Auto on leikki, auto on hauta: Jälkistrukturalismi Jyrki Kiiskisen Kun elän -runokokoelman autorunoissa

The car is a game, the car is a grave. Poststructuralism in Jyrki Kiiskinen’s car poems in his collection Kun elän This article focuses on poems where cars and driving play a key role in Kiiskinen’s collection Kun elän (1999, When I Live), and demonstrates the multiplicity of meanings and interpretations that they evoke. The car is a common denominator in Kiiskinen’s poetry; his poststructuralist play on meanings often begins from the vehicle, and leads to comments on, and deconstruction of perceptions of language and identity. The car poems are examined from a poststructuralist and psychoanalytical perspective through a theoretical framework based on the ideas of Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan and Julia Kristeva. Interpreting the etymology and polysemy of the word ‘car’ becomes an element of deconstruction in Kiiskinen’s poems by dissolving the possibility of closure on one meaning or interpretation. The ‘car’ also creates an intertextual connection with Derrida’s concept of différance, and expresses Lacan’s idea of the substitute object as a function and object of lack. The poems communicate experiences of emptiness and transience, as well as Kristeva’s idea of the dissolution of the form of the sign. The ‘car’ in Kiiskinen’s poems can be seen as a symbol of power and a creator of a complete and uniform identity, but it can also become linked with nearness of death, and melancholy