L’expression pluri-identitaire de l’équilibre retrouvé – Norman Manea, Intoarcerea huliganului / Le retour du hooligan
The Multi-Identity Pattern of The Regained Equilibrium - Norman Manea, Intoarcerea Huliganului / The Return of The Hooligan

Summary/Abstract: The identity focus in Norman Manea’s writing is textually displayed by the various autobiographical / autofictional forms and structures joining together within the complex melange of textual signs and ‘reloaded’ pragmatics – the one re-defining the pluri-voiced reference as well as the Life-as-Text construct. In other words, the text itself rebuilds the author’s autobiographical pilgrimage as a specific subject of the narrative. The double-focused theme – the self and its identity – is projected to an autofictional frame thus reflecting an identity profile replacing the identitary vacuum hard to live with. Therefore, the author feels at home in his text, even protected from the vicissitudes of History. Being a Romanian Jew, an exiled in his own country as well as in Europe or United States, Norman Manea recognises himself in Mihail Sebastian’s tragic existence and in the latter’s vital relations to the Romanian language - an exemplary value covertly guiding the scriptural history. By reiterating the identity practice of his predecessor, Norman Manea undertakes his Jewish roots, hoping that he can cope with the postmodern identity dilemmas and the heterotopy - always tragic – displayed by exile. This type of approach is permanently put under question by the profound Romanian dimension of his being. Thus, if we are to paraphrase Constantin Noica, we can say that Intoarcerea huliganului / The Return of the Hooligan stands for a symbolical return home, to the comfortable matrix space of the Romanian language and culture whose ‘product’ the writer has always declared to be.

• Details
• Contents