PhD Thesis (Rezumat/Overview) by Ramona Hărșan
Journal of Romanian Literary Studies, Issue no. 24, 2021
The article (re)assesses the most popular critical perspectives on Mircea Nedelciu’s fiction
and ... more The article (re)assesses the most popular critical perspectives on Mircea Nedelciu’s fiction
and the rather common tendency to allocate his work to various literary trends and groups. The
purpose of this approach is to draw (specialist) attention (away) from the temptation to
conveniently (and unproblematically) classify this highly original author according to various subtrends of Romanian modernism or post-modernism and to(wards) the reconsideration of a keyelement which seems to have been almost completely overlooked by critical viewpoints so far, as a
potential focus point of future (re-)readings: the “story” behind the textual artifices. The proposal is
thus to revert the consecrated optics on the topic, i.e. to reconsider the meta-textual surface of the
text as an intelligent and intricate, but deceitful “censor trap” and recompose the narrative it was
meant to conceal as the main meaning-producing mechanism in Nedelciu’s writing. This would
result in a new, richer and more appropriate “reading grid”, allowing not only a re-evaluation, but
also a re- (or proper) valuation of this canonical eighties writer.
REZUMAT
Obiectivul principal al cercetării este acela de a analiza și de a pune în evidență ... more REZUMAT
Obiectivul principal al cercetării este acela de a analiza și de a pune în evidență componenta profund etică din filigranul proiectului prozastic nedelcian. Urmărind ilustrările tensiunilor de ordin moral și identitar care apar, în textele scriitorului optzecist, între conștiința individuală și discursurile legitimatoare ale regimului comunist din România (implicând, printre altele, internalizarea forțată de către individ a unor modele umane masifica[n]te, simplificate în dimensiunea lor etic-identitară) – antagonisme pe care Mircea Nedelciu le sesizează, explorează și (re/de)construiește în mod constant în proza sa – studiul plasează accentul asupra dimensiunii „de conținut” a operei sale. Ca atare, analizele se axează în principal pe sistemul de reprezentări ficționale al prozei nedelciene și pe modul în care ele sunt puse în scenă în așa fel încât să „semnifice” nu doar estetic, ci și cultural (în general), etic (în special). Lucrarea îi are astfel în centru, mai precis, pe protagoniștii tipici ai povestirilor și romanelor lui Mircea Nedelciu – personaje care trăiesc într-o stare de (aparentă) confuzie moral-identitară, manifestată nu de puține ori printr-un gen aparte de comportament social transgresiv. Este vorba aici, însă, despre practicarea unui tip particular de „amoralism” și despre un „personaj principal” cu un profil specific, semnificativ, al cărui comportament și ale cărui aspirații ori convingeri intime nu se pot sincroniza în mod autentic cu un anumit sistem de valori dat (i.e. cel formulat de discursul „oficial” ceaușist). Studiul își propune, așadar, să releveze complexitatea unui întreg nivel de semnificare al proiectului literar nedelcian – cel al reprezentărilor simbolice – vădind coerența intenției etice (dezideologizante) și caracterul profund „antropogenetic” (emacipator) al ansamblului scrierilor lui Mircea Nedelciu.
ABSTRACT
The main objective of the present research is that of analysing and emphasising the highly ethical dimension of Mircea Nedelciu’s fictional project. Focusing on the illustrations of ethical tensions and identity issues that appear, in the texts of this eighties writer, between the individual conscience and the legitimating discourses of the Romanian communist regime (implying, among other things, the forced internalisation by the individual of certain mass, ethically simplified identity models) – antagonisms observed, explored and (re-/de-)constructed systematically by Mircea Nedelciu in his literary writings – the present paper spotlights the “content” of his works rather than their “form”. As such, the analyses are basically centred upon the system of symbolic representations encapsulated in Nedelciu’s prose and upon the way in which they are “staged” so as to gain a significance which thus becomes not only aesthetic, but also cultural (in general) and moral (in particular). The demarche headquarters, in fact, among the typical protagonists of Mircea Nedelciu’s short stories and novels – characters that live in a state of (apparent) moral confusion and identity loss, usually manifesting itself through a particular type of socially transgressive behaviour deprived of visible/explicit causes. However, this can actually be read as being the practice of a distinct type of “amoralism”, as these “main characters” with special features and profile cannot manage to authentically synchronise their behaviour and their intimate convictions or desires with a specific system of moral values which is being imposed on them (i.e. the one formulated by the “official” discourses of Ceauşescu’s era). Therefore, the present study is first of all meant to signal the existence (and to reveal the complexity) of a new level of symbolic significance within the frames of Mircea Nedelciu’s literary project as a whole – i.e. the level of fictional representation – showing the inner coherence of its ethical (counter-ideological) stakes and its essentially “anthropogenetic” (emancipative) nature.
Bachelor's Degree Thesis (Unpublished) by Ramona Hărșan
"Argument (extrait)
[...] Ce mémoire ne procède donc pas à l’analyse exhaustive de la totalit... more "Argument (extrait)
[...] Ce mémoire ne procède donc pas à l’analyse exhaustive de la totalité de l’œuvre gidienne, dans toute la variété d’aspects qu’elle présente (bien qu’une telle analyse soit implicite) ; nous ne nous lancerons pas, non plus, dans des analyses extensives tenant au côté esthétique de l’œuvre gidienne, car ce serait visiblement hors sujet, sauf prou certains cas où le style contribue sensiblement à l’idée; car ce qui nous préoccupe ici, est le coté extra-esthétique de l’œuvre de Gide, c'est-à-dire sa philosophie des valeurs. Nous essayerons d’en trouver le principe d’unité concernant la morale, les attitudes [...] immoralistes envisagées, les particularités de la vision immoraliste gidienne qui en ressortent et les modalités d’expression littéraire du système axiologique gidien – aspects de si grand intérêt, d’ailleurs, pour une réception correcte de Gide.
Nous avons structuré notre mémoire en trois grandes parties : la première traitera de l’immoralisme gidien d’une perspective culturelle intégrative, afin de le décrire comme point culminant d’une évolution naturelle (et nécessaire) de la culture (ceci, en contrepoint des théories le qualifiant de dérogation destructive) ; la deuxième section analysera sa genèse et ses manifestations internes, par une approche dissociative qui tentera de trouver et d’expliciter le spécifique de l’immoralisme de Gide, en le traitant dans son déterminisme intime, d’un côté, et en comparaison avec ses influences majeures, de l’autre ; la troisième partie est une démarche appliquée, qui suivra l’immoralisme Gidien à l’œuvre : ses topoï littéraires et leur fonctionnement. À ces trois grandes parties correspondent, évidemment, les trois chapitres du mémoire : le premier, André Gide et la filiation immoraliste ; le deuxième, Le Devenir immoraliste de la conscience gidienne : désagrégation ou délivrance ? et respectivement le troisième, L’immoralisme gidien à l’œuvre : les topoï immoralistes et la nouvelle axiologie. [...]"
Papers by Ramona Hărșan
This article deals with the mysterious side of Mircea Nedelciu's fictional geography. Often u... more This article deals with the mysterious side of Mircea Nedelciu's fictional geography. Often underestimated by the critics in terms of their aesthetic and conceptual value, these "mysterious territories" (utopian "mysterious islands" and "vanishing points") play, however, an important part in the overall signification system of Nedelciu's works. In order to prove it, I have identified them and interpreted their symbolic value(s) through recent anthropological and cultural theories concerning the concepts of space and utopia , thus showing that they are a main contribution to the literary representation of the author's weltanschaaung.
Journal of Romanian Literary Studies, Issue no. 24, 2021
The article (re)assesses the most popular critical perspectives on Mircea Nedelciu’s fiction
and ... more The article (re)assesses the most popular critical perspectives on Mircea Nedelciu’s fiction
and the rather common tendency to allocate his work to various literary trends and groups. The
purpose of this approach is to draw (specialist) attention (away) from the temptation to
conveniently (and unproblematically) classify this highly original author according to various subtrends of Romanian modernism or post-modernism and to(wards) the reconsideration of a keyelement which seems to have been almost completely overlooked by critical viewpoints so far, as a
potential focus point of future (re-)readings: the “story” behind the textual artifices. The proposal is
thus to revert the consecrated optics on the topic, i.e. to reconsider the meta-textual surface of the
text as an intelligent and intricate, but deceitful “censor trap” and recompose the narrative it was
meant to conceal as the main meaning-producing mechanism in Nedelciu’s writing. This would
result in a new, richer and more appropriate “reading grid”, allowing not only a re-evaluation, but
also a re- (or proper) valuation of this canonical eighties writer.
Redefining Community in Intercultural Context, 2020
The paper focuses on Central Europe’s problematic philosophical relationship with history by brin... more The paper focuses on Central Europe’s problematic philosophical relationship with history by bringing together three different post-communist viewpoints on Central Europeanism which seem to spotlight a certain distrust in history as a key element in any relevant understanding of its cultural specificity. The primary sources proposed for analysis consist of three authoritative Central European writers’ essayistic approaches to the said relationship – namely, Andrzej Stasiuk, Mircea Nedelciu and Gheorghe Crăciun’s – as each of them provides a different paradigmatic standpoint on Central Europe’s “historic pudency” and this attitude’s role in re-defining Europeanism in the zone. The investigation’s main purpose is to determine the way in which these discourses articulate around a distinct conceptual apparatus and build emblematic contemporary perspectives, adding up to pre-communist and late, 1980s (anti-)communist philosophical debates concerning Central European identity.
Ruralism and Literature in Romania, 2019
The present analysis investigates the main aesthetic and narrative devices used by Romanian write... more The present analysis investigates the main aesthetic and narrative devices used by Romanian writer Mircea Nedelciu (1950-1999) to generate covert ethical meaning under Nicolae Ceaușescu's regime, by exploring the underlying architecture of the fictional rural geographies as configured in his short stories and novels, with a focus on those prose productions who were published or devised before the Romanian Revolution in 1990. The excursion leads to the discovery of overlapping, yet seemingly incompatible recurrent categories of narrative territories, of real or phantasmal appearance and construction, which can be described via such oppositions as rural versus urban/suburban, archaic/traditional versus modern, alternative / subversive versus submissive, utopian / dystopian versus physical / real / realistic, ultimately facilitating the worthy visitor's access to symbolic significance and implicitly, to its fundamental ethical reconfiguration.
Beyond the Iron Curtain: Revisiting the Literary System of Communist Romania, 2021
The chapter investigates the counter-cultural potential of metafictional techniques as a feature ... more The chapter investigates the counter-cultural potential of metafictional techniques as a feature characterizing a specific sub-trend in 1980s Romanian prose, a direction the today canonical representatives of which are considered to be Mircea Nedelciu and Gheorghe Crăciun. Focusing on illustrations drawn from the two main exponents’ short stories and novels, the analysis bypasses certain classicized critical standpoints and ultimately attempts to redefine the intra-fictional metadiscourse as part of a more complex, multi-layered textual structure involving politically “passive-aggressive” showing techniques and peculiar autofictional representations.
Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov. Series IV: Philology and Cultural Studies, 2022
As the current international context has forced a faster integration of technology into teaching ... more As the current international context has forced a faster integration of technology into teaching in general, a hands-on assessment, based on the tutors’ experiences, of the benefits and shortcomings brought about by remote (online) learning tools in FLT is already feasible at this point. Based on the said premise, but with a narrower scope in view, the article focuses on the potential advantages of teaching ESP to Romanian air cadets via Microsoft Teams. The primary point of interest is to overview the situations (teaching/learning activities and skill-specific tasks) in which using the above-mentioned (business) communication platform may represent an asset in everyday teaching.
The article analyses two recent fictional reiterations of Count Dracula’s topos – namely, Alucard... more The article analyses two recent fictional reiterations of Count Dracula’s topos – namely, Alucard
in Kouta Hirano’s Hellsing manga series (1997-2008) and Fifi/FAD (Florin Anghelescu Dragolea) in Alexandru
Muşina’s novel Dracula’s Nephew (2012) – as two rather authoritative contemporary references modifying the
vampiric epitome originally outlined by Bram Stoker (and others). The focus is set on the evolution of ‘nation
branding’ related elements reflected inside the common fictional paradigm. More specifically, this imagological
investigation revolves around the ethical-symbolic dimension of the two selected contemporary works, in its
particular relation to the controversial tendency of ‘branding’ Romania (or Transylvania) as the ‘actual’ homeland
of the vicious vampire count. The ethical response both works imply is distinctive as well as significant, in the sense
that it illustrates a current tendency towards what will be referred to in the present study as a ‘pop-cultural
détente’.
This contribution aims to reopen the discussion
around the controversial author’s preface to the ... more This contribution aims to reopen the discussion
around the controversial author’s preface to the novel Tratament
Fabulatoriu [Fabulatory Treatment] by Mircea Nedelciu, a consistent
theoretical paratext first published in 1986, then re-written – or
“overwritten” – and commented upon by the writer a decade later,
as the political context changes radically after the anti-communist
revolution in 1989. The purpose of the present analysis is to look into
Nedelciu’s “overwriting” (i.e., rewriting) and “hyperwriting”
(i.e., text addition) techniques as politically-induced textual strategies
in a two-sided politics of reception – and more, as the investigation
eventually hints to their possible pertinence as a key to (re-
)reading the entire experimental dimension of the writer’s fictional
work.
Metacritic Journal for Comparative Studies and Theory, https://doi.org/10.24193/mjcst.2017.3.08, 2017
Having as a theoretical premise the idea that “essential personal identities” do not always synch... more Having as a theoretical premise the idea that “essential personal identities” do not always synchronise with the essential identity of the group they are supposed to belong to, and that this de-synchronisation can have an ethical opposition at its core, the paper focuses on the way in which Mircea Nedelciu’s typical protagonists – nomads, socially marginal individuals with confusing, “unaccomplished identities” – attempt to (culturally and morally) reconstruct their damaged personal identities by disengaging from their social and spatial appurtenance to the national macrogroup (dominated by the moral values, identity models and cultural stereotypes imposed by Ceauşescu’s regime) and phantasmatically “relocating” their identities in the Western Counterculture of “the Sixties”. This implicit refusal to belong can ultimately be read as an “ethics of reconnaissance”, an anti-totalitarian counter-politics or negative politics of identity led by persons or small groups that thus become a (fictionally) “significant minority”.
Convergent Discourses. Exploring the Contexts of Communication, 2016
Using (and to some extent, “abusing”) Jacques Derrida’s concept of “decontextualisation”
(and “re... more Using (and to some extent, “abusing”) Jacques Derrida’s concept of “decontextualisation”
(and “recontextualisation”), the broadest interest of my paper is the deliberate (and critical)
decontextualisation of stereotypes through literature. My study particularly focuses here on a fictional
strategy I will call “literary deflection”, i.e. the intentionally distorted reflection – having critical
deconstruction as its main intent – of a cultural stereotype. As a hands-on illustration of this fictional
policy, I have chosen Alexandru Mușina’s take on the profile of the vampire in his last novel Nepotul
lui Dracula [Dracula’s Nephew] (2012). Starting from a thorough observation of the hilarious
(ironical) “misuse” of the original romantic stereotype of the vampire in Mușina’s story, this
approach will eventually reveal the essentially ethical nature of such implied cultural identity
(re)negotiation and the pertinence of fictional discourse as an instrument for cultural analysis.
The paper focuses on the extra-literary concept of
“moral identity” and the new possibilities it ... more The paper focuses on the extra-literary concept of
“moral identity” and the new possibilities it may open for literary
historians (and literary analysts) in directions as different as the
area of cultural (or sociology-based) studies concerning the
particular features of Eastern-European fiction under communism
or, at the other end, as the field “post-colonial” studies. Thus, the
study attempts on the one hand to theoretically adapt the
philosophical (and psychological) concept of “moral identity” to
literary studies and to show how it can be applied to fictional
characters. On the other hand, it aims to exemplify the outcomes of
using moral identity as a tool in the interpretation of literature,
showing how Romanian and Eastern-European fiction written
under communism could be re-read and re-assessed if the idea of
the “fictional moral identity” of the character was taken into
account.
The relatively recent notion of „moral identityŗ is proper to the fields of ethics and moral
psyc... more The relatively recent notion of „moral identityŗ is proper to the fields of ethics and moral
psychology. Often used in connection to the „essential identityŗ of an individual or a (social) group, the
concept basically describes a morally-defined identity, those articulations of moral values, options and
engagements that are so important to person or a community that the given entity must necessarily and
substantially be defined through them. But what if we could also use this same notion to discuss the ways
in which issues related to culturally intermediated moral identities are set forth and reflected by
contemporary fiction, applying it to individual or collective literary characters, to certain narrative
devices, displays or settings used to fictionally approach the extra-literary moral identity of the group?
And if we could, how can it be done? This paper attempts to draw a guideline concerning the main
possible metaliterary uses of the concept and its importance as a means of updating current literary
metadiscourse, its investigation methods and perspectives, in order to meet the immediate reality and
necessities of present-day (globalized) societies.
Le topos littéraire de l’errance en tant que stratégie
identitaire exprimant l’appartenance de l’... more Le topos littéraire de l’errance en tant que stratégie
identitaire exprimant l’appartenance de l’errant à une minorité – et
son aliénation ou désolidarisation par rapport à l’identité du
groupe majoritaire, (politiquement) dominant – s’est coagulé dans
la littérature avec la génération des Beatniks aux États-Unis et s’est
fait approprier par la tumultueuse Contreculture des « années
soixante-huit », phénomène culturel dont le roman Sur la route de
Jack Kerouac est devenu l’un des symboles cultes les plus influents
à long terme – et à longue distance. Lorsqu’il a transpercé
inévitablement, bien que furtivement, les barrières politiques telles
le mur de Berlin, il a inspiré des images symboliques à
significations politiques décontextualisées chez quelques écrivains
de l’Europe de l’Est. Le présent article mène en ce sens une
investigation comparative de la reprise fictionnelle (dialogique) de
« l’errance beat » (à la manière de Kerouac) chez deux auteurs Esteuropéens
importants : Mircea Nedelciu (en Roumanie, dans les
années 1980 et 1990) et Andrzej Stasiuk (en Pologne, dans les
années 1990-2000), analysant les transformations successives subies
par le topos ou la « narration » d’origine.
The paper focuses on the impact of the Western 'Sixties' Counterculture on the dystopian
represe... more The paper focuses on the impact of the Western 'Sixties' Counterculture on the dystopian
representations of community and group identities in Mircea Nedelciuřs fiction, since the Romanian
writer frequently uses covert intercultural dialogue as one of his most prominent de-ideologising
fictional strategies. His stories and novels actually displace and (re)contextualise the counter-cultural
symbolic discourse, the value system and the moral code(s) of the Western ŖSixtiesŗ, strategically
adapting them to the Romanian totalitarian context of the 1980s. Nedelciuřs fictional reconstruction of
the dystopian nature of reality is thus essentially built on a particular type of inter-cultural dialogue:
one which replaces the impossible (forbidden) exchanges between different Central cultural
paradigms with a secret „trafficŗ between marginal subcultures (or counter-cultures). The cultural
identity of the social group (especially its moral dimension and implied value system) thus goes
beyond local/ national/ regional definition and becomes the result of a dialogic, globalised sociocultural
enterprise. Nedelciuřs viewpoint on community and its possible, plural identity
configuration(s) thus corresponds to such theories as those regarding the Ŗimaginedŗ (and therefore
socially re-configurable) nature of communautary identities, the idea of intercultural discourse as
bearer of différance and the theories related to Ŗmoral identityŗ as negotiable, responsible
construction, while simultaneously illustrating the essential role of intercultural dialogue in the
process of group identity construction in a globalized world.
Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Braşov, Series IV: Philology and Cultural Studies • Vol. 8 (57) No. 1 – 2015 , http://webbut.unitbv.ro/BU_2015/Series%20IV/Contents_IV_1.html, 2015
Writing under Ceauşescu’s communist regime, Romanian author Mircea Nedelciu seems to
fictionally... more Writing under Ceauşescu’s communist regime, Romanian author Mircea Nedelciu seems to
fictionally exploit the politically subversive potential of the male libido as emphasized by the
imagery of the Western sexual revolution, through a gallery of male protagonists recurrently
exhibiting unconventionally libertine and misogynistic erotic behaviours. However, his
underlying ethical commentary regarding the issue actually generates a theoretical
standpoint that might not only be significant for a regional (re)interpretation of
“sexistentialism” as a (counter-)cultural topos in the Eastern European literature of the
1980s, but an interesting contribution to the nowadays renewed debates concerning the
cultural achievements of the Sixties’ sexual liberation as well.
Redefining Community in Intercultural Context, Vol. 4 no. 1/2015, pp. 308-316., May 2015
Starting from a comparative analysis of the symbolic representations of community in the works of... more Starting from a comparative analysis of the symbolic representations of community in the works of two
major Eastern European fiction writers of the 1980s (nationally praised Romanian prose writer Mircea Nedelciu
and internationally acclaimed Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai), the present contribution brings together
their fundamentally similar perspectives on community disaggregation under communist totalitarianism. The two
authors’ aesthetic (re)constructions of community – favouring fantasy-like approaches and a poetics of absence
often turning into actual representations of “spectrality” (in the Derridean sense of the term) – are meant to be read
as (underlying) ethical standpoint(s) on the distortion of the moral component of personal and group identity under
totalitarianism. Moreover, both writers are interested in exploring the possibilities (and limits) of marginal moral
resistance (i.e. the possibility of moral resistance with socially marginalised individuals, marginal/uncharted
communities etc.) as alternative moral identity (re)construction model(s). Nedelciu and Krasznahorkai’s
“fabulatory” ways of exploring socio-cultural reality and political imagery could hereby be associated with
theoretical viewpoints such as André Petitat’s approach on “secret” and social forms, Tadeusz Buksiński’s concept
of “covert passive resistance”, Jacques Derrida’s take on “spectrality” or with the more general discussions
concerning the concept of “moral identity”, while also proposing a particular and plausible relationship between
“aesthetics and mimesis” (as recently re-defined by Beljah Mehdi-Kacem).
Bulletin of the Transilvania University of Brasov, Series IV - Philology and Cultural Studies, no. 2/2014, pp. 117-125.
Bringing together two different contemporary fiction writers – Mircea Nedelciu, a
nationally-pra... more Bringing together two different contemporary fiction writers – Mircea Nedelciu, a
nationally-praised Romanian author and continentally-acclaimed Polish author Andrzej
Stasiuk – the present article focuses on their common preoccupation with (and recurrent
representations of) Eastern European identity. A rather meaningful autochthon counterpoint
to “classical” approaches on the matter (such as Cioran’s theory of the “historical void”)
emerges as their views (coincidentally) converge towards an original and up-to-date way of
(re)defining Central and Eastern Europeanism.
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PhD Thesis (Rezumat/Overview) by Ramona Hărșan
and the rather common tendency to allocate his work to various literary trends and groups. The
purpose of this approach is to draw (specialist) attention (away) from the temptation to
conveniently (and unproblematically) classify this highly original author according to various subtrends of Romanian modernism or post-modernism and to(wards) the reconsideration of a keyelement which seems to have been almost completely overlooked by critical viewpoints so far, as a
potential focus point of future (re-)readings: the “story” behind the textual artifices. The proposal is
thus to revert the consecrated optics on the topic, i.e. to reconsider the meta-textual surface of the
text as an intelligent and intricate, but deceitful “censor trap” and recompose the narrative it was
meant to conceal as the main meaning-producing mechanism in Nedelciu’s writing. This would
result in a new, richer and more appropriate “reading grid”, allowing not only a re-evaluation, but
also a re- (or proper) valuation of this canonical eighties writer.
Obiectivul principal al cercetării este acela de a analiza și de a pune în evidență componenta profund etică din filigranul proiectului prozastic nedelcian. Urmărind ilustrările tensiunilor de ordin moral și identitar care apar, în textele scriitorului optzecist, între conștiința individuală și discursurile legitimatoare ale regimului comunist din România (implicând, printre altele, internalizarea forțată de către individ a unor modele umane masifica[n]te, simplificate în dimensiunea lor etic-identitară) – antagonisme pe care Mircea Nedelciu le sesizează, explorează și (re/de)construiește în mod constant în proza sa – studiul plasează accentul asupra dimensiunii „de conținut” a operei sale. Ca atare, analizele se axează în principal pe sistemul de reprezentări ficționale al prozei nedelciene și pe modul în care ele sunt puse în scenă în așa fel încât să „semnifice” nu doar estetic, ci și cultural (în general), etic (în special). Lucrarea îi are astfel în centru, mai precis, pe protagoniștii tipici ai povestirilor și romanelor lui Mircea Nedelciu – personaje care trăiesc într-o stare de (aparentă) confuzie moral-identitară, manifestată nu de puține ori printr-un gen aparte de comportament social transgresiv. Este vorba aici, însă, despre practicarea unui tip particular de „amoralism” și despre un „personaj principal” cu un profil specific, semnificativ, al cărui comportament și ale cărui aspirații ori convingeri intime nu se pot sincroniza în mod autentic cu un anumit sistem de valori dat (i.e. cel formulat de discursul „oficial” ceaușist). Studiul își propune, așadar, să releveze complexitatea unui întreg nivel de semnificare al proiectului literar nedelcian – cel al reprezentărilor simbolice – vădind coerența intenției etice (dezideologizante) și caracterul profund „antropogenetic” (emacipator) al ansamblului scrierilor lui Mircea Nedelciu.
ABSTRACT
The main objective of the present research is that of analysing and emphasising the highly ethical dimension of Mircea Nedelciu’s fictional project. Focusing on the illustrations of ethical tensions and identity issues that appear, in the texts of this eighties writer, between the individual conscience and the legitimating discourses of the Romanian communist regime (implying, among other things, the forced internalisation by the individual of certain mass, ethically simplified identity models) – antagonisms observed, explored and (re-/de-)constructed systematically by Mircea Nedelciu in his literary writings – the present paper spotlights the “content” of his works rather than their “form”. As such, the analyses are basically centred upon the system of symbolic representations encapsulated in Nedelciu’s prose and upon the way in which they are “staged” so as to gain a significance which thus becomes not only aesthetic, but also cultural (in general) and moral (in particular). The demarche headquarters, in fact, among the typical protagonists of Mircea Nedelciu’s short stories and novels – characters that live in a state of (apparent) moral confusion and identity loss, usually manifesting itself through a particular type of socially transgressive behaviour deprived of visible/explicit causes. However, this can actually be read as being the practice of a distinct type of “amoralism”, as these “main characters” with special features and profile cannot manage to authentically synchronise their behaviour and their intimate convictions or desires with a specific system of moral values which is being imposed on them (i.e. the one formulated by the “official” discourses of Ceauşescu’s era). Therefore, the present study is first of all meant to signal the existence (and to reveal the complexity) of a new level of symbolic significance within the frames of Mircea Nedelciu’s literary project as a whole – i.e. the level of fictional representation – showing the inner coherence of its ethical (counter-ideological) stakes and its essentially “anthropogenetic” (emancipative) nature.
Bachelor's Degree Thesis (Unpublished) by Ramona Hărșan
[...] Ce mémoire ne procède donc pas à l’analyse exhaustive de la totalité de l’œuvre gidienne, dans toute la variété d’aspects qu’elle présente (bien qu’une telle analyse soit implicite) ; nous ne nous lancerons pas, non plus, dans des analyses extensives tenant au côté esthétique de l’œuvre gidienne, car ce serait visiblement hors sujet, sauf prou certains cas où le style contribue sensiblement à l’idée; car ce qui nous préoccupe ici, est le coté extra-esthétique de l’œuvre de Gide, c'est-à-dire sa philosophie des valeurs. Nous essayerons d’en trouver le principe d’unité concernant la morale, les attitudes [...] immoralistes envisagées, les particularités de la vision immoraliste gidienne qui en ressortent et les modalités d’expression littéraire du système axiologique gidien – aspects de si grand intérêt, d’ailleurs, pour une réception correcte de Gide.
Nous avons structuré notre mémoire en trois grandes parties : la première traitera de l’immoralisme gidien d’une perspective culturelle intégrative, afin de le décrire comme point culminant d’une évolution naturelle (et nécessaire) de la culture (ceci, en contrepoint des théories le qualifiant de dérogation destructive) ; la deuxième section analysera sa genèse et ses manifestations internes, par une approche dissociative qui tentera de trouver et d’expliciter le spécifique de l’immoralisme de Gide, en le traitant dans son déterminisme intime, d’un côté, et en comparaison avec ses influences majeures, de l’autre ; la troisième partie est une démarche appliquée, qui suivra l’immoralisme Gidien à l’œuvre : ses topoï littéraires et leur fonctionnement. À ces trois grandes parties correspondent, évidemment, les trois chapitres du mémoire : le premier, André Gide et la filiation immoraliste ; le deuxième, Le Devenir immoraliste de la conscience gidienne : désagrégation ou délivrance ? et respectivement le troisième, L’immoralisme gidien à l’œuvre : les topoï immoralistes et la nouvelle axiologie. [...]"
Papers by Ramona Hărșan
and the rather common tendency to allocate his work to various literary trends and groups. The
purpose of this approach is to draw (specialist) attention (away) from the temptation to
conveniently (and unproblematically) classify this highly original author according to various subtrends of Romanian modernism or post-modernism and to(wards) the reconsideration of a keyelement which seems to have been almost completely overlooked by critical viewpoints so far, as a
potential focus point of future (re-)readings: the “story” behind the textual artifices. The proposal is
thus to revert the consecrated optics on the topic, i.e. to reconsider the meta-textual surface of the
text as an intelligent and intricate, but deceitful “censor trap” and recompose the narrative it was
meant to conceal as the main meaning-producing mechanism in Nedelciu’s writing. This would
result in a new, richer and more appropriate “reading grid”, allowing not only a re-evaluation, but
also a re- (or proper) valuation of this canonical eighties writer.
in Kouta Hirano’s Hellsing manga series (1997-2008) and Fifi/FAD (Florin Anghelescu Dragolea) in Alexandru
Muşina’s novel Dracula’s Nephew (2012) – as two rather authoritative contemporary references modifying the
vampiric epitome originally outlined by Bram Stoker (and others). The focus is set on the evolution of ‘nation
branding’ related elements reflected inside the common fictional paradigm. More specifically, this imagological
investigation revolves around the ethical-symbolic dimension of the two selected contemporary works, in its
particular relation to the controversial tendency of ‘branding’ Romania (or Transylvania) as the ‘actual’ homeland
of the vicious vampire count. The ethical response both works imply is distinctive as well as significant, in the sense
that it illustrates a current tendency towards what will be referred to in the present study as a ‘pop-cultural
détente’.
around the controversial author’s preface to the novel Tratament
Fabulatoriu [Fabulatory Treatment] by Mircea Nedelciu, a consistent
theoretical paratext first published in 1986, then re-written – or
“overwritten” – and commented upon by the writer a decade later,
as the political context changes radically after the anti-communist
revolution in 1989. The purpose of the present analysis is to look into
Nedelciu’s “overwriting” (i.e., rewriting) and “hyperwriting”
(i.e., text addition) techniques as politically-induced textual strategies
in a two-sided politics of reception – and more, as the investigation
eventually hints to their possible pertinence as a key to (re-
)reading the entire experimental dimension of the writer’s fictional
work.
(and “recontextualisation”), the broadest interest of my paper is the deliberate (and critical)
decontextualisation of stereotypes through literature. My study particularly focuses here on a fictional
strategy I will call “literary deflection”, i.e. the intentionally distorted reflection – having critical
deconstruction as its main intent – of a cultural stereotype. As a hands-on illustration of this fictional
policy, I have chosen Alexandru Mușina’s take on the profile of the vampire in his last novel Nepotul
lui Dracula [Dracula’s Nephew] (2012). Starting from a thorough observation of the hilarious
(ironical) “misuse” of the original romantic stereotype of the vampire in Mușina’s story, this
approach will eventually reveal the essentially ethical nature of such implied cultural identity
(re)negotiation and the pertinence of fictional discourse as an instrument for cultural analysis.
“moral identity” and the new possibilities it may open for literary
historians (and literary analysts) in directions as different as the
area of cultural (or sociology-based) studies concerning the
particular features of Eastern-European fiction under communism
or, at the other end, as the field “post-colonial” studies. Thus, the
study attempts on the one hand to theoretically adapt the
philosophical (and psychological) concept of “moral identity” to
literary studies and to show how it can be applied to fictional
characters. On the other hand, it aims to exemplify the outcomes of
using moral identity as a tool in the interpretation of literature,
showing how Romanian and Eastern-European fiction written
under communism could be re-read and re-assessed if the idea of
the “fictional moral identity” of the character was taken into
account.
psychology. Often used in connection to the „essential identityŗ of an individual or a (social) group, the
concept basically describes a morally-defined identity, those articulations of moral values, options and
engagements that are so important to person or a community that the given entity must necessarily and
substantially be defined through them. But what if we could also use this same notion to discuss the ways
in which issues related to culturally intermediated moral identities are set forth and reflected by
contemporary fiction, applying it to individual or collective literary characters, to certain narrative
devices, displays or settings used to fictionally approach the extra-literary moral identity of the group?
And if we could, how can it be done? This paper attempts to draw a guideline concerning the main
possible metaliterary uses of the concept and its importance as a means of updating current literary
metadiscourse, its investigation methods and perspectives, in order to meet the immediate reality and
necessities of present-day (globalized) societies.
identitaire exprimant l’appartenance de l’errant à une minorité – et
son aliénation ou désolidarisation par rapport à l’identité du
groupe majoritaire, (politiquement) dominant – s’est coagulé dans
la littérature avec la génération des Beatniks aux États-Unis et s’est
fait approprier par la tumultueuse Contreculture des « années
soixante-huit », phénomène culturel dont le roman Sur la route de
Jack Kerouac est devenu l’un des symboles cultes les plus influents
à long terme – et à longue distance. Lorsqu’il a transpercé
inévitablement, bien que furtivement, les barrières politiques telles
le mur de Berlin, il a inspiré des images symboliques à
significations politiques décontextualisées chez quelques écrivains
de l’Europe de l’Est. Le présent article mène en ce sens une
investigation comparative de la reprise fictionnelle (dialogique) de
« l’errance beat » (à la manière de Kerouac) chez deux auteurs Esteuropéens
importants : Mircea Nedelciu (en Roumanie, dans les
années 1980 et 1990) et Andrzej Stasiuk (en Pologne, dans les
années 1990-2000), analysant les transformations successives subies
par le topos ou la « narration » d’origine.
representations of community and group identities in Mircea Nedelciuřs fiction, since the Romanian
writer frequently uses covert intercultural dialogue as one of his most prominent de-ideologising
fictional strategies. His stories and novels actually displace and (re)contextualise the counter-cultural
symbolic discourse, the value system and the moral code(s) of the Western ŖSixtiesŗ, strategically
adapting them to the Romanian totalitarian context of the 1980s. Nedelciuřs fictional reconstruction of
the dystopian nature of reality is thus essentially built on a particular type of inter-cultural dialogue:
one which replaces the impossible (forbidden) exchanges between different Central cultural
paradigms with a secret „trafficŗ between marginal subcultures (or counter-cultures). The cultural
identity of the social group (especially its moral dimension and implied value system) thus goes
beyond local/ national/ regional definition and becomes the result of a dialogic, globalised sociocultural
enterprise. Nedelciuřs viewpoint on community and its possible, plural identity
configuration(s) thus corresponds to such theories as those regarding the Ŗimaginedŗ (and therefore
socially re-configurable) nature of communautary identities, the idea of intercultural discourse as
bearer of différance and the theories related to Ŗmoral identityŗ as negotiable, responsible
construction, while simultaneously illustrating the essential role of intercultural dialogue in the
process of group identity construction in a globalized world.
fictionally exploit the politically subversive potential of the male libido as emphasized by the
imagery of the Western sexual revolution, through a gallery of male protagonists recurrently
exhibiting unconventionally libertine and misogynistic erotic behaviours. However, his
underlying ethical commentary regarding the issue actually generates a theoretical
standpoint that might not only be significant for a regional (re)interpretation of
“sexistentialism” as a (counter-)cultural topos in the Eastern European literature of the
1980s, but an interesting contribution to the nowadays renewed debates concerning the
cultural achievements of the Sixties’ sexual liberation as well.
major Eastern European fiction writers of the 1980s (nationally praised Romanian prose writer Mircea Nedelciu
and internationally acclaimed Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai), the present contribution brings together
their fundamentally similar perspectives on community disaggregation under communist totalitarianism. The two
authors’ aesthetic (re)constructions of community – favouring fantasy-like approaches and a poetics of absence
often turning into actual representations of “spectrality” (in the Derridean sense of the term) – are meant to be read
as (underlying) ethical standpoint(s) on the distortion of the moral component of personal and group identity under
totalitarianism. Moreover, both writers are interested in exploring the possibilities (and limits) of marginal moral
resistance (i.e. the possibility of moral resistance with socially marginalised individuals, marginal/uncharted
communities etc.) as alternative moral identity (re)construction model(s). Nedelciu and Krasznahorkai’s
“fabulatory” ways of exploring socio-cultural reality and political imagery could hereby be associated with
theoretical viewpoints such as André Petitat’s approach on “secret” and social forms, Tadeusz Buksiński’s concept
of “covert passive resistance”, Jacques Derrida’s take on “spectrality” or with the more general discussions
concerning the concept of “moral identity”, while also proposing a particular and plausible relationship between
“aesthetics and mimesis” (as recently re-defined by Beljah Mehdi-Kacem).
nationally-praised Romanian author and continentally-acclaimed Polish author Andrzej
Stasiuk – the present article focuses on their common preoccupation with (and recurrent
representations of) Eastern European identity. A rather meaningful autochthon counterpoint
to “classical” approaches on the matter (such as Cioran’s theory of the “historical void”)
emerges as their views (coincidentally) converge towards an original and up-to-date way of
(re)defining Central and Eastern Europeanism.
and the rather common tendency to allocate his work to various literary trends and groups. The
purpose of this approach is to draw (specialist) attention (away) from the temptation to
conveniently (and unproblematically) classify this highly original author according to various subtrends of Romanian modernism or post-modernism and to(wards) the reconsideration of a keyelement which seems to have been almost completely overlooked by critical viewpoints so far, as a
potential focus point of future (re-)readings: the “story” behind the textual artifices. The proposal is
thus to revert the consecrated optics on the topic, i.e. to reconsider the meta-textual surface of the
text as an intelligent and intricate, but deceitful “censor trap” and recompose the narrative it was
meant to conceal as the main meaning-producing mechanism in Nedelciu’s writing. This would
result in a new, richer and more appropriate “reading grid”, allowing not only a re-evaluation, but
also a re- (or proper) valuation of this canonical eighties writer.
Obiectivul principal al cercetării este acela de a analiza și de a pune în evidență componenta profund etică din filigranul proiectului prozastic nedelcian. Urmărind ilustrările tensiunilor de ordin moral și identitar care apar, în textele scriitorului optzecist, între conștiința individuală și discursurile legitimatoare ale regimului comunist din România (implicând, printre altele, internalizarea forțată de către individ a unor modele umane masifica[n]te, simplificate în dimensiunea lor etic-identitară) – antagonisme pe care Mircea Nedelciu le sesizează, explorează și (re/de)construiește în mod constant în proza sa – studiul plasează accentul asupra dimensiunii „de conținut” a operei sale. Ca atare, analizele se axează în principal pe sistemul de reprezentări ficționale al prozei nedelciene și pe modul în care ele sunt puse în scenă în așa fel încât să „semnifice” nu doar estetic, ci și cultural (în general), etic (în special). Lucrarea îi are astfel în centru, mai precis, pe protagoniștii tipici ai povestirilor și romanelor lui Mircea Nedelciu – personaje care trăiesc într-o stare de (aparentă) confuzie moral-identitară, manifestată nu de puține ori printr-un gen aparte de comportament social transgresiv. Este vorba aici, însă, despre practicarea unui tip particular de „amoralism” și despre un „personaj principal” cu un profil specific, semnificativ, al cărui comportament și ale cărui aspirații ori convingeri intime nu se pot sincroniza în mod autentic cu un anumit sistem de valori dat (i.e. cel formulat de discursul „oficial” ceaușist). Studiul își propune, așadar, să releveze complexitatea unui întreg nivel de semnificare al proiectului literar nedelcian – cel al reprezentărilor simbolice – vădind coerența intenției etice (dezideologizante) și caracterul profund „antropogenetic” (emacipator) al ansamblului scrierilor lui Mircea Nedelciu.
ABSTRACT
The main objective of the present research is that of analysing and emphasising the highly ethical dimension of Mircea Nedelciu’s fictional project. Focusing on the illustrations of ethical tensions and identity issues that appear, in the texts of this eighties writer, between the individual conscience and the legitimating discourses of the Romanian communist regime (implying, among other things, the forced internalisation by the individual of certain mass, ethically simplified identity models) – antagonisms observed, explored and (re-/de-)constructed systematically by Mircea Nedelciu in his literary writings – the present paper spotlights the “content” of his works rather than their “form”. As such, the analyses are basically centred upon the system of symbolic representations encapsulated in Nedelciu’s prose and upon the way in which they are “staged” so as to gain a significance which thus becomes not only aesthetic, but also cultural (in general) and moral (in particular). The demarche headquarters, in fact, among the typical protagonists of Mircea Nedelciu’s short stories and novels – characters that live in a state of (apparent) moral confusion and identity loss, usually manifesting itself through a particular type of socially transgressive behaviour deprived of visible/explicit causes. However, this can actually be read as being the practice of a distinct type of “amoralism”, as these “main characters” with special features and profile cannot manage to authentically synchronise their behaviour and their intimate convictions or desires with a specific system of moral values which is being imposed on them (i.e. the one formulated by the “official” discourses of Ceauşescu’s era). Therefore, the present study is first of all meant to signal the existence (and to reveal the complexity) of a new level of symbolic significance within the frames of Mircea Nedelciu’s literary project as a whole – i.e. the level of fictional representation – showing the inner coherence of its ethical (counter-ideological) stakes and its essentially “anthropogenetic” (emancipative) nature.
[...] Ce mémoire ne procède donc pas à l’analyse exhaustive de la totalité de l’œuvre gidienne, dans toute la variété d’aspects qu’elle présente (bien qu’une telle analyse soit implicite) ; nous ne nous lancerons pas, non plus, dans des analyses extensives tenant au côté esthétique de l’œuvre gidienne, car ce serait visiblement hors sujet, sauf prou certains cas où le style contribue sensiblement à l’idée; car ce qui nous préoccupe ici, est le coté extra-esthétique de l’œuvre de Gide, c'est-à-dire sa philosophie des valeurs. Nous essayerons d’en trouver le principe d’unité concernant la morale, les attitudes [...] immoralistes envisagées, les particularités de la vision immoraliste gidienne qui en ressortent et les modalités d’expression littéraire du système axiologique gidien – aspects de si grand intérêt, d’ailleurs, pour une réception correcte de Gide.
Nous avons structuré notre mémoire en trois grandes parties : la première traitera de l’immoralisme gidien d’une perspective culturelle intégrative, afin de le décrire comme point culminant d’une évolution naturelle (et nécessaire) de la culture (ceci, en contrepoint des théories le qualifiant de dérogation destructive) ; la deuxième section analysera sa genèse et ses manifestations internes, par une approche dissociative qui tentera de trouver et d’expliciter le spécifique de l’immoralisme de Gide, en le traitant dans son déterminisme intime, d’un côté, et en comparaison avec ses influences majeures, de l’autre ; la troisième partie est une démarche appliquée, qui suivra l’immoralisme Gidien à l’œuvre : ses topoï littéraires et leur fonctionnement. À ces trois grandes parties correspondent, évidemment, les trois chapitres du mémoire : le premier, André Gide et la filiation immoraliste ; le deuxième, Le Devenir immoraliste de la conscience gidienne : désagrégation ou délivrance ? et respectivement le troisième, L’immoralisme gidien à l’œuvre : les topoï immoralistes et la nouvelle axiologie. [...]"
and the rather common tendency to allocate his work to various literary trends and groups. The
purpose of this approach is to draw (specialist) attention (away) from the temptation to
conveniently (and unproblematically) classify this highly original author according to various subtrends of Romanian modernism or post-modernism and to(wards) the reconsideration of a keyelement which seems to have been almost completely overlooked by critical viewpoints so far, as a
potential focus point of future (re-)readings: the “story” behind the textual artifices. The proposal is
thus to revert the consecrated optics on the topic, i.e. to reconsider the meta-textual surface of the
text as an intelligent and intricate, but deceitful “censor trap” and recompose the narrative it was
meant to conceal as the main meaning-producing mechanism in Nedelciu’s writing. This would
result in a new, richer and more appropriate “reading grid”, allowing not only a re-evaluation, but
also a re- (or proper) valuation of this canonical eighties writer.
in Kouta Hirano’s Hellsing manga series (1997-2008) and Fifi/FAD (Florin Anghelescu Dragolea) in Alexandru
Muşina’s novel Dracula’s Nephew (2012) – as two rather authoritative contemporary references modifying the
vampiric epitome originally outlined by Bram Stoker (and others). The focus is set on the evolution of ‘nation
branding’ related elements reflected inside the common fictional paradigm. More specifically, this imagological
investigation revolves around the ethical-symbolic dimension of the two selected contemporary works, in its
particular relation to the controversial tendency of ‘branding’ Romania (or Transylvania) as the ‘actual’ homeland
of the vicious vampire count. The ethical response both works imply is distinctive as well as significant, in the sense
that it illustrates a current tendency towards what will be referred to in the present study as a ‘pop-cultural
détente’.
around the controversial author’s preface to the novel Tratament
Fabulatoriu [Fabulatory Treatment] by Mircea Nedelciu, a consistent
theoretical paratext first published in 1986, then re-written – or
“overwritten” – and commented upon by the writer a decade later,
as the political context changes radically after the anti-communist
revolution in 1989. The purpose of the present analysis is to look into
Nedelciu’s “overwriting” (i.e., rewriting) and “hyperwriting”
(i.e., text addition) techniques as politically-induced textual strategies
in a two-sided politics of reception – and more, as the investigation
eventually hints to their possible pertinence as a key to (re-
)reading the entire experimental dimension of the writer’s fictional
work.
(and “recontextualisation”), the broadest interest of my paper is the deliberate (and critical)
decontextualisation of stereotypes through literature. My study particularly focuses here on a fictional
strategy I will call “literary deflection”, i.e. the intentionally distorted reflection – having critical
deconstruction as its main intent – of a cultural stereotype. As a hands-on illustration of this fictional
policy, I have chosen Alexandru Mușina’s take on the profile of the vampire in his last novel Nepotul
lui Dracula [Dracula’s Nephew] (2012). Starting from a thorough observation of the hilarious
(ironical) “misuse” of the original romantic stereotype of the vampire in Mușina’s story, this
approach will eventually reveal the essentially ethical nature of such implied cultural identity
(re)negotiation and the pertinence of fictional discourse as an instrument for cultural analysis.
“moral identity” and the new possibilities it may open for literary
historians (and literary analysts) in directions as different as the
area of cultural (or sociology-based) studies concerning the
particular features of Eastern-European fiction under communism
or, at the other end, as the field “post-colonial” studies. Thus, the
study attempts on the one hand to theoretically adapt the
philosophical (and psychological) concept of “moral identity” to
literary studies and to show how it can be applied to fictional
characters. On the other hand, it aims to exemplify the outcomes of
using moral identity as a tool in the interpretation of literature,
showing how Romanian and Eastern-European fiction written
under communism could be re-read and re-assessed if the idea of
the “fictional moral identity” of the character was taken into
account.
psychology. Often used in connection to the „essential identityŗ of an individual or a (social) group, the
concept basically describes a morally-defined identity, those articulations of moral values, options and
engagements that are so important to person or a community that the given entity must necessarily and
substantially be defined through them. But what if we could also use this same notion to discuss the ways
in which issues related to culturally intermediated moral identities are set forth and reflected by
contemporary fiction, applying it to individual or collective literary characters, to certain narrative
devices, displays or settings used to fictionally approach the extra-literary moral identity of the group?
And if we could, how can it be done? This paper attempts to draw a guideline concerning the main
possible metaliterary uses of the concept and its importance as a means of updating current literary
metadiscourse, its investigation methods and perspectives, in order to meet the immediate reality and
necessities of present-day (globalized) societies.
identitaire exprimant l’appartenance de l’errant à une minorité – et
son aliénation ou désolidarisation par rapport à l’identité du
groupe majoritaire, (politiquement) dominant – s’est coagulé dans
la littérature avec la génération des Beatniks aux États-Unis et s’est
fait approprier par la tumultueuse Contreculture des « années
soixante-huit », phénomène culturel dont le roman Sur la route de
Jack Kerouac est devenu l’un des symboles cultes les plus influents
à long terme – et à longue distance. Lorsqu’il a transpercé
inévitablement, bien que furtivement, les barrières politiques telles
le mur de Berlin, il a inspiré des images symboliques à
significations politiques décontextualisées chez quelques écrivains
de l’Europe de l’Est. Le présent article mène en ce sens une
investigation comparative de la reprise fictionnelle (dialogique) de
« l’errance beat » (à la manière de Kerouac) chez deux auteurs Esteuropéens
importants : Mircea Nedelciu (en Roumanie, dans les
années 1980 et 1990) et Andrzej Stasiuk (en Pologne, dans les
années 1990-2000), analysant les transformations successives subies
par le topos ou la « narration » d’origine.
representations of community and group identities in Mircea Nedelciuřs fiction, since the Romanian
writer frequently uses covert intercultural dialogue as one of his most prominent de-ideologising
fictional strategies. His stories and novels actually displace and (re)contextualise the counter-cultural
symbolic discourse, the value system and the moral code(s) of the Western ŖSixtiesŗ, strategically
adapting them to the Romanian totalitarian context of the 1980s. Nedelciuřs fictional reconstruction of
the dystopian nature of reality is thus essentially built on a particular type of inter-cultural dialogue:
one which replaces the impossible (forbidden) exchanges between different Central cultural
paradigms with a secret „trafficŗ between marginal subcultures (or counter-cultures). The cultural
identity of the social group (especially its moral dimension and implied value system) thus goes
beyond local/ national/ regional definition and becomes the result of a dialogic, globalised sociocultural
enterprise. Nedelciuřs viewpoint on community and its possible, plural identity
configuration(s) thus corresponds to such theories as those regarding the Ŗimaginedŗ (and therefore
socially re-configurable) nature of communautary identities, the idea of intercultural discourse as
bearer of différance and the theories related to Ŗmoral identityŗ as negotiable, responsible
construction, while simultaneously illustrating the essential role of intercultural dialogue in the
process of group identity construction in a globalized world.
fictionally exploit the politically subversive potential of the male libido as emphasized by the
imagery of the Western sexual revolution, through a gallery of male protagonists recurrently
exhibiting unconventionally libertine and misogynistic erotic behaviours. However, his
underlying ethical commentary regarding the issue actually generates a theoretical
standpoint that might not only be significant for a regional (re)interpretation of
“sexistentialism” as a (counter-)cultural topos in the Eastern European literature of the
1980s, but an interesting contribution to the nowadays renewed debates concerning the
cultural achievements of the Sixties’ sexual liberation as well.
major Eastern European fiction writers of the 1980s (nationally praised Romanian prose writer Mircea Nedelciu
and internationally acclaimed Hungarian novelist László Krasznahorkai), the present contribution brings together
their fundamentally similar perspectives on community disaggregation under communist totalitarianism. The two
authors’ aesthetic (re)constructions of community – favouring fantasy-like approaches and a poetics of absence
often turning into actual representations of “spectrality” (in the Derridean sense of the term) – are meant to be read
as (underlying) ethical standpoint(s) on the distortion of the moral component of personal and group identity under
totalitarianism. Moreover, both writers are interested in exploring the possibilities (and limits) of marginal moral
resistance (i.e. the possibility of moral resistance with socially marginalised individuals, marginal/uncharted
communities etc.) as alternative moral identity (re)construction model(s). Nedelciu and Krasznahorkai’s
“fabulatory” ways of exploring socio-cultural reality and political imagery could hereby be associated with
theoretical viewpoints such as André Petitat’s approach on “secret” and social forms, Tadeusz Buksiński’s concept
of “covert passive resistance”, Jacques Derrida’s take on “spectrality” or with the more general discussions
concerning the concept of “moral identity”, while also proposing a particular and plausible relationship between
“aesthetics and mimesis” (as recently re-defined by Beljah Mehdi-Kacem).
nationally-praised Romanian author and continentally-acclaimed Polish author Andrzej
Stasiuk – the present article focuses on their common preoccupation with (and recurrent
representations of) Eastern European identity. A rather meaningful autochthon counterpoint
to “classical” approaches on the matter (such as Cioran’s theory of the “historical void”)
emerges as their views (coincidentally) converge towards an original and up-to-date way of
(re)defining Central and Eastern Europeanism.
paper focuses on the impact of the Western “Sixties” Counterculture on some particular Eastern
representations of identity during the ‘80s and ‘90s. In specie, the hypothesis is that this (otherwise
non-explicitly treated) cultural influence is significantly reflected by a few Central European literary
works, especially in relation to issues concerning the construction of marginal (and hereby
alternative) personal and/or group identities. This observation is applied to fictional writings
belonging to two major eastern authors: Mircea Nedelciu (writing both under Ceauşescu’s
dictatorship and after) and Andrzej Stasiuk (writing in post-communist Poland). In this sense, both
writers favour protagonists belonging more or less to the same generation (the troubled generations of
the ‘50s and ‘60s), whose (basically similar) cultural profiles and identities seem to compose (or recompose/
reflect), without actually saying so literally, the improbable portrait of a subtler and
somewhat displaced, eastern variant of the hipster. The main characters in most of Nedelciu’s and
Stasiuk’s works are marginal individuals (socially speaking) for whom the echoes of the “Sixties” (the
music, the cinema, the books, the ideals or attitudes) become an essential underlying layer in the
formation of the self. Once matured, these heroes naturally tend to separate/oppose their own
personal identities and cultural beliefs from/to the dominant cultural identities of their respective
national groups/communities. The identity (re)construction policies explored and/or imagined by the
two authors bear consistent ethical, anti-totalitarian symbolical meanings (mainly with Nedelciu) and
open (especially with Stasiuk) towards reflection on broader identity issues, such as the idea of a
Central European cultural identity going beyond the traumas of recent history and traditional
national differences.