Eastern Europe, Romania, Postcommunism Research Papers

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Romanian constitution-making since 1989 has been of an uneven and recently evermore conflictive kind. In the 1990s, no significant changes to the 1991 Constitution were made, and the role of the Romanian Constitution could be said to be... more

Romanian constitution-making since 1989 has been of an uneven and recently evermore conflictive kind. In the 1990s, no significant changes to the 1991 Constitution were made, and the role of the Romanian Constitution could be said to be less visible in politics. Since the mid-2000s, in contrast, and after the 2003 amendment mostly triggered for reasons of EU accession, the Constitution has become a clear object of political salience and contention. Constitutional conflict is particularly outspoken since the presidential crisis of 2007, and has become outspoken again in the summer of 2012. This has triggered the 2013 attempt to revise the Constitution, not least in order to deal with the question of relations between the president, the parliament, and the government.
Recent turmoil is in a way surprising, since in the early 2000s, Romanian constitutional democracy seemed to get closer to the idea of a Rechtsstaat, the rule of law, and what in general could be called a form of ‘legal constitutionalism’ or ‘new constitutionalism’. Such a legal-constitutionalist order is supposed to enhance stability and legality. But in an apparently contradictory way, constitutional conflict has recently become more prominent, and one aspect seems to be – as has become particularly clear in the summer of 2012 – what I will call here a form of 'legal resentment'. The latter refers to a skeptical view of political forces regarding rigid, legalist constitutions and strong constitutional courts, as well as, in a related way, external interference into domestic constitutional politics.
Key problems in Romania remain a weakly diffused constitutional culture among both politicians and the wider public, a Constitutional Court that seems unable to play the role of guardian and constitutional educator, and the relative absence of a meaningful constitutional debate in the wider public sphere. The constitutional frame seems to fail in inducing in both political and civil society a civic and political orientation towards constitutional values and a robust public debate on the foundations of Romanian democracy. The 2013 turn to constitutional revision, might however include a turn into the right direction and constitute a 'constitutional moment'. This is not least because of the setting up of the inclusive Forum Constitutional, which involves civil society as well as legal experts in the constitutional revision process.
The paper starts with a discussion of constitution-making since 1989. Second, I will briefly analyze the role of the Romanian Constitutional Court in the democratization process, and, third, discuss the recent crisis that directly involved the Court. Fourth, I will look into the current revision process and 'constitutional moment', and fifth, I will discuss the potentially reinvigorating effects of civic engagement in constitutional change.

The first volume analyzing the 2009 elections for the European Parliament in Romania. The volume includes chapters by Cristina Stănuș, Florin Feșnic, Adrian Sebastian Popa and Paul Thomas Weith, Paul E.Sum, and the three editors.

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- by Claudiu Tufis and +1
  Mircea Comsa
- •
- 8
  Voting Behavior, Romanian Studies, Electoral Behavior, Eastern Europe, Romania, Postcommunism

Romanian constitutional democracy is once again experiencing a period of great turmoil. In the early 2000s, Romanian democracy seemed to get closer to the idea of a Rechtsstaat and the rule of law, and what in general could be called a... more

Rezumat: O bună parte a confruntărilor care definesc epoca modernă pornesc de la principiul conform căruia ființa umană are, prin însăși natura ei, vocația libertății. Oricât ar fi de seducătoare această formulare, ea nu este acceptabilă... more

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- by Zoe Petre and +2
  Sorin Adam Matei
  Emanuel Copilaș
- •
- 2
  Political Science, Eastern Europe, Romania, Postcommunism

The volume analyzes topics related to political participation among Romanian teenagers, using survey data collected from more than 5800 high-school students. It includes studies by Gabriel Bădescu, Mircea Comșa, Andrei Gheorghiță,... more

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- by Claudiu Tufis and +2
  Mircea Comsa
  Gabriel Badescu
- •
- 6
  Political Behavior, Political Culture, Romanian Studies, Political Attitudes

Capitolul analizează justificările sprijinului public pentru cultură și arte in Romania postcomunista, pornind de la câteva asumpții de bază: că politica culturală este inseparabilă de valori și că ideile și ideologiile contează, la fel... more

The question of foreign oppression and its nefarious effects on subdued cultures is usually discussed by postcolonial critics belonging to the dominating West or the formerly colonized Third World. I am troubled by my situation as a... more

The question of foreign oppression and its nefarious effects on subdued cultures is usually discussed by postcolonial critics belonging to the dominating West or the formerly colonized Third World. I am troubled by my situation as a Romanian academic and critical intellectual who has been teaching or publicly debating postcolonial issues and has been engaged for a while now in American or British Cultural Studies projects. Where do I really belong in such confrontational fields? And can my/our postcommunist experience contribute to the understanding of (post)colonial experience and thus provide a critical warrant for a comparative treatment of these two hypostases of subalternity?

In trying to answer these questions I found myself confronted with several difficulties. Eastern Europe is uncomfortably placed inside a baffling area of polarized instances of otherness which is nothing like the usual binary oppositions employed by most postcolonial criticism. My critical and ideological agenda as a postcommunist intellectual from Eastern Europe is much more complicated than that of my counterparts from the former colonies of the West. The conceptual vocabulary of coloniality is riddled with ambiguities and accounts of colonialism stereotypically pair it with the modern Western colonial and imperial conduct.

Readers can expect to find suggestions for a more consistent use of the terminology of coloniality and for a reconsideration of coloniality outside the traditional Westcentric schematics. Western critical idioms—sometimes mimicked by Third World authors just as they are trying to liberate themselves from Western hegemony—are in the habit of annexing the domain of coloniality to the Western variant of modernity. The Sovietized world is thus robbed of its claim to a colonial status which would enable post-Soviet subjects to better understand and resolve their colonial trauma. An important part of the book is dedicated to understanding the significance of Romanian nationalism (no more than a local example of similar East European discourses) and of its figurative assertion of identity.

This study explores the literary-cultural relation of Eastern Europe – particularly its communist legacy and post-communist trajectory – to postcolonial studies, interrogating the extent to which postcolonialism can function as an... more

This study explores the literary-cultural relation of Eastern Europe – particularly its communist legacy and post-communist trajectory – to postcolonial studies, interrogating the extent to which postcolonialism can function as an enabling theoretical construction that can help illuminate instances of ‘mind-colonisation’ in non-Third World contexts. It argues that colonisation is to be understood principally as a condition of ideological domination that has engendered similar forms of literary and cultural resistance; consequently, it offers a comparative framework which enables a reading in differential contexts of texts that ostensibly have little in common, but which, on close examination, reveal a shared imaginative space, rhetoric and narrative agency.

Structurally, the book consists of two interrelated parts. Part one is a critical discussion of the ideologies, cultural imaginaries and representational practices articulated in a diverse range of representative postcolonial and post-1945 East-Central European texts; these are shown to share, despite dissimilar conditions of production, uncannily related narrative modes and thematic emphases. The second part is a comparative literature case-study which discusses two authors whose work is both highly representative of the cultural formations I compare (Milan Kundera and Salman Rushdie) and, at the same time, highly controversial.

The book thus straddles three main disciplinary areas: East-Central European studies, Postcolonial Studies and Comparative Literature. This is one of its major strengths, for it brings into dialogue fields of inquiry which, more often than not, tend to rationalise their lack of interest in each other’s problematics by elaborate arguments of historical and cultural incompatibility.

My approach, on the contrary, capitalizes on points of confluence (among which the construction of colonialism/communism as ambivalent processes, triggering differential moments of resistance, accommodation and complicity; post-imperial symptomatologies; exile and immigration) and analogous cultural nodes (the role of memory in the re-writing of the past; resistance as a complex of doubly-inscripted or overcoded discourses, ranging from overtly oppositional to carnivalesque and magical realist). Postcolonialism is not used as an ‘interpretive matrix’ for a unified theory of post-communism; rather, the study aims to show how these two different “posts”, both marking the wake of an empire, can inform each other within the space of differential ideological and cultural contexts, and thus work towards a more open and nuanced response to post-1989 geopolitical polarizations.

"Le tracé de la frontière qui sépare actuellement Roumanie et Ukraine remonte à la décision par les soviétiques d’annexer en 1940 Bucovine du Nord et Bessarabie. Aux lendemains de l’effondrement de l’Union soviétique les dirigeants... more

After three decades since the 1989 revolution, is postcommunism still a relevant concept for understanding Romania's profound transformations after the fall of Ceaușescu's national-communist regime? For a number of reasons detailed in the... more

After three decades since the 1989 revolution, is postcommunism still a relevant concept for understanding Romania's profound transformations after the fall of Ceaușescu's national-communist regime? For a number of reasons detailed in the introductive section, I aim to offer a positive answer to this question: postcommunism is still a valid theoretical tool in apprehending this new stage of Romania's development, although its relevance is not so powerful as it was back in the 1990s. This study tries to differentiate several major directions of analysis regarding Romanian postcommunism. The typology it proposes is by far not a complete one, not even a very complex one; it just tries to identify, grosso modo, what I consider to be the main dimensions of this complex social phenomenon. Of course, the debate can go on, and it is highly recommendable to go on, both by expanding and/or contesting the present typolo-gy. After I analyze the ideological, political, economical, social and cultural components of Romanian postcommunism, the idea I try to bring forward is that of the irreducible particularity of this ideology, the more prolific as its discursive efforts to present itself as the 'end of history', common sense, reality or non-ideological universalism-were more intense. Introducere: controverse și clarificări/delimitări conceptuale În ce măsură mai este relevant conceptul de postcomunism la aproape trei decenii de la revoluția din 1989? Discuția este una am-plă și merită redată, cel puțin în parametrii săi esențiali. Astfel, în sensul deja clasic al termenului, așa cum transpare el din ana-lizele lui Leslie Holmes, postcomunismul ca reacție imediată și critică la ideologiile și practicile teoretice ale fostelor regimuri comuniste este în mare măsură epuizat (Holmes, 2004). Anii 1990 sunt cu mult în urma noastră, și avem deja un deceniu de când ne-am integrat în structurile politico-economice și de securitate ale Occidentului. În același timp, criticii lui Alexandru Polgár, conform căreia termenul de postcomunism este impropriu deoarece regimurile est-euro-pene aflate la putere între 1948 și 1989 nu au fost comuniste, falsificând nucleul doc-trinar al marxismului originar (Polgár, 2015, 91-94)-i se poate răspunde prin aceea că nicio filosofie politică sau ideologie nu poate avea o practică perfect identică în raport cu propriul conținut teoretic. Nici capitalismul contemporan nu este atât de dereglementat, de inovativ și de dispus să își asume riscuri pe piață pe cât este prezentat în acest fel de autori ca Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek sau Milton Friedman. Sigur, critica lui Polgár se susține prin simplul fapt că ex-periența istorică a comunismelor real-exis-tente nu anulează pe viitor posibilitatea unor noi proiecte emancipatoare, indiferent de terminologia prin care acestea vor fi identi-ficate și interpelate pentru a produce reali

This volume analyzes the 2009 presidential elections in Romania. The volume includes chapters by Traian Rotariu, Florin Feșnic, Oana Armeanu, Bogdan Voicu, Cristina Stănuș, and the editors.

Welcome to the ninth issue of EU-27 Watch. Due to the new treaty provisions of the Lisbon Treaty and the economic crises the enlarged EU of 27 member states is on the search for a new modus operandi while also continuing membership talks... more

In this paper I problematise some influences on Romanian journalism in the interwar period, in the light of Anglo-Saxon normative models that have become common points of reference in the post-communist period. Thus, I discuss about... more

Volumul de față explorează atât problematici actuale ale politicii culturale și artelor cât și precedentele lor istorice, propunând o abordare comparativă multidisciplinară și trans-națională, care articulează nivelurile local, național... more

The chapter on Romania in a volume of Eastern European politics, on contract with Cambridge University Press.

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- by Lavinia Stan
- •
- 5
  Democratization, Romanian Studies, Elections, Postcommunist studies

N. Steinhardt (1912-1989) was a literary critic and writer who is now best remembered as the author of Jurnalul fericirii (The Diary of Happiness). First published in 1991, it may be considered as one of the most original and uplifting... more

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- by Penka Peykovska
- •
- 54
  Languages, Religion, Eastern European Studies, Eastern Europe

The article provides a critical look at some of the recent academic literature (in English) on the New Romanian Cinema (NRC). It mainly engages with three texts: a book-length appreciative introduction (by Monica Filimon) to the work of... more

This paper is dealing with the basic concepts of Romanian geopolitics. The paper was written in cooperation with Nagy Egon and Antal Kristóf.

During the first two decades following the collapse of the communist regime, Romania has reckoned with the human rights infringements perpetrated from 1945 to 1989 with the help of a range of official and unofficial, judiciary and... more

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- by Lavinia Stan
- •
- 11
  Communism, Romanian Studies, Transitional Justice, Postcommunist studies

The purpose of this article is to challenge Ştefan Zeletin’s classical sociological thesis (regarding the economic and politic extinction of the great Wallachian boyar-class) which is not historically sustainable neither on economic, nor... more

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- by Bogdan Bucur
- •
- 59
  Romanian History, Government, Romanian Literature, Romanian Studies

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- by Liviu Bordas
- •
- 28
  Religion, Comparative Religion, History, European History

Reflecting on European colonialism in 1950 - at a time when discussions about what we now know as the European Union emerged in western Europe, Aimé Césaire wrote, . . . Europe is morally, spiritually indefensible. This idea is fairly... more

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- by József Böröcz
- •
- 127
  Discourse Analysis, History, European History, Sociology

The present study is an analysis of the political regrouping of the former Romanian communist elite during the 1989 Revolution. The purpose of the research is to show that, although the revolutionary events appeared to be a break-up of... more

The local contours of populism have significantly shifted in the last two decades, and recent evolutions point to a pervasive presence of populist rhetoric in both media and cross-spectrum political contexts. While various populist... more

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- by Lucian Turcescu and +1
  Lavinia Stan
- •
- 7
  Communism, Transitional Justice, Postcommunist studies, Eastern Europe, Romania, Postcommunism

La novela representa una sutil reflexión sobre la liberación de los tabúes del cuerpo femenino, y de todo el proceso con el cual una mujer intenta superar su trauma a través de la escritura.

The 30th anniversary of the 1989 Romanian Revolution was an occasion for a study trip with students and colleagues from the University of Jena to Romania in September 2019. What impressed us most was a visit to the Institute of the... more

Full Table of Contents & Abstract: https://www.peterlang.com/view/title/68206?v=toc&result=1&rskey=mFE2ld The collected volume presents an overview of the most significant dialogues between Romanian literature and European as well as... more

Full Table of Contents & Abstract:
https://www.peterlang.com/view/title/68206?v=toc&result=1&rskey=mFE2ld

The collected volume presents an overview of the most significant dialogues between Romanian literature and European as well as world literature with respect to translation. Deploying various research methods, ranging from distant reading and macro-analysis to close reading and translation analysis, this book aims to provide a toolbox for the integration of the Romanian literary system in a regional and global frame.

The articles either give a panorama of translation in Romania during the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries or are close readings of relevant phenomena for the current state of affairs in the Romanian literary world.

(PDF on academia.edu contains book cover and table of contents only)

Contents

Section I General Analysis and Quantitative Studies

1. Andrei Terian, Translating the World, Building the Nation:Microtheories of Translation in Romanian Cultural Criticism (1829–1948)
2. Cosmin Borza, Translating Against Colonization.Romanian Populists’ Plea for Peripheral Literatures (1890–1916)
3. Emanuel Modoc, Traveling Avant-Gardes. The Case of Futurism in Romania
4. Ștefan Baghiu, Strong Domination and Subtle Dispersion: A Distant Reading of Novel Translation in Communist Romania (1944–1989)
5. Alex Goldiș, Literary Interferences in Subversive East-European Prose under Communism
6. Vlad Pojoga, A Survey of Poetry Translations in Romanian Periodicals (1990–2015)

Section II Close-ups of Literary Translation

7. Stefan Sienerth, „Geheftet an die wirre Schrift der Zeit“ Zur Lebens- und Werkgeschichte des Dichters und Übersetzers Wolf von Aichelburg
8. Maria Sass, Rezeption, Nachgestaltung und literarische ÜbersetzungDer Dichter und Literaturvermittler George Coșbuc
9. Ioana Constantin, Goethes Faust in der Übertragung Lucian Blagas. Eine Bestandsaufnahme
10. Anca-Simina Martin, Foreignizing Shakespeare’s Bawdy Multilingual Puns in Communist and Post-Communist Romania
11. Cătălina Stanislav, Sexual Language in Translation.An Analysis Based on Male v. Female Authored Novels
12. Andreea Coroian Goldiș, “Editorial Fiction”: Local Issues and Global Relevance in French and Romanian Literature
13. Iulia Elena Gîță, Chinese Literature in Romanian Translation:Fidelity v. Artistic Coherence in Yu Hua’s Huózhe
14. Ovio Olaru, Translating Nordic Noir Bestsellers.Towards a Comparative View on German and Romanian Markets
15. Alex Ciorogar, Beyond Print and Invisibility:“Translatorship” in the Age of Digital Globalization

Section III A Translator’s Perspective: Language, Discourse and Meaning

16. Georg Aescht, Ein Pfingstfest findet nicht stattDem Übersetzer bleibt sein selbstgerechtes Lamento über seine selbstverschuldete Mühsal
17. George State, Circumcelan A Critical Confession
18. Radu Vancu, Ezra Pound: A Few Notes after a Translation
19. Sunhild Galter, Die Übersetzung machte sie bekanntBeatrice Ungar übersetzt Luminița Mihai Cioabă für die deutsche Leserschaft
20. Nora Căpățână, Humor und Zeitkritik in Radu Paraschivescus Prosaschriften
21. Doris Sava, Prosa im Kleinformat oder die Ver(s)-Dichtung des Details ganz groß:Doina Ioanids poeme în proză in deutscher Übertragung

links:

Peter Lang:
https://www.peterlang.com/view/title/68206

free shipping: https://www.bookdepository.com/The-Culture-of-Translation-in-Romania--Uebersetzungskultur-Und-Literaturuebersetzen-in-Rumaenien-Maria-Sass-tefan-Baghiu-Vlad-Pojoga/9783631766422

Google Books:
https://books.google.ro/books/about/The_Culture_of_Translation_in_Romania_Ue.html?id=-p5OvgEACAAJ&hl=en&output=html_text&redir_esc=y

Goodreads:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/43277272-the-culture-of-translation-in-romania-uebersetzungskultur-und-literatu

Amazon:
https://www.amazon.in/Culture-Translation-Uebersetzungskultur-Literaturuebersetzen-Rumaenien/dp/3631766424

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- by Maria SASS and +2
  Stefan Baghiu
  Vlad Pojoga
- •
- 20
  Comparative Literature, Translation Studies, The Novel, Translation theory

The idea of compiling this dictionary sprang from the team’s shared conviction that it would be a great gain to explore the possibility of extending the terminology developed by Postcolonial Studies to the area of Postcommunist Studies,... more

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- by Bogdan Stefanescu and +1
  Ruxandra Visan
- •
- 17
  Eastern European Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Post-Soviet Studies, Post-Socialist Societies

This article analyses Romania’s foreign policy during the transition from communism to democracy, between 1990 and 1996, through the lens of its relations with Hungary. These were conditioned by the historical background, antagonistic... more

Eastern Europe, Romania, Postcommunism

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