Skogsmyr och öppna vyer : Platsens betydelse för gestaltningen av Vi och Dom i Sara Lidmans Hjortronlandet

Sammanfattning: Sara Lidman’s second novel Hjortronlandet (1955) unfolds in the north of Sweden in the early 20th century. It describes the progress of modernity and the conflicting interests of an old local culture and a new more “civilised” one. The two cultures are constituted by different value systems and in the novel they are represented by two neighbour communities. In this essay I examine this cultural encounter out from a postcolonial perspective by looking at the definitions of We and Them and how the author in various ways transcends the boundaries between the two positions. In order to do that I have used Michail Bachtin’s theories on the chronotope, a literary unity comprising the aspects of both time and space which together includes an ethical-moral dimension. In this context, theories on local and universal values formulated by Dipesh Chakrabarty and Elleke Boehmer have proved useful. With the help of their definition of “time” as a non-linear and complex unity of the past and the present, I have tried to make visible new layers of meaning in Lidman’s novel. Moreover, I have examined the author’s ambivalent position, located in between centre and periphery. This position originates from the author’s personal experiences of leaving her home region for a modern urban life. This essay shows how Sara Lidman by different means illustrates the problems with the conventional definitions of We and Them, and how she out from her hybrid position is able to depict the representations of these positions as both complex and unstable.