LA « SOCIÉTÉ CIVILE » DES INTELECTUELS. USAGES ET ENJEUX DE LA NOTION DE « SOCIÉTÉ CIVILE » EN ROUMANIE POSTCOMMUNISTE
THE "CIVIL SOCIETY" OF INTELECTUALS. USES AND ISSUES OF THE CONCEPT OF "CIVIL SOCIETY" IN POST-COMMUNIST ROMANIA

Summary/Abstract: “Civil society” is a notion invested by Romanian intellectuals after 1989 in their political studies, and more generally in the intellectual field but also in the political field and mostly in the field of media. “Civil society” becomes a political category when intellectuals claim their political role as civil society. It seems then preferable to analyze the function, for intellectuals, of using „civil society”, taking into consideration how they define it and the context of avoiding to assign significations and purposes which result ed from the repositioning strategies accomplished after 1989. Intellectuals express themselves as a collective, by forming a group, and define themselves as “civil society” which then designates the engagement by journalism and the posture of critical intellectuals. “Civil society” serves as a justification and basis for the future engagements and even for becoming politicians. “Civil society” is then becoming a label to mark that they are part of the intellectual world and that they are to be distinguished from politicians. “Civil society” enters the vocabulary of political identities when intellectuals become politicians as a collective. “Civil society” reveals and accomplishes strategies of legitimization, functioning both in intellectual and political fields. We discuss about “civil society” before civil society, intellectuals who are organizing the civil society and its rhetoricians and theoreticians.

• Details
• Contents