Women, Writing, and the Cultural Politics of Intimacy in Modern Romania

Abstract

Taking on Jonathan Flatley's concept (2008), my stance is that the affective mapping of Romanian space at the turn of the 20th century emphasizes women's self-fashioning their identity through intimacy. I am examining the narratives of three Romanian-born French women writers to trace the developments of intimacy as a key tool of identity construction: from its traditional perception as a private sphere matter, to a public cultural category which permeates social roles and determines social judgements. The challenge is that when applied to specific contexts configuring a map requires a route, as well as boundaries, peripheries and fringes. What is the gendered reaction to all this, especially in the context of transnational mapping? In all three cases, the writers' (self)narratives of intimacy become transient spaces where both gender and political emancipation discourses are intertwined, an in-betweenness which underlines the subtle transfer of the paradigm of (French) modernity into the Romanian culture, via women. Thus, the contours of a politics of intimacy appear on the less defined boundaries between the personal and the public, between the masculine/ public and the feminine/ private divide, where intimacy shapes and is shaped by space -from the domestic to the national and beyond. Keywordsaffective mapping -intimacy -fringe -public -private -gender -cultural transfer -transnational Ever since Critical Inquiry issued the inspirational volume on Intimacy (edited by Lauren Berlant), this concept has been regarded as one that "builds worlds, it creates spaces and usurps places meant for other kinds of relations", closely associated with particular affects (Berlant 1-8). In Affective Mapping: Melancholia and the Politics of Modernism (2008) Jonathan Flatley