Du cri à la mémoire: La liberté comme émotion politique dans le contexte de la Révolution roumaine de 1989
From Outcry to Memory: Freedom as Political Emotion in the Context of the Romanian Revolution of 1989

Summary/Abstract: This article investigates how the word “freedom”, within the context of the 1989 Romanian Revolution, functions as a vehicle for political emotions that articulate a genuine affective grammar of historical change. Drawing on the theoretical frameworks proposed by William Reddy, Sara Ahmed, Martha Nussbaum, and Georges Didi-Huberman, the analysis foregrounds the performative force of this word in the Romanian public sphere—from its revolutionary emergence to its later memorial reconfigurations. Slogans, photographs, inscriptions and commemorative practices all serve as forms through which the word “freedom” is charged with multiple affects—exaltation, pain, critical melancholy—and becomes an operator of civic connection, collective mourning, and shared memory. The study thus argues that freedom cannot be reduced to an ideological claim or an abstract concept: it is experienced, shared, and inherited as a fundamentally political emotion.

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