Postcolonialism și postcomunism în studiile literare românești
Postcolonialism vs. Postcommunism in Romanian Literary Studies

Summary/Abstract: For the last two decades, postcolonial theory has become one of the most dominant perspectives in the study of literature and culture in the Western Academia (Chioni Moore 2001). Together with its increasingly more authoritarian voice, postcolonial theory has also become able to influence peripheral scholar communities, including those coming from cultures with no direct link with the historical phenomenon of colonialisation (Anfeng 2007). This influence seems to be of two distinct types. The first one is a mimetic one (i.e. unintermediated by local experiences), which has generated an imitative postcolonial discourse in local academia, mostly used by members of English language departments. The second one, which may be called particularizing (i.e. intermediated by local cultural experiences), has tried to adapt (to various degrees of intensity) the postcolonial perspective to local conditions. This second type of influence can be seen, for example, in the adaptation of postcolonial theory to the analysis of postcommunist cultural phenomena in Central and Eastern Europe (Kelertas 2006). The same thing has happened in Romanian literary studies, although at a low degree of intensity. In this article, I will try to analyse the impact of postcolonial theoretical speculation on the Romanian literary studies of the last two decades. By focusing especially on the practical problem of the relationship between postcolonialism and postcommunism, I will try to evaluate how adaptable postcolonial theory can be in relation to local cultural / historical experiences. Last but not least, I will try to analyse the way in which these theories adapt to local particular conditions.

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