Asynchronous Instantaneity. The Posthuman Turn in the Romanian Literary System
Asynchronous Instantaneity. The Posthuman Turn in the Romanian Literary System

Summary/Abstract: Cultural globalisation, made possible by the enhancement of digital infrastructure, has led some scholars to reconsider the dynamics of core-periphery transfers, stressing the immediacy with which popular culture crosses national and linguistic borders. This is the case of Theory in the ‘Post’ Era: A Vocabulary for the 21st-Century Conceptual Commons, which in its preface proposes an epidemiological model of the transfer of cultural capital. In my paper, I want to relate “the contagion theory” to the import of Posthumanism in Eastern Europe and contemporary Romanian literature. The links between Posthumanism and contemporary literature have provoked sometimes productive, sometimes controversial local debates. The way in which this philosophy/theory is naturalised calls into question the instantaneity with which ideas circulate, since there are cases in which its core meanings are hijacked in Romanian culture. This cultural dysmorphia (along with other cultural products considered self-colonial) demonstrates how the unequal relations between centre and periphery are not completely dissolved by the digital turn but generate a new paradox of asymmetrical instantaneity. The aim of my article is to see how the theory of posthumanism travels from the centre of Anglo-American cultural studies to the semi-periphery of the Romanian literary field, where several mutations can be noticed: first of all, the shift from SF literature to poetry, which has a greater symbolic capital in Romania. I will analyse the contexts of the “regimes of relevance,” the transformations brought about by Romania’s accession to the European Union, and the mechanisms of diffusion of posthuman theory in the local space.

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