Narratives from the margin? Welfare and well-being in Kerstin Ekman's Skraplotter

Abstract

When Kerstin Ekman's Skraplotter (Scratch Cards) appeared in 2003, the novel was read as representing an impoverished version of contemporary Sweden, viewed from the margin. This article questions such easy conclusions by reading the text in terms of narrative and narration, drawing especially on feminist narratology and Susan S. Lanser's notion of narrative voice. The analysis demonstrates how the narration helps authorise three characters on the margin of the Swedish welfare state, one of them Saami, female and elderly, another elderly and male, and the third a middle-aged female minister in the Lutheran State Church. With the novel's narrative voices approaching Lanser's 'communal voice', the reader is prodded to reconsider the concepts of centre and margin and the relationships between them. Viewed in light of Rosi Braidotti's notion of 'nomadic becoming', subjectivation in this novel extends into the rhizomic mode; in other words, it is 'trans-personal [...], ultimately collective'. The text's allegedly impoverished version of contemporary Sweden turns out to point boldly ahead, away from the welfare state as we have known it and towards more inclusive and sustainable communities.