Objectives

This project aims to identify the main coordinates marking the evolution of the relationships between ethnic groups and their host nations, as reflected and artistically sublimated in the literary text, approached, from an interdisciplinary point of view, as a social, historical and political document. The research method used in this endeavour is comparative, using a postcolonial – Foucauldian perspective and contrasting, for the first time in the history of ethnic studies, two minority literatures (Jewish-Romanian and Jewish-American), and their corresponding mainstream literary texts (Romanian and American) in point of their renditions of ethnic minority-national majority relationships. The reason for this choice is of an ideological nature: by comparing two ethnic minorities to the two types of mainstream groups from two states (Romania and the U.S.A.) founded on opposite ideologies (authoritarianism / totalitarianism /communism vs. individualism /democracy / capitalism), we could obtain the necessary experimental framework for analysing the nature of those relationships, as well as for supporting our assumption that the literary text as a hybrid allows for the establishment of a dialogue between two totally opposing views, and for the deconstruction of essentialising ethnic stereotypes / narratives.

While analysing relevant literary texts from the perspective mentioned above, the following objectives are to be met, as part of distinct research stages detailed in the Methodology section:
Identify assimilation and dissimilation strategies developed by the minority group.
Reveal and deconstruct stereotypes and essentialising / antisemitic ethnic definers as issued by the mainstream.

Identify instances of ethnic tolerance and commonality in both minority- and mainstream- originating literary texts.
Literary critical analysis of Jewish Romanian literature in Romania is still in an incipient stage, traditionally organised in terms of literary themes or chronology (S. Podoleanu, T. Goldstein); however, when the approach is generally cultural and historical, it is still limited to the 1930s (L. Volovici, Z. Ornea).

The critical model proposed and imposed by West European and American postcolonial studies is currently preferred while analysing Jewish-American literature, as it helps to identify, in the specific texts, multiple identities continuously interacting with one another (including relations between the mainstream and the margin), as well as possible ethnic and social solidarity initiators (K. Brogan; M. Kramer; R. Wisse). However, the Foucault-inspired variant of the critical model previously mentioned takes over only the genealogical approach (Ebest; Mary Ellen Prell), focusing thus on the non-discursive aspects of any kind of text (production forms, social relations, institutions, techniques of the self, knowledge acquisition patterns), i.e. on the power-knowledge relations (e.g. the case of the mainstream limiting access to education to minority groups) defining a particular historical space and time. Hence, the artistic language and corresponding aesthetic aspects (Foucault: discursive / reflexive aspects of discourse), i.e. conventions pertaining to a specific genre or artistic language, as well as to the manner in which a particular author relates himself / herself to those conventions, become of secondary importance. This is one of the aspects that this project endeavours to address in an innovatory manner whereby the literary text is approached both archeologically and genealogicall: it is therefore to be discussed in its specificity and then integrated into history (similar to the direction proposed by G. Spivak with respect to transnational cultural studies, but never applied to Jewish-American/Jewish-Romanian literary texts). Moreover, as this interdisciplinary standpoint aims to discuss and analyse fractures and conflicts in order to create a sense of commonality / dialogue between the mainstream and the margin, it inscribes itself in an innovating manner into the array of post-colonial critical concerns.

References
Brogan, Kathleen. Cultural Haunting. Charlottesville and London: University Press of Virginia, 1998.
Ebest, Ron. “Anzia Yezierska and the Popular Periodical Debate Over the Jews”. MELUS (Spring 2000).
Kramer, Michael P. “Race, Literary History and the Jewish Question”. Prooftexts 21.1 (Fall 2001): 287-350.
---. “Beginnings and Ends: The Origins of Jewish American Literary History”. The Cambridge Companion to Jewish American Literature. Michael P. Kramer and Hana Wirth-Nesher, eds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003: 12-30.
---. “Critical Narcissism and the Coming-of-Age of Jewish American Literary Studies”. The Jewish Quarterly Review 94: 4 (Fall 2004): 677-693.
Ornea, Zigu. Anii treizeci. Extrema dreapta romaneasca. Bucuresti: 1996. Editura Fundatiei Culturale Romane.
Prell, Riv-Ellen. Fighting to Become Americans. Assimilation and the Trouble between Jewish Women and Jewish Men. Boston: Beacon Press, 1999.
Volovici, Leon. Ideologia nationalista si problema evreiasca in Romania anilor ’30. Bucuresti: Humanitas, 1995.
Wisse, Ruth R. The Modern Jewish Canon. A Journey through Language and Culture. 2000. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2003.