Abstracts for Dilema veche no 253

Luca Niculescu
Televiziunea moldo-romana
The Moldavian-Romanian television
Pro TV Chisinau is about to lose its license to broadcast following a decision of the Moldavian broadcasting agency. The frail arguments brought about to justify this decision might hint to more powerful reasons: the channel is currently one of the few institutions still independent and thus a possible threat in next year's upcoming Parliamentary election. While Pro TV has to bid for a new license early next year, the prospects are hard to predict. Will Pro TV follow the same path as the Romanian public channel which was banned last year on similar evasive grounds?

Victor Iulian Tuca
La Poznan, controverse... benefice
Fruitful controversies in Poznan
While it is common to argue that in order to save the environment CO2 reduction is inevitable, a report by World Growth International claims that forestation is more effective than simply cutting back on polluting energies. But this will not solve the issue hold critics such as EU and environmental agencies, because one of the major problems is annual deforestation, more widespread in poorer countries where timber exploitation is vital for survival. The key might be both to reforest and reduce CO2 emissions at the same time. But this will not work if the rich countries are not ready to step in, on both fronts.

Cristian Ghinea
O tara aflata in cadere nervoasa
A country on the verge of a nervous breakdown
Far from the glamorous images of postcard-Greece, the country is in deep trouble. When ordinary people supported the so-called villains in the recent demonstrations, it was clear that more than a minor student rifle was going on. People, especially young ones, want a better living standard and a thorough reformation of the state. But how? When such a reform was attempted planned, it was rejected as anti-Greek and pro-capitalist. Are today's students in fact fighting for the same privileges they seemed to repudiate?

Weekly Dossier: Was Ceausescu good?

Mircea Kivu
Ce bine era, ce bine ca nu mai e!
It was so good, but better now that it's gone
The article examines some of the best known claims about the good aspects of life under state socialism by emphasizing the downside. Nostalgia about free summer holidays, equality, better morality and so on are placed in the wider societal context of their emergence. From such a perspective it appears clear that what people now remember in a positive light about the socialist past were no more than vehicles to fulfill basic needs. Was not communism then an epoch of plenty for the very basic needs?

Daniel Daianu
De ce persista utopia socialista?
Why does the socialist utopia still persist?
Apart from its intrinsic lure and Marx's analysis, there might be another reason why socialism is still attractive to many despite its obvious failures and totalitarian undertones. The internal contradictions of capitalism itself, especially with regard to issues of inequality and poverty, do a lot to preserve the socialist utopia. But it would be misleading to believe that once we proclaim socialism a bad thing, capitalism must necessarily be without flawless. On the contrary, the author argues, many variants of capitalism are not necessarily democratic since it favours just a minority of people. Furthermore, the generalization of capitalism's principles might alter its purpose altogether. Are we then destined to live with the socialist utopia as long as we have capitalism?

Abstracts for Dilema veche no 254-255

Andrei Plesu
Cum am calcat in strachini la Berlin
How I did it in Berlin
The author does an ironic mea culpa for damaging Romania's image abroad during a conference at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Berlin. Following a conference on space and time phenomenology by a reputed German scholar, Plesu, more out of politeness and spirit of conference dialogue, inquired into the positive and negative valences customarily attributed to representations of time and space. This benign and predictable question is enough to unleash a systematic criticism both from the speaker and from the audience against any idea of hierarchy. How far has the vulgate of political correctness managed to imbue our sense of normality?

Lucian Mandruta
Saracia va fi mai frumoasa
Poverty will be beautiful
In face of the global recession and upcoming economic crisis, the author ponders their unexpected beauty. Once our constant rush for profit, success and comfortable life melts together with the finances, there will be plenty of time to go back to the virtues of simplicity and nature. Put differently, the upcoming crisis will resemble a very long fishing holiday, so there are plenty of reasons to be optimistic about it.

Mircea Vasilescu
O noua adresa în agenda vienezului – interviu cu Carmen Bendovski, directoarea Institutului Cultural Român din Viena
A new address for the Viennese – interview with Carmen Bendovski, director of Romanian Cultural Institute, Vienna
The director explains some of the obstacles emerging Cultural Institutes like the Romanian face in promoting their cultural strategy. Firstly, difficulties arise from the structure of the national press, in this case the Austrian, which has peculiar policies in relating to the activities of cultural institutes. Secondly, the activity of the Institute is challenged by the impossibility, at home, to reach consensus on what cultural products should be promoted. Different tastes and rationalities call for different strategies and products, but in the end the Institute is faced with the need to cater for the respective tastes of the public. Thirdly, the longer traditions of other countries' corresponding institutions requires the Romanian one to put in greater effort only to gain some visibility that will allow some equality in cultural promotion.

Daniel Daianu
Cît de deschise pot fi economiile nationale?
How open can national economies be?
Daianu observes that despite the obvious inequalities and crises produced by the world's economic system, liberalization and deregulation have been central in the "rational economics" of the day. The spread of these beliefs have been fuelled by the collapse of communism and the successive neo-liberal model of the USA. The current crisis, however, might lead to a reshaping of this widely taken for granted idea. One such instance might be the questioning of the link between globalization and deregulation, a cornerstone tenet before the crisis. A new and more sensible understanding of globalization, geared towards pragmatic interests of growth and prosperity, might offer a renewed place for national states to intervene in the economy and domesticate the inherent excesses of the global markets. But this is no easy task either. While some note that states have always been present in the economy by protecting strategic business, others contend that a fragmentation of the global economic system by national measures will harden exchange. The solution, the author suggest, might be a mixture of the two: local alliances of nation-states able to compensate the excess of a too open global system and strong enough to generate multi-polarity to US hegemony. Whether the change of ideology that will produce such mutations is possible, remains an open concern.

Carmen Gavrila
Distractii pop made in Iran
Pop fun made in Iran
The image of an Iran covered in chadors and ultraconservative in religious terms hides a lesser known, more relaxed, reality. Despite the rigorous everyday enforcement of Islamic rules, hip-hop, pop and techno music flourishes among the young. If, during the permissive years of the 1990s, local pop stars were hired as advertising tools to stir consumption, the presidency of Mahmud Ahmadinejad has seen a return to stricter values and lifestyles. Be that as it may, the hip-hop and pop scenes are still booming provided lyrics and music are approved by the bureaucrats of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance. But, as the author's informants admit, this should not be a problem since most artists choose to express mainly social problems. When love does comes in, it is necessarily in the form of a married couple.

Roxana Lupu
Închisoarea îngerilor
Angels' prison
Roxana Lupu's staggering reportage about the life of underage convicts in a re-education centre raises disquieting questions about the Romanian penal system and Romanian society at large. Being one of the luckiest destinations for kids committing crimes, the centre in Buzias is remarkable for its lack of cells and guardians. Rather, all efforts are made to compensate for the neglected education and social life of the inmates. The life stories of three children undergoing this programme clearly dovetail the sinuous road from the under-class social milieu through petty crimes, leading them to decent occupation and schooling. But, the officials of the centre warns, this is not enough: the reintegration of these people into society is most often hindered by society's preconceptions and lack of assistance after leaving Buzias. This drama is encapsulated by one of the kids in the centre: despite showing true artistic talent and willingness to pursue a career in the visual arts, he is seriously considering asking for a prolonged stay in the centre to avoid facing the difficulties on the "outside".

Weekly dossier: the dilemmas of 2008

Economy and ideology

Doru Cojoc
Sfarsitul unei alte utopii?
The end of yet another utopia?
The author analyses the future of libertarianism after the severe blows it suffered during the recent financial and economic crisis. While most voices on the left point a finger at its incumbent fallacies, libertarians have decided to step down from the debate for a while, and keep quiet. But the author argues it is highly necessary not to throw the baby of libertarianism out with the dirty waters of today's crisis. If people are to prosper in the future, the solution is not a return to an all encompassing state, but to maintain minimal state intervention, predicated solely on its positive effects and regulatory functions when the situation asks for it.

Foreign policy

Magdalena Boiangiu
Ce culegi dupa ce alegi
The ripe of elections
The article investigates the many elections that took place in several countries around the world in 2008: from Kenya to Russia, from Pakistan to Serbia, from Spain to Zimbabwe. The conclusion is not a cheerful one: the democratic exercise of casting the ballot is losing its impact. Blatantly rigged elections, such as in Kenya, or more subtle political and administrative deals, like in Russia, have emptied elections of their significance. The US, perhaps the hot-spot of the elections in 2008, was not far from the mainstream: Obama's historic win was premised more on his willingness to do things for Americans than on his prior experience.

Abstracts for Dilema veche no 256

Magdalena Boiagiu
Nu doar Gaza
Not only Gaza
The much mediated conflict of Gaza is a significant moment to reflect on the other numerous conflicts around the world, as vivid and dramatic as the one in the Middle East, but which at present fail to reach the front page. One example of such a muted conflict is the rise of radical Islamism in Bosnia, a place known for its moderate Muslims. The banning of Santa Claus for ideological inadequacy with the Muslim precepts might the hilarious start of a more tragic conflict, the author muses.

Oana Tanase
Arta ca dar
Art as a gift
The author investigates the meaning of Perifieric 8, a biennale of Contemporary art held in Iasi. Apparently, the crux of the works displayed revealed a need to question and redefine the economic system in which art is produced and sold. Is it possible to re-invent art as an alternative economic system in which the ideas of gift, reciprocity, sharing and mutuality prevail? Without offering strict answers, the biennale forces us to imagine these alternatives.

Marius Chivu
Pesano
Clan
Reviewing a book by Toma Roman Jr. in which a some of Ceausescu's close circle are brought together, Marius Chivu reaches an unsettling conclusion: Romania was ruled by a totally insipid dictator. The portrait of Ceausescu that is drawn in the book presents a taciturn person, with no friends, no real connections with his family, a poor hunter, with no musical or culinary tastes, with no scruples, profoundly suspicious and egocentric, a liar obsessed with his won personality cult, scared of complots and viruses, profoundly xenophobic and anti-Semitic, rigid, obtuse and irascible with those who did not play along. Completely disconnected from the realities and sick, Ceausescu thought he would live forever. Equally disturbing is the picture of Elena Ceausescu, his wife. Admittedly, she had a tremendous influence over him, while he was totally dedicated to her – the only good quality the interviewees are able to acknowledge in Ceausescu. Vicious, arrogant, stupid, snobbish, egocentric and aggressive, the "world famous savant" was the only person Ceausescu trusted. What can be more desolating than to learn that Romania was lead for so many years by a dictator and his wife who lacked any genuinely evil subtleties, mystical desires or complicated and abyssal desires?

Andrei Manolescu
Interview with the novelist Filip Florian – "Each novel must follow its destiny"
The multi-prized author Filip Florian believes that there is no secret to be deciphered and repeated in order to write a successful novel that is translated to many languages, as was the case with his debut novel Degete mici (Small fingers). Rather, the novelist believes that any book and author have their own trajectory so sometimes it seems faulty to talk of national literatures. A sinuous route that took Florian from being a geologist to journalism during the early 1990s and then on to literature, follows the inescapable creative route one has to confront in order to generate that quiet space for creation. Filip acknowledges his need to escape the turmoil of life in Bucharest to a mountain cabin where he can properly devote himself to his writing.

Weekly dossier: Hate

Vladimir Marinov
Brancusi's hate
Vladimir Marinov glosses over a portrait of Brancusi by Eugeno Ionescu in order to point to Brancusi's dialectic between hate and love. If, in Freudian psychoanalysis. hate precedes love, Brancusi denotes a case in which primordial love manifests the immaterial sphere of the origin, preceding the hate of the real, mature world. The crying of the new-born child is, for Brancusi, a clear-cut case of its unwillingness to come into a world dominated by adults and their faulty relations. For Marinov, this is a pretext to enquire whether Brancusi's entire sculpture is not a permanent quest for accessing this primordial world of love and immateriality against the materiality of the adult world and its cadaver-like sculptures.

Vera Sandor
Ura si destructivitate
Hate and destructiveness
In October 2008, in Bucharest, Cotroceni Palace hosted the International Colloquium of Psychoanalysis about hate and destructiveness, new challenges for twentyfirst century psychoanalysis. The fragmented psychoanalysts' scene in Romania, and other free-spirited intellectuals that relate positively to this discipline, managed to come together to offer a complex and exhaustive portrait of hate and its manifestations. While Freud's death drive concept has an 85-year long career, the vast casuistic of its manifestation and articulation with hate and destructiveness is yet to be fully grasped. The aim of this colloquium was also a reminder that everything that is regarded as beautiful in life has to be won from the hold of the death drive.

Abstracts for Dilema veche no 257

Andrei Plesu
Greek and Latin
Amidst warning bells against the fading interests in the study of classical languages and topics, good news is signalled by a German newspaper. More and more secondary school children embark on rediscovering the virtues and pleasures of classical studies. A perfect moment, Plesu believes, to let ourselves be contaminated by this side of the West.

Luca Niculescu
Europe's energies
The author sees in the recent Russian gas crisis a chance for Europe to regain its energies writ large. If the start of the conflict saw Europe unprepared to face it, the development of the events produced a genuine communion among the member states and unitary action. This might be the evidence, once more, that Europe has a tendency to progress following deep crises. The gas crisis might prove to be another one.

Magdalena Boiangiu
War talks
The peace talks that seek to broker a cease fire between Israeli and Palestinians have the air of war talks, the author observes. This largely because as long as Hamas and other anti-Israeli organizations do not give up their overt goal of wiping out the Israeli state, genuine peace talks remain out of sight. Meanwhile, the intricacies of the situation seem to consolidate the general mood that the conflict in the Middle East is in fact "without solution".

Sever Voinescu
Life and death tunnels
Voinescu depicts and comments on one of the lesser known aspects of the life and war in Gaza. Under the border of Gaza and Egypt a vast network of tunnels provide for the basic needs of the Palestinians but also for the traffic of missiles used by Hamas against Israel. The Egyptian government is either unwilling or unable to take more pressing actions, despite US encouragement, to close the tunnels. Incrementally, the Egyptian side of the tunnels lies in the arid mountain area of Sinai, where the Egyptian army can deploy only a limited number of soldiers. While Israel seeks to destroy these tunnels to cut off the missile traffic, the Palestinian population is highly dependent on them for its survival. A catch-22 situation that can only make things worse.

Vintila Mihailescu
Our country's youth, the pride of others
The articles reveals an unsettling reality: the Romanian post doctoral students, with good credentials and results in top Western academic institutions, experience a sort of post-doctoral existential crisis due to lack of proper recognition at home. Furthermore, the author concludes, returning home often involves market productivity first, which is only then followed by some second rate academic recognition.

Madalina Schiopu
Antifa, the Mioritic division
The article investigates the Romanian groups that claim allegiance with the anti-fascist movements across the globe. The heterogeneity of ideologies that anti-fascist movements sport, coupled with punk music and a feeling of being part of something might explicate the success of the movement for some teenagers. However, the author muses whether movements like anti-fascism do not in fact dovetail the profound collapse of traditional politics to generate and sustain political mobilization.

Mihail Neamtu
Multicultural new year's party
The author depicts his new year party intellectual adventures in the company of some fellow students from the University Ann Arbor. What started as a promising and pleasant night in the company of erudite companions, quickly turned into a bitterly entrenched ideological battlefield. In an environment largely dominated by Marxist influences an apparently benign discussion about Judaic circumcision sloped into aggressive attacks against the murderous nature and history of Christianity. The author's consternation to such tenets and his successive attempts to bring factuality into the discussion are overlooked as elitist presumptions. After the party, the author ponders the necessity for higher education and advanced research if facts and texts can be so easily dismissed in favour of ideologies that are taken for granted.

Weekly dossier: Different times, different generations? – parents and children

Ruxandra Tudor
Interview with Mihaela Stefanescu: "Children of emigrants don't know what and who they are"
Mihaela Stefanescu is programme coordinator for Soros Romania, a foundation that constantly surveys Romanian migration practices. Based on the results, Stefanescu points out that children involved in migration practices experience significant changes in their lives. If one or both of their parents go abroad to work, their new life, with different people in charge of their upbringing, will take a different course. Statistics show that children in this situation experience learning difficulties and a sense of solitude. But children who follow their parents are not necessarily better off either. Distance from the familiar environment and the difficulties in adapting to the new life might lead to a sense of estrangement and loneliness as well.

Published 2009-01-23

Original in Romanian
Contributed by Dilema veche
© Dilema veche
© Eurozine