World-Literature and the Bessarabian Literary System. Combined and Uneven Development in The Semiperiphery

Abstract

This essay proposes a theory of interperipheral relations in Eastern Europe, starting from the cases of Romania and the Republic of Moldova. The aim is to affirm a more materialistic interpretation of world-literature studies, starting from the thesis of separation and inequality between the two Romanian-language literary systems. Thus, the essay starts from a critique of several directions of world literature and postcolonialism, returning to the method of world-systems analysis (as conceived by Immanuel Wallerstein and his followers). Another method is that of the Warwick Research Collective, which conceives global literature as defined by the Marxist theory of combined and uneven development. Romania, being in a geopolitical position that is closer to the neoliberal ideologies of “civilizational progress” and “artistic modernity”, represents Moldova's access point to the transnational market. The cases exemplified in the second part of the essay highlight the way in which a series of Bessarabian authors use and recontextualize some narrative forms specific to post-communist Romanian literature. The authors brought into discussion are the Fracturists Dumitru Crudu and Alexandru Vakulovski, the journalist Vasile Ernu, the anthropologist Dinu Guțu, the Bessarabian novelists Iulian Ciocan and Liliana Corobca, and the émigré writer Tatiana Țîbuleac.