The Politics of Amnesia: a Modern "idiot" in Lucian Dan Teodorovici's Novel Matei Brunul
Year: 2013
Type: article
Abstract: Never were the ideological state apparatuses more efficient in controlling and manipulating collective memory than during the two great totalitarian regimes that scarred the image of the 20th century. That policy was one of the key elements which ensured the leaders' grip on social life in Nazi Germany and in communist countries. However, it was impossible that memory be reformatted just suddenly, by some sleight of hand: the almost complete erasure of the old beliefs and historical knowledge had to be performed in the first place, and this took some time to accomplish. Thus, in Romania and the other countries of the Soviet bloc, we may speak about a culture of induced amnesia that lasted for a good many years after 1947. The novel Matei Brunul (Matthew, the Brownie), recently published by the Romanian author Lucian Dan Teodorovici, which notched up a remarkable critical success, is the story of a 1950's victim of totalitarian repression who also suffers a head trauma resulting in severe retrograde amnesia. My point in this paper is that if we look beyond the diegesis proper, and if we have in mind Halbwachs's and Ricoeur's insistence on the intertwinement of individual and collective memory, the case of Teodorovici's protagonist acquires a prototypical relevance: the way in which the communist Security leaders attempt to fabricate a new self out of a person's amnesic remainders is emblematic for the politics of memory exercised in that epoch. Besides, as a Ukrainian-born trauma specialist, Maria Tumarkin, remarks, the effects of that kind of politics can still be perceived today in the postcommunist society, where an extensive "social amnesia" can be noticed in matters of history and public beliefs.
Author: Radu Surdulescu
Language: English
Subfield: Cultural Studies
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W2407025838