State of relevant debates

The project proposed for financing has been deemed as necessary within the Romanian post-communist, post-EU-accession framework, as it aims to contribute to solving complex issues and problems pertaining to the transition from an ethnic-type of democracy (Smooha, Kymlicka) to a liberal republican one, represented by the nation-state (the dominant model with West European states). In case of the former, citizenship is defined as separate from ethnic origin, and the state itself is characterised by the existence of a nucleus-like ethnic nation, which is generally imagined as the owner of the state apparatus and which, in times of economic and social hardships, perceives the non-nucleus ethnic groups as a threat to its survival and integrity. Conversely, in case of the latter, despite some minority -/other ethnic group- homogenising pressure, the state aims to be neutral to the ethnic identity of its constituent groups.

On its way toward the latter type of democracy, Romania undertook to implement a series of multicultural measures (represented by bilingualism at the institutional level, including education in one’s native tongue); yet, these measures triggered, starting with the 1990s, virulent nationalistic retorts targeted at three ethnic groups, traditionally ‘othered’ in Romanian state narratives: Hungarians, Roma and Jews. However, over the past 10 years (according to the BARE market surveys and studies), due to heavy Jewish emigration, most of the ethnic conflicts opposed the mainstream to the Hungarian and Roma minorities. Starting with the 1994 – 1995, antisemitic rhetoric decreased in the public sphere (Pippidi), and was later on diluted into a nationalist discourse constructed around some Romanian ethnic definers such as: Christian-Orthodox, unitary state, tolerant and generous people, culturally superior to the other nations, but victim of international conspiracies. Within this framework, minorities and their contribution to Romanian culture are missing from Romanian collective memory. For instance, the Romanian university curricula for Romanian literature maintains G. Calinescu’s canon (except for insignificant and formal changes) and his teleological – organic point of view (itself conditioned by the powerful nationalistic trend in 1941; see the preface to his History of Romanian Literature edition of that year), whereas the canonical battles / conflicts mostly consist of replacing one text with another, and not one author with another. Moreover, the recent additions to the Romanian literary canon rather aim to attest to the deep-rootedness of Romanian culture within the boundaries of the Carpathians, the Danube, and the Black Sea, such as the introduction of the new category of Romanian literature written in old Slavic, represented for instance in a university curriculum by Invataturilor lui Neagoe Basarab catre fiul sau, Teodosie (cf. Dan Horia Mazilu) in the study of Romanian culture, and not other categories such as Romanian literature written in Hungarian, in Yiddish etc. On the other hand, the minorities’ attempts at articulating and negotiating their belonging to this geographical space and their contribution to Romanian culture (e.g. the Cultural Notebooks issued by the Jewish community’s monthly Realitatea evreiasca) are still marginal and still addressed to the originating minority group while the Romanian mainstream’s endeavour at creating a dialogic / commonality-informed space has mainly consisted so far in sociological and historical studies (e.g. initiatives developed by Centrul de Resurse pentru Diversitate Etnoculturala), excluding literary scholarship.

This research project does not aim to influence the Romanian public opinion regarding the relationships between Romanian minorities and the mainstream, following the discussion of such sociological and historical facts in close relation with Jewish literature (non-eligible and utopian purpose), but realistically to suggest and provide the necessary corpus (primary and secondary texts) for an interdisciplinary multicultural analysis of Romanian literature, and other literatures, at the university/academic level. Various identity narratives on the relations between the margin / minority (Jewish-Romanian) and the center / mainstream (Romanian ethnic), as this is reflected in the literary texts (authored both by Jewish and Romanian ethnics in Romania starting from the 19th century), are to be considered. Apart from improving the existing scholarship and the research infrastructure on the topic previously mentioned, by approaching the margin – mainstream relationship as reflected in Jewish American literature and in American literature written on Jews, we endeavour to develop a contrastive comparison between the United States as an immigration country, and Romania as a state continuously defined as resisting / opposing the Other (Slavs, Fino-Hungarians, Poles, Turks, Russians etc).

However, the discussion of the two cultural spaces within the same context does not imply conducting a type of cultural comparatism which starts from the a priori assumption that ethnic communities are organic, but it focuses on the way in which ethnic groups continuously articulate their cultural differences, they continuously invent their ethnicity (Sollors) under the impact of the power-knowledge relations defining a particular space and time (Foucault), and they translate those differences for the Other for legitimising purposes. Thus, literature as border space, as a discursive environment (Foucault) allows for dialogue, for a continuous redrawing of the relations between the minority (the ethnic) and the mainstream (the national), Self and the Other, East – West (Bhabha), providing a different image of the geographical space inhabited (particularly important in the case of the mythical area marked by the Carpathians, the Danube and the Black Sea), which should clearly indicate its cultural hybridity. The ambivalences, ambiguities, disjunctions and fractures (Appadurai) identified on the majority – minority topic in the two cultural spaces, following the interdisciplinary approach of the chosen primary sources (included in the Methodology section of the form), constitute the assertion of a powerful wish for social solidarity (Bhabha). Consequently, such an analysis and its results could, by offering proofs of a sense of commonality likely to happen, minimise the social and political fragmentation associated with the ethnic conflicts and manifested at the level of high education.

References
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