Towards a Critical Theory of Postcommunism? Beyond Anticommunism in Romania

Towards a critical theory of postcommunism? Beyond anticommunism in Romania Ovidiu Ţichindeleanu In Eastern Europe, 1989–2009 has been a time of At the level of the governmental organization of fundamental changes in the meaning of social and power, the postcommunist transition is also of the political concepts, accompanied at different speeds order of closure: the progressive integration of the by the radical transformation of society. I consider former Eastern Bloc into Western structures of power.2 transition the fundamental thematic concept of this The political meaning of transition/integration/acces- historical shift, its operative terms being integration sion is therefore the top-to-bottom alignment of East and accession. Of course, transition had been also the European governmentality in the order of Western fundamental concept of East European regimes before governmentality, and of local economies into the 1989, then defined as the gradual passage from feudal world system of capitalism. As an integration of the agrarian societies to socialism, on the way to com- former Second World into the global periphery or munism.1 Transition used to be the total idea that sub- semi-periphery, this alignment comes is out of sync jected debates, theories and statistics in state-socialist with the Free World: the postcommunist durée of countries, with rhythms punctuated in the daily life transition is inseparable from the generalization of an by party congresses, quintennial and yearly plans, as allochronic regime of perception that converts space well as organized waiting times for the acquisition of into time, to the effect of undermining local histories apartments and consumer goods. In the framework of of autonomy. Due to the ‘deviation of communism’ dialectical materialism, the strategic aspects of transi- from the progressive order of Western modernity, the tion had been stated in Chapter 22 (from capitalism to local Eastern time is ontologically in delay from the socialism) and the long-anticipated Chapter 40 (from Western hour and there is no alternative but to try and socialism to communism) of Polecon, the cult textbook catch up with the standards of development, accepting of Political Economy published for the first time in the necessary sacrifices of the population. The post- 1954 by the Institute of Economy of the Soviet Union. communist transition develops its system of closures by However, in the political expressions of actually exist- way of a series of temporal distinctions that frame its ing socialism, the main subject of transition had not differential space, providing the significations of what been the (socialist) world, but the national state. has been called postcommunist history: from past to Postcommunism has reaffirmed transition, but in a future, from behind the Iron Curtain to the Free World, completely different framework of meaning. While the from communism to capitalism, from totalitarianism end of the transition to communism was an open-ended to democracy, from tyranny to freedom, from madness idea, an actual fantasy, the meaning of the end of post- to normalcy, from backwardness to civilization, from communist transition is delineated through closures, East to West. and by a determined fantasy: technocratic pragmatism In spite of their difference, both transitions, pre- and eradicating the role of ideology in politics. The end of post-1989, be it under the ideology of Polecon or that state-communism did not bring the radical opening of of ‘shock therapy’ and ‘structural reforms’, channelled the Iron Curtain. Rather, the fall of the Berlin Wall and their promises through the vision of an elite (political the domino-like series of 1989 revolutions naturalized or technocratic) that leads the population, in spite of the sense of the end of a world previously defined by sacrifices, towards the fulfilment of modernity. Both division, and now imagined as progressing, from West transitions gave a central role to technocentrism and to East, towards self-transparency. to apparatuses that are delegitimizing leftist criti- 26 cal thought, emancipative reason and the possibility copies. A year later, twenty-six translations in different of political change by claiming the sovereignty of languages had been either made or were in process. the people. In the conditions in which the dominant In Romania, the book was translated and published phenomena of transition have been global capital- in 1998 by Humanitas, the publishing house of the ism and colonization, the postcommunist mainstream postcommunist–anticommunist intellectual elite. As culture industry has lacked any critical assessment influential as it may have been, the Black Book of of capitalism or of the coloniality of power for two Communism is but one drop in the ocean of the new decades (nonetheless, a different picture appears on the local culture industry. Here, the authoritative voices independent scenes). The ‘non-existence’ of capitalo- articulating the discourse on communism belonged centrism and Eurocentrism could have never been to a number of former anticommunist dissidents who, blown to such ideological proportions without the after 1989, had successfully converted their symbolic establishment of anticommunism. This is why the capital into political and/or economic capital. recent debates on the genealogy of postcommunism The great dissidents were perhaps too ready in the in Romania are important on a larger scale, and even early 1990s to pass final judgement on communism more so in times of crisis, because what is at stake is and mistook the superpower/empire left standing with the struggle to hold in place communism as a critique the realm of absolute freedom. This is especially the of capitalism, and an assessment of ‘actually existing case in Romania, where the intellectual dissidents socialism’. For what point is there in a discussion about could not claim a history of organized resistance to East European debates on communism if not to look totalitarianism. Instead, Gabriel Liiceanu, translator there for a renewal of the left theoretical tradition? of Heidegger and director of Humanitas from 1990, coined the formula ‘resistance through culture’ to The anticommunist establishment redefine Romanian dissidence. This meant the study The first decade after 1989 recorded the most dra- of forbidden authors (by communist censorship) in matic decline of the Romanian economy in its history secluded, private, confidential communities. If the and an equally unprecedented explosion of printed whole of society was going downhill, at least a few publications. The discourse of transition/integration people were keeping the cultural flag flying high. replicating Western models passed seamlessly from The Heideggerian theme of falling everydayness and the practices of mass media, whose freedom and unwavering authenticity comes in almost naturally, as ‘professional development’ were generally seen as well as Heidegger’s negative position towards praxis ‘preconditions of democracy’, to the whole society and intersubjectivity. itself. Unsurprisingly, a significant number of works One can argue that since 1989 this line of thought that appeared in the early 1990s pondered on the end has become a programme that reinstitutes the validity of actually existing socialism and/or communism. One of the hierarchical distinction between elite and mass recurring formula was the ‘bankruptcy of communism’, culture, and facilitates ideological conversion. Even itself a syntagm articulated from the perspective of though the end of communism was often interpreted in profit. Even leftist thinkers adopted a similar formula, the works of dissidents as the ultimate disenchantment the ‘failure of the Left’. The most visible moment of (the end of Ideology), the postcommunist culture indus- this movement was the publication in French in 1997 tries excelled in the fetishistic production of accursed of the Black Book of Communism, edited by Stéphane symbols linked with communism, left thought, and the Courtois, an authoritative source that introduced in common man, and the converse import of works and the scholarly world the canon of a grand narrative figures of the masters of thought from the right side identifying communism as a lineage passing from of the political spectrum, a cultural tradition forbidden Marx to Lenin, Stalin and the Gulag; the genre of and censored by communism. In the cultural history direct comparisons between fascism and communism; of postcommunism, anticommunist dissidence cannot and a certain mode of thought in relation to com- be associated anymore with a history of resistance, munism that I would like to call ‘tribunal-thought’ neither with forms of independent culture, but rather – that is, the prosecutorial stance raised to being with cohabitation with and/or direct participation in commanding principle of thought itself, and a mode governmental and capitalist power, and with the local of generalizing speech-acts in the name of the victim. colonization of dominant ideologies, including the The market was ready to welcome the book: one year political ideologies of neoliberalism and neoconserv- after its publication, this massive book of 846 pages, atism. As of recent times, this is no secret either: in priced at 189 francs (around €27) sold over 200,000 a glowing eulogy to neoconservative figure Irving 2 Kristol, Vladimir Tismăneanu openly acknowledged Presidential Committee meant to bring together the that ‘I owe and we owe to the neoconservatives

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