Genre and the (Post-)Communist Woman

Genre and the (Post-)Communist Woman
Title Genre and the (Post-)Communist Woman PDF eBook
Author Florentina C.Andreescu
Publisher Routledge
Pages 203
Release 2014-09-25
Genre Political Science
ISBN 1317747356

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This work is a critical intervention into the archive of female identity; it reflects on the ways in which the Central and Eastern European female ideal was constructed, represented, and embodied in communist societies and on its transformation resulting from the political, economic, and social changes specific to the post-communist social and political transitions. During the communist period, the female ideal was constituted as a heroic mother and worker, both a revolutionary and a state bureaucrat, which were regarded as key elements in the processes of industrial development and production. She was portrayed as physically strong and with rugged rather than with feminized attributes. After the post-communist regime collapsed, the female ideal’s traits changed and instead took on the feminine attributes that are familiar in the West’s consumer-oriented societies. Each chapter in the volume explores different aspects of these changes and links those changes to national security, nationalism, and relations with Western societies, while focusing on a variety of genres of expression such as films, music, plays, literature, press reports, television talk shows, and ethnographic research. The topics explored in this volume open a space for discussion and reflection about how radical social change intimately affected the lives and identities of women, and their positions in society, resulting in various policy initiatives involving women’s social and political roles. The book will be of interest to students and scholars of gender studies, comparative politics, Eastern European studies, and cultural studies.

Women's Life Writing in Post-Communist Romania

Women's Life Writing in Post-Communist Romania
Title Women's Life Writing in Post-Communist Romania PDF eBook
Author Simona Mitroiu
Publisher Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Pages 168
Release 2022-11-07
Genre Social Science
ISBN 3110766531

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This book analyzes the impact of abusive regimes of power on women’s lives and on their self-expression through close readings of life writing by women in communist Romania. In particular, it examines the forms of agency and privacy available to women under totalitarianism and the modes of relationships in which their lives were embedded. The self-expression and self-reflexive processes that are to be found in the body of Romanian women’s autobiographical writings this study presents create complex private narratives that underpin the creative development of inclusive memories of the past through shared responsibility and shared agency. At the same time, however, the way these private, personal narratives intertwined with collective and official historical narratives exemplifies the multidimensional nature of privacy as well as the radical redefinition of agency in this period. This book argues for a broader understanding of the narratives of the communist past, one that reflects the complexity of individual and social interactions and allows a deep exploration of the interconnected relations between memory, trauma, nostalgia, agency, and privacy.

Cultural Change in East-Central European and Eurasian Spaces

Cultural Change in East-Central European and Eurasian Spaces
Title Cultural Change in East-Central European and Eurasian Spaces PDF eBook
Author Susan C. Pearce
Publisher Springer Nature
Pages 270
Release 2021-03-05
Genre Social Science
ISBN 3030631974

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This book weaves together research on cultural change in Central Europe and Eurasia: notably, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Poland, Russia, and Ukraine. Examining massive cultural shifts in erstwhile state-communist nations since 1989, the authors analyze how the region is moving in both freeing and restrictive directions. They map out these directions in such arenas as LGBTQ protest cultures, new Russian fiction, Polish memory of Jewish heritage, ethnic nationalisms, revival of minority cultures, and loss of state support for museums. From a comparison of gender constructions in 30 national constitutions to an exploration of a cross-national artistic collaborative, this insightful book illuminates how the region’s denizens are swimming in changing tides of transnational cultures, resulting in new hybridities and innovations. Arguing for a decolonization of the region and for the significance of culture, the book appeals to a wide, interdisciplinary readership interested in cultural change, post-communist societies, and globalization.

Justice, Memory and Redress in Romania

Justice, Memory and Redress in Romania
Title Justice, Memory and Redress in Romania PDF eBook
Author Lavinia Stan
Publisher Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Pages 360
Release 2017-01-06
Genre Social Science
ISBN 1443862592

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Are there any lessons Romania can teach transitional justice scholars and practitioners? This book argues that important insights emerge when analyzing a country with a moderate record of coming to terms with its communist past. Taking a broad definition of transitional justice as their starting point, contributors provide fresh assessments of the history commission, court trials, public identifications of former communist perpetrators, commemorations, and unofficial artistic projects that seek to address and redress the legacies of communist human rights violations. Theoretical and practical questions regarding the continuity of state agencies, the sequencing of initiatives, their advantages and limitations, the reasons why some reckoning programs are enacted and others are not, and these measures’ efficacy in promoting truth and justice are answered throughout the volume. Contributors include seasoned scholars from Romania, Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom, and current and former leaders of key Romanian transitional justice institutions.

Women as Constitution-Makers

Women as Constitution-Makers
Title Women as Constitution-Makers PDF eBook
Author Ruth Rubio-Marín
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Pages 397
Release 2019-03-28
Genre Law
ISBN 1108492770

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Offers case studies of women as constitution-makers in nine countries, clarifying the gender aspects of participatory constitutionalism.

The Romance of American Communism

The Romance of American Communism
Title The Romance of American Communism PDF eBook
Author Vivian Gornick
Publisher Verso Books
Pages 335
Release 2020-04-07
Genre Biography & Autobiography
ISBN 178873551X

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“Before I knew that I was Jewish or a girl I knew that I was a member of the working class.” So begins Vivian Gornick’s exploration of how the world of socialists, communists, and progressives in the 1940s and 1950s created a rich, diverse world where ordinary men and women felt their lives connected to a larger human project. Now back in print after its initial publication in 1977 and with a new introduction by the author, The Romance of American Communism is a landmark work of new journalism, profiling American Communist Party members and fellow travelers as they joined the Party, lived within its orbit, and left in disillusionment and disappointment as Stalin’s crimes became public. From the immigrant Jewish enclaves of the Bronx and Brooklyn and the docks of Puget Sound to the mining towns of Kentucky and the suburbs of Cleveland, over a million Americans found a sense of belonging and an expanded sense of self through collective struggle. They also found social isolation, blacklisting, imprisonment, and shattered hopes. This is their story--an indisputably American story.

Political Memory and the Aesthetics of Care

Political Memory and the Aesthetics of Care
Title Political Memory and the Aesthetics of Care PDF eBook
Author Mihaela Mihai
Publisher Stanford University Press
Pages 382
Release 2022-01-11
Genre Philosophy
ISBN 1503630137

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With this nuanced and interdisciplinary work, political theorist Mihaela Mihai tackles several interrelated questions: How do societies remember histories of systemic violence? Who is excluded from such histories' cast of characters? And what are the political costs of selective remembering in the present? Building on insights from political theory, social epistemology, and feminist and critical race theory, Mihai argues that a double erasure often structures hegemonic narratives of complex violence: of widespread, heterogeneous complicity and of "impure" resistances, not easily subsumed to exceptionalist heroic models. In dialogue with care ethicists and philosophers of art, she then suggests that such narrative reductionism can be disrupted aesthetically through practices of "mnemonic care," that is, through the hermeneutical labor that critical artists deliver—thematically and formally—within communities' space of meaning. Empirically, the book examines both consecrated and marginalized artists who tackled the memory of Vichy France, communist Romania, and apartheid South Africa. Despite their specificities, these contexts present us with an opportunity to analyze similar mnemonic dynamics and to recognize the political impact of dissenting artistic production. Crossing disciplinary boundaries, the book intervenes in debates over collective responsibility, historical injustice, and the aesthetics of violence within political theory, memory studies, social epistemology, and transitional justice.