Ovidiu Ivancu
OVIDIU IVANCU is a PhD holder at the University of Alba Iulia, Romania, The Faculty of History and Philology. The PhD dissertation (published in 2013) has the title: Cultural Identity and Collective Romanian Mentality in Post-Communism: Images, Myths, Perceptions, Repositions. Between 2009-2013, he was Visiting Lecturer at Delhi` University, New Delhi, India, teaching Romanian Language and Literature. Between 2017-2018, he was Visiting Lecturer with State University of Comrat (Republic of Moldova). Currently, he teaches Romanian Language and Culture with Vilnius University (Lithuania). He has published numerous articles on the Romanian imaginary and collective mentality. He has also published articles in different collective volumes which are in Central and Eastern European Online Library.”. Ovidiu Ivancu’s scientific interests are imagology, the theory of mentalities, literary theory, literary criticism, history of literature. He is a permanent collaborator of the journal “Viața Românească”.
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The book starts from the thesis that many of the distinctive characteristics which have been associated with the taboo syntagma ”national specificity” are nothing but the emanation of a mythological arsenal built at the dawn of the national state of Romania, both fuelled by and degraded during Communism, and perpetuated in Post-Communism. The answer to the question: “who are we?” can be searched with more success rather in the imagery and mythology than in history. At the same time, we have tried to demonstrate all along our analysis that the cultural identity and the Romanian cultural mentality are still essentially tributary to different perceptions of the 19th century.
We have chosen that the introductory pages bear the title Defence at least for two reasons. First of all, taking into consideration the analysed period of time and the rich bibliographical material supposed to be read, we have assumed a type of analysis with a set of borderline instruments, which presuppose an interdisciplinary approach. Secondly, the defence implies a necessary relativization in itself. Nevertheless, without resorting to it excessively, we believe that such a theme be studied without the tendency of absolutisation. As we have suggested in the text itself, the easiness accompanying different ultimate sentences when speaking about Romanians is stunning. We have intended to avoid the certitudes invariably implied in any discourse that spins around the matrix-syntagma “We, the Romanians, are…”.
The first chapter (Instrumentary) has been dedicated to the definition and classification of the theoretical instruments which our analysis relies on. Our main aim in this chapter has been the theoretical approach of the image, the myth and the collective Romanian mentality. Starting from the theories of Claude Levy-Strauss and Jean-Jacques Wunenburger, we have made the necessary distinction between the imaginary and the imaginal, trying to avoid the insufficient relation amongst image-truth-reality inherent to the common language. As for the myth, we have been interested in limiting the semantic area that the term covers. In this sense, we have confronted different acceptations of the myth as they are presented by Plato, Claude Lévy-Strauss, Northrop Frye, Mircea Eliade, Roland Barthes or Lucian Boia. We have not embraced the theories which associate the myth with the story, and asserted thus that the myth is an ever updating remanence. Once the two theoretical instruments being delimited, we have used them in order to shape the collective mentality. We thus understand the collective Romanian mentality as a sum of perceptions, images and myths, as a reality in continuous change, influenced by significant historical moments and successive openings towards the Others. The idea we have attempted to demonstrate is that the collective Romanian mentality is not, as it is seldom perceived, a monolithic structure, on the contrary, it is rather a sum of perceptions, often antagonistic, amongst which any form of attempt of reconciliation is meant to fail.
The second chapter (The Romanian Post-Communism – an Exotic Imagery) analyses the transition period from Communism to Post-Communism. Starting from the fact that, beyond all the political or economic implications, Communism developed a vast system of mythologies strongly shaped by a collective mentality with a low immunity, we have identified in the cultural Romanian evolution human typologies and topoi which extended their existence beyond 1989. As Communism cannot be cancelled as a mythological system through a decree or insinuations (either formal or not) of democracy, it continues to still make its presence felt. We are interested thus in the identity mutilations it has generated, and we have paid special attention to the New Man, and to the way he entered Post-Communism. Afterwards, we have analysed the situation of those intellectuals who vacillate between two imperatives which marked their public course: the involvement in the affairs of the state, and the withdrawal in the ivory tower. In the same chapter, we have also approached the transition literature, and have made a case study. On account of a solid systematisation, to which we can add the incapacity of the literary canon to create hierarchies inside the Romanian Post-Communist literature (characterised by a confusing graphomania), we have resorted to subjective criteria. With regard to the selection of the texts and authors, impossible to accomplish exclusively according to aesthetic criteria, we have followed other coordinates, where the main criterion is the relevance of the literary text for the argumentation the present dissertation aims at.
The third chapter (In Search of an Identity) starts from the necessity to define the strong points of the Romanian identity. In order to do that, it would be necessary to appeal to the national cultural history. We have mentioned the main contributions the Romanians elites had in the shaping of the identity (The Transylvanian School, the 1848 generation, the Junimea group, the interwar generation), against which we have the de-structuring contribution of Communism. Thus we notice that some identity traits have been preserved along centuries (the Romanian hospitality, the peaceful nature of the Romanian people s. o.), while others changed according to an unavoidable zeitgeist (for example, the sometimes idolatrous, sometimes hostile attitude towards the Foreigners).
We have thus returned to the present moment, bringing to discussion some of the strong identity clichés today. We have by now analysed the way in which literature reflects two projects that have marked the Romanian Post-Communism deeply: Romania’s joining NATO (with the reactivation of the American myths), and Romania’s joining the European Union (which has reactivated the older debates regarding our position between the Occident and the Orient). Both are in direct relation with the myth of the frontier. Implicitly, the national identity is being shaped today under the powerful impact of the disappearance of the frontier. The frontier itself is, as we have attempted to prove in this chapter, an integrating part of the collective Romanian mentality. And here we do not refer to the basic meaning of the word frontier, but to the constant imaginary limit which has kept the Romanians away from the Others. Starting from Salman Rushdie’s observation that “ [...] in our deepest natures, we are frontier-crossing beings”, we have dedicated one subchapter to an identity profile often controversial, sometimes denied or most often ignored: the strawberry picker. The term, often perceived strongly pejoratively, defines a significant critical mass of Romanians who, carrying along both their frustrations, and their expectations (definitely the economic, not the cultural ones) have known the West beyond the mythisations it undertook during Communism.
As closure for our dissertation, we have shaped a projection for the future. We have chosen the title Quo vadis? in order to suggest, similarly to the beginning of the study, that in the area of cultural identity and collective mentality, certitudes are a proof of inadmissible self-sufficiency. We have not aimed at formulating axioms, but rather at turning these axioms into dubitative statements. We have started from the premise, to which we have turned to several times along our reasoning, that the main factor which will influence the national idea in the near future is globalisation. We believe that globalisation will contribute significantly to the placement of the ethnic in a secondary plan, and to the assumption of an identity which has little in common with the classic discourse on identity.
The novelty of our book could come from two distinct directions. First of all, as we have already stated before, we have approached a period of time which is momentarily insufficiently explored, full of contradictory paradoxes, not systematised and still unable to be fixed in a coherent paradigm (which, on the other hand, can mean a great disadvantage for the researcher). Secondly, we have intended to analyse cultural phenomena and literary texts with an interdisciplinary instrumentary, which does not belong exclusively to literature, but which, if well defined and delimited, can offer novel research fields.