Living Relationships with the Past. Remembering Communism in Romania by Marie-Louise Paulesc A Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy Approved April 2014 by the Graduate Supervisory Committee Sarah Amira De la Garza, Co-Chair Dan Brouwer, Co-Chair Joel Gereboff ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY May 2014 ©2014 Marie-Louise Paulesc All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT In the countries of Eastern Europe, the recent history of the communist regimes creates a context rich in various and, many times, contradictory remembering practices. While normative discourses of memory enacted in official forms of memory such as museums, memorials, monuments, or commemorative rituals attempt to castigate the communism in definite terms, remembering practices enacted in everyday life are more ambiguous and more tolerant of various interpretations of the communist past. This study offers a case study of the ways in which people remember communism in everyday life in Romania. While various inquiries into Eastern Europe’s and also Romania’s official and intentional forms of memorializing communism abound, few works address remembering practices in their entanglements with everyday life. From a methodological point of view, this study integrates a grounded methodology approach with a rhetorical sensitivity to explore the discourses, objects, events, and practices of remembering communism in Bucharest, the capital city of Romania. In doing so, this inquiry attends not only to the aspects of the present that animate the remembering of communism, but also and more specifically to the set of practices by which the remembering process is performed. The qualitative analysis revealed a number of conceptual categories that clustered around three major themes that describe the entanglements of remembering activities with everyday life. Relating the present to the past, sustaining the past in the present, and pursuing the communist past constitute the ways in which people in Romania live their relationships with the communist past in a way that reveals the complex interplay i between private and public forms of memory, but also between the political, social, and cultural aspects of the remembering process. These themes also facilitate a holistic understanding of the rhetorical environment of remembering communism in Romania. ii To Alex and Daniel. To my parents, Maria and Dan iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS There are many people who have contributed in many and significant ways to this work. First and foremost, I am especially thankful for the continual and warm support I have received over the years from my advisors, Dan Brouwer, and Amira de la Garza. They have generously offered to me their time and expertise and the long and in-depth conversations, their insightful comments, and their challenging questions have transformed not only my work, but they have transformed me into a better critical scholar. Thank you for being such great mentors! I am also indebted to Joel Gereboff, whose expertise in collective memory supported my conceptual thinking throughout all the stages of my work. His generous feedback and help were vital to my project. I am also heavily indebted to my colleague and great friend, Roberta Chevrette, for allowing me to use her as my sounding board, for the precious time she spent reading, editing, and offering valuable feedback in various stages of my work, as well as for lifting my spirits and providing encouragements. I am grateful to my sister-in-law, Julie Paulesc, for reading and editing my work, for checking my translations from Romanian, and for being a good and patient listener when I needed one. This work would have not been possible without the generous and enthusiastic support I have received during my fieldwork from my Romanian friends: Iulia Popovici, Miruna Runcan, Anamaria Pravicencu, Diana Barca, Adriana Savu, and Ana-Maria Sandu. I am also forever indebted to my interviewees, who offered their time and cultural expertise. iv Thanks to all those who helped me along the way with insightful conversations, coffee, laughs, and encouragements: Terrie Wong, Shuzhen Huang, Jieyoung Kong, Mary Domenico, Brian Ott, Nathan Stormer, and Greg Dickinson. I am also especially grateful to the Hugh Downs School of Human Communication for providing financial support for my travel to Romania and to the Graduate College for the fellowship that supported the writing of this dissertation. I would also like to express my infinite gratitude to my husband, Daniel, for his relentless support and encouragements, and to my son, Alex, who was kind and understanding. v TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER Page 1 INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………..1 The Past Under Revision……………………..………………………………….3 The Communist Past Between Void and Abundance……………………….…..7 The Communist Past Caught in Politics……………..…………………………10 Recent History, Live(d) Memory……….……………………………………...13 Remembering in the Everyday……...……………………………………….…17 Living Relationships with the Past………………………..……………………22 2 METHODOLOGY………………………………………………………………...33 Introduction………………………………………………………………….…33 Collecting Data……………………………………………….…..………….…34 Participant Observation and Interviews……...………….………………..…38 Sampling……………………...…………………….……………………40 Convenience Sampling…………………………………...…………..40 Snowball Sampling…………………………………….……………..41 Purposive Sampling……………………………...………………..….41 Settings and the Role of Researcher………………………………..……42 Settings………………………………………………………………..43 My Role as a Researcher……………………………………….……..47 Semi-Structured Interviews…………………………...…………...…….50 Recruiting……………………………………………………………..50 Consent and confidentiality………………………………………..…54 v CHAPTER Page Interview Process………………………………….……………..……....54 Interview Questions…………………………………………………..56 Other Contacts in the Field…………………………………..…………..….59 Analyzing Data in Grounded Theory……………………………….………….59 Coding in Grounded Theory……..…………….……………………………61 Process of Analysis……………………………………………………….....62 Open Coding…………………………………………………………......62 Focused Coding……………………………………………………….....64 Constant Comparison………………………………………………….....65 Axial Coding……….………………………………………………….....65 Themes……….………………………………………………………......67 Sensitivity………………………………………………………………………68 View on the Grounded Theory Method………….………………………....69 Data/Textual Fragments………………………………………………..…...71 Rhetorical Sensitivity and Process of Analysis……….………………..…...73 Theorizing in rhetoric……………………………………………………….75 Writing………………………………………………………….………………76 3 RELATING THE PRESENT TO THE PAST…………………………………….89 Introduction…………………………………………….………………………89 Conceptual Categories………………………………………………………….93 Comparing the Present to the Past………………..………………...……….93 Explaining the present in Terms of the Past……………………………..….94 vi CHAPTER Page Defining Identity………….…….…………………………………………...94 Defining Generational Identity………………………………………..…94 Defining Romanian Identity……………………………………………..95 The Students……………………………………………………….…………. 96 “Just Like during Communism”…………………………………………96 “I, Too, Was Born During Communism!”……………………………..100 “We Speak from Fragments”…………………………………………..102 “A State of Physical Sickness”………………………...……………….104 “A History that Is Hidden from Us”……………………...………….…107 The Activist………………………………………...…………………………111 “The Same Name, the Same Project, the Same Style. Unbelievable!”........111 “It Could Also Come from Before”……………………..…………………114 “Everything is Frozen in Time”……………………………...………….…116 The Family Doctor………………………...………………………………….122 ”They Were like Two Trops of Water”........................................................122 “Don’t Talk to Anybody about Your Personal Stuff”….……………….…124 “Does it Come from Communism or Where Does it Come From?”...….…129 4 SUSTAINING THE PAST IN THE PRESENT…………………………………143 Introduction……………………….………………………………………..…143 Conceptual Categories .……….…………………...……………………..…...149 Preserving the Past………………………………………….…….…….…149 Invoking Nostalgia……….……………………………………………..…153 vii