Suchergebnisse

Vladimir Biti, Tracing Global Democracy: Literature, Theory, and the Politics of Trauma. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter. 2016, 394 pp.

The present research aims to explore the institutional history of feminist disciplines and the trajectory of their inclusion in the Romanian academic curriculum, as well as in the intellectual space from the late 90's to the present day. The adoption of feminist theories has been limited by two impediments that have made their curricular inclusion difficult and their circulation in Romania quite sporadic: firstly, the subject has been rejected and boycotted by a moralising conservative public discourse and secondly, their critical disciplinary implication has posed problems of institutional acceptance due to suspicion of leftist bias. The paper aims to analyse the public debates concerning feminism, compared to a form of totalitarianism, in Romania, on the one hand. The second part has in view to define the import channel of feminist studies in Romania, along with the difficulties that hindered the first feminist scholars and activists' efforts to disseminate the discipline in post-communist countries. The liberal ethos with conservative nuances of the Romanian academic space and the public intellectuals' anti-communist positions remain responsible for the poor representation of feminism in Romania, as its impiety towards feminist theories has to do with the protectionism of dominant, conservative discourses.

The notion of being a social animal makes it difficult for humans to exclude space, a quintessential factor of life itself. It serves and chisels humanity throughout. The movement and actions of individuals actuate the space because only when people and artifacts inhabit a space, it turns into a place. This space, be it social or cultural, moulds a person into a mature self and it reflects the ideology, power and politics of the institution existing within it. Every literary work testifies to a space, even though it may be virtual or fictive space. The Hungry Tide is a prophetic novel by Amitav Ghosh about insight, beauty and humanity. It explores the precarious life of some 'desperate' souls sustaining in the region of Sundarbans. The central plot is that Piya, an American cetologist who comes to India and gets the aid of Kanai, a translator and Fokir, a local fisherman, in her adventure in waters. The unlikely trio travel to find the rare Irrawaddy Dolphin and face several unexpected turns. Survival is an everyday battle for the settlers of the Sundarbans who have learned to strike a balance with nature. The space of sea has enormous influence in the destiny of fishermen like 'Fokir'. The novel unravels the ongoing tension between humanity and the space of Sundarbans with its vast salty tracts of mangrove forest. The routine as well as the beliefs of the inhabitants were tamed according to the conditions of that marshy land; for instance, the perpetual threat of tigers. The paper attempts to bring forth the relevance and recognition of the role of space in this novel.

Variousattempts have been made to bring to the attention of a wider historical audience the debates that have taken place among intellectual historians over the past decade. Such summaries may soon be in need of some updating. Insofar as many of these discussions have been inspired by developments among our colleagues in departments of literature, it is worth noting that those scholars likewise have engaged in heated exchanges. Since those debates seem to have resulted in a triumph of "history," we may be looking forward to new modes of argument among intellectual and cultural historians as well. This essay will attempt to present a summary of the issues within poststructuralism that induced this turn to a "new historicism" in departments of literature, and it will conclude by offering some suggestions about the ways in which this tendency might be useful to the study of the German past.