Self-Censorship (of the Pre-Emptive Kind): English-written Discourses as a Lens into Romanian Self-Identification
Self-Censorship (of the Pre-Emptive Kind): English-written Discourses as a Lens into Romanian Self-Identification

Summary/Abstract: In the aftermath of the Great War, the view of the English-speaking world on the Balkans posed a challenge to Romanian self-identification patterns. English-language memoirs by US servicemen and that of Marie, Queen of Romania, capture the spirit of the times. They spell out, on the one hand, the conviction that the Romanian kingdom was part and parcel of a new, thoroughly Balkanized Europe, and demonstrate, on the other hand, how the path forward for a new-found home country can be shaped. Their stories feature the Romanians as yet another imagined community in the making, a nation whose identity is otherized as a marginal offshoot of emerging national traditions in the Balkans. In the process, they reveal productive censorship and self censorship on a discursive scale commonly seen in colonial matrices of power.

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