ABSTRACT
This chapter takes Tony Bennett’s concept of the ‘exhibitionary complex’ as a starting point to explore post-war historical pageantry in Finland through the intersection of representation, public space, civic participation, urban governance and power. Performing the past through historical pageantry gained high popularity in the first part of the twentieth century across the Western and imperial world. The chapter shows that in the study of historical pageantry, the Foucaultian concept of power-knowledge, which assumes powerful scripts and actors, needs to be complemented by the idea of power as performance, and by the understanding of historical pageants as participatory, experiential and emotional events.
