„Vrem o țară ca afară”: Neoliberalism, alienare și auto-colonialism în România după aderarea la Uniunea Europeană

Abstract

The neoliberal action in Romania following its EU accession in 2007 in inseparable from a specific discourse on the legitimacy of market forces, private property and public property and services privatization. However, this discourse is backed by an underlying narrative steamed by the orientalist assumption that Romania is a failed state, incapable of solving the intricate issues of modernization and capitalist development. The state is a burden for liberal and capitalist forces because it is still connected by cultural ties to a Romanian majority who is hostile to the benefits of post-modernism. With the majority of Romanians attached to the Church and to other traditional values, the state will be unable to push forward and thus get rid of the peculiar backwardness, religiosity, inefficiency and irrationality. The self-colonialism that is expressed by those topics is the dominant underlying narrative, which makes an effort to explain and to justify Western superiority and domination.

Keywords

• european union
• neoliberalism
• orientalism
• romania
• self-colonialism