Celălalt în Aferim! al lui Radu Jude: dimensiunea lingvistică a rasismului
Rezumat
The Other in Aferim! by Radu Jude: The Linguistic Dimension of Racism
Abstract: Following the general problematics of reformulating the concepts of “discourse” and “narrative” and treating cinematic products as textual objects, with incursions into the 21st century cinema as a realist-expositional medium of the social problems of the Other, the present paper aims, by contextualizing the film Aferim! (2015) by Radu Jude, to analyze the relationship between language, language and race, racialization, and representation. In short, it aims to analyze the position of linguistic racism in the admitted “realistic” and artistic presentation of the process of marginalization. Such academic analyses have become present internationally, especially with the development of the linguistic dimension of postcolonial studies and the emergence and expansion of the concept of political correctness and/or cultural sensitivity in the contemporary socio-cultural discourse, especially in direct relation to language, language, and visual media of artistic transposition. We must be remembered, however, that Roma people occupy a marginal place even in postcolonial analysis of otherness. In the Romanian space, with a strong intertextual character, Aferim! occupies a privileged place precisely because of the primacy given to the theme: the Roma slavery in the 19th century Wallachia, during the year 1853, which is a key-year, considering that the formal abolition of slavery took place only three years later, in 1856, in Wallachia. Intentionally subversive, Jude takes the historical form of the popular films from the communist period and turns it against itself, while also adding the American-inspired aesthetic of Westerns. The multiplicity of perspectives is present, but the „intimacy” belongs to the white, oppressive characters, putting the viewer in an uncomfortable position that belongs to them historically. Following the results of the quantitative study of the present work, where the most often used word is „cocoane” [lord] in all its declined versions, Aferim! is thus a film about power dynamics, a dynamic in which the Roma are the Other.
Keywords: colonialism, linguistic racism, Roma slavery, Roma, quantitative studies.
Bibliografie
Achim, Viorel. The Roma in Romanian History. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2013.
Andrews, Edna. “Cultural Sensitivity and Political Correctness: The Linguistic Problem of Naming.” American Speech 71, no. 4 (1996): 389-404.
Chereta, Lucian. “The Etymology of the Word Țigan (Gypsy) and (R)Rom (Romany).” Journal of Romanian Linguistics and Culture, no. 2 (2014). http://limbaromana.org/en/etymology-words-tigan-gypsy-rromthe-etymology-words-tigan-gypsy-rrom-romany/.
Dorobanțu, Oana, and Carmen Gheorghe, eds. Problema românească. O analiză a rasismului românesc [The Romanian Problem: An Analysis of Romanian Racism]. Bucharest: Editura Hecate, 2019.
Fantinuoli, Claudio and Federico Zanettin. New Directions in Corpus-based Translation Studies. Berlin: Language Science Press, 2015.
Gorzo, Andrei, and Veronica Lazăr. “‘…and Gypsies get many a beating…’: On the Significance of Radu Jude’s Aferim!.” Transilvania, no. 6-7 (2022): 1-11.
Marushiakova, Elena, and Vesselin Popov, eds. Roma Voices in History: A Sourcebook. Leiden: Brill, 2021.
Matei, Petre. “Adunările țiganilor din Transilvania din anul 1919 (partea I)” [“The Roma Gatherings in Transylvania in 1919 (part I)”]. Revista Istorică XXI, no. 5-6 (2010).
Matras, Yaron. Romani: A Linguistic Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Morsberger, Robert E., and Katharine M. Morsberger. “Screenplays as Literature: Bibliography and Criticism.” Literature/Film Quarterly 3, no. 1 (1975): 45–59.
Ofelia García, Nelson Flores, and Massimiliano Spotti, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Language and Society. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.
Sarău, Gheorghe. Rromii, India și limba rromani [Roma, India and the Romani Language]. Bucharest: Kriterion, 1998.
Stauber, Roni, and Raphael Vago, eds. The Roma: A Minority in Europe. Historical, Political and Social Perspectives. Budapest: Central European University Press, 2007.
