From Communism to Capitalism: Nation and State in Romanian Cultural Production

This book offers an interdisciplinary mode of analyzing transitions from communism and planned economy to democracy and capitalism focusing on how the various social and political transformations are reflected within one hundred Romanian films produced during communism, transition, and post-transition.

Table of Contents:
1. Transitions and the Aesthetic Turn 1 2. Radical Social Change and Distortions of Fantasy Formations: a Model of Analysis 39 3. Transitions and The Changing Face of the Social Authority 69 4. The Journey of the Romanian Worker Hero 115 5. The Changing Face of the Sacrificial Romanian Woman 147 6. From Communism to Capitalism: Reshaping the Space of the Nation 181 7. Conclusions 209

About the Author :
Dr. Florentina C. Andreescu is a lecturer in International Studies at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. Her work investigates through cinema issues of legitimization and social authority, gendered, national and ethnic identities, transitions, trauma and space. She has published in peer-reviewed journals such as Space and Culture, Nationalities Papers: the Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity, Studies in Ethnicity and Nationalism, Studia Politica Romanian Political Science Review and Short Film Studies.

Review :
"From Communism to Capitalism: Nation and State in Romanian Cultural Production develops an imaginative and innovative examination of identity formation and change in communist and post-communist Romania by tracking the presentation and evolution of three central aspects of identity in Romanian film those of the worker, of women in society, and the concept of the nation. The author draws upon post-modernist theoretical interpretations of self and other to provide the reader with a clear picture of the ways in which political and economic transition have overlapped with cultural and psychological change. The resulting narrative provides an important almost essential - complement to the narrowly political and economic analyses that dominate the field of post-communist transition studies." - Roger E. Kanet, Professor, University of Miami, and editor of Russian Foreign Policy in the Twenty-First Century "Combining theoretical depth, with lucid application, Andreescu's inquiry into the transition to Romania's post communist, state-implicated fantasy structures is a wide ranging scholarly contribution that transcends considerably the usual individual nation-focused investigation. Articulating psychoanalysis, cultural analysis, international political economy, state theory and feminist theory, with conceptually astute film readings, From Communism to Capitalism is a brilliant application of aesthetic methodology and a compelling, interdisciplinary contribution to many areas of political inquiry." - Michael J. Shapiro, Department of Political Science, University of Hawai'i, Manoa