Anthropology of East Europe Review

LAYERED ENCOUNTERS: PERFORMING MULTICULTURALISM AND THE URBAN PALIMPSEST AT THE ‘GATEWAY OF EUROPE’ Kristof Van Assche, Minnesota State Universities – St. Cloud State Petruţa Teampău, Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj Napoca

Introduction infrastructure and public space assist us in deconstructing the glorious CED narrative given In this paper, we will explore the that these things do not say much about the kind performance of multiculturalism in Sulina, a of multiculturalism that prevailed. Interviews small town on the eastern edge of the Romanian establish that few ethnic “neighborhoods” Danube Delta. Similar to places such as Odessa existed. In general, first and second streets were (Richardson 2005, 2006) and Trieste (Magris more urban, more expensive, and more 1989, Ballinger 2003), Sulina has a cosmopolitan Greek/Armenian/Jewish. However, there were heritage and a nostalgia for empire – a nostalgia exceptions to this general pattern. Older people for the glory days of hustle and bustle in the port, who still acknowledge their Lipovan (Old economic prosperity, political relevance, Believer) roots ascribe their quick assimilation to international networks, and cultural their scattering throughout the city, including the sophistication. Sulina was the product of the more urban streets (where some houses were European Danube Committee (CED), an vacated by the other groups). international organization long defunct. Yet images of the glorious CED period (late 19th What emerged from our investigations century and early 20th century) pervade both was a highly complex picture. Local identity (“I local discourses about place and cultural identity am from Sulina”) was more relevant in self- and discourses emanating elsewhere that identification than ethnic/cultural identity while promotes tourism and the project of European the unifying myth of cosmopolitanism, integration (Teampău and Van Assche 2007). A reinvigorated under tourism and under the feature of the current imagery of cosmopolitan European Union, underlies this apparent glory days under the CED is the peaceful homogeneity. Simultaneously, ethnic identity coexistence of various ethnic groups –Turks, still exists, and different versions of the myth Greeks, Armenians, Brits, Jews, Romanians and together with other legacies from the past others. This coexistence is not reflected upon and produce patterns of social interaction and is unproblematically assimilated to present-day performances of multiculturalism, where, “European” ideals of multiculturalism. depending on the occasion fragments of a multitude of discourses are actualized and The local myth of cosmopolitanism long integrated. It is, we argue, in the variety of gone is, as usual, far removed from the historical everyday encounters that one can study the realities of accommodations between various functioning of the local discourses on self, other, cultural groups (Ballinger 2003, Malcolmson and cosmopolis, and, simultaneously, map out 1998). What interests us more in this paper is the the diversity in discourses. While we did not function of that local myth in everyday life in originally envisage the use of the metaphor of Sulina, its appropriation in tourist and political the palimpsest, it emerged as an appropriate tool discourses, and, finally, the response and re- to analyze the layered and fragmentary appropriation by the locals of a myth that is potentiality of identity discourse in Sulina (Van increasingly becoming an economic asset. Assche and Teampau 2008). During fieldwork conducted in 2003, 2006, 2007, and 2008, in Sulina, and in Tulcea, the regional capital, we studied discourses on Sulina, Palimpsest Revisited its histories, and its cultural complexity. We According to recent developments in the attempted to unveil different versions of the local fields of urban anthropology, postmodern human imagery of cosmopolitanism and contrast them geography, and cultural studies, places, as with observed performances of multiculturalism, objects of study, are no longer considered the present-day construction and use of innocent, stable settings, but should be analyzed ethnic/cultural categories, and categories of i as social and political products and contexts of cooperation, coexistence, assimilation. social interactions, always embedded in relations Sulina’s modest size, its relatively of power. This perspective upholds a new social modest stock of historical buildings, “reading” of urban space, emphasizing its unique

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Anthropology of East Europe Review polymorphy, as well as the plurivocality of city- multiculturalism. In geography, the metaphor of stories and, consequently, the richness of the landscape as palimpsest is traditionally potential inquiry into the most “familiar” and embedded in the metaphor of landscape as text, a closed spaces. Urban places, as dynamic contexts metaphor that has generated an impressive of social interaction and memory, are not only amount of research (Daniels 1988, Barnes and ideology-informed, but also have the power to Duncan 1992). However, due to the limitations coalesce and sustain a community. Recent of the underlying semiotic model (interpretation discussions in urban studies and social sciences as reading of text, discourse as text), the focus on the diversity of urban life, in viewing resulting palimpsest metaphor does not capture cities as “encounters, as spatial formations much of the complexity brought forth by the resulting from dense networks of interaction and discursive construction of reality, as understood as places of meeting with ‘the stranger’” and by Foucault (as exemplified by Foucault 1968). with his/her “difference” (Simonsen 2008: 145). If we understand reality as discursively Sulina, our site of observation, is constructed, then every observable aspect of located at the mouth of the Danube, a region that reality, including human actions and interactions, has always been of political and economic can be interpreted as discursively articulated interest. Sulina covers a small limb of land in- (Foucault 1968, Barnes and Duncan 1992, between the Danube and the Black Sea. It can be Bowers and Iwi 1992). This in turn implies that argued that the landscapes of most Romanian both communication and action can be the locus post-socialist cities are palimpsests with different of observation for competing discourses, layers of meaning, where stories and discourses dissonant voices, for traces of older discourses collide to establish a new reading of the city that shimmering through. In other words, the puts the communist past out of sight. New landscape of social interaction, consisting of business networks, new places, new power communication and action, can be interpreted as relations, are being inscribed on pre-existing a palimpsest, offering glimpses of the genealogy spaces, while abandoned industrial landscapes of concepts (like multiculturalism, ethnic are being reinterpreted. In the case of Sulina, categories) and glimpses of competing memory plays a vital role in (re) inscribing the discourses, just like a physical landscape, or city landscape with fresh meanings, erasing or space, shows us traces of older orders and obliterating other (and others’) denotations, and competing orders. For the people in Sulina, in giving a sense to “our” city. Drawing on urban space and the urban palimpsest is always anthropological fieldwork (interviews with local available as a source of identity discourses. For people, authorities, decision makers, tourists, and them, and not just for the researcher, as is often extended participant observation) our paper assumed in geographical research, city space describes the official strategies for marketing functions as a palimpsest. For us, as researchers, diversity and multiculturalism – an important this function of urban space as palimpsest for the local resource crucial for forging a local/global locals was an integral part of everyday (European) identity. We also describe the gaps multiculturalism we were interested in. In our between, on the one hand, the official discourse reading and reconstruction of the palimpsest of on history and the urban palimpsest of the city, social interaction, the situational interpretation of and, on the other hand, between the former and the spatial palimpsest by the locals offered us the day-to-day intercultural experience, as valuable clues. Urban space provides an recalled by elderly people as part of their indispensable substratum for the reproduction of personal biographies (Teampau and Van Assche the local myth of cosmopolitanism in all its 2009). variations. “Palimpsest” thus acquires a double Learning (from) the past of one’s city is meaning in our analyses. Whereas the part of the process of building an identity and of geographical literature of the 1990s (indebted to self-positioning in one’s environment, that the investigations of Swiss geographer Claude “complex mental map or significance by which Raffestin in the 1970s) usually sees the physical the city might be recognized as ‘home’” (Bridge landscape as the palimpsest, the manuscript with and Watson 2002: 4). Admittedly, this is not to older layers of text shimmering through in say that there is a perfect coherence and fragmentary fashion, we also want to consider integration of the individual in the texture and the landscape of social encounters as a life of the city. On the contrary, there is no single palimpsest in Sulina: a palimpsest of city, nor one unitary narrative of it. People and

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Anthropology of East Europe Review groups “live” differently the space of the city, open air restaurant for tourists are the they imagine and construct urban places in unpretentious local taverns mostly frequented by diverse manners, and in this process, memory Lipoveni. and nostalgia have a special role in inscribing the This first street, paralleling the Danube city with certain meanings while concealing and full of sounds and lights in the warm others. summer evenings, overlooks the old shipyard and the Prospect fishermen neighborhood across The Narrative City: Stories and the Urban the Danube, where life has a different rhythm, Palimpsest prices are lower and there are hardly any lights at night. This heterogeneous physical landscape is Stories people tell about places serve wrapped in multiple overlapping semiotic strata: not only to position them in a desired location, stories of people born in Sulina, whose lives are but also, to delineate social boundaries, to assert intimately intricate with its history; stories of who “belongs” and who doesn’t, to clarify who people who came “to the city” from the deep of we are (Bird 2002). In other words, “narratives the swamp, for whom the space of the urban is a make places habitable and believable, […] they collection of ill-fated places and magical spots, organize the invisible meanings of the city” of supernatural interdictions and witchcraft; (Simonsen 2008: 146). If we look at the stories of people who try to find the stories of the discursive makeup of landscape, we can notice city; and the mainstream narrative about “how that contesting meanings of urban belonging and this city used to be,” a narrative that feeds the divergent stories and memories are crucial for local pride and substantiates the identity of the local identity and for articulating the future of place. the city. Since every city is a privileged space of diversity and heterogeneity, “collective memory” Stories people tell about place and their is just a rhetorical construction, while in fact memories about it are neither innocent nor “there is a plurality of social memories in every without consequences. The city is cut through by city – each particular to a different group and ethnic/group differences that sometimes translate routed in the material and mental spaces it has into spatial differences; imagining the city experienced” (Bélanger 2002: 78). involves also visualizing and enforcing boundaries, whether practical or discursive, Sulina was originally built following a material or symbolic and always delineate grid pattern of six streets paralleling the flow of networks of inclusion/exclusion. This “politics of the Danube. Its architectural mix of nineteenth belonging” as Daniel Trudeau calls it, pertains to century buildings (most of Turkish and Greek “the discourses and practices that establish and design), interwar buildings, modern terraces and maintain discursive and material boundaries that socialist blocks of flats testify to different correspond to the imagined geographies of a historical epochs and functionalities. Passing polity and to the spaces that normatively embody from Street I to the other five parallel streets of the polity” (Trudeau 2006: 422). the city entails a unique gradual translation from urban to rural, each with specific architecture However, the imaginary map of the city and routines. However, in Sulina the urban and its symbolic construction does not only palimpsest currently speaks the language of comprise boundaries between its communities, decay and transformation. Yet it also stands as a but also bears witness to another type of witness to the city’s better epochs and to encounters. In the case of Sulina, the constant subsequent political upheavals. The ruins in the influx of tourists (at least during the summer) has urban scenery of Sulina (old damaged houses, had an impact on re-inventing local identity and sometimes just a façade still standing while on on re-enforcing local pride. As Fiona Allon the inside vegetation has literally consumed the argues, in such encounters, “the city is produced walls; abandoned shops still bearing as a distinctive and marketable place with a “communist” inscriptions) speak different particular myth of identity at the same time as it memories and evoke different stories and ghosts. is being rewritten by global economic forces They comprise a contradictory and operating above and beyond its boundaries” heterogeneous urban landscape with restaurants (Allon 2004: 55). full of lights and voices adjacent to a silent and dim empty house; hidden behind the former Sulina: Diversity and Local Narratives communist market deserted for years and For most of its history, Sulina was a suddenly transformed into the most fashionable

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Anthropology of East Europe Review pirates’ nest and a humble rural settlement. According to the official website of However, Sulina’s golden age began with the Sulina’s town hall, “The city of Sulina has been establishment here of the European Commission characterized as a multiethnic settlement from its of Danube (CED) in 1856. CED was a earliest documents, a ‘Europolis’ in which supranational organization composed of inhabitants of different origins have lived representatives of France, England, Austria, together in a perfect harmony, a fact which has Prussia, Russia, Sardinia, and Turkey (See been passed down through centuries until today.” Teampau and Van Assche 2007 for more Moreover, “the inhabitants of the city, whose historical background). In addition to its role in geographical, cultural and especially financial dredging the Danube and improving navigation, isolation did not always favour them, have the Commission was actively involved in the life always had the feeling of belonging to the big of the town in a kind of beneficial colonization melting pot named DOBROGEA (where we can which included sponsoring all churches and meet Greeks, Turks, Armenians, Italians, building confessional cemeteries, hospitals and Aromanians, Megleno-Romanians, Ukrainians, schools. By 1939, CED had transformed Sulina Lipoveni Russians, Gypsies etc.). This was an into a modern city, a fashionable resort, and a internationally recognized example of peaceful flourishing Porto Franco of over 10, 000 multiethnic coexistence.” This self-presentation inhabitants. Proudly presented in the media as speaks, once again, about the complexity of local “the most cosmopolitan city in the country”, identification. While feeling alienated from a until the Second World War Sulina was the main political system they do not really identify with Romanian harbor on the Danube and home to (“the first to see the sun and the last to see consulates of all the important European justice”) and having changed, for that matter, countries. several political-administrative authorities in the Before World War II, the social and past two centuries (Turk, Russian, European, and political landscape of Sulina changed finally Romanian), since 1939, most people of dramatically. Most “Europeans” disappeared Sulina would rather identify themselves either as with the dissolution of CED in 1939, while Jews, “European” (to which their unique history Armenians, and most Greeks left shortly after entitles them), or “Sulinean” (again, as symbol World War II. During the communist period, the of their peculiarity and marginality). However, population was heavily “Romanianised” and they seem reluctant to identify as “part of the efforts were made to erase all signs of Delta”, to which the urbanites refer as “the “imperialist” prosperity in the urban landscape. swamp” (and which is “out there”); this official While Sulina possessed a prosperous local presentation actually places Sulina as part of the industry during communism, today it is historical region of Dobrogea, between the Delta, characterized by decay like of many of the Black Sea and the Danube, a region Romania’s small cities. In addition, Sulina is recognized as a multicultural area. only accessible by water; the local favorite After the communist demise in 1989, catchphrase, “we are the first to see the light and local authorities began recuperating the the last to see justice” speaks both of the previously forbidden pre-World War II history of geographical and political marginality. Local the city and emphasized its multiculturalism and authorities try to conceal this disadvantage by prosperity as part of the new “European” arguing that Sulina, the most Eastern city of the discourse. They presented a mythologized European Union, is not some long-forgotten general narrative of urban history in which the place, but the very “gateway of Europe.” This city’s residents participated optimistically in argument visibly follows from a nostalgic vision constructing a city of incredible affluence with in which Sulina, and the whole region, played a “over 40,000 inhabitants” (compared to 5,000 vital role in European trade and communication. today), “27 ethnicities”, several confessions and However, they seem to ignore the fact that the ethnic schools. While the remaining buildings political and geo-strategical relevance of the are a testament to this past and while the official lower Danube region has changed dramatically discourse is attractive on tourist brochures and over the past century, and a more appropriate sometimes “sells” to uninformed visitors, there is understanding of Sulina’s role and place on the clearly a gap between this official narrative and map of Europe would have to look more closely the local urban landscape. With a Romanian at the interplay of global-local identities and majority, a minority of Lipoveni (Russian Old interactions, in which the European Union is just Believers) and less than two percent Greeks left one actor (Van Assche and Teampau 2009). (not to mention only two Armenians), local

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Anthropology of East Europe Review authorities still try to present Sulina as a city of always mutually situational identification” (apud diversity with a unique history and destiny as Simonsen 2008: 152). Developing this idea, “the gateway of Europe.” Simonsen advocates a “practical orientalism”, However, the historical Sulina of one that can “grasp how hegemonic ideas official discourse does not match up with the translate into everyday practices and infiltrate the urban landscape of the present. While history ‘banal’ spaces of ordinary life, including visibly lingers in the decayed walls of old houses everyday sociality and sensual experience” we are not presented with information about (Simonsen 2008: 153). A number of analyses of those buildings but rather an abstract narrative of the multicultural city connect the narratives of a once prosperous city that does not need “proof” difference to “banal” everyday experiences, to or material remains to hold true. A local museum everyday embodied practices and particularly to in a former lighthouse is primarily focused on meals and food. In Sulina, most biographical the local hero and writer Jean Bart and the narratives are accounts of people growing up and activities of CED, but does not portray the playing together, learning each other’s language, multicultural life of the prewar city. Further, participating in ethnic ceremonies and life course prewar multicultural life is reflected in neither rituals (weddings, funerals), even attending the the annual Festival of Minorities which attempts other’s church, mixed with anecdotes of daily to showcase the ethnic diversity of the region interaction with so many “others”, all of which (Greeks, Lipoveni, Turks, Tatars, Armenians reconstruct a grassroots vision of intercultural etc.) and retains the overtone of propaganda, nor city life. the widely advertised “maritime cemetery” with its separate sections for Christians, Jews, “Well, the old ones are gone, now there are Muslims and Lipoveni Old Believers. All these only Lipoveni and haholi”: Memory, mnemonic places seem to be isolated items in the Nostalgia and Community complex web of local history. There are almost In Sulina, people tend to recollect the no narrative links between the existence of this past in the frame of two main intertwining unique cemetery and the peculiar urban life of narratives: that of prosperity and that of multicultural Sulina that enabled it. One notable intercultural tolerance. In a forthcoming article exception is the local legend of “the (Teampau and Van Assche 2009) we investigate princess/dancer and her lover buried together” the mutual relationship between collective which is netted around two graves in the remembering and personal memories by looking cemetery. While most nineteenth century at how individual – autobiographical – accounts tombstones with English, Italian, French names are socially and politically framed and shaped, on them offer no explanation and no inquiry in and how the unique and particular context of the collective imaginary; this local legend is in each personal account is negotiated – through fact largely based on the fictional plot of the narrative – to comply with the official version of “Europolis” novel by local writer Jean Bart. collective memory. Sulina was a Porto Franco Nonetheless, narrative interviews with and a harbor where people came and went. There elderly people can bring us a little closer to the was indeed a unique blend of ethnicities, specificities of everyday multicultural life in religious confessions and languages. Sulina. Thus, some accounts indicate that while Nevertheless, nostalgia tends to even out the the city flourished, it was split symbolically, and rough edges, facilitate the “forgetting” of even physically, between the spaces of the conflicts and present the past through rose- European employees of CED – usually coloured spectacles. temporary residents of western European origin The very ethnic groups that made Sulina – and local workers and merchants. What the “most cosmopolitan city in the country” are seemed to be a “big happy family” could have no longer there. The functioning of CED with its been a city in which symbolic and material many representatives and employees of different boundaries delimited spaces of interethnic ethnicities who worked together and community life. communicated on a daily basis likely had an Baumann cautioned us about the peril of important role in generating the “cosmopolitan” reification of cultures in discussions of outlook of the city. However, the French, the multiculturalism, arguing “multicultural society British, the Dutch, Italians, Germans etc. are not is not a patchwork of five or ten cultural “remembered” by contemporary residents identities, but an elastic web of crosscutting and (except for few cases where the informants’

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Anthropology of East Europe Review family had personal connections to them), explanation: “they left and took their tombstones perhaps due to the boundaries mentioned above. with them.” In Sulina, remembering “the old Ethnic groups that remain in the collective ones” and their absence in the contemporary life memory are people who were part of the of the city is performed in a special frame: the multicultural day-to-day life of the city and narrative of the peculiar “ethnic” personality (as involved in its social networks and in the fabric the quintessence of an entire community now of urban co-existence. Jews, Armenians, Turks, gone). Although there are some exceptions such and Greeks were traditionally urban populations as Mr. Zachis who has detailed knowledge of the involved in commerce and trade (Van Assche cosmopolitan life of the interwar city, most and Teampau 2009). Their involvement in these respondents remember interesting characters. professions had a significant influence on the One example of such a character is Mr. Ardaşe, built environment and forms of urban sociality in an Armenian who owned a soda and lemonade the city. Similar to what Amy Mills has noted in shop and who married a former prostitute from the case of Istanbul “the Greeks, Jews and Bessarabia, a very beautiful woman. Another Armenians took the character of the city with example is Zadik Ervant, the uncle of the last them when they departed” (Mills 2006: 371). Armenian of Sulina who was homeless and was Most of the contemporary inhabitants of the origin of the local saying about vagrants: “he Sulina are either Romanians or Lipoveni who is like Zadik.” A third character is the Greek came to “to the city” from neighboring villages. Camberis, the rich owner of an elegant hotel, still According to the last census, of a total remembered as a man of his habits. A final population of 5140, 82.5% are Romanians, individual is the Armenian dentist, formerly a 10.6% Lipoveni, 2.14% Ukrainians, 1.3% housepainter, who was a short fat man who Greeks, and 0.2% Turks. Very few are old smoked a lot and walked around with his enough to actually remember Sulina before the dentists’ instruments, a pipe, and a little bag of war. Since many of them learn anew about tobacco. Sulina’s glorious past, one would think that they would be less likely to long for a past they have Trauma no connection to (biographical and/or affective). Historical trauma can mark a Nonetheless, as Pine, Kaneff and Haukanes have community long after the most affected groups made clear, conflicts over memory are not only have departed (Antze and Lambek 1996). In the about the historical truth, but also about identity community left traumatized, the coping claims and power (Pine, Kaneff and Haukanes mechanisms can be complex and manifold. 2004: 3-4). In this case, divergence over memory Sulina narratives speak of a strong desire for can hide an underlying, tacit divergence between unity and harmony, for an absence of difference, groups, who develop loyalties and memories of in this case disguised as an unproblematic different times. After all, many of the Lipoveni coexistence of difference. Reconstructions of the and Romanians used to work for the Greeks and narratives of group identity and place history Armenians – the main characters in the nostalgic imply systematic forgetting. A Freudian narratives – not infrequently as domestic therapeutic anamnesis in Sulina is all the more servants. Even when they participate in a difficult because the present inhabitants, even if common mnemonic account of Sulina’s “good they assimilated into older narratives of place, times,” details of their own biography locate are so radically different. The Halbwachsian them in different social strata and places. “social frames,” conceptual spaces from which to Writing about a certain melancholy of remember, have vanished; the vantage points are remembering the mahalle in Istanbul, Amy Mills gone. argues that “the narrative of peace and tolerance In referring to the absent Armenians so embedded in the landscape of social memory prominent in prewar Sulina, residents often said, obscures other, untold stories of the mahalle’s “they even took their graves with them” which past: the traumatic events that pushed out the implies ungratefulness or even guilt. What minority communities” (Mills 2006: 379). Very remains of the Armenians are characters like Mr. few people in Sulina actually remember that Ervant and Mr. Ardaşe. They figure in the Greeks were forced to leave during the Second dominant narrative of the prosperous CED World War, even without papers, while the Sulina as sidekicks in a story that is driven by absence of Armenians from collective memory very generic characters and episodes: “the and the urban landscape has a peculiar Europeans” came; they developed the town;

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Sulina became prosperous; “everyone” lived CED self-representations, which portray the together peacefully in close proximity without CED as a benevolent ruler that brought real tensions. In the stories of elderly residents, civilization, European values and prosperity. “The Europeans” are not specified and the other Older counter-narratives to the CED self- groups are reduced to cartoonish individual presentations, possibly held by under-privileged characters while stories’ development and groups or their descendants, can hardly be traced. harmony are systematically embellished. A historical anthropology of multiculturalism in After the Second World War, groups prewar Sulina would prove extremely hard that had previously worked for the now-vanished because of lack of sources (the CED does have urban elites (Greeks, Armenians, Jews) became extensive archives but most of the archives of the the dominant groups in the city. Despite this, it is other groups have disappeared together with the still possible to trace the embellishment of these people) and the memories of the present do not narratives, some old tensions, and some counter- allow for a reconstruction of the old narratives. In longer interviews, Sulina’s elderly positionalities or the complexity of the old residents refer to significant hardships, distrust, encounters. and class inequality partly tied to ethnic distinctions. Autobiographical narratives that do Historic Ruptures and the Legibility of the not hide the negative aspects of pre-war life, Palimpsest: Communism dramatic family histories stretching back to the As stated before, we have scrutinized CED period, do clash frequently with the contemporary multiculturalism as a palimpsest positive Sulina myth of prosperous, tolerant where old patterns of encounters and localized cosmopolitanism. The tensions between the rosy identity constructions shimmer through in Sulina myth and more gritty stories are often not present relations and identifications. In order to observed by the local storytellers who switch understand contemporary forms of effortlessly from one register to another. multiculturalism and its spatial forms, it is Anecdotes about the tragedies of the war reveal important to attend to the traces of communist the quick dissolution of the social fabric of the histories and ethnic policies. The transformations CED period, a fabric that had been deteriorating and permutations of CED-era narratives and earlier. As in many other places, the war brought counter- narratives might be extremely hard to simmering tensions, envy, and distrust to the trace (the re- appropriation of CED propaganda surface. The sheer quantity of stories about the is about the only clear issue) but much more is riches of the urban elites, their fate, and the known about the communist narratives. enduring suspicions among Sulinese regarding Consequently, the palimpsest of multiculturalism the appropriation of that old wealth betray, on will more easily yield fragments of the the one hand, the power of the glorified CED- communist narrative. The festival of minorities narrative, and on the other hand, fissures in that we observed from 2006-2008 still bears the mark same narrative. Longer interviews reveal that of communist conceptions of ethnic identity – few people had any objection to the departure of the notion of the peaceful coexistence of other ethnic groups. What happened to their different groups that have entered a new era, assets was far more important. Few stories leaving irrelevant differences and quarrels acknowledged the role of the networks and behind. Ethnicities were reified and reduced to geopolitics of Western Europeans, Greeks, costume, dance, food, and music to be displayed Armenians and Jews in the rise and functioning on certain occasions (festivals) and in certain of Sulina. places (folklore museums). Power differentials As mentioned earlier, most of the and differences in groups’ position within the present residents identify themselves as “from Romanian communist state were systematically Sulina” or “Romanian” even though family ignored. More complex patterns of identification, histories reveal strong Lipovan or Ukrainian and by implication, of multiculturalism, were not roots. The majority of the current residents acknowledged or analyzed. In accordance with moved to Sulina from villages in the Delta after these ideas, the inscription of identity in urban the war or were resettled from other regions in space was either ignored or actively opposed. Romania. They did adopt the story of the Ethnic neighborhoods were ignored in scholarly glorious prewar Sulina as part of their identity. analysis and policy-making or simply torn down. We have noted only fragmentary and indirect In Sulina, the construction of resistance to the dominant narrative derived from communist apartment blocks deliberately

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Anthropology of East Europe Review defaced the “imperialist” and “foreign” first and Russian wife?” At weddings, fissures in the second streets, while simultaneously signaling “Sulina” identity come to the surface and the efforts of the regime to bring progress, order accusation of witchcraft seem connected to and rationality to this remote corner of the state. perceived differences based on one’s former The policy of Romanization minimized the ethnic identity. Language is still a marker but not presence of “minorities” effectively and in a monolithic manner. Residents commonly propagated a folklorized concept of minority refer to “the old Sulina where everyone spoke culture. Local (Sulina) and regional (Tulcea) four or five languages,” which stresses unity in policy-makers continue to operate with very diversity, peaceful communication and similar assumptions about culture, ethnicity, and cohabitation, and the flexibility of ethnic multiculturalism. Events such as the festival are boundaries. meant to prove that the Greeks and the Roma Now few people speak more than two have a place and that their rights are protected. languages and non-Romanian languages are However, although communist discourse may largely confined to private spaces or one have transformed social relations and urban neighborhood, which is the liminal zone between space, it did not replace other types of city and swamp where Sulina fades into a narrow encounters, identifications, and spatial strip of higher land – the location of a Lipoveni inscriptions in postwar Sulina as if it were a neighborhood. The dominance of Romanian blank slate. People like Mr. Zachis preserved operates as a sign of unity and practices at a and transmitted memories of cosmopolitan different level, a nationalist unity also reinforced Sulina. Lipoveni, Ukrainians and Romanians under communism. However, other languages from other regions brought their own memories are still present and do present barriers. Minority to the city. Therefore, the particular ecological languages are signs of otherness that cannot be location and material character of Sulina completely reinterpreted under the banner of produced patterns of interaction and cosmopolitanism. Under the CED people identification that are far richer than the official probably did not speak four or five languages communist discourse on identity and except for the multilingual CED-administration multiculturalism. (to which their archives bear witness) and some In part due to Sulina’s isolation, of the more cosmopolitan merchants (who had at memories, and the urban palimpsest, people very the very least a working knowledge of the quickly became “from Sulina.” A local identity languages of various customers). Yet many was revived. Despite ongoing contact with the people did speak more languages than they do villages in the Delta, the Lipoveni and today while the fluidity and complexity of group Ukrainians, came to identify themselves as boundaries was clearly greater. coming from the city. The “Sulina” identity calmed lingering tensions and was used both externally (to distinguish oneself from “the Forces Shaping Contemporary Performances of Multiculturalism villages” and from “Bucharest”) and internally (occasionally overriding other categorizations). We argue that in Sulina, the local With its latent references to a more cosmopolitan performance of multiculturalism is shaped by and multicultural past, “Sulina” served as a communist policies and practices and the powerful synthetic image of successful “Sulina” synthetic image – the local myth of multiculturalism. Such an image, which is cosmopolitanism. The catastrophic episodes of assumed to be shared by all participants in a war and dismantling of CED allowed for the social encounter, frequently simplifies the present functioning of the Sulina myth, since the positioning in everyday interactions. This systematic loss of connections with the CED mechanism is still very strong today. past, its networks, and its people made it possible to alter the image of the CED era more freely. At the same time, the synthetic image More recently, democratization, conversion to a cannot replace all the complexity of identity market economy, tourism, and European construction in the presence of other identities. integration have further transformed the Old labels, old prejudices, and old expectations performance of multiculturalism. These return in certain situations while new ones are processes continue to influence how images of produced. Although Lipoveni were “from place, self, and other invoked and marketed. Sulina” in a bar after a lot of drinking, people would still say “hey, Lipovan” or “how’s your The rupture caused by the disintegration of the CED and by World War II allowed for the

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Anthropology of East Europe Review appropriation and transformation of the CED and which is marked by short-term thinking. myth underground in postwar communist Sulina and later in the open after the end of socialism. Marginality and Multiculturalism After the end of communist rule, Romanians decided they wanted to be European again and The multicultural past and present that join the European Union. The marginal city of attracted some tourists also functioned as a sign Sulina represented an opportunity to construct of Sulina’s marginality. We argue that the and market a European past as a key to the reading of the palimpsest of multiculturalism European future. Europe pushed actively for should be informed by the local history of institutional reform, for the cultivation of marginality. An event like the festival of democratic values including multiculturalism, minorities does not reflect the everyday practices and the protection of the heritage of various of multiculturalism in Sulina, but it does reflect a communities. In Sulina, European grants and feature of local culture that stems from a history subsidies have been pursued by invoking a of marginality: an us-them distinction that multicultural past and present that is based on a opposes “all this” (all these minorities, us) to the reified conception of cultural identity. The rest of the world (seen as homogeneous and in promotion of Sulina in the city and region largely negative terms). The festival thus consistently refers to the CED myth, and functions as a sign of the unity of the community contemporary multiculturalism, which is in a world that does not understand them and is assumed to be similar to earlier forms. The city not well understood itself. is presented as an example of modern European We also argue that the success of other multiculturalism. boundary-maintaining mechanisms such as the One could say that the myth of CED CED myth can be partly attributed to residents’ Sulina feeds off the modern European perception of isolation, neglect, and opaque, mythologies (including their version of culture poorly enforced rules emanating from the center. and multiculturalism) and vice versa. Both the The collective perception of being in the margin localized myth of the past of Sulina and the myth is fertile ground for the production of new signs of a European common destiny in diversity of difference from the outside world as well as reinforce each other locally. Local and regional local unity. A similar attitude can also be governments try to market the city in those observed in the dealings of local government in terms. The local palimpsest of multiculturalism Sulina with the regional (and national) is therefore connected not only to images of a governments. City hall prefers to develop plans cosmopolitan past, but also images of a and policies with minimal communication with cosmopolitan future. CED and EU are conflated, the other levels of government because these and the local and temporal features of other levels cannot be trusted and it is better to cosmopolitanism forgotten. rely on oneself. Policies developed at other levels are rarely implemented in Sulina. The local tourist industry has been growing in recent years, and particularly in 2008. Older layers of the palimpsest of However, tourists do not seem particularly multiculturalism are fading quickly. The impact interested in local cultural diversity or the of recently intensified official rhetoric of unity architectural heritage of the CED. Rather, the and of diversity is high; discourse with locals remote location of the town and curiosity about and on locals is pervaded by standardized and its location in a place surrounded by sea, swamp repeatedly appropriated images of unity and and Danube seems to be what attracts tourists. diversity (provoking each other, provoking new They were only secondarily drawn by the town’s images of unity and diversity) which makes it special history and identity. The landscape extremely difficult to observe other patterns of attracts visitors more for the beach and the cultural encounters or multiculturalism. It is clear fishing opportunities than for its unique ecology. that although other more subtle and complex Cooperation among people in Sulina was patterns that exist under the radar are not very traditionally fraught with challenges and old, they are nevertheless real. suspicion was rampant. This continues to be the Many local residents were ambivalent case. The more tourists come, the more they will about the “revival” of the idea of a monolithic reveal the limitations of the local tourist industry ethnicity, minority ethnic identity, as a result of which is still deliberately marginal due to tax the development of tourism, political and evasion, minimal investment, non- cooperation, economic transition, and the influence of EU

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Anthropology of East Europe Review policies and subsidies. Residents often wanted more popular in the Danube Delta (schools) than to understand our intentions better before Russian nowadays and the keepers of Lipoveni addressing the “minority” theme more than traditions feel they are fighting a rising tide. superficially. Trust is scarce in Sulina and is In the case of the Lipoveni, their long necessary in order to discuss ethnic and cultural history of flight and self-styled marginality identity and multiculturalism in everyday life. In (being adherents of an ostracized faith in Russia) our view, the political history of ethnic makes it difficult to write their history. Many of categories and the term “minority” has had a the villages in the Delta where they lived before major influence on how residents speak about coming to Sulina had short histories and an multiculturalism in the present. Although being ephemeral existence. The variety of groups that identified as a member of a distinctive group was filtered into the Delta area all had different of some interest and could bring rewards, many histories and reasons to move. The result is a still felt it to be unsafe. When people do speak confused history and a social memory that is up, the official “Sulina” narrative offers safe extremely simplified (“we came when Peter cut ground on which to talk about multiculturalism. the beards”) and, for many Lipoveni themselves, Belonging can be expressed and not entirely convincing. Individuals often experienced through various senses. When expressed their doubts after relating the story or experienced, it can be articulated or not told it with some hesitation. articulated. Sulina residents have many concerns; In this marginal hybridism, any clear- their ethnic belonging and interethnic encounters cut representation of physical space and social are not high on their agendas. This is partly the space marketed as multicultural is bound to be consequence of tragic histories, some of which remote from the experiences of most locals. At are remembered and others of which are not. It is the same time, the new or re- emerging also the consequences of short-term thinking and discourses can be easily manipulated because of short-term concerns in this harsh marginal this distance from actual practice. Moreover, environment, which means there is little place those discourses might in time reshape the for excessive ethnic pride. It is also the result of identities and the practices of people in Sulina. a history of the mixing of identities through Revivals can be artificial at first and marriage, assimilation, and forgetting, however wholeheartedly felt and embraced later. Our the “original” identities are conceived. analyses might evoke cynicism among readers expecting a narrative of stable groups working Conclusion: The Palimpsest of together in a stable community, threatened by Multiculturalism and Hybridism of the alien bureaucratic and economic discourses. We Margin would like to counter that the patterns of multiculturalism were hard to read, not always We believe that the reasons discussed important for the people themselves, and highly above are behind the current, often-observed disrupted despite tales of continuity. Yet we confusion on cultural identity. In positive terms, argue that “community” can be a remarkably the hybridism of the margin produced blurred resilient concept, that “Sulina” is remarkably boundaries in most everyday situations. The strong as a unifying myth, and that community groups that were clearly identifiable under the ties can be present even if they are unarticulated CED have either gone or merged in complex adaptations to difference, visible in everyday patterns with “Romanian” emerging as the encounters and unreflected practices. dominant identity. In prewar Sulina, interactions between those groups and the patterns of In the layered encounters we observed, interactions could be studied as performances of reading the layers in the palimpsest of multiculturalism. Today, both the discourses multiculturalism was difficult because of the from above (tourism, policy, etc) and the truly hybridism of the margin and because of the hybrid/confused character of ethnic identity ruptures and discontinuities in local history. The make the palimpsest of multiculturalism unifying myth of Sulina brought continuity and extremely hard to read. In the case of the structure to the palimpsest. Our attempt to Lipoveni, the largest group that was identified as reconstruct the palimpsest of multiculturalism non-Romanian, most young people are turning often had to take slight variations of the Sulina away from their religion, and no longer grow myth as starting point. By dissecting variations beards or speak Russian. Often they move to of the prevalent myth, conducting a contextual Tulcea, Bucharest, Italy or Spain. Spanish is analysis of its use, and juxtaposing the CED

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Anthropology of East Europe Review myth with other circulating narratives, we were Ballinger, P. 2004. “Authentic Hybrids in the able to map out part of the terrain. A Balkan Borderlands,” Current continuously reinterpreted Sulina myth glosses Anthropology, 45,1: 31-60. over some difference and creates new differences in advocating a simplified ethnic identity Barnes, T.J., J.S. Duncan. 1992. Writing Worlds. marketable for tourism under the banner of the Discourse, Text and Metaphor in the European future. Representation of Landscape. London: Sulinese interpretations of urban space Routledge. in their readings of the urban palimpsest informed our interpretation of the palimpsest of multiculturalism. For most contemporary Bélanger, Anouk. 2000. “Urban Space and residents, the myth of Sulina is anchored in Collective Memory: Analysing the urban space only in a very general sense. “The Various Dimensions of the Production harbor,” “the Danube,” “First Street,” and the of Memory,” Canadian Journal of churches are markers of cosmopolitan Sulina. Urban Research 11, 1: 69-92. Other than that, few memories exist of the symbolic topography of CED-Sulina. City space Bird, S. Elizabeth. 2002. “It Makes Sense to Us: – the urban palimpsest – is interpreted freely, Cultural Identity in Local Legends of following the fleeting categorizations of Place,” Journal of Contemporary marginal hybridism. It is thanks to this loose Ethnography 31,5: 519-547. coupling of the urban palimpsest and the performance of multiculturalism that the reinterpreted CED myth can shape new Bowers, J., K. Iwi. 1993. “The Discursive encounters so profoundly. Construction of Society,” Discourse and Society 4,3: 357-394.

Endnotes 1This research was part of a larger research Brockmeier, Jens. 2002. “Remembering and project under the title ‘Nature, culture, planning Forgetting: Narrative as Cultural in the Danube Delta’, a cooperation of Memory,” Culture & Psychology 8,1 Minnesota State Universities- St Cloud, Babes 15-43. Bolyai University, Cluj- Napoca, Leuven University, and Wageningen University, Chang, T. C. 2005. “Place, Memory and Identity: investigating cultural and ecological complexity Imagining ‘New Asia,’” Asia Pacific in the Danube Delta, and the potential for spatial Viewpoint 46,3: 247–253. planning to accommodate humans and nature.

Daniels, S. 1988. Landscape, Image, Text. References Cambridge: Cambridge University Allon, Fiona. 2004. “The Consumption and Press. Construction of Tourist Spaces and Landscapes in Sydney,” Space & Culture 7,1: 49-63 Della Dora, Veronica. 2000. “The Rhetoric of Nostalgia: Postcolonial Alexandria Between Uncanny Memories and Antze Paul, Michael Lambek (eds.). 1996. Tense Global Geographies,” Cultural Past: Cultural Essays in Trauma and Geographies 13: 207-238. Memory. New York, London: Routledge. Fainstein, S. Susan. 2005. “Cities and Diversity: Should We Want It? Can We Plan For Ballinger, P. 2003. “Imperial Nostalgia: It?” Urban Affairs Review 41, 3. Mythologizing Habsburg Trieste,” Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 8,1: 84-101. Foucault, M. 1968. Les mots et les choses. Paris: Gallimard.

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Gottdiener, M., A. Lagapoulos. 1986. The City Simonsen, Kirsten. 2008. “Cities, Cultures and and the Sign. An Introduction to Urban Everyday Life,” European Urban and Semiotics. New York. Regional Studies 15; 99.

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Magris, C. 1989. Danube: A Sentimental Teampau, P., K. Van Assche. 2009. ‘Sulina, Journey from the Source to the Black Sulina. When There’s Water, There’s Sea. London: Harvill. No Light. Narrative and Autobiography in a Romanian town’, in Narrative and Malcolmson, S. 1998. “The Varieties of culture. Proceedings of the Cluj Cosmopolitan Experience”, in P. Cheah, conference, Cluj Napoca. B. Robbins, Eds. Cosmopolitics. Feeling and Thinking Beyond the Trudeau, Daniel. 2006. “Politics of Belonging in Nation, Minneapolis: University of the Construction of Landscapes: Place- Minnesota Press, 233- 245. making, Boundary Drawing and Exclusion,” Cultural Geographies 13: Mills, Amy. 2006. “Boundaries of the Nation in 421-443 the Space of the Urban: Landscape and Social Memory in Istanbul,” Cultural Van Assche, K. 2004. Signs in Time. An Geographies 13: 367-394. Interpretive Account of Urban Planning and Design, the People and Their Richardson, T. 2006. “Living Cosmopolitanism? Histories. Wageningen: Wageningen ‘Tolerance’, Difference and Local University. Identity in Odessa,” in C. Hann, Ed., The Postsocialist Religious Question: Van Assche, K., P. Devlieger, P. Teampau. Faith and Power in Central Asia and 2008. “Liquid Boundaries in Marginal East- Central Europe. Berlin: Lit, 213- Marshes. Reconstructions of Identity in 240. the Romanian Danube Delta,” Studia Sociologia 14,1: 115- 138. Richardson, T. 2005. “Walking Streets, Talking History: The Making of Odessa,” Van Assche, K., P., Teampau. 2009. Ethnology, 44,1: 13-33. “Remembering and Forgetting in the Margin. Constructing Past and Future in Rietbergen, P. 2003. De retoriek van de eeuwige the Romanian Danube Delta,” Memory stad. Rome gelezen. Nijmegen: SUN. Studies 2, 2: 211- 234.

Setha Low, Dana Taplin, and Suzanne Scheld. Verdery, K.1996. What Was Socialism and What 2005. Rethinking Urban Parks: Public Comes Next? Princeton: Princeton Space and Cultural Diversity, 1st ed. University Press. Austin: University of Texas Press. Verdery, K. 2003. The Vanishing Hectare.

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Property and Value in Postsocialist Transylvania. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

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