäämättä intersubjektiivista ja ympäristöllistä. Taitavan ja herkän lukemisen oppiminen voi olla henkilökohtaisen ja yhteiskunnallisen muutoksen keino. Lukemisen mahdolliset vaikutukset syntyvät aina suhteessa muuhun maailmaan, tiettyyn tilanteeseen ja kontekstiin: lukeminen on vaikuttumista ja limittymistä.

niin & näin: Filosofinen aikakauslehti, 2020

Arkikokemus ei helposti saa kiinni kaukana sulavista jäätiköistä tai kapitalistisista tuotantoket... more Arkikokemus ei helposti saa kiinni kaukana sulavista jäätiköistä tai kapitalistisista tuotantoketjuista päivittäisten appelsiiniemme takana. Antroposeenikeskustelussa kuuluu usein väitettävän, että tällaiset ilmiöt ovat ruumiillisen kokemuksen "tuolla puolen", liian suuria, hitaita, hajaantuneita tai kaukaisia. Mutta entä jos kokemuksen heikkous onkin vain yrityksen puutetta? Entä jos oleellinen kysymys ei olekaan "mitä kokemukselle tapahtuu" vaan "mitä kokemukselle voidaan tehdä"? Spekulatiivinen fiktio, vaikkapa Paolo Bacigalupin The Windup Girl, voi auttaa tekemään kokemuksesta oudompaa ja siten auttaa pääsemään kiinni antroposeenin ilmiöihin.

Reconfiguring Human, Nonhuman and Posthuman in Literature and Culture, 2019

This chapter, “Becoming-instrument: Thinking with Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation and Timothy Mort... more This chapter, “Becoming-instrument: Thinking with Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation and Timothy Morton’s Hyperobjects”, considers first-person narration and empathic enactment of fictional experience from posthumanist and enactivist perspectives. It introduces a new methodological device called “becoming-instrument”, which opens the reader’s experience to nonhuman influences. Building on Marco Caracciolo’s (2014) claims about empathic engagement with first-person narratives and Merja Polvinen’s (2012) notion of self-aware readerly engagement, the chapter’s author Kaisa Kortekallio argues that engagement with estranging first-person narratives, such as Annihilation and Hyperobjects, can work toward dissolving the certainty of the human subject and develop in its stead a model of subjectivity as “multiple and always-in-progress” (Sherryl Vint 2005).

Annihilation (2014) and Hyperobjects (2013) both invite the reader to enact the affective experientiality of their first-person narrators, but they also foreground the fictionality of those narrators. The chapter argues that affective experientiality and awareness of fictionality can intertwine in the readerly experience, and that the combination of affectivity and self-referentiality is characteristic of the “dark” or “weird” ecology VanderMeer and Morton advance in their texts. Finally, Kortekallio suggests that the dynamic of enactment applies not only to explicitly fictional narrative techniques but also to the rhetorical devices employed in non-fiction texts – such as the rhetorical “I” in Hyperobjects.

Fafnir – Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research, Volume 1, Issue 2, pages 23–40., Jun 15, 2014

This article analyzes two novels by the British writer Simon Ings, Hot Head (1992) and Hotwire (1... more This article analyzes two novels by the British writer Simon Ings, Hot Head (1992) and Hotwire (1995), from perspectives provided by second-order systems theory, philosophy of neuroscience and posthumanist philosophy. In Ings' cyberpunk fiction, the use of a particular novum, a programmable cerebral tissue called “datafat”, enables elaborate experimentation on different theories of mind and matter. Due to this experimentation, Ings’ work is able to convey a conception of cognition as an emergent effect produced in material processes that are both human and non-human. Ings’ work asserts the human subject as a complex system in a complex technological ecology and, consequentially, presents us with a model for subjectivity that might be called “posthuman”.

Reading Mutant Narratives, 2020

'Reading Mutant Narratives' explores how narratives of environmental and personal transformation ... more 'Reading Mutant Narratives' explores how narratives of environmental and personal transformation in contemporary ecological science fiction can develop more-thanhuman modes of embodied experience. More specifically, it attends to the conflicted yet potentially transformative experientiality of 'mutant narratives.' Mutant narratives are viewed as uneasy hybrids of human-centered and posthumanist science fiction
that contain potential for ecological understanding. Drawing on narrative studies and empirical reading studies, the dissertation begins from the premise that in suitable conditions, reading fiction may give rise to experiential change. The study traces and describes experiential changes that take place while reading works of science fiction.
The bodily, subjective and historical conditions of reading are considered alongside the generic contexts and narrative features of the fictional works studied.
As exemplary cases of mutant narratives, the study foregrounds the work of three American science fiction authors known for their critiques of anthropocentrism and for their articulations of more-than-human ecologies: Greg Bear, Paolo Bacigalupi, and Jeff VanderMeer. While much of contemporary fiction naturalizes embodied experience and hides their own narrative strategies, mutant narratives have the potential to defamiliarize readers’ notions of bodies and environments while also
estranging their embodied experience of reading fiction. As a theoretical contribution to science fiction studies, the study considers such a readerly dynamic in terms of 'embodied estrangement.'
Building on theoretical and practical work done in both embodied cognitive and posthumanist approaches to literature, the study shows how engagements with fictional narratives can, for their part, shape readers’ habitual patterns of feeling and perception. These approaches are synthesized into a method of close reading, 'performative enactivism,' that helps to articulate bodily, environmental, and more-thanhuman aspects of readerly engagement. Attending to such experiential aspects integrates ecological science fiction more deeply into the contemporary experiential situation of living with radical environmental transformation.

This paper concentrates on Carl Sagan's use of conceptual metaphor in his popular science book Co... more This paper concentrates on Carl Sagan's use of conceptual metaphor in his popular science book Cosmos (1980). Written in semi-academic Finnish.

niin & näin, 2016

Tieteisfiktio kuvittelee toisia maailmoja, ja siksi sitä pidetään yleensä leimallisesti ei-realist... more Tieteisfiktio kuvittelee toisia maailmoja, ja siksi sitä pidetään yleensä leimallisesti ei-realistisena. Hyvin usein tieteisfiktiivisten kertomusten vaikuttavuus kuitenkin nojaa realistisen kerronnan keinoihin – se luo toden vaikutelmaa siinä missä realismikin. Mitä tieteisfiktio sitten todellisuuksillaan tekee?

Kirjallisuudentutkimuksen aikakauslehti Avain, 2021

Kirja-arvio/book review (in Finnish): N. Katherine Hayles, Unthought

European Journal of Women’s Studies 26/2, 2019

Donna Haraway is known for her figurations - the cyborg, the companion species, and the Modest_Wi... more Donna Haraway is known for her figurations - the cyborg, the companion species, and the Modest_Witness, just to list the most well-known examples. In Staying With the Trouble, she foregrounds 'compost' as a figuration that articulates life in complex more-than-human ecologies. The collection of eight essays, all recently published elsewhere as well, continues on the lines of When Species Meet (2008), telling stories of multispecies engagements: the work and play of humans and other critters, often bundled in assemblages saturated with modern technologies. She contextualizes the telling of these stories as SF-"science fiction, speculative fabulation, string figures, speculative feminism, science fact, so far" (2). The political potential of storytelling emerges as one of the major themes of the book, along with the evocative theoretical ideas of string-figuring, tentacular thinking, sympoiesis, kin-making, and the titular staying with the trouble.

European Journal of Women's Studies

Raportti Reconfiguring Human and Nonhuman -seminaarista (Jyväskylän yliopisto, 28.-30.10.2015)

In this presentation, I consider the bodily effects of reading Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation and... more In this presentation, I consider the bodily effects of reading Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation and Timothy Morton's Hyperobjects. The presentation was given at the VIII Conference for Cultural Studies, Oulu 3.-4.12.2015.

This presentation considers communal subjectivity and the use of the teenage mutant figure in Gre... more This presentation considers communal subjectivity and the use of the teenage mutant figure in Greg Bear's novel Darwin's Children (2003). The presentation was given in the Archipelacon Academic Programme, Mariehamn 25.-28.6.2015.

"In continental posthumanist thought, subjectification is conceptualized as a material and collec... more "In continental posthumanist thought, subjectification is conceptualized as a material and collective process. In Simon Ings' science fiction novel Hotwire (1995), the posthumanist subject is produced by biotechnological means. Ings' novum, a programmable neurological tissue called 'datafat', functions as a metaphor for an embodied mind. Ing's subject is connected to and mutated by the surrounding technological environment, incl. radio, kitchen appliances and massive AIs. In this paper I ask how Ings' fictional characters relate to Rosi Braidotti's model of nomadic/rhizomatic subject. This approach also brings into focus the specific phenomena of feminine posthumanist embodiment – eg. mother-daughter -relationships and pregnancy.

Hotwire's protagonist, Rosa, is an artificial girl produced in a massive AI / space station that is referred to as her Mother. Rosa is described as a doll, a dream or a passage of text, a figment of her mother's material imagination. Inside her mother's mind/body, Rosa's thoughts and speech cannot be clearly distinguished from her mother's. Once outside, she can develop a subjectivity of her own that nonetheless does not revert to humanist ideals of individuality and autonomy. She continues to connect with her living environment. In Ings' cybernetic/animistic model of the world, Rosa's pregnancy is constructed as analogical to the development of a semi-conscious city nearby: both are continuously evolving rhizomatic figurations. One of them just happens to be made of flesh and blood and neural synapses, the other of optical signals in a phone network."

Tässä opinnäytetyössä tutkin posthumanistista subjektiviteettia Simon Ingsin teoksissa Hot head (... more Tässä opinnäytetyössä tutkin posthumanistista subjektiviteettia Simon Ingsin teoksissa Hot head (1992) ja Hotwire (1995). Humanistinen subjekti on ollut kriisissä koko 1900-luvun ajan, mutta arkikokemuksessa se samastetaan edelleen ”luonnolliseen” ihmisyyteen. Kuitenkin muutokset kulttuurisessa ja teknologisessa ympäristössä asettavat ihmisen tilanteeseen, jossa humanistiset oletukset essentialistisesta, rationaalisesta ja autonomisesta subjektista eivät enää toimi. Hot head ja Hotwire kommentoivat juuri tätä tilannetta: molemmissa teoksissa humanistinen subjekti muotoutuu kivuliaasti posthumanistisempaan suuntaan. Tavoitteeni on selvittää, millaisia posthumanistisen subjektin malleja Ingsin teokset tarjoavat lukijalleen ja miten nämä mallit purkavat humanistisen subjektikäsityksen oletuksia. Lähestyn tavoitettani suhteuttamalla teosten keskeisimpiä henkilöhahmoja posthumanististen teorioiden subjektimalleihin sekä toisten fiktiivisten teosten humanistisempiin henkilöhahmoihin.

Verrattaessa Hot headin keskushenkilöä Malise Arnimia humanistisiin toimintasankareihin, kuten William Gibsonin Caseen ja Peter O'Donnellin Modesty Blaiseen, huomataan ettei hänen edustamansa posthumanistinen subjekti voi toimia sankarin kaavan mukaisesti. Malise ei yrityksistään huolimatta saavuta rationaalisen hallitsijan asemaa suhteessa aseisiinsa ja ympäristöönsä, sillä hän on itsekin aseen kaltainen: laajemman kyberneettisen koneiston komponentti. Hotwiren keskushenkilö Rosa edustaa sujuvampaa posthumanistista subjektiviteettia. Rosan älykkäästä kudoksesta valmistettu ruumis on intensiivisessä ja osittain tiedostamattomassa yhteydessä teknologiseen ympäristöönsä. Rosa rinnastuu Rosi Braidottin nomadiseen subjektiviteetin malliin. Rosan seksuaalisen halun ja raskauden kautta subjekti kartoitetaan rihmastolliseksi, sosiaaliseen ja teknologiseen ympäristöön limittyväksi prosessiksi – sikiön ja kaupungin kehitystä hahmotetaan saman koreografian avulla.

Transhumanistisessa tieteisfiktiossa subjektin merkityksenantoprosessi on usein palautettu ohjelmointikielten symboliseen logiikkaan – mieli on käsitetty koodia käsitteleväksi tietokoneeksi. George Lakoffin ja Mark Johnsonin kognitiofilosofinen tutkimus osoittaa tämän pelkistävän hahmotustavan riittämättömyyden empiirisesti tutkitun ruumiillisen subjektin kannalta. Ingsin teoksissa hahmot kirjoittuvat metafiktiivisesti kuin tekstit tai tietokoneohjelmat, mutta inhimilliset subjektit kokevat virtuaalisenkin ympäristönsä ruumiillisina tiloina. Ruumiillinen merkityksenantoprosessi kirjoittaa uudelleen sekä hahmoja että ympäristöä. Ingsin tekstissä ja posthumanistisessa filosofiassa kirjoittaminen hahmottuu vahvana ja monimutkaisena teknologiana, joka voi muovata sekä kirjoittajansa että lukijansa subjektiviteettia uusiin muotoihin.

Routledge eBooks, Jul 10, 2019

Reading Mutant Narratives explores how narratives of environmental and personal transformation in... more Reading Mutant Narratives explores how narratives of environmental and personal transformation in contemporary ecological science fiction can develop more-thanhuman modes of embodied experience. More specifically, it attends to the conflicted yet potentially transformative experientiality of mutant narratives. Mutant narratives are viewed as uneasy hybrids of human-centered and posthumanist science fiction that contain potential for ecological understanding. Drawing on narrative studies and empirical reading studies, the dissertation begins from the premise that in suitable conditions, reading fiction may give rise to experiential change. The study traces and describes experiential changes that take place while reading works of science fiction. The bodily, subjective and historical conditions of reading are considered alongside the generic contexts and narrative features of the fictional works studied. As exemplary cases of mutant narratives, the study foregrounds the work of three American science fiction authors known for their critiques of anthropocentrism and for their articulations of more-than-human ecologies: Greg Bear, Paolo Bacigalupi, and Jeff VanderMeer. While much of contemporary fiction naturalizes embodied experience and hides their own narrative strategies, mutant narratives have the potential to defamiliarize readers’ notions of bodies and environments while also estranging their embodied experience of reading fiction. As a theoretical contribution to science fiction studies, the study considers such a readerly dynamic in terms of embodied estrangement. Building on theoretical and practical work done in both embodied cognitive and posthumanist approaches to literature, the study shows how engagements with fictional narratives can, for their part, shape readers’ habitual patterns of feeling and perception. These approaches are synthesized into a method of close reading, performative enactivism, that helps to articulate bodily, environmental, and more-thanhuman aspects of readerly engagement. Attending to such experiential aspects integrates ecological science fiction more deeply into the contemporary experiential situation of living with radical environmental transformation.

This article analyzes two novels by the British writer Simon Ings, Hot Head (1992) and Hotwire (1... more This article analyzes two novels by the British writer Simon Ings, Hot Head (1992) and Hotwire (1995), from perspectives provided by second-order systems theory, philosophy of neuroscience and posthumanist philosophy. In Ings' cyberpunk fiction, the use of a particular novum, a programmable cerebral tissue called “datafat”, enables elaborate experimentation on different theories of mind and matter. Due to this experimentation, Ings’ work is able to convey a conception of cognition as an emergent effect produced in material processes that are both human and non-human. Ings’ work asserts the human subject as a complex system in a complex technological ecology and, consequentially, presents us with a model for subjectivity that might be called “posthuman”.

Partial Answers, Jun 1, 2022

Drawing on feminist, enactivist and posthumanist theories of reading, the essay develops theoreti... more Drawing on feminist, enactivist and posthumanist theories of reading, the essay develops theoretical and methodological tools for bodily and reflective reading of fictional figures. It introduces the notion of “readerly choreography,” which stands for the iterative experiential patterns that fictional narratives suggest. The primary purpose of the notion is to provide a better grasp of readerly dynamics typical to genre-derived works of fiction — including the cases in which generic frames of expectation and experience are estranged and reconfigured. The essay’s contribution to theory is presented on the basis of a reading of Paolo Bacigalupi’s “The People of Sand and Slag” (2004). This short story plays on the conventions of action-adventure, exaggerating the toughness and physical capabilities of technologically enhanced, posthuman action heroes. Owing to this exaggeration, it becomes difficult for readers to continue to perform the habitual experiential patterns of excitement, action-derived pleasure, and identification with the heroic protagonist. In other words, “The People of Sand and Slag” estranges the readerly choreography of action-adventure narratives.

Ghent University Academic Bibliography (Ghent University), 2021

Kirjallisuudentutkimuksen aikakauslehti Avain, Jun 7, 2021

Routledge eBooks, Jul 10, 2019

Fafnir, Jun 16, 2015

A year or two ago, a fellow graduate student told me about a fabled overseas event called ICFA. “... more A year or two ago, a fellow graduate student told me about a fabled overseas event called ICFA. “It’s a great conference,” she said, “there is one pool for humans and another one for alligators.” What she left unsaid is that you do not actually get to mingle with the alligators. Despite this major disappointment, the conference proved enjoyable for a young scholar interested in posthuman perspectives, posthumanist thought, and evolutionary theories in fiction. It was quite easy to dive through the program equipped with these filters, and emerge covered in enticing ideas. As the ideas are absorbed, they may induce quite interesting metamorphoses – perhaps allowing for tighter entanglements with the nonhuman in the future. The Thirty-Sixth International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts (a.k.a. ICFA 36) took place in Orlando, Florida, on March 18-22, 2015. The event brought together some 500 scholars, authors and editors of more than 20 different nationalities. This year’s theme, “The Scientific Imagination,” was thoroughly examined in the keynote talks by Guests of Honor James Morrow and Joan Slonczewski, and Guest Scholar Colin Milburn. Already in the opening panel, chaired by Gary K. Wolfe, they touched upon a variety of topics that would soon prove central to the conference as a whole – the most central, perhaps, being the relation of science and imagination as complementary rather than oppository modes of inquiry. “Science emerged from magic,” Morrow pointed out – listing alchemy, herbal medicine, and the psychological influence practiced by all witches and shamans as examples of early scientific thinking. Scientific thinking requires a certain amount of imagination, the ability to speculate on the potential. On the other hand, Morrow proposed that the modern scientific method is based on restraining the imaginative aspect of thinking – it has to rely on only objective (that is, multiperspectival) observations of phenomena. A true empirical scientist, according to Morrow, is one who, upon seeing a white sheep on a meadow, says not “I see a white animal” but “I see an animal that is white on one side.” Speculation and extrapolation – including that of the sciencefictional kind – enter the picture when one wants to know about the “dark side of the sheep.” Based on observations about earlier sheep, we can infer that it is likely that the other side of the sheep is white too. But only likely – it can be something else entirely. We have to keep checking. Joan Slonczewski, being a biologist as well as a fiction author, raised the issue of the nonhuman. Natural-scientific research keeps telling humanity that “the universe is not about us”. This might also be what takes at least some science fiction apart from the more humanist mainstream fiction – it usually busies itself with something other than human-human relationships. Depending on the perspective, humans can be seen as invasive animals, a geological force, or even a vector for microbial evolution. Provoking less discussion than one would expect, Slonczewski asserted that “microbes invented multicellular beings to have a vehicle for themselves.” Among the remarkably nonanthropocentric panelists, this was met with appreciative

ion is of course an essential component in all theorizing, for no theory can account for the infi... more ion is of course an essential component in all theorizing, for no theory can account for the infinite multiplicity of our interactions with the real. But when we make moves that erase the world’s multiplicity, we risk losing sight of the variegated leaves, fractal branchings, and particular bark textures that make up the forest. (Hayles 1999, 12.) Hot headissa Malise muuttuu vaha vahalta informationaalisemmaksi olennoksi. Jo alussa han on kasitteellistetty ja abstrakti hahmo siina, miten hanen kirjallinen persoonallisuutensa muovautuu poliittisten ja sosiaalisten voimien ristipaineessa. Tama on kuitenkin viela sosiaalista konstruktiota, strukturalismia: kaikkine muuntuvine osasineenkin Malise on yha ihminen, ruumiissa ja hengessa. Datafat kuitenkin aiheuttaa ratkaisevan murroksen pelkistaessaan hanen persoonallisuutensa kopioitavaksi ja muokattavaksi koodiksi. Malisen hahmoa muovaavat voimat vaihtuvat tarinan edetessa sosiaalisista ja poliittisista institutionaalisiin ja tietoteknologisiin. Alkuasetelma on Euroopan poliittisessa tilanteessa ja isasuhteessa, joista siirrytaan sotilaallisten ja tieteellisten instituutioiden kautta kohti ”tarinakoneita”, voimakkaita datafat-ohjelmistoja joissa hanen kopioitu tajuntansa kasvaa uusiin suuntiin ohjelmiston metaforisen logiikan ehdoilla. Datafatin luomana informationaalisena konstruktiona han on editoitavissa kuin mika tahansa teksti. Hanet on yksinkertaistettu materiaalisesta ihmisesta malliksi, koodiksi, komponentiksi kyberneettisessa jarjestelmassa. Ingsin kerronnassa datafatia ei kuitenkaan kasitella pelkastaan loogisena apparaattina vaan se saa myos myyttisia piirteita, jotka saavat Malisen

ion is of course an essential component in all theorizing, for no theory can account for the infi... more ion is of course an essential component in all theorizing, for no theory can account for the infinite multiplicity of our interactions with the real. But when we make moves that erase the world’s multiplicity, we risk losing sight of the variegated leaves, fractal branchings, and particular bark textures that make up the forest. (Hayles 1999, 12.) Hot headissa Malise muuttuu vaha vahalta informationaalisemmaksi olennoksi. Jo alussa han on kasitteellistetty ja abstrakti hahmo siina, miten hanen kirjallinen persoonallisuutensa muovautuu poliittisten ja sosiaalisten voimien ristipaineessa. Tama on kuitenkin viela sosiaalista konstruktiota, strukturalismia: kaikkine muuntuvine osasineenkin Malise on yha ihminen, ruumiissa ja hengessa. Datafat kuitenkin aiheuttaa ratkaisevan murroksen pelkistaessaan hanen persoonallisuutensa kopioitavaksi ja muokattavaksi koodiksi. Malisen hahmoa muovaavat voimat vaihtuvat tarinan edetessa sosiaalisista ja poliittisista institutionaalisiin ja tietoteknologisiin. Alkuasetelma on Euroopan poliittisessa tilanteessa ja isasuhteessa, joista siirrytaan sotilaallisten ja tieteellisten instituutioiden kautta kohti ”tarinakoneita”, voimakkaita datafat-ohjelmistoja joissa hanen kopioitu tajuntansa kasvaa uusiin suuntiin ohjelmiston metaforisen logiikan ehdoilla. Datafatin luomana informationaalisena konstruktiona han on editoitavissa kuin mika tahansa teksti. Hanet on yksinkertaistettu materiaalisesta ihmisesta malliksi, koodiksi, komponentiksi kyberneettisessa jarjestelmassa. Ingsin kerronnassa datafatia ei kuitenkaan kasitella pelkastaan loogisena apparaattina vaan se saa myos myyttisia piirteita, jotka saavat Malisen

Artikkeli esittelee transhumanististen ja posthumanististen ajattelusuuntauksien hengellisiä aspe... more Artikkeli esittelee transhumanististen ja posthumanististen ajattelusuuntauksien hengellisiä aspekteja ja suhteuttaa niitä ihmiskeskeisyyden ja luontosuhteen teemoihin

Kirja-arvostelu: Arvosteltu teos: Itäranta, Emmi: Kuunpäivän kirjeet. Helsinki: Teos 2020

Elonkehä : syväekologinen kulttuurilehti, Sep 1, 2017

Routledge eBooks, Jun 15, 2023

Arkikokemus ei helposti saa kiinni kaukana sulavista jäätiköistä tai kapitalistisista tuotantoket... more Arkikokemus ei helposti saa kiinni kaukana sulavista jäätiköistä tai kapitalistisista tuotantoketjuista päivittäisten appelsiiniemme takana. Antroposeenikeskustelussa kuuluu usein väitettävän, että tällaiset ilmiöt ovat ruumiillisen kokemuksen "tuolla puolen", liian suuria, hitaita, hajaantuneita tai kaukaisia. Mutta entä jos kokemuksen heikkous onkin vain yrityksen puutetta? Entä jos oleellinen kysymys ei olekaan "mitä kokemukselle tapahtuu" vaan "mitä kokemukselle voidaan tehdä"? Spekulatiivinen fiktio, vaikkapa Paolo Bacigalupin The Windup Girl, voi auttaa tekemään kokemuksesta oudompaa ja siten auttaa pääsemään kiinni antroposeenin ilmiöihin.Peer reviewe

Fafnir: Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research, 2020

Fafnir: Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research, 2015