Semantica „rasei” - de la clasificări tradiţionale ale „ţiganului” la discursul elitei roma din România contemporană
The semantics of race - from traditional classifications of the “Gypsy” to the discourse of the Roma elite from contemporary Romania

Summary/Abstract: The classic modernity is considered to have been the moment of consecration for the social classificatory notions like the nation or the race. They were frequently interchangeably used and served some essentialized and ideologized discourses that legitimized social hierarchies both inter- or intra- groups. Thanks to its capacity to enforce stigmatizations, the concept of “race” reveals power relations between groups and has significance particularly in the relations between majorities and minorities both ethnic and social. The discursive implications were multiple, though, it basically connected physical traits and intellectual and civility achievements. All over European cultures “Gypsies” were profoundly racialized. For centuries this went hand in hand with a tendency of exotization which had negative as well as positive idealizing effects. Modernity and the national projects exposed them to a general wave of stigmatization. Surely, the resulting discourses and policies may be very well acknowledged as forms of more or less aggressive racism. As it intended to maintain segregation and domination, such a discourse was somehow convincingly assumed by the normative authorities (i.e. state agents like intellectuals, missionaries, police and sanitary officers) with respect to these ethnic groups. What I intend to show is that racism, respectively, racialism may also play a role in the intra-group discourses, thus, preserving internal strong hierarchies. What is striking is the fact that theoretically untenable tropes may be re-activated by the contemporary Roma elites; they are essentially the same as those used by the majorities, fact which unambiguously portraits the epistemic imperialism of the “race” category.

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