Table Of ContentCREOLIZING THE
MODERN
CREOLIZING
THE MODERN
Transylvania across Empires
Anca Parvulescu and Manuela Boatcă
CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS ITHACA AND LONDON
Copyright © 2022 by Cornell University
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts
thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing
from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage
House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. Visit our website at
cornellpress. c ornell. e du.
First published 2022 by Cornell University Press
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Librarians: A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the
Library of Congress.
ISBN 9781501765728 (hardcover)
ISBN 9781501766565 (paperback)
ISBN 9781501765735 (pdf)
ISBN 9781501765742 (epub)
Contents
Acknowl edgments vii
Introduction 1
1. The Face of Land: Peasants, Property, and the
Land Question 24
2. Transylvania in the World- System: Cap i tal ist Integration,
Peripheralization, Antisemitism 49
3. The Longue Durée of Enslavement: Extracting Labor
from Romani Music 67
4. Counting and Discounting Languages: Transylvanian
Interglottism between Hugó Meltzl and Liviu Rebreanu 91
5. The Inter- Imperial Dowry Plot: Nationalism, W omen’s
Labor, Vio lence against W omen 115
6. Feminist Whims: W omen’s Education in an
Inter-I mperial Framework 138
7. God Is the New Church: The Ethnicization of Religion 157
Notes 181
Bibliography 225
Index 247
Acknowle dgments
We would like to thank our editor at Cornell University Press, Jim Lance, for
his generosity and editorial support throughout the publication pro cess.
This book benefited from numerous conversations with colleagues and
friends. We would like to thank, in par tic u lar, participants in the Telciu Sum-
mer Schools in 2018 and 2019 and in the 2019 Annual Meeting of the Po liti cal
Economy of the World- Systems Section in Freiburg, Germany—in par tic u lar
Luis J. Beltrán- Álvarez and Agustín Lao- Montes— for their inspiring feedback
and suggestions. Gratitude is due to Cornel Ban, Valer Simion Cosma, Laura
Doyle, Abram van Engen, Tabea Linhard, Christian Moraru, Santiago Slabodsky,
Marius Turda, Ovidiu Țichindeleanu, and Immanuel Wallerstein for taking the
time to provide feedback and make suggestions on some or all of the arguments
in this book at dif er ent stages in its emergence. We would like to extend special
thanks to Bogdan Vătavu and Ágota Ábrán, who provided invaluable research
assistance.
This proj ect benefited from the financial support provided by an American
Council of Learned Socie ties Collaborative Research Fellowship during 2018–
2020, a Summer Research Seed Grant from the Center for the Humanities at
Washington University in St. Louis, a Collaborative Research Seed Grant from
the Center for the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis, and a pub-
lication stipend from the Arts and Sciences Dean’s Office at Washington Uni-
versity in St. Louis.
We would like to thank the following presses for permission to reprint parts
of the following articles: Taylor & Francis for “The Inter- Imperial Dowry Plot,”
Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies 23, no. 4 (2021): 570–
95; Wiley for “The Longue Durée of Enslavement: Extracting L abor from Romani
Music in Liviu Rebreanu’s Ion,” Lite ra t ure Compass 17, no. 1–2 (2020); Brill for
“(Dis)Counting Languages: Between Hugó Meltzl and Liviu Rebreanu,” Journal
of World Lit er a ture 5, no. 1 (2020): 47–78; Illinois University Press for “Creoliz-
ing Transylvania: Notes on Coloniality and Inter- Imperiality,” History of the Pre
sent 10, no. 1 (2020): 9–27.
vii
INTRODUCTION
Transylvania: Inter- Imperial Creolization
The photo graph frames a smiling old w oman holding a book.1 She is dressed in
black, a sign of her widowhood, and wears the signature head scarf of el derly
peasant women in Transylvania. An intricate tapestry and a golden mass-
produced wall clock stand out in the background. The woman is not posing as a
reader; the book is closed, and she handles it rev er ent ly, as if it were a sacred
object (figure I.1). A reporter asks the woman about her mother and father, who
served as models for the characters in a 1920 novel set in the village. Her par-
ents are famous, having had their tumultuous youth fictionalized a hundred
years ago in what is now a canonical Romanian novel. The old w oman has not
read the novel that immortalized her parents. She does not own a copy; the edi-
tion she holds belongs to the reporter. She knows from other villa gers that the
novel improvised some ele ments of her parents’ lives and outright lied about
others. She confirms, however, the veracity of one aspect of the fictional text: all
her life, she worked the land she inherited from her parents, the land her father,
in par tic u lar, was passionate about. Like him, she cherished the land. Her
rough, cracked hands testify to the labor she has dedicated to it. “Nobody works
the land anymore,” she laments. “All youngsters have gone abroad, only us
older folks are left.” The statement comes across as tragic. This is the same land
that generations of Transylvanians of all ethnic and racial backgrounds fought
over, among themselves and against the background of multiple conflicting em-
pires. This is the same land that Liviu Rebreanu’s famous novel Ion took as its
1
