Why 1989 Still Matters: Post-communist Rhetoric, Romanian Discourse and European Identity as Public Arguments of Democracy

Please join the East Central European Center, the Romanian Cultural Institute, New York, and the Harriman Institute for a talk with Dr. Noemi Marin, School of Communication and Multimedia Studies, Florida Atlantic University.

Dr. Marin will present on the pre- and post-1989 political discourse in Romania, Eastern Europe, and the United States, drawing on the volume she recently co-edited with Cezar Ornatowski, Rhetorics of 1989: Rhetorical Archaeologies of Political Transitions (Routledge, 2015). She will address the question of how political speech in communist and transition periods does and does not change democratic action, and what challenges remain inherent to the public arena to this day. In this lecture, she intends to popularize scholarship on Romanian political communication pertinent to the country’s history within the context of European identity post-1989.

With crises arising on the democratic scene of former Eastern Europe, including the rise of nationalist rhetoric and the issues surrounding migration, there is an increasing need for scholarship on the role of the political and rhetorical communication and its impact on communist and post-communist times. The abundant scholarship produced for over the last twenty five years primarily focuses on historical, political, and sociopolitical perspectives, leaving out a communication studies approach. Communication and rhetorical perspectives help the public understand why nationalist arguments remain part of the political arena in Romania and the region as a whole, why democratic language and ‘wooden language’ share political arguments in presidential discourse, and why the notions of ‘other’ and ‘we-they’ remain fundamentally connected to the current European identity public discourse.

From the Harriman Institute.