Borderland spaces of identification and dis/location: Multiscalar narratives and enactments of Seto identity and place in the Estonian-Russian borderlands

Abstract

This article explores the cultural politics of memory and the reconfiguration of commemorative landscapes as one of the principal arenas within which the interiority and exteriority of place and identity are being re-narrated, contested, and re-enacted by actors and institutions representing a wide range of scalar stances. We treat place and identity as mutually constituted, dynamically interactive discursive and practical categories of becoming, and identify borderlands as multiscalar sites of imminence, where the interiority and exteriority of place and identity are re-narrated and re-enacted. Using a multiscalar network approach, we focus on the actors engaged in the cultural politics of memory in the southern Russian-Estonian borderlands. We conclude that borderlands are central multiscalar nodes where power, place and identity intersect, where the interior and exterior not only of Setomaa and Seto-ness, but also of Estonia and Estonian-ness, Russia and Russian-ness, and Europe and European-ness are reconfigured.