Can One Fight Geopolitical Tides with Imperfect Weapons? Reckoning with the Recent Past in Ana Blandiana’s More-than-the Simple Past

Abstract

The present study focuses on Ana Blandiana’s diary Mai-mult ca-Trecutul / More-than-the Simple Past: 31 August 1988-12 December 1989 published in 2023, which chronicles the last year and a half of communist regime in Romania during which the author was banned from publishing. For its contemporary readers, the text raises a lot of questions as it provides invaluable context for mapping the dynamic and still controversial geography and temporality of an era that is neither far enough to be considered “the Past,”/settled history, nor close enough to be referred to as “recent past” by younger generations. As my essay demonstrates, this still contentious past defined by a collective trauma will probably continue to remain suspended in the insoluble ambiguity of a neither-there nor here, and a never-entirely-then nor now for those who lived it. Blandiana’s title preserves the sense of this past’s inherent undecidability, which evokes Derrida’s différance, a trope which haunts not only historical interpretations, but discourse itself, whose most persuasive accounts hide a fundamental absence: a black hole at its very center.

Keywords

• communist regime
• chronotope
• secret police
• ana blandiana
• collective trauma
• memorial literature