I’ve determined to handle two questions that proceed to puzzle me: What can literature do to dismantle constructions of violence? And why will we nonetheless want the peace motion?
My curiosity in peace, ecological points and the deconstruction of constructions of violence stems from my very own life experiences. Until I left residence on the age of 15, I lived in a family the place the warfare traumas of males who had fought on the entrance strains of each World War II and the Lapland War had been continually current and a part of each day life. Men who had been psychologically damaged on the entrance vented their anxiousness and rage at residence. Their fury affected people, different species in addition to the encompassing nature.
The operational logics of aggression and violence internalised in wars, intertwined with silence, are handed on from one era to the subsequent. Today, the outcomes of those patterns of behaviour will be noticed in clearcut forests, drained swamps, open-pit mines and polluted waterways.
The legacy of warfare trauma runs deep in Finnish society. Having lived by this, I joined the anti-Vietnam War motion whereas nonetheless in secondary college and later, in highschool, grew to become concerned within the peace and environmental actions.
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Committed literature
In 1947, Jean-Paul Sartre, the thinker who survived the horrors of World War II, requested his contemporaries, particularly the authors, to take a great look within the mirror. He known as for a “dedicated literature” – littérature engagée.
Not to tame the authors or make them the servants of political tendencies and actions, however merely to resist the entire degradation of western civilization and the entire corruption of Enlightenment values going down on the very coronary heart of Europe within the wake of Auschwitz; to come across that actuality with honesty.
Now, in 2025, once we have a look at the world, we should ask ourselves how far we actually are from that post-war decadence that Sartre noticed.
In 1955, ten years after the USA had destroyed the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the thinker Bertrand Russell revealed a petition towards nuclear weapons. The most outstanding one who signed Russell’s manifesto was the physicist Albert Einstein. The most necessary a part of the petition is that this one:
Here, then, is the issue which we current to you, stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an finish to the human race; or shall mankind resign warfare?
When Finland in 2023 joined NATO, the world’s largest army alliance, our leaders emphasised that the deterrence of NATO is predicated on nuclear weapons. Now that Finland is a member of NATO and the position of the nuclear arms on Finnish territory is not thought of unattainable, politicians have began to make use of the time period “nuclear defend”.
The steadiness of terror maintained by this defend doesn’t in any method take into account the truth that in a nuclear warfare, total nations, animals, forests, water methods shall be annihilated, and the air that we breathe polluted.
The UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which entered into drive in January 2021, goals at precisely that. None of the international locations which have nuclear weapons or is a member of NATO, Finland included, has signed the settlement. In truth, each Russia and the USA, in addition to Israel, India, and Pakistan, even leaders in Germany, France and the UK, have lately raised the opportunity of a restricted nuclear warfare.
And but, everyone knows {that a} nuclear warfare would end in local weather disruption and international hunger. It would be the finish of civilisation. The solely solution to stop nuclear warfare is the entire destruction of nuclear weapons.
US Republican President Dwight Eisenhower warned as early as 1961 concerning the risks of the expansion of the army–industrial complicated. He was referring to that the army, political and financial powers are intricately intertwined and collectively type a risk to peace and democracy.
We have ended up residing within the time that President Eisenhower warned us about.
‘Violence originates in language’
Militarisation of discourse and the best way that discuss safety and defence has develop into a part of our on a regular basis lives continues to chip away at democracy. According to warfare researcher Susanna Hast “Violence originates in language – it’s conceptualized, strategized, and initiated by discourse.” The use of euphemistic terminology, reminiscent of referring to warfare as a “battle”, “the combat towards terrorism” or “the liberation of territories” serves to obscure the true nature of occasions.
Once warfare has been introduced into on a regular basis language, combating turns into a pure extension of our phrases.
We stay in a time when the world order created after World War II is falling aside. The international powers are presently breaking away – or have already damaged away – from democracy. Now, in 2025, we will ask ourselves what we have now discovered from World War II, what have we discovered from historical past typically? All our actions, right here on our planet, have a world influence and we’d like international establishments to resolve these. Global establishments, that are presently undermined by these nice powers.
Acting in a peace and ecological motion is these days considered an idealistic delirium, one thing from the previous. In truth, each the peace motion and the ecological motion are wanted greater than ever. They are wanted to remind us that militarism is a alternative – a alternative for huge ecological destruction, a alternative for ecowar. These actions are wanted to demand that worldwide justice is upheld and additional developed.
They are there to advertise the institution of demilitarised zones and name for the destruction of nuclear weapons. For sustaining the idea in world peace and non-violent motion. And, lastly, we’d like the peace motion and the ecological motion to strengthen a sort of communication that respects the ideas of a democratic society.
We must remind ourselves that each individual’s contribution to the peace motion, and to ecological motion that can assist on this course of, is significant. Change typically begin from small actions, Tiny streams that converge to type an important river. For instance, the civil motion towards the Vietnam War or the braveness of Gandhi’s pacifistic motion to withstand one of many world’s greatest colonial powers each modified the course of historical past.
I, as a dedicated author, intention to uncover the roots of violence and illustrate how literature can actively contribute to discovering a counterbalance
Today, individuals’s actions reminiscent of Elokapina, the Extinction Rebellion motion in Finland, the worldwide local weather motion, different environmental and peace actions, the Ecocide motion, and feminist students researching militarism all act as counterforces to destruction.
Considering that the present emissions from warfare and the army–industrial complicated are among the many most damaging to the surroundings, I, as a dedicated author, intention to uncover the roots of violence and illustrate how literature can actively contribute to discovering a counterbalance.
My focus is on reshaping the narrative of a human being who champions militarism and the survival of fittest, on re-contextualising such an individual’s existence inside the broader internet of life, which incorporates all species.
Violence and exclusion, and literature
Although the setting of my novels is historic, writing them has at all times been motivated by the burning questions of the day. How to share the experiences of violence and exclusion by literature? How to rewrite human actuality and man’s place in nature and amongst different species? How to discover a respiration connection to the layers of our existence that human-centred modernism has tragically misplaced over the previous centuries? How to compose the literary narrative to disclose the straightforward reality that we have now so stubbornly denied for such a very long time: that nature doesn’t want man, however man wants nature?
The artwork historian Anita Seppä emphasises that “we stay at a pivotal second in historical past, when the facility to redefine our future nonetheless lies inside our grasp. The inexperienced transition isn’t sustainable if we don’t swiftly join environmental efforts with long-term peace constructing and diplomacy. This endeavour necessitates radically new methods of envisioning the world inside and round us. Literature and the humanities play vital roles on this important reimagining course of.”
The time to begin this transformative work is undoubtedly in the present day.
