UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, 7th Annual International Postgraduate Conference

Inclusion Exclusion

16-18th February 2006

Thursday 16 February 4:30 – 6:00: Panel C4: Jewish Émigré Literature

Ioana Luca (University of Bucharest/Linacre College, Oxford): ‘In and out: Andrei Codrescu or the journey of a Romanian exile’

What role and effect do contemporary exile intellectuals have in the evolving process of redefinition and reassertion of the former Communist countries? Is their voice exploited or manipulated by political regimes in power? Do they contest and subvert or undermine them? Do they speak "truth to power" (in Said’s terms)? Or are they accomplices and tied up to present authority? How are they included in or excluded from current cultural, political or historical debates within the region?

These are questions that I attempt to answer in my present paper by focusing on the Romanian context. More specifically, I analyze the writings and reception of Andrei Codrescu (Romanian-born writer and poet now living and writing in the U.S.) in Romania, seeking to probe into the politics of an exile’s identity, history and memory. The first part of my study examines Codrescu’s attempt to reconstruct his identity as an excluded individual, a Jew in Communist Romania, later an expatriate and a cultural exile. While examining the forces of various types of exile and exclusion at work in Codrescu’s writings, I also explore the inner mechanisms of autobiographical-historical writing, and the uses of memory and personal history in a post-Communist country. The second part of my paper discusses thus the way Codrescu (de)constructs Romanian contemporary history and ideology in his autobiographical works The Disappearance of the Outside (1989) and The Hole in the Flag: an Exile's Story of Return and Revolution (1991). 'Official' or 'received' history is tampered with and realigned in his writings. The way his work affects changes in the context of current representations/perceptions of the early 90s controversial political situations is of major importance for my paper.

I have found Codrescu’s work and his reception in post 1989 Romania extremely interesting and worth analyzing because it leads one to ask questions regarding agency, authority, political struggle, and political commitment. I argue that Andrei Codrescu testifies for the importance of remembering, retrospective writing and political commitment of the exiled writers in a post-totalitarian and post-Communist country. I consider his work as particularly important because, being addressed to an Anglo-American/Western audience, it plays a significant role in what I take to be a larger context of translating and recuperating/including Romanian culture for a Western audience.