Philo-Germanism without Germans in Romania after 1989. (November 2015)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Cercel, Cristian
• Other Names: Kosicki Piotr H. guest-editor.; Tołczyk Dariusz guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: East European politics and societies. Volume 29:Number 4(2015)
• Page Start: 811
• Page End: 830
• Publication Date: 2015-11
• Subjects: Romanian Germans -- representations of otherness -- intimate colonization -- postsocialism; Europe, Eastern -- Politics and government -- 1945-1989 -- Periodicals; Europe, Eastern -- Politics and government -- 1989- -- Periodicals; Europe, Eastern -- Social conditions -- Periodicals; 947.0005
• DOI: 10.1177/0888325414550360
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0888-3254

Abstract

This article argues that positive representations of the German minority in post-1989 Romania, discernible in specific memory and identity discourses, are linked to an internalized self-orientalizing view of Romanianness and to a symbolic wish to "belong to Europe, " present in Romanian society and displayed on the Romanian political scene. In other words, it maintains that a phenomenon describable as "philo-Germanism without Germans" in contemporary Romania is tightly connected with the production and reproduction of symbolic geographies whose aim is to insert Romania into the "civilized" Western/European world.