Philo-Germanism without Germans in Romania after 1989
Philo-Germanism without Germans in Romania after 1989
Author(s): Christian CercelSubject(s): Political history, Transformation Period (1990 - 2010), Ethnic Minorities Studies, Sociology of Politics, Politics of History/Memory, Politics and Identity
Published by: SAGE Publications Ltd
Keywords: Romanian Germans; representations of otherness; intimate colonization; postsocialism;
Summary/Abstract: This article argues that positive representations of the German minority in post-1989 Romania, discernible in specific memory and identity discourses, are linked to an internalized self-orientalizing view of Romanianness and to a symbolic wish to “belong to Europe,” present in Romanian society and displayed on the Romanian political scene. In other words, it maintains that a phenomenon describable as “philo-Germanism without Germans” in contemporary Romania is tightly connected with the production and reproduction of symbolic geographies whose aim is to insert Romania into the “civilized” Western/European world.
Journal: East European Politics and Societies
- Issue Year: 29/2015
- Issue No: 04
- Page Range: 811-830
- Page Count: 20
- Language: English
- Content File-PDF