Romanian Cultural Space and the Global World in the

Works of Diaspora Romanians

Anca-Teodora Serban-Oprescu. "East and West: Romania
and America, or the Creolization of Cultural Spaces in
the Context of Globalization" 171
Elena-Adriana Dancu. ""Home, where?": Global Foreigners
in the Plays of Saviana SHinescu" 183
Maria-Sabina Draga Alexandru. "Poetry as Transatlantic
Dialogue: Forgiven Submarine by Ruxandra Cesereanu
and Andrei Codrescu" 201
Alexandra Florescu. "Influential Romanian Literary
Theorists Building Their Careers Abroad: Are They
Ours or Are They the World's?" 217
Representations of Romania in the Global World through
Western Lenses
Diana Benea. '''Identity Debates in and beyond Herta
MUller's German and Anglo-American Reception".... 233
Ilinca-Miruna Diaconu. "Western Representations of the
Balkans: Romania as "Frozen Image"" 251
Dana Mihfiilescu. "Images of Romania in Contemporary
North American Narratives" 265
"Ode to Bucharest" 293
"Taking the air" 294
"From the colonies" 295
"In This City" 297
"Preambulatory" 298
Romanian Culture in the Global Age is a collection of
essays which investigates the dynamics of Romanian culture in
the new, context created by the interaction between the forces of
globalization and those of post-communist transition and of post-
E.U. accession. In the two decades that have passed since the
collapse of communism, Romania, like all the other ex-communist
countries, has been through a continuous process of redefining
and reaffirming its identity as a new democracy. The contributors
to the present volume attempt to provide answers to several
topical questions related to the shaping of the Romanian cultural
identity and the location of Romanian culture in the global world
following the country's new status as a NATO and an E.U.
member: How does the local/glo,bal dialectic intrinsic to the global
world affect the re-shaping of Romanian cultural identity? How
do the increasingly fast flow of information and the
communications revolution affect a country like Romania, whose
visibility has increased rapidly since the country became aNATO
and an E.U. member? How does the awareness of being one of the
world's democracies and an active participant in the world's
urrent debates change the way in which Romanian culture
imagines and reinvents itself as it becomes increasingly freer from
the mental manacles bequeathed by the communist regime?
In the attempt to tackle these and other related questions,
the essays included in the present volume offer a rich variety of
thematic approaches, ranging from studies that open broad
theoretical perspectives to case studies that emphasize original
Ipeets of contemporary Romanian culture at the interface with
( day's world. In addition, as an imaginative touch to the
, ademic format, the volume includes in its Coda several po ms
about the pulse of Romania's everyday life written by American
poet Martin Woodside, a Fulbright grantee, during his stay in
Romania, in 2009-2010.
Accordingly, we have structured our volume in four
sections, moving from a broad general perspective of Romanian
identities in the global world, to particular case studies of how the
Romanian cultural space is portrayed in Romanian in situ
productions, in works by diaspora Romanians and, finally, in
Western narratives. The Coda contains poems by Martin
Woodside.
A first series of essays are grouped together under the title
Romanian Identities in the Global World: Cross-Cultural
Exchanges, and locate Romanian identities at the crossroads of
three spaces of analysis: post-communism, cultural legacy and
the global world. The opening essay of the volume, Roxana
Oltean's "Between Kitsch and Authenticity: Romanian Identity in
the Age of Globalization," attempts to draw atheoretical model to
locate Romanian identity in the global world, positioning it at the
intersection of kitsch and authenticity. With a similar objective in
view, Ovidiu Ivancu's essay "Romanians and Europe. Identity
Issues in the Global World" focuses on how Romania's accession
to the E.U. has rekindled the culture wars of the 1930's between
traditionalism and Europeanism and shows how the two types of
Romanian identity corresponding to those conflicting attitudes,
that of an archaic Romanian and a European Romanian, have led,
in contemporary times, to the rise of a new image-type,
representative of Romanian identity - the "Roma?ian~in-
transition." Addressing all the three spaces of cultural mqUlry,
Rodica Mihaila examines the case of the 2009 Nobel Prize for
literature awarded to Romanian-born German author, Herta
MUller. In her essay entitled "Questions of Identity in the
Globalizing World. The Case of Herta MUller's Nobel Prize"
MihaiIa argues that, despite on-going academic debates favoring
fluid identities, as proved by this particular case, national identity
continues to represent a significant category of cultural analysis.
Sharing the concern for identifying the most adequate
representations of Romanian identity, Marina Cap-Bun's essay,
"Romanian Studies Programs and the Promotion of Romanian
Culture Abroad," discusses various strategies of promoting the
study of Romanian culture abroad.
The last three essays in this first section turn to
representations of Romanian identity in drama and poetry. In her
essay "'Performing Memories: Communism as Rhizome,"
Catalina-Florina Florescu focuses on two plays by Mihaela
Michailov and Matei Vi~niec, and draws attention to the
importance of incorporating the memories of the communist
experience into the substance of imaginative, artistic works.
Including communism in the rhizomatic formation of Romanian
national identity in the global age, she argues that performative
memory explored artistically is the best way to understand
ommunism's moral crimes and keep them alive in people's
, nsciousness.
While Florescu describeS' Romanian cultural identity in the
I bal age as "rhizomatic," Adriana Bulz refers to it as
"dialogical" in nature. Bulz explores "the local/global dialectics of
I manian-American theater exchanges at the dawn of the twenty-
IiI' t century," aiming to explain how such instances of cross-
(ultural engagement can help develop Romanian cultural identity
licllogically, within the larger context of globalization. Finally, in
Iii.. essay "Romanian Multimedia Poetry in the Global Age," Chris
I lnasescu discusses Romanian cultural identity in the global age
11 investigating how and to what extent European and American
IIvllnt-garde multimedia experiments have found their way in
Iiltemporary Romanian poetry.
The second section of the volume, Portraying Romania
1111 I the Global World in Romanian Cultural Productions,
II'Iudes a number of essays examining how in-situ Romanian
111111 I' and producers have inscribed Romanian identity in the
global age. Among these, Costinela Dragan's essay, "Post~~old
War Conceptualizations of America in Romanian Travel WrItmg"
examines how two Romanian travel writers, Viorel Salagean and
Stelian Tanase envision shifted images of America in the post-
, .
1989 context as a multiethnic space and model of democracy, m
opposition to the negative conceptions previously shaped by
communist ideology and propaganda. The other two essays
included here move on' to the realm of film: Mihaela
Paraschivescu examines Mircea Eliade's personality and work as
source of inspiration for Francis Ford Coppola's 2007 film, Yo~th
without Youth; Camelia Anghel focuses on the recent Romanian
film, Francesca, and the contradictory debates it has given rise to
in Italy, arguing that the film is ameditation upon Romanians' ~nd
Italians' failure to understand each other, deconstructmg
stereotypical views of "the other." These essays try to determine
to what degree Romanian literature and cinematography can serve
as an internationally-relevant space of reflection capable of
increasing Romania's visibility in today's global age.
In the attempt to cover - as much as possible - the wide
variety of present-day cultural exchanges between Romania and
the global world, the essays in part three, Romanian Cultural
Space and the Global World in the Works of Diaspora
Romanians, focus on Romanian cultural diaspora in the U.S.,
examining the way in which the transatlantic dialogue influences
diasporic identities. In this sense, Anca-Teodora $erba~-
Oprescu's essay argues that the creolization of cultural spaces I~
an inherent topic of Romanian diaspora narratives by AndreI
Codrescu, Gabriel Ple~ea, Alexandra Tarziu and Mirela
Roznoveanu. Elena-Adriana Dancu examines the plays of Saviana
Stanescu and shows how the author's immigrant characters
renegotiate Romania, and, more broadly, Eastern Europe, by
becoming global foreigners in America. Maria-Sabina Draga
Alexandru analyzes the role of poetry in the transatlantic dialogue
y focusing on Ruxandra Cesereanu and Andrei Codrescu's
volume Forgiven Submarine. Finally, Alexandra Florescu tackles
the case of Matei Calinescu's life and work in Romania and the
.S. The leading idea of these essays refers to the experiences of
Romanian immigrants to the U.S., where America becomes a
space of reflection allowing for a renegotiation of East European
identity as fluid and in process.
The last section of the volume, Representations of
Romania in the Global World through Western Lenses, includes
'ssays aevoted to the way in which Romanian culture has
oppeared in WesternlNorth American narratives. Among these,
I iana Benea's essay, "Identity Debates in and beyond Herta
MUller's German and Anglo-American Reception," compares
MUller's critical reception in Germany and the Anglo-American
..pace, ranging from emphasis on her Romanianness to her
I''Iocation in the position of the Communist other; the author
'oncludes on the writer's overcoming such binary debates and
Iituating her identity outside any fixed cultural categorization. In
11 'I' essay "Western Representations of the Balkans: Romania as
""'I'ozen Image"," Ilinca-Mirt.ma Diaconu foregrounds the
I Tsistence of a culturally inferior image of Romania in Western
liscourse, following her close reading of Tony J udt's article,
"R mania: Bottom of the Heap" (2001). In addition, Dana
Mihrtilescu's essay, "Images of Romania in Contemporary North
merican Narratives," examines the representation of Romania in
111' narratives of three North American authors who traveled to
Iomania between 1999 and 2002, Aleksandar Hernon, Bruce
II'nderson and J ill Culiner. In her reading, the image of the
I \Inanian cultural space inside the respective texts stresses
I nmanians' urgent need to fight a present-day amnesiac tendency
Illwurds the communist past by acknowledging and confronting
1\ () major coordinates that have become deeply engrained in
I\ll'" nt-day Romanians' psyche, namely a persistent culture of
II I i ion and categorical discourse.
The volume ends in a Coda, which includes five poetical
vignettes of Romania's everyday life, as seen by American poet
Martin Woodside. The poems ponder on the relation between
time's passage and people's hassled existence and on the typical
Romanian city. Seen as a multilayered site, it superposes the
image of tired and hard-working people with that of the begging
needy, and their strained attempts to balance indifference and
sympathy. Our intention, in that respect, has been that of offering
our readers an idea of the dynamic dialogical exchanges between
literature and cultural criticism by, hopefully, steering up
discourse and conversation in a fruitful way.
Considering the different angles of analysis presented
above, the essays in this volume are likely to contribute to the on-
going scholarly attempt towards the democratization of
transatlantic studies by presenting the Romanian/East European -
Western dialogue as a space of mutual and honest exchanges in
which criticism of "the other" is balanced by a responsible sense
of self-analysis. Finally, we hope that those interested in
Romanian culture in the global age will find in the present volume
original and stimulating approaches.
Romanian Identities in the Global
World: Cross-Cultural Exchanges