Dissident Poetics, Experimental Excess : Jaakko Yli-Juonikas' Finnish Novel Neuromaani

Abstract

In this chapter, I discuss the dissident poetics in Neuromaani (2012), an excessive Finnish experimental novel by Jaakko Yli-Juonikas (b. 1976). I examine how and what kind of, in-betweeness is produced in the novel that both harbours dissident literary modes and, at the same time, exposes the always-already murky undercurrents of the so-called mainstream and the current capitalist ‘system’. First, I introduce Neuromaani, its composition, themes, context, background and reception. After that, I lay out the theoretical background of my reading: the concepts of actual, virtual and repetition. Lastly, I examine the excess produced by the dissident poetics of in-betweeness in Neuromaani. Brian McHale argues that (descriptive) poetics itself is in-between of interpretation and theory: it can be informed by and have implications for both (McHale 1994, 59). In this regard, Neuromaani offers an interesting point of departure for contemplations on both the novel’s own poetics and on their possible interpretations but also more generally the nature of literary in-betweeness or the possible contemporary poetics of dissidence—and their counter-cultural potential. Following the Oxford English Dictionary, poetics is here understood as the creative principles or techniques informing any literary construction. This also applies, according to the OED, to social and cultural constructions, and thus, brings a wider scope of human interaction and meaning-making on various platforms into play. Jacques Rancière argues that literature (and, more generally, art) is a specific mode of language: ‘a language that speaks less by what it says than by what it does not say, by the power that is expressed through it’ (Rancière 2011, 59). He then continues naming this the ‘poetic power’ (Rancière 2011, 67). In this regard, literature is both a self-sufficient form of and an expression of society. Through these remarks, I seek to map out ways to configure and re-configure poetic spaces of being an outsider within—and along the lines of Jacques Rancière, maybe a possible way out.