romanian cultural identity
TRANSCRIPT
7/25/2019 Romanian Cultural Identity
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Romanian Cultural and Political Identity
Author(s): Donald R. Kelley
Source: Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 59, No. 4, (Oct., 1998), pp. 735-738
Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3653941
Accessed: 08/06/2008 15:46
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7/25/2019 Romanian Cultural Identity
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Romanian u l t u r a l
n d
olitical
I d e n t i t y
The
Journal
of
the
History
of
Ideas,
in
collaboration
with other
institutions,
n-
cluding
the
Universities
of
Bucharest and
Budapest
and
the Soros
Foundation,
re-
cently
sponsored
he
second
in
a
series of international onferences
being planned
on
topics
in
current
ntellectual
history.
(The
first,
Interrogating
radition,
was held at
Rutgers
University,
13-16
November
1997.)
The
Romanian
conference,
which was
held
in
the
Elisabeta
Palace
in
Bucharest
27-31
May
1998),
was devoted
to
Culture
andthePolitics of NationalIdentity n Moder Romania. Overfortyscholars,mainly
from
Romania
but
some
also
from the
U.S., France,
Germany,
and
Hungary,
gathered
to
discuss a
variety
of
questions
about Romanian
society,
past, present,
and
specula-
tive
future;
and
they
were
joined
by
at
least as
many
visitors,
especially
students,
from
the local
area
and
beyond.
Topics
discussed
included
politics,
language,
economics,
historiography,
reli-
gion,
education,
philosophy,
ideologies, intelligentsia, particular
ntellectuals,
mi-
norities,
and
women
(though
not
Gypsies
or
gays).
Under
this riot
of rubrics
a
wide
range
of
questions
were
posed
in
interdisciplinary
ashion,
with
frequent,
sometimes
impassioned
nterventions.
What
is-was,
might
have
been,
can
be-Romania?
Who
is
a
Romanian
and
who
not)?
What
is
Romania's relation
to
the
West
and
the East?
(And
what
are the
West
and
the
East ?)
To
modernity,
o
modernism,
o modern-
ization?
What
is-has
been,
should
be-the function of
intellectuals,
of
political
and
cultural
elites,
in
understanding
he
Romanian
past
and
in
setting
a
course
for
the
future?
What,
more
generally,
s the
role
of
history
in
answering
such
questions?
Or
is
history
perhaps
as
Karl
Krause
remarked f
psychoanalysis)
the disease
for which
it
claims
to be
the
cure?
Keith
Hitchens's
keynote
address
suggested
that
rehashing
old essentialist
de-
bates
might
not be
productive
at millennium's
end,
but the conference
itself could
not
avoid
some
excursions
down
the
paths
of
memory
and
myth.
For
historians,
Western
historians
anyway,
Romania
seems to have too
many pasts.
Located
at the
juncture
of
four previousempires,Romaniais a mosaic, or perhapsa pandemonium,of ethnic,
religious,
economic,
and
ideological groups
that can
only
imagine,
or
invent,
a
na-
tionality.
Geographically
and
in
many ways culturally)
remote
from the
West,
Ro-
mania
for a
long
time
(as
Sorin
Antohi
remarked)
acked both
a
public
sphere
and
a
civil
society;
and
suffering
a
Counter-Reformation
ithout
a
Reformation
Alexandru
Dutu's
phrase),
it
has
not
enjoyed
a traditionof
religious
or
ethnic toleration. Nor
have
either
the
Germansor the
Jews
(as
Glass
said)
found
their
own
unity
within
the
changing
bordersof
the
moder Romanianstate. Not until the
nineteenth
century
did
Romania
develop,
out of
its
Boyar background
as
Siupiur
argued),
an intellectual
elite
that could
create a
moder
national
history
and
help
turn
peasants
nto Roma-
nians
(Antohi'sphrase);andeven then this elite seemedmore
attracted
o
conserva-
735
Copyright
1998
by
Journal
of
the
History
of
Ideas,
Inc.
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Journal
of
the
History of
Ideas
tive
(Herder,
Savigny,
Burke)
than to
liberal
views of autochthonism.
Many
features
of Western
modernity,
uch
as
Newtonian
science,
reached
Romania
ate,
and indeed
there
was a
retrograde
movement
against
liberalismunder
the
aegis
by
orthodoxreli-
gion.
In
any
case
this
intelligentsia
has
been
as
fragmented
and
multiform
as
the
Romanian
past
itself.
True,
some
Romanian
cholars
like to
posit
a
mainstream
radi-
tion,
excesses
aside,
as
one
speakerput
it-but
how,
asked
another,
can historians
put
excesses
aside from
the
devastatingperspective
of
this
century?
Political and
cultural
self-examination
was the dominant
theme
of
this confer-
ence.
Nationality,
said
Pippidi,
depends
on
three
factors,
viz.,
name,
language,
reli-
gion,
and
territory.
The
Romanian name dates from
the tenth
century,
indicating
a
separation
of the
Roman
from
the Greek tradition n
Wallachia;
and from
the seven-
teenth
century
the
idea
of a
mainly
Roman
provenance
was
given
privilege.
As
a
language,
Romanian
was
spoken
in
the late Middle
Ages,
but
the
first
written
docu-
ment is
dated 1521.
The
principalreligion
in Romania
was
and
is Greek
orthodox,
although
there are also
Roman
Catholic,Jewish, Islamic,
and German
Protestant om-
munities, as well as the Uniate church createdin the eighteenthcentury.As for the
territory,
his
has
been a
matter
of
change,
conflict,
and confusion
throughout
he
tragic
course
of
southeastern
European istory
and
continues o
be
so for
the
Moldavian-
Wallachian
wins
viv-a-vis their
equally agitated
and
protean
neighbors.
Finding, finally,
a
kind of
modem
nationality
n
the
wake
of
World
War
I,
Roma-
nia
was
plunged
into the
bloody
excesses
of Fascism and
Communism.
The intellec-
tuals of the
unlucky
generation
of
1927
sought
understanding
nd
legitimacy
in
a
variety
of
contradictoryways,
including
what Calinescu
called
the
apocalyptic
e-
ver of
the
1930s,
to
which
Eliade,
among
others,
surrendered.
At that
time,
as one
participant
reminded
us,
both
fascism and communism
had
a
future
and
cannot,
retrospectively,
be
discountedas
irrelevant excesses.
In
general
nationalist
and
ex-
clusionist
sentiments were
countered
by
the
centrifugal
forces of
regionalism,
xeno-
phobia,
and
extremist
deologies
of that
age.
No wonder
Romania
didn't
work
(as
one
commentator
remarked)
either
under socialism
or
under
the
megalomaniacal
dirigisme
of
Ceaucescu. In
fact
Romania
has lived
through
not
just
one
but
a
number
of
unlucky
generations
since the
achievement
of
political
independence;
and this
is
an
indelible
part
of its
national
history
which is the
subject
of
these
critical
exchanges.
What of
the future?Will
this and the next
generations
be
luckier?
Can Romania
be made to work? Is
there a
Romanian
path
to
modernity
(or
postmodernity)?
The
Romanian
past
has not
been
liberal n a
Western
sense,
and
many
participants
x-
pressed
doubt
about this
model
(although
Daniel
Chirot,
in a
spirit
largely
at odds
with the spiritof dialogue in earliersessions, held it out as the only way of coping
with
political
and
economic
challenges
in
the
millennium
to
come).
In
any
case
Ro-
mania
has
more
immediate
problems,
social,
ethnic,
and educational
as
well as
po-
litical and
economic,
to
resolve before it
can
join,
or
rejoin,
mainstream,
hegemonic
Western
history-and
to do so at
a time when this
mainstream
nd
this
hegemony
are
being challenged
and
when
Southeastern
Europe
tself
is
in a condition
of
apparently
endless
chaos.
How
this
works out
only
history
will
tell,
while the
intellectuals
watch,
perhaps
act,
but at
least
(such
is
the minimal liberal
hope)
continue
the
sort of
dia-
logue
carried
on
here.
Donald
R.
Kelley
736
7/25/2019 Romanian Cultural Identity
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Romanian
Culture
and
Identity
Program
Keynote
Addresses:
Keith
Hitchins,
The
Identity
of Romania
Alexandru
Zub,
Western
deas on the
RomanianSoul
Modernity
and the
Construction
of National
Identity:
Alexandru
Dutu,
The
Communitarian
Model
and
National
Ties
Andrei
Pippidi,
Romanian
dentities
in the Sixteenth
Seventeenth
Centuries
Adrian-Paul
Iliescu,
Nineteenth-Century
Romantic
and
Conservative
Sources
of
Romanian
Autochthonism
Hugh Kearney
(comment)
Religion and Identity:
H. R.
Patapievici,
A
Short Look
into the
Dissemination
of
Newtonian
Ideas
in
the
Romanian
Provinces,
1687-1860
Maria
Craciun,
Religious
Change
and
Tolerance
n
Sixteenth-Century
Moldavia
Catherine
Durandin,
From he Liberalism
of 1848
to
the
'Orthodoxismul'
of
the
1930s
AlexandruDutu
(comment)
Historiography
nd
National
Myths:
Mirela-Luminita
Murgescu,
School
Textbooks
and
Heroes
of
Romanian
His-
tory
Ovidiu
Pecican,
Moder Romanian
Historiography
nd
the National
Project
Alexandru
Zub,
Romanian
Historiography
under
Communism
Sorin Antohi
(comment)
Cultureand
Identity
in
InterwarRomania:
Hildrun
Glass,
The Jews of
Greater
Romania:
The Search
for
a
Single
Identity
(1919-1938)
Rainer
Ohliger,
Minority
Identity
in Process:
Cultural
Politics
among
Ethnic
Germans n InterwarRomania
Edit
Szegedi, Regionalism
and National
Socialism
Andrei
Corbea Hoisie
(comment)
Engineering
Social
Identity:
Elena
Siupiur,
The
Formation
of Romanian
Intellectuals
n
the
Nineteenth
Cen-
tury
Mariana
Hausleitner,
Cernauti
University,
1918-1944:
Concepts
and
Conse-
quences
of
Romanization
CharlesKing, MakingMoldavians:LanguageandEthnicityon the Romanian-
Soviet
Border
Irina
Livezeanu
(comment)
737
7/25/2019 Romanian Cultural Identity
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Journal
of
the
History of
Ideas
Interwar
ntellectuals and Politics:
Matei
Calinescu,
The 1927
Generation
n
Romania:
Mihail
Sebastian,
Mircea
Eliade,
Nae
Ionescuu,
Eugene
Ionesco
Marta
Petreu, Cioran,
The
Transfiguration
f
Romania
Claude
Karooth,
Lucian
Blaga
and the
Birth of
the
Modem
Sorin
Alexandrescu,
The Iron Guard
Phenomenon
Leon Volovici
(comment)
Ideologies
and
Economic Theories:
Joseph
Love,
Interwarand Postwar
Structuralist
Theories
of
Development
in
Romanin
and
Latin
America
Bogdan Murgescu,
The
Heritage
of
the
Past
in
Contemporary
Economic
De-
bates
F. Peter
Wagner
comment)
The
Woman
Question
and Feminism:
Marias
Bucur,
Calypso
Botez: Gender
Difference
and
the
Limits
of Pluralism
n
InterwarRomania
Mihaela
Miroiu,
Antifeminismas Conservatism:
The
Romanian
Case
Irina
Liczek,
WesternCultural
mports
n Eastern
Europe:
Democracy
and
Femi-
nism
Bonnie G.
Smith
(comment)
Intellectuals
and Communism:
Alexandra
Laignel-Lavastine,
From he
'First' Constantin
Noica to the
Second:
Break or
Continuity?
Mircea
Flonta,
Analytic
Philosophy
in Communist
Romania:
Why
and
How?
Vladimir
Tismaneanu
(comment)
Final Address:
Daniel
Chirot
(Thereareplansto publishthe papersof this conferencein Romanian,andperhaps n
English,
at a later
point.)
738