Abstract

In this article, building on the work of Lauren Berlant (2008, 2022) and Sara Ahmed (2004, 2010), I ask what it means to feel historical in the context of today’s pervasive crisis [of] ordinariness, whether it is possible to talk about a particular postsocialist affect, and what aesthetic forms the affect takes in fiction. The analysis of two Estonian texts will follow the theoretical discussion: Tõnu Õnnepalu’s novel Border State (1993) and Maarja Kangro’s story collection Õismäe ajamasin (2021). Lauren Berlant opens her article ["Thinking About Feeling Historical," in Emotion, Space and Society] on feeling historical with the following sentence: “these are not ordinary times” (Berlant 2008, 4). The times of the writing of this article are not ordinary, either, especially for a person from Eastern Europe contemplating postsocialist affect. Russian aggression in Ukraine, economic precarity, and systematic populist attacks on democratic freedoms have created an uncanny affective effect of returning to the 1990s, but with a twist. While the 1990s in Eastern Europe were optimistic, the dire economic situation alleviated by a promise of joining the West, the 2020s seem bleaker (p. 75).