Postmemorial work of moral valence: A study of the resistance practices of Ingrian descendants

Abstract

In this article, I use narrative analysis to examine practices of postmemorial resistance to oppressive authorities in interviews with descendants of Ingrian Finns. The themes that were important to the interviewees concerned questions of historical and contemporary social injustice activated by family memory. My two case studies, based on biographical data collected in Finland in 2020–2021, reflect Ingrians’ descendants’ experiences of marginalization, based both on their inherited family memories of oppression and on their own experiences of having a different family story than those of the social majority. My analysis reveals how the postmemorial work of the descendants of Ingrians is socially, politically and temporally expansive. In contrast to Hirsch, I argue that postmemory, as processed in acts that I conceptualize as postmemorial expressive and rhetorical resistance practices, reflects an identity position.