Volume XXVIII (2023), no. 2

Contents

Amalia COTOI, Alexandru MATEI
Institution:
Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca ; Transilvania University, Brașov
Email:
amalia.cotoi@ubbcluj.ro, alexandru.matei@unitbv.ro
Abstract

Studies

Yves CITTON
Institution:
Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint Denis
Email:
yves.citton@gmail.com
Abstract

Can there be a “resumption” of modernity? After Jürgen Habermas famously qualified modernity as an “unfinished project”, after Jean-François Lyotard declared it “liquidated”, should we now attempt to “go back” to it? 1 Obviously not. Even if some of us estimated such a resumption  was  desirable, there is no going back in historical times. Always forward—towards a glorious future or closer to the cliff — but always forward. Here is a tale about future reckonings of Bruno Latour’s AIME project.

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Jean-Christophe CAVALLIN
Institution:
Université Aix-Marseille
Email:
jean-christophe.cavallin@univ-amu.fr
Abstract

To bridge the Great Divide between subject and object,  Bruno  Latour uses the notions of 'agency', which neutralises this division, and 'metamorphic zone', as the place where 'performances' of an anonymous agency are translated into 'skills' of an identified agent.  But  in  literature, as the repressed often returns in defence formations, this translation tends to describe agents in the distorted guise of subjects – i.e. as persons or characters. This article proposes to re-  evaluate the notion of agency  in  the light of  the notion of  form, and thus explore a way to shunt the anthropormorphic bias where still dwells the spectre of our thwarted modernity.

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Alexandra CHIRIAC, Victor CELAC
Institution:
Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Iaşi ; Iorgu Iordan - Al. Rosetti Linguistic Institute, Bucharest. The Romanian Academy, Bucharest
Email:
alexandra.chiriac@uaic.ro, victor_celac@yahoo.com
Abstract

Dimitrie Cantemir’s Descriptio Moldaviae is considered the first [pre-] modern historiographical text of national history/geography and is celebrated as the first academic work written by a native Romanian that can still be used as a scientific reference today. We postulate in the present article that  the modernity of the Catemirean writing is not derived from its academic virtuousness and informational value, but rather from its long  history  and circulation throughout the Enlightened Western and Eastern Europe. For the reconstruction of the text circulation, we will not follow the traditional linear pattern of cultural transfer, of publication and re-publication, of text production  and  translation,  but  we propose to reconstruct (even if only partially, given the information gaps) the complicated and entangled network that this text, as non-human actant, creates around it, and the effects and mutations it produces along its various  stops  in space and time. Following a chronological path, we aim to highlight the entanglements of various actors and actants and less so the unidirectional relationship between humans and artefacts. Thus, Descriptio Moldaviae becomes an important actor in a complicated and  globally  active network that highlights the intrinsic interconnectedness of the pre-modern world, still so familiar today.

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Adrian TUDURACHI
Institution:
“Sextil Pușcariu” Institute of Linguistics and Literary History, Cluj-Napoca. The Romanian Academy, Cluj-Napoca Branch.
Email:
adrian.tudurachi@acad-cj.ro
Abstract

For nearly two decades, Marielle Macé has been working on the formal aspects of literature. Her reflections have focused on genres, reading, style, migration and ecology, while remaining steadfastly anchored to a “formalist” vocabulary, encompassing literary forms, the formal framework of language, as well as the formalities of existence – social gestures and postures, or the protocols of interactions, including those with animal behaviour. Two pivotal aspects emerge from an analysis conducted on Marielle Macé’s approach. The first concerns the ability of contemporary formalism to reorient itself in response to questions about the subject, the community and society. The second point calls into question the shift from moral reflection on form to ecological reflection. This transition entails tracing the reorientation of form and the rearrangement of its properties within new ideological contexts that discuss the relationship with the environment and with nature.

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Erik BORDELEAU
Institution:
NOVA University, Lisbon
Email:
erik.bordeleau@gmail.com
Abstract

What is at stake in the method of dramatization? And how does it concern speculative pragmatism, a post-deleuzian philosophical approach that builds on the work of Alfred N. Whitehead and William James and encompasses the work of illustrious contemporary thinkers such as Isabelle Stengers, Donna Haraway, Brian Massumi, Erin Manning, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Anna Tsing and, last but not least, Bruno Latour? In trying to answer these questions, one is quickly confronted with another, simpler and essential question around which revolves Deleuze’s interpretation of Nietzsche’s method of dramatization: the decisive importance of the question “Who?” in an attempt to elaborate on an image of thought that veers away from the clear and distinct realm of representation, inherited from Descartes and prevailing throughout modernity, hinting instead toward ontogenetic processes of individuation to be spotted within modernism. Articulating at the very intersection of the speculative and the pragmatic, the question “who?” becomes a key entry point into the speculative pragmatist notions of activity and intensity, and into Latour’s understanding of the inner narrativity of things in the age of the Anthropocene.

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Alexandra OLTEANU
Institution:
Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Iaşi
Email:
alexandra.olteanu@student.uaic.ro
Abstract

The history of the Romanian novel intertwines with the earliest substantial theoretical explorations within Romanian culture. As the primary foundation of its own theorization, the novel has initiated a fruitful set of observations regarding the nature, objectives, stakes, and potential thematic contents of literature. Since the discourse on the novel must be articulated in an operative theoretical form, constructed with terms whose conceptual boundaries are precisely defined, the absence of homogeneous literary species or genres that could serve as literary foundations in analyses condemns sporadic sets of reflections without application to the national cultural environment. This situation creates difficulties in establishing literary terminology. The canon represents a record of aesthetic authority relations upon which there is consensus and, at the same time, the result of a battle for hegemony over a cultural system.

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Emanuel LUPAȘCU
Institution:
Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca
Email:
emanuel.lupascu@ubbcluj.ro
Abstract

In this article, I examine Timothy Bewes’s book, Free Indirect: The Novel in a Postfictional Age, published in 2022 by Columbia University Press. My critical examination will consist of three stages: a contextualizing stage, which involves analysing the macro-ideological context in which Bewes’s book is situated (i.e., the status of literary criticism and theory nowadays); a synthetic exposition of the book’s main arguments, along with a critical analysis that highlights problematic concepts in Bewes's methodology and arguments. In the first part of the article, I will revise the genealogy of aesthetic regimes, as referred to by Jacques Rancière. These regimes are defined as the relationship between subject, world, language, and text, and I will  delve into how this relationship operates in the 21st century. In the second part of the paper, I will tackle Bewes’s primary (hypo)theses concerning the free indirect structure of the novel in a postfictional age. The key concept here is “instantiation,” which refers to the intrinsic structure of the novel. I aim to connect this concept with the notion of the “narrative unconscious” and explore the idea of authorial responsibility. Additionally, I will draw on Moretti’s delimitation of the modern epic and the novel, as well as Mark Fisher’s concept of “capitalist realism,” to analyse the relationship between the contemporary novel and the (post)ideology of  neoliberalism. Lastly, in the final part of my analytical approach, I will offer a critique of Bewes’s “totalizing” theory from a world literature perspective. Specifically, I will focus on the unequal dynamics of literatures within the capitalist world-system.

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Amalia COTOI
Institution:
Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca
Email:
amaliacotoi@gmail.com
Abstract

Drawing on Modernist Studies, Critical Theory and the work of Bruno Latour, the aim of my paper is to explore how Romanian modernist literature from the late 19th century to the first three decades of the 20th century engages with, participates in, and contributes to a culture of modernity. I will investigate the way in which Romanian modernist literature negotiates the relationship that the modern society constructs between the public and private dimensions of life, starting from two important sociocultural and economic phenomena: (1) the intensification of migration, and (2) the development of cultural tourism. In the first part of the article, I will provide an operational definition of the concept of modernity starting from Hartmut Rosa and Bruno Latour’s work and discuss its intertwining with literary modernism. In the second part, I will delve into the way that the Romanian modernist characters, both male and female, migrate from one place to another in pursuit of employment opportunities and a better life. In the third part, I will explore the modern context of travelling the world, and the idea of youth culture from both historical and sociological perspectives. This section sets the stage for the final part of the article, in which I will focus on what I consider to be the first modern female cosmopolitan in Romanian literature and I will explore the aspects of modernity that the cosmopolitan novel sheds light on and constructs. The literary modernism discussed in this article spans from the late 19th century, exemplified by Vasile Alecsandri's novel Dridri1 (1871), to novels from the second and third decades of the 20th century, including Codin2 (1926), În lumea Mediteranei3 (1934) by Panait Istrati, and Femei4 (1934) by Mihail Sebastian.

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Alexandru MATEI
Institution:
Transilvania University, Brașov
Email:
alexandru.matei@unitbv.ro
Abstract

Relying primarily on Bruno Latour's works, such as "We Have Never Been Modern" (1991) and "An Inquiry into Modes of Existence: An Anthropology of the Moderns" (2012), alongside influential texts by Dipesh Chakrabarty, Peter Osborne, Quentin Meillassoux, and Justine Huppe, and contributions from New Modernist Studies scholars like Sascha Bru and Jean-Michel Rabaté, among others, this paper sets two aims. Firstly, it seeks to articulate a concept of modernism distinct from both Latourian perspectives and the approach of the New Modernist Studies, but aiming to foster a dialogue between the two. I will coin it "conceptual modernism" and I will explore the way in which through "We Have Never Been Modern," Bruno Latour transcends his role as a mere sociologist of science, making a significant impact on the humanities. In the second part of the essay, I endeavor to define the paradox of modernism, characterized by a discourse asserting the failure of theories alone to accurately represent truth about reality and the world. The emerging theoretical landscape, indebted to anthropology, shaped by Latour's prominence in the early 21st century, necessitates an interaction between theory and practice. Latour brings  theory "down to Earth" as I will illustrate in the final section of this paper. I will explore how Latour, as a new kind of Modernist thinker, addresses this paradox by establishing and practicing a novel "deal" between words (ideas, theory) and things (fieldwork). This involves not only traditional academic pursuits such as writing books and giving lectures but also engaging in various forms of fieldwork, functioning as an anthropologist, artist, scene director, and even a poet.

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Miscellanea

Jean-Michel RABATÉ
Email:
amaliacotoi@gmail.com
Abstract

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Interview by Amalia COTOI

Patrice MANIGLIER
Email:
alexandru.matei@unitbv.ro
Abstract

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Interview by Alexandru MATEI

Camille de TOLEDO
Email:
alexandru.matei@unitbv.ro
Abstract

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Interview by Alexandru MATEI

Horea POENAR
Email:
amalia.cotoi@ubbcluj.ro
Abstract

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Interview by Amalia COTOI

Book reviews

Carmen BORBÉLY, Erika MIHÁLYCSA, Petronia PETRAR (EDS.)
Reviewed by
Borbála SZÁSZ
Email:
szaszborbala@yahoo.com
Abstract
John GREANEY
Reviewed by
Alexandra-Teodora MÂNDRA
Email:
alexandra.mandra@ubbcluj.ro
Abstract