Nation-Building and Contested Identities - MEK

MARIUS TURDAa chronic political competition for national affiliations in Romania. In my opinion,this competition proves to be not only historically obsolete but also individuallyrepressive. In order to unmask its negative effects, one should finallyadmit its corrosiveness. Personally, I would argue that, in many respects, Transylvaniahas saturated the political discourses in which it circulates. Even more,I think that the Transylvanian problem does not exist anymore.NOTES1An earlier version of this essay was published in Sfera politicii 80 (2000), and, in theform of a short essay, under the title “Europe in the Imagination of an ApoliticalRomanian Cynic,” by Oxford University European Affairs Society (February 2001).2One could attempt to compare the present discussions on Romania’s place inEurope with corresponding dilemmas experienced after 1848 or 1918. SeeAdrian Marino, Pentru Europa. Integrarea României: Aspecte ideologice ºi culturale(For Europe. The Integration of Romania: Ideological and CulturalAspects) (Iaºi: Polirom, 1995).3Alina Mungiu-Pippidi, Transilvania subiectivã (Subjective Transylvania)(Bucharest: Humanitas, 1999). The quotations here are from the English versionavailable from http://www.osi.hu/ipf/publications; Internet; accessed 10 April 2001.4For a discussion of this problem, see Iordan Chimet, ed., Momentul adevãrului(Moment of truth) (Cluj-Napoca: Dacia, 1996).5Romanian society has traditionally been split between two camps, but, as SorinAntohi observed: “In Romania, the efforts aiming at a transfiguration of thenational symbolic space have fallen traditionally into two main categories: theformer includes arguments rooted in the Westernizing ‘invented traditions,’while the later includes the Autochtonists’ ‘imagined community.’ Both Westernizersand Autochtonists are rather ideal types, the mutually exclusive, ifinterwoven, and ultimately contaminated, extremes of a continuum: Romania’spolitical imagery.” Sorin Antohi, “Putting Romania on Europe’s Map,”paper presented at the workshop Euro-Balkans and Balkan Literature,Budapest (6-7 February 1998), p. 36.6See Katherine Verdery, “Civil Society or Nation? Europe in the Symbolism ofRomania’s Postsocialist Politics,” in Ronald Grigor Suny and Michael D.Kennedy, eds., Intellectuals and the Articulation of the Nation (Ann Arbor: TheUniversity of Michigan Press, 1999), pp. 301-340.7In a similar vein, George Schöpflin argued that post-communist governmentsare rather interested in representing the nation than the society. “The nationin its ethnic dimension functions in politics as a category that is connected primarilyto the establishment of the state and to definitions of identity. ... Thenation is sacralized and cannot be the subject of the bargains and compromisesneeded for the smooth functioning of democracy.” George Schöpflin, Politicsin Eastern Europe, 1945-1992 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), p. 278. My argumentis also complemented by Tom Gallagher’s pertinent analysis of