SHADOW LINES OF SELFHOOD: SUBJECTIVE TEMPORALITIES IN DOMNICA RĂDULESCU’S TRAIN TO TRIESTE
SHADOW LINES OF SELFHOOD: SUBJECTIVE TEMPORALITIES IN DOMNICA RĂDULESCU’S TRAIN TO TRIESTE

Summary/Abstract: This paper will aim to expand Amitav Ghosh’s notion of the “shadow lines” of history reflected in the microcosm of a single family to the individual account of dislocation, migration and relocation in Domnica Rădulescu’s novel Train to Trieste. I will show that this story of the experience of one representative of the Romanian-American diaspora under communism and in the first years following the fall of communism, the first one of its kind, constructs a subjective line of temporal development – symbolised by the recurrent image of the train – which supplements official history. It shows a possible way in which personal narrative can escape the neocolonial limitations imposed by official historical discourses on subaltern cultures. If Amitav Ghosh builds a model of circulation for cultures through the metaphor of the transit lounge and Gloria Anzaldua proclaims the fluidity of all borders – which she rereads as borderlands – Rădulescu’s Train to Trieste focuses on a highly personal story, whose predominant narrative tense is the present, which overcomes the limitations of Romania’s various subaltern positionings and in which the protagonist’s success comes almost exclusively through the strength of individual agency.

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