Staging Citizenship. Ioana Szeman
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Название: Staging Citizenship

Автор: Ioana Szeman

Издательство: Ingram

Жанр: История

Серия: Dance and Performance Studies

isbn: 9781785337314

isbn:

СКАЧАТЬ television soaps Gypsy Heart (Inimă de Ţigan), The Queen (Regina) and State of Romania (State de România), in which non-Roma actors play Roma characters; reality shows on Romanian television, such as Clejanii, which features famous Roma musicians; and music and dance performances, including manele, a controversial and extremely popular music genre played almost exclusively by Roma musicians in Romania. I also discuss internationally acclaimed Roma artists and young amateur performers in Pod, the very few television programmes by Roma in Romania (such as the weekly programme Roma Caravan – Caravana Romilor) and the presence of Roma activists on mainstream Romanian talk shows and television programmes.

      This book analyses performances as expressions of belonging and cultural citizenship for Roma, transmitted across generations through what Diana Taylor (2003) calls the ‘repertoire’, and absent from institutionalized forms of culture in Romania. At the same time, the association between Roma and performance, especially music performance, has been a staple of perceptions and stereotypes of Roma (Okely 1983; Stewart 1997; Lemon 2000a; Silverman 2012). For centuries, Roma musicians in Russia and the countries of East Central Europe were considered mere vehicles of the genius of those nations, and as lacking a culture of their own. Roma were excluded from national culture and folklore in Romania, and Roma musicians’ contribution was seen to be merely the transmission of Romanian folklore. The visibility of Roma as the exotic Other onstage and in works of literature and art by non-Roma was accompanied by constant monitoring and repression by the police and authorities across centuries.

      Another example of performance of citizenship addressing a Roma counterpublic is the August 2010 edition of the television programme Roma Caravan, dedicated to the expulsions of Roma from France. In this programme, Daniel Vasile, vice-president of the Roma Party for Europe, and George Răducanu, Roma activist, accused both French and Romanian governments of racism and criticized the treatment of Roma Romanian citizens as second-class citizens. They spoke to a Roma counterpublic and pointed out that the forceful expulsions and evictions of Roma in France and Romania, respectively, reflected the French and Romanian governments’ similar attitudes towards Roma. This was one of the rare instances where unequivocal criticism of the expulsions was broadcast on Romanian television and media in general.

      The Citizenship Gap in Pod: Basic Citizenship Rights and Cultural Citizenship

      Pod, the settlement near the refuse site where I conducted ethnographic research with poor Roma, represents the materialization of the gap between legal and actual citizenship: the space, erased from official maps, where Roma with legal Romanian citizenship are de facto non-citizens and experience a complete failure of their citizenship rights. I see the spatial reality of the citizenship gap as a variation of Giorgio Agamben’s (1998) camp. The camp, according to Agamben, is where refugees live as non-citizens, a place for zoe or ‘bare life.’ From the state’s point of view, Pod has been reduced to a gap; however, my ethnographic research brings into focus the subjectivities of Pod’s inhabitants – not unlike Sigona (2015), who uses the term ‘campenization’ to discuss the status of Roma living in camps in Italy (see also Sigona and Trehan 2009; Hepworth 2015).

      This book shows how neoliberal economic policies – including large cuts in social security, the disappearance of low-skilled jobs and work opportunities for Roma, and evictions from formerly nationalized properties that were returned to their owners after 1989 – have disproportionately affected Roma. I discuss everyday experiences of the citizenship gap for Roma from Pod, such as the enrolment of Roma children in a school for children with learning disabilities, and mistreatment by the police; I also discuss how Roma in Pod have resisted the citizenship gap through dance performances and their own claims to belong in Romania. Pod and other similar places, contrary to media representations, are connected to Romanian society through a series of informal networks of relatives, acquaintances and new arrivals. Pod residents express these affective ties to Romania when they speak of ‘our country, Romania’, ‘our politicians’ and ‘our language’, the latter sometimes being Romani and sometimes Romanian. Their views on belonging echo those expressed by prominent Roma activists, whose strategies in the media and cultural events aim to raise public awareness about Roma history and Roma contributions to culture and society.

      ‘Roma Culture’ Clashes: The State, the EU and Roma NGOs