Book review | “He who demands respect from others is a clown,” claims essayist Herman Raivio

Essays

Herman Raivio: An unsafe space. Agonistic essays. Counterweight. 266 pp.

Opponent is different from the enemy. This is good to keep in mind when focusing on building a safe space in the middle of a world that is unstable in every way.

Critic Herman Raivio seeks in his collection of essays an unsafe space where it would be possible to present perspectives that are not shot down because of hurt or fear. Polemism and opponents are needed.

“Herman Raivio’s essays are disturbing”, the publisher advertises on the back cover of the collection. That’s too much to say.

Disturbingness would require rudeness or impropriety. Raivio, on the other hand, despite his name, is a polite and matter-of-fact essayist who weighs his subjects and opinions in an even more pleasant way.

It’s about about a long-time newspaper writer whose expertise is best shown in an essay that feeds criticism and reception Ax has work to do. Criticism has become toothless and is used as an analogy for the whole culture.

The author’s distaste for the life-size care and therapy process is obvious. Acknowledging one’s own shame, supporting others, turning one’s own vulnerability into a moral victory, constant apologizing – all depressingly weak and less life-flavored media stories and structures.

Neo-sentimentalism is catching on.

Needed thus a safe space where one can speak freely. One unsafe condition is the holocaust and By Jonathan Littell Benevolent (2006) literature essay. The risk of insecurity is not seen in the fact that the Holocaust is such a shocking event, but in the fact that it has been erased in endless TV documentaries and literature.

Even though the Holocaust is talked about endlessly, it is in Littell’s treatment that there are angles where you can find something new and disturbing. A safe space would only allow handling the victim position.

The most fascinating Raivio enters an unsafe state when he immerses himself in concrete brutalism. The essayist looks for the aesthetic and political interfaces of concrete construction, for example, where Finnish concrete does not reflect socialist models in the same way as in many other countries, both western and socialist. In Finland, concrete seems to have penetrated the social structure from the church to the army.

However, there is something excitingly egalitarian in brutalism, and Raivio is looking for it, for example by Le Corbusier design work. According to Raivio, concrete walls offer uncertainty and uncertainty. The human mind is not yet used to the openness and transparency of glass cases, the absence of secrets.

Behind the modern Great Wall of China, on the other hand, is an unsafe space because we don’t know what’s going on there. That’s why brutalism is despised and glass houses like Sanomatalo are built. The requirement of openness forces to manifest it.

Unsafe it’s hard to find space even in punk, which Raivio discusses in his most confessional essay at the end of the work. “Hertsi” is one of the punks, albeit one like most of the writers often are in youth cultures.

That is, a hangaround who ordered rivets from England for his jacket, and who writes a bit of lyrics. We drink kilju and realize consensus, growth rites and prove grouping.

So punk is an identity project where you can’t actually disagree. That also disappoints those seeking pluralism. You have to trust everyone and no longer suspect anyone. “Punk is Dead,” he sang Steve Ignorant already in 1978, but that was also canceled so that the guys wouldn’t get angry.

When follows quotes from the work, it can be roughly said that the essayist borrows from contemporary domestic authors numbing haste and from European philosophers profundity. This is probably an essential example of an unsafe space; the essayist criticizes his peers.

“I still brag about the importance of opponents and enemies. I’m thirsty for action and intensity, for something to happen”, writes Raivio in his capacity as a punk and concrete uncle.

There is absolutely no point in taking this position. Unsafe mode is at its best when it forgets its imagined opponent. When a punk reminiscence is going on, you’re not quite sure where the opponent is, but that’s exactly what makes shadow boxing fascinating.

“He who demands respect from others is a clown,” Raivio writes at the end of the work, and there begins the publisher’s advertising slogan about being disruptive, finally delivering on its promise.