Appeal to the Witness. The Role of Romanian Post-Communist Witness Literature in Outlining National (Self-)Images

• Authors: Laura Sasu
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The purpose of this paper is to identify and investigate the role of Romanian post-communist witness literature for contemporary historiography in outlining national and social (self-)images. This type of literature, written mostly by former political detainees, is perceived by literary criticism as a specific borderline segment partly relevant as historical documents and partly as literary texts. Applying the conceptual pattern coined by Giorgio Agamben. in his analysis based upon the national socialist concentration camp, to post-communist depositional literature reveals two focal directions of imagological relevance: on the one hand, the points of similarity and difference of totalitarian practices in creating stereotypes, cultivating the sense of absolute antagonist otherness and promoting distorted ethnic, social and national images and. on the other hand, the particular contributions and limitations posed by the post-totalitarian depositional discourse in (re)-creating national and social (self-)images.

Keywords

EN

totalitarianism; distorted (self-)images; depositional literature; the witness

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Philologica
• Year: 2013
• Volume: 5
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 67-78

Dates

published

2013-07-01

online

2014-05-30

Contributors

author

Laura Sasu

• Transilvania University of Braşov Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics

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Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/ausp-2014-0006