Affective politics and neoliberal subjectivities in ‘left behind’ places: Counter-narrating regional decline within/from Finland’s ‘Capital of Pessimism’

Increased scholarly and political interest in the ‘geographies of discontent’ demands attention not only to the material—but also to the emotional and discursive—dimensions of regional inequality. Amidst growing investigation into the affective geographies of depopulation and post-industrial life, little empirical work yet explores how ‘left behind’ communities themselves contribute to broader political discourses concerning deprived places. This paper asks: what potentials do local initiatives have to transform endogenous and exogenous discourses of decline? Drawing on J.K. Gibson-Graham, we analyze the case of the Pessimists Association in Puolanka, Finland—an artists’ initiative which parodies their shrinking town through comedic performance art. Through qualitative and ethnographic methods, we find that the Pessimists’ humorous and joy-full counter-narrative of regional decline reconfigures affective norms toward shrinkage by centering abundance, belonging, and acceptance. Yet by capitalizing on Puolanka’s ‘slow death,’ the project privileges entertainment/exchange-value for exogenous audiences over its cathartic/use-value for Puolanka residents. In all, this case details how entrenched neoliberal subjectivities thwart a wholly reimagined ‘politics of possibility’ for ‘left behind’ places. But, more hopefully, it also suggests strong potential for local initiatives’ affective resonance to transform discourses of decline beyond their grassroots.