MARIA-SABINA DRAGA ALEXANDRU
University of Bucharest
Abstract
The collapse of the Soviet
Union and the emergence of new nations on the map of Europe coincided with a
paradigm shift in postcolonial studies in the early nineteen-nineties. As
postcolonialism was being institutionalised, reaching the speaking platform of
the academia and thus losing some of its former subversive poignancy, its
emancipatory mission seemed to be taken over by postcommunism. Postcommunism, a
new discipline, was then in need of conceptual working tools to theorise the
historical experience of communism and the transition to a new capitalist
economy in Eastern Europe. Initially, it borrowed established concepts from
disciplines such as postcolonialism and cultural studies. A decade later, the
gradual EU accession of former communist countries, still recovering from
difficult processes of economic and political transition, brought the
postcolonialism/ postcommunism dialogue back on the agenda, reconsidering its
self-reflexive narratives with renewed urgency. Recent theories on imperialism
and globalisation show significant potential to shed light on some of the issues
in the postcommunism-postcolonialism debate and should be further explored. This
essay examines the current state of the discipline and argues in favour of the
benefits of the dialogue between the two discourses, but also cautions against
the generalising tendencies inherent in this theoretical enterprise.
Keywords:
Postcolonialism, postcommunism, narrative, discourse, EU accession, Eastern
Europe, translation, globalisation, migration, empire
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