Temporalization of Experiencing: First-Hand Experience of the Nation in Mid-Nineteenth Century Finland

Abstract

Kokko tests and develops further Benedict Anderson’s thesis about “imagined communities” through analyzing the experiential change that the emerging of first-hand experience of the nation required at the individual level. The analysis of readers’ letters published in the Finnish-language press provides a rare history-from-below approach to the emerging experience of the nation. Besides focusing on the mid-1800s’ Finnish grass roots experience of the nation, the chapter draws attention to the form of belonging which existed prior to it. ‘Temporalization of Experiencing’ presents the first-hand experience of the nation as a social phenomenon. The chapter indicates that the absorbing of the experience of the nation was based on a transformation in the structures of experiencing that was linked to the modernization process.