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Hesitation as an Interpretive Strategy

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Hesitant Histories on the Romanian Screen

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Abstract

In this chapter the author introduces a range of theoretical concepts that are used for the articulation of hesitation, which is deployed in the analyses presented in the subsequent chapters. Starting with a discussion on the concepts of modernism and realism, the chapter progresses via Lefebvre’s and de Certeau’s notion of the social production of space. After demonstrating that hesitation as a mobile subject position can be employed in the visual arts, the author integrates the idea of mobility and spatiality in the specifically Romanian cultural context of spatial design.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    While Lefebvre does not deploy the concept of the “panoptic” to refer to the top-down mechanism in the construction of space, I will use it throughout my study in a Foucauldian sense (Foucault 1991).

  2. 2.

    Throughout the study I will refer to the 1945–1989 era in the Eastern European bloc as the state socialist period. As Kornai argues, the term communism refers to a set of ideas, while state socialism refers to the system that aimed at the construction of that set of ideas (Kornai 1992, 9–12). Since the emphasis here is on the political formation and the institutions of the state in the designated period, and not so much the ideological considerations behind the actions of the social agents, I will systematically refer to these as state socialist. Additionally, through this conceptual choice I also attempt to avoid activating the semantic layers of the term communism, which mobilize a dichotomic Cold War terminology.

  3. 3.

    A good example of this approach in a journalistic context is A. O. Scott’s video analysis (Scott 2011). However, academic discussions of New Romanian Cinema also use this framework, for example Gorzo (2012), Nasta (2013), or Pop (2014).

  4. 4.

    Some of the key writings that summarize the ongoing debates in this field are Connerton (1989), Misztal (2003), and Radstone-Schwarz (2010).

  5. 5.

    Here Lefebvre indicates in a footnote that he borrowed the concepts of competence and performance from Chomsky, “which should not be taken as implying any subordination of the theory of space to linguistics” (Lefebvre 1991, 33). However, this conceptual connection will be taken up by de Certeau, who talks explicitly about the possibility of using literary tropes in the analyses of spatial practices.

  6. 6.

    In Lefebvre’s original this concept reads as les espaces de représentation. While Nicholson-Smith, the English translator, used “representational spaces,” Stuart Elden argues that “spaces of representation” has become the standard practice. See Elden (2004, 206, footnote 186).

  7. 7.

    On the anthropological effect of the early phases of sistematizare, and the urbanization of rural communities, see Sampson (1982).

  8. 8.

    Films on the past include 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days (Cristian Mungiu 2006), Tales from the Golden Age (Hanno Höfer, Razvan Marculescu, Cristian Mungiu, Constantin Popescu, Ioana Uricaru 2009), The Paper Will Be Blue (Radu Muntean 2006), How I Spent the End of the World (Cătălin Mitulescu 2006), and 12:08 East of Bucharest (Corneliu Porumboiu 2006).

  9. 9.

    Films about the present include The Death of Mr Lazarescu (Cristi Puiu 2006), Aurora (Cristi Puiu 2010), If I Want to Whistle, I Whistle (Florin Șerban 2010), Everybody in Our Family (Radu Jude 2012), Best Intentions (Adrian Sitaru 2011), Tuesday After Christmas (Radu Muntean 2010), Morgen (Marian Crisan 2010), Outbound (Bogdan George Apetri 2010), The Child’s Pose (Calin Peter Netzer 2013), and When Evening Falls on Bucharest or Metabolism (Corneliu Porumboiu 2013).

  10. 10.

    The connection between studies in post-socialism and postcolonialism has received a lot of attention recently. On the general connections between postcolonialism and post-socialism, see for example Moore (2006) or Kiossev (2011). Among other writers, Mazierska et al. (2013) or Imre (2014) discuss this complex web of relations in the context of cinema. Hajnal Király’s (2015) study on mobility, space, and postcolonialism in Romanian and Hungarian cinema is a good example of the possible applications of this theoretical framework.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary

    László Strausz

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  1. László Strausz
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Strausz, L. (2017). Hesitation as an Interpretive Strategy. In: Hesitant Histories on the Romanian Screen. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55272-9_2

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