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Title: “The Romanian Peasant Museum and the Authentic Man”

Author: Vintilă Mihăilescu

How to cite this article: Mihăilescu, Vintilă. 2006. “The Romanian Peasant Museum and the Authentic Man”.

Martor 11: 15‐31.

Published by: Editura MARTOR (MARTOR Publishing House), Muzeul Țăranului Român (The

Museum of the Romanian Peasant)

URL: http://martor.muzeultaranuluiroman.ro/archive/martor‐11‐2006/

Martor (The Museum of the Romanian Peasant Anthropology Review) is a peer‐reviewed academic journal established in 1996, with a focus on cultural and visual anthropology, ethnology, museum studies and the dialogue among these disciplines. Martor review is published by the Museum of the Romanian Peasant. Its aim is to provide, as widely as possible, a rich content at the highest academic and editorial standards for scientific, educational and (in)formational goals. Any use aside from these purposes and without mentioning the source of the article(s) is prohibited and will be considered an infringement of copyright. Martor (Revue d’Anthropologie du Musée du Paysan Roumain) est un journal académique en système peer‐review fondé en 1996, qui se concentre sur l’anthropologie visuelle et culturelle, l’ethnologie, la muséologie et sur le dialogue entre ces disciplines. La revue Martor est publiée par le Musée du Paysan Roumain. Son aspiration est de généraliser l’accès vers un riche contenu au plus haut niveau du point de vue académique et éditorial pour des objectifs scientifiques, éducatifs et informationnels. Toute utilisation au‐delà de ces buts et sans mentionner la source des articles est interdite et sera considérée une violation des droits de l’auteur.

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PPrreemmiissee:: The Romanian Peasant Museum isnot a museum of the Romanian Peasant.

PPrroobblleemm:: For Romania, any process of(re)thinking the national and identity issues hasto go through a “vision” on “the Romanian peas-ant.” What role does it and may it have in the fu-ture the Romanian Peasant Museum, within thisprocess of (re)thinking Romania itself?

PPeerrssppeeccttiivvee:: “In this museum we are experi-menting with something old.”

“Your museum displays a polemic vision; itstages a concept of museology that must be ex-plained and defended; most absent are the de-bates on this concept” (Gerard Althabe, 1997).The French anthropologist who spent much timein our museum and in Romania knew what hewas talking about: the Romanian Peasant Muse-um was accused, protected, and awarded manyprizes, but its structure was less debated in theprofound sense of this word. But this goes for allRomanian ethnographic museums in general,whose statute does not pose any problem, and forthose that enjoy this statute since their nationalfoundation: as patrimony curators, museographshave a clear and obvious goal, and all they haveto do is fulfill it with devotion. But staging cul-ture is never and nowhere a feat without issues,

as it always illustrates a vision and serves a causeto the loss of other visions and causes – thus al-ways (and also) being an act of power. From thisperspective, this presentation paper raises thefollowing question: what vision and what causeare we talking about, where the Romanian Peas-ant Museum is concerned, and what significancedo they bear within the Romanian cultural andpolitical context?

TThhee RRoommaanniiaann PPeeaassaanntt MMuusseeuumm –– aa mmuusseeuummooff tthhee EEuurrooppeeaann aauuttoocchhtthhoonnoouuss??

We must start our analysis by clarifying a pos-sible misunderstanding regarding the very nameof our museum: who is, in fact, the “Romanianpeasant” of its name?

“We are starting to set up lists with possiblenames for the new museum”, Irina Nicolau re-called in her diary, one of Horia Bernea’s maincollaborators. “How” should we call it? Whatwould be the appropriate name? God, why didn’tI keep that paper? I know for sure that Horiahad numbered those names and that we hadreached more than 20. He oversaw TThhee RRoommaa--nniiaann PPeeaassaanntt MMuusseeuumm, but he didn’t like it. Afew hours later, this very name was chosen, aname which annoyed many people during thefirst years. Peasant? It’s derogatory, said theFrench. Romanian? It’s limiting and politically

TThhee RRoommaanniiaann PPeeaassaanntt MMuusseeuumm aanndd tthhee AAuutthheennttiicc MMaann

VViinnttiill`̀ MMiihh`̀iilleessccuuDirector,

Romanian Peasant Museum

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incorrect, said others. Later, we were also sorrynot to have called it just The Peasant’s Museum”(Nicolau and Hulu]`, 2001:17, the underlinedphrases belong to the authors). And, later: “Aftermore than one year, we still struggle to add asubtitle to this name - A National Museum ofCrafts and Tradition. We give up. All for the bet-ter: we would have entered a European family ofmuseums with which we have nothing in com-mon” (idem). Therefore, whose is this museum,to whom does it refer and who is the “Romanianpeasant” of its title?

The trials mentioned above are already sug-gesting several ideas: a) it’s a pity they didn’tchoose “The Peasant’s Museum” and b) anyway,this museum is not part of the museum family of“crafts and tradition.” On top of all these comethe naming of the Romanian Peasant Museumas “a national museum of anthropology” and theconstant rejection of a “purely” ethnographic vi-sion. “It is normal to have a national museum ofanthropology,” said Horia Bernea during around table organized by the daily “Cotidianul,”of June 18th, 1993. “Understandably, a countrywhich takes so much pride in the only civiliza-tion which can effectively protect it in the eyesof Europe (although this image is already start-ing to be questioned) should have a museum ofanthropology in its capital, a national museumabout what this traditional man was and is, whilealso serving as a testimonial for the future. Themuseum is a basic landmark for anyone whowould try to understand this nation.” During thesame discussion, Gabriel Liiceanu rhetoricallyasks himself “whether, when Horia Berneaspeaks about anthropology, he doesn’t refermainly to the salvation of a human type.” Obvi-ously, the answer is affirmative: “The name ofthe museum (…) casts a precise light upon a new“object,” that is tthhee ttrraaddiittiioonnaall mmaann,,” explainsIrina Nicolau (op.cit.:21, the underlined phrasebelongs to the author).

The Archetypal Dimension

So, this is not about an ethnographic muse-um of the particular species of the Romanianpeasant living in Romania, but about a morecomprehensive notion of an anthropological mu-seum of the next gender, i.e. traditional man. Wetherefore must ask ourselves who this “tradi-tional man” is.

Traditional man is placed beyond the varietyand historicity of its particular traditions (alsocalled “ethnographic”). As Gerard Althabe re-marks, “the placement of objects in the museummarks the exclusion from the exhibition of a di-mension pertaining to hhiissttoorriiccaall ttiimmee” (Althabe,1997:164, the underlined phrase belongs to us).In other words, “historical time is crossed inevery direction, as here rules the long period ofaarrcchheettyyppeess” (Pippidi, 1993:8; the underlinedphrase is ours). Therefore, the type of “tradi-tional man” is a-historical. At the same time, heis a matrix, a “model” of all its versions and be-coming. As Andrei Pippidi underlines (op.cit.),“the space outlined by the museum does not be-long to geography, but to the pprriimmeevvaall uunniittyy(the underlined phrase is ours). “We will studyvillages, modern man, peasants as they are,” saysBernea in his turn, “but we will understand whathappened only if we have a ““mmooddeell”” well struc-tured inside the museum–that is, the traditionalvillage.” (Bernea, 1996:14, the underlinedphrase is ours). Open to changes and to “presenttime,” the Romanian Peasant Museum wants tofirmly and constantly stay anchored in thisarchetypal “model,” without which the purposeof the “Romanian peasant’s” world would witheraway and would lose itself in the significances ofpeasants of our days and of the days of yore.

In this respect, the view on the Romanianpeasant seen as typology rephrases—or even bet-ter, it rebuilds—the dominant view of the periodbetween the two world wars, which today’s an-thropology would name “essentialist” criticizedby Henri Stahl (1983), who called it “a theologi-cal idealism”). Therefore, there are some obvi-

16 Vintil` Mih`ilescu

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ous analogies between this idea of “type” andthat of a “stylistic matrix” proposed by LucianBlaga. The “model of traditional village” is for-mally not far away from the “village-idea,” pro-posed by the same Blaga. This vision proves tobe closer and directly related to the constant wayin which Ernest Bernea (Horia’s father and abrilliant ethnologist of Dimitrie Gusti’s sociolo-gical school of Bucharest) imagined “the processof learning the peasant’s way of thinking in tra-ditional rural communities,” aiming at identify-ing “the fundamental frames of Romanian popu-lar traditional thinking”—that is, the way inwhich the Romanian peasant imagines time,space and causality (E. Bernea, 1985:10). It is nowonder, therefore, that the museum is some-times perceived as being “essentialist,” if notplainly “fundamentalist.”

The European dimension

This is not about going back to “traditionalmuseography.” or to the national and nationalistethnography of the “popular culture” of the pe-riod when the Romanian nation formed and con-solidated itself. “We do not want to add anothervariant to the large gallery of caricatures which,ever since the 18th century, produced almostevery fifty years or so one or two different im-ages of the Romanian peasant,” as Irina Nicolauwould specify in a dialogue with French anthro-pologist Gerard Althabe, who would also state:

“An exhibit is often the object of misunder-standings: some see this combination betweenthe traditional peasant world and Orthodox Chris-tianity as a nostalgic remembrance of a lost uni-verse, which may have never existed; these peo-ple sense the peril of straying towards theexpression of a national identity which closes it-self around a specificity that separates it fromothers. In this case, we are dealing with a “pret-a-porter” interpretation, which reveals the refusalof making the effort to penetrate the exhibit,more precisely the sense that it carries in itself.”

(Althabe, op.cit.:164)

Therefore, there is an important difference:“the human type” of “traditional man” in whichand by which the “Romanian peasant” is seenwalks out of the patterns of “Romanian aprior-ism” (Blaga, 1944). It reaches beyond the fron-tiers of nationalism, without suffering the leastestrangement from it. “Traditional man” is seenas being the “real” European man: “Europeanman has really existed through peasants. Ourmuseum will be an integrative view of the Euro-pean man” — wrote Irina Nicolau in stating theirprogramme (op.cit.:26), echoing Horia Bernea’sdeep convictions. “I think the easiest way tounite Europe is to do it on the grounds of tradi-tional man,” Bernea said in his published dia-logue in the Cotidianul daily newspaper. “I findthat, much closer to a Romanian peasant withrespect to what is profoundly human and typicalto his civilization—is a peasant from Spain orSouthern France, than the bourgeois or citydweller of 1800, who was paying a much moresolid tribute to certain local habits and ways oflife. This is certain.” Gabriel Liiceanu writes inthe mentioned dialogue that, in fact, we are deal-ing with “a human universality represented bypeasant.” Beyond these extensions, for HoriaBernea, the basic reference seems to be the Eu-ropean one, in its deepest sense.

Therefore, the entire paradox of the Roma-nian Peasant Museum comes to life: as a muse-um of the Romanian peasant, it is a museum ofthe authentic peasant; as such, it is in fact a mu-seum of traditional man, that is of the authentictraditional man—that is the European au-tochthonous, while the other “traditional men”from elsewhere do not count: in this sense, thereis an illuminating inner but frequent equiva-lence between the traditional man of Europe andtraditional man as a “human type.”5

As a museum of the authentic Romanianpeasant, the Romanian Peasant Museum definesitself, oddly enough, as a museum of the Euro-pean eternal autochthonous! Nationalism is

The Romanian Peasant Museum and the Authentic Man 17

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therefore distilled into Eurocentrism, whileethnographic particularities are transgressed,though without reaching universalism.

The Christian dimension

There is a fundamental reason for this geo-graphical confinement: “traditional man” is a“Christian man.” More exactly, he is the “real”Christian, the one before the Great Schism: thisis about “a very well circumscribed spirituality,as one before the schism,” Bernea explains. “Eu-rope’s unity must be sought in that period,” thatis, in that remote past “when we were united,”he continues. “So, isn’t this about a museum ofa human type whose fundamental axis in life isfaith?” - Liiceanu asks himself again, as a half-rhetorical question. “Of course,” Andrei Ple[uanswers without hesitation. But we must notethat this is not about faith in general, but aboutChristianity: Real Christianity.

Now we can ask ourselves what the commonpoints are between the modern Romanian peas-ant and the European pre-schismatic au-tochthonous. From an empirical point of view,there are almost none! For Bernea, their com-mon denominator, their liaison is this “tradi-tional man” whose abstract structure appears tobe clearer now. It is not a social or ethnic type,it is not the Romanian or Spanish peasant, northe one from Southern France, as Berneaclaims. In fact, Bernea is not interested in howSpanish or French peasants used to live or howRomanian peasants in Maramures do now. TheRomanian Peasant Museum does not “exhibit”any kind of these peasants! “Traditional man” isa kind of ideal type, not an epistemological, butan axiological one: he is the ideal type. The au-thentic Man.

The patriotic dimension

The Romanian peasant’s authenticity istherefore meeting with the authentic European,while the European vision is transferred without

any contortions on national patriotism. “He whodoesn’t believe in the virtues of this nation, inall its best that lies hidden under the miserablecrust of vileness and acculturation, he who does-n’t believe in its capacity to exhibit these virtuesand make them obvious has no place here,”Horia Bernea once said. There is no trace of pa-triotic emphasis in this statement and in othersimilar ones, but only a trustful sense of “love ofits kind” which belonged to a forgotten, but notextinct species. This “patriotism” has muchdeeper roots than the deep abyss of feeling.These roots are to be found in the words men-tioned above and might be analyzed as follows:Europe’s future (therefore, the future of us all)depends upon rediscovering its spiritual unity;this can be found in traditional man’s past, in its“local” and specific instance of “Christian man,”the way he existed on the entire territory of ourcontinent, before the Great Schism; “the Roma-nian peasant,” seen in his human dimension, iscloser—especially due to his historical setbacks—to this mutual spiritual fund; he is closer both tooriginal Christianity (by his Orthodox confes-sion, which implicitly or explicitly continues“true Christianity”), and to tradition, by the frag-mentary perpetuation of a specific spirituality or,at least, by the wide availability of certain cre-ations, as testimonies of this spirituality: “ourtraditional man may be the most interesting, ashe finds himself at a crossroad on a multitude ofhistorical layers which are almost inexistent inother places, to such a great extent”- claimsBernea in a dialogue of the daily Cotidianul.6

WWhhaatt kkiinndd ooff aa mmuusseeuumm ffoorr TTrraaddiittiioonnaall MMaann??

In the vision we have traced so far, the Ro-manian peasant is neither a chauvinist, nor a fa-natic—although he can become both at anytime... His calling makes him an “authenticman,” who in fact is the original traditional manof Europe. How can this be staged, especiallywhile using the particular and connotative ex-pressions of the Romanian peasant?


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A religious creation: “testimonial” museography

The interest shown to “traditional man”starts by taking the peasant out of his particularethnographic context. Thus, what shocks us inthe very beginning regarding the exhibits of themuseum, as compared to the rest of the ethno-graphic museums in Romania, is “the explicit re-fusal of the realistic illusion,” a major trait ofany other traditional ethnographic exhibition,while the “realistic illusion” consists in a full useof the object according to its function as a wit-ness” (Althabe, 1997:145). A witness to a “socialor professional universe” in which any museumof a society wants to introduce its visitors. There-fore, in Bernea’s case, this is not about a“restoration” of the pre-Communist nationalethnography, but about a true “instauration.”

On what can such a “revolutionary” act bebased? If the “realistic illusion” that is typical toethnographic museums is rejected, then what isthe approach on which the museum’s discoursemust be founded?

Horia Bernea has an explicit answer whichhe repeats any time he can: “we are testifyingabout a reality which is included in the Easternspirituality” (Bernea, 1996: 7). More precisely,this is about the iconoclastic experience andabout the deep sense which the interdiction of“having a carved image” acquires in this expe-rience. “Our Catholic brothers or Christians ofother confessions or even people of different re-ligions must know that, after the great icono-clastic crisis, Orthodoxy became extremely atten-tive with regard to “images,” Bernea recalls(idem:9). In this vision, “the image doesn’t rep-resent Christ or the angel. It presents them.”Bernea thus evokes “the fear of the ancientChurch founders regarding the much too strictrules and their mistrust in excessive formaliza-tion” (idem:5). This “fear” gave birth to theByzantine icon, with its entire particular uni-verse of significance.

This Christian Orthodox foundation is trans-

posed in a museological vision, while Berneaoften uses expressions like “Christian museogra-phy” or “Orthodox museography.” That is, hefights for a “museography based on apophasis,which is ‘negative’ in the Christian mysticalsense (...), and which defines through exclusionand circumscribes its sense by exclusion, and notby explicit statements, which are inevitablymaiming” (idem:7). Or, in a totally different lan-guage, this fear of the ancient fathers is translat-ed as “an excess of formalization which impov-erishes the quantity of information” (idem:5).Therefore, we obtain a principle of a museogra-phy as a “trial to know the unknown,” “an ex-periment in the phase of an endless beginning,”which implies an “acceptance of the hazard”—while the museum stays, nevertheless, constant-ly “open” and “alive:” this is what Bernea calls aatteessttiiffyyiinngg mmuusseeooggrraapphhyy.. Not an affirmative one- and even less a positivist-explanatory one - buta feat on the verge of the “unknown,” which“poses problems” more than suggests or indi-cates answers.

From this point of view, the kind of know-ledge proposed by Bernea’s museography is veryclose to what Lucian Blaga stated as “Luciferianthinking,” as opposed by him with “the para-disiacal thinking” (Blaga, 1943). “The crossingline between the two kinds of knowledge” startswith “the very idea of its problems”: “to pose aproblem in the sphere of Luciferian knowledgeis to provoke a Luciferian crisis inside the ‘ob-ject,’ that is to open the way towards a mystery”(idem:180). “The inner phenomenon of para-disiac knowledge is the determination of the ob-ject (...), or the gathering of adequate conceptsregarding the fact that is was sensed, thought orimagined. The inner phenomenon of Luciferianknowledge is totally different: the crisis of the ob-ject and i t s var ious consecut ive acts .”(idem:161). Unlike “paradisiacal thinking”(which may be roughly identified with what wegenerally understand by knowledge, at leastsince Kant, as Blaga suggests), Luciferian think-ing is not directed towards the exhaustion of the


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“mystery,” but towards its intensification, not to-wards what Blaga names “plus-knowledge,” but,paradoxically in appearance, as it would seem toa positivist mind, towards “minus-knowledge:”“generally, any cognitive material, when seenfrom the perspective of Luciferian knowledge,becomes a revealed side of a mystery that is es-sentially hidden” (idem:179).

A museum “poses some problems”, asBernea claims in his turn. It supposes “an actionwhich goes way beyond the physical limit of theexposed object” (Bernea, 1996:13). The “testi-mony” to which Bernea refers does not exposethe object in order to have its “definition” plan-ted inside the visitor’s mind, but it somehowhides it from being seen, in order to open it tothe inner eye. It shows it as “spirit,” as Berneawould call it—and thus, we might add in ourturn, as “mystery.” But this mystery constantlycarries the testimony of a deep sense, of a mean-ing. What Blaga saw as “theory of knowledge,”Bernea interprets as “mmyyssttiiccaall aaeesstthheettiiccss..””

Bernea’s “testifying museography” has a sec-ond complementary foundation, in Orthodoxspirituality: the organic. We must consider, hesays, “the importance that Orthodoxy gives tothe organic and to organicity” (idem:7). “Ortho-doxy,” Bernea goes on, “rejects a feeling with-out a concrete support (...), a feeling that doesnot ‘heal,’ through which the very matter is nottransfigured. Which is the actual result of Incar-nation? What is the use in glorifying and prais-ing Incarnation, if not to discover the Spiritwhich animates and transfigures the object?”(idem:8). Again, this dimension that became amuseographic faith comes from a long traditionof modern Romanian thinking, from Eminescuto Mircea Eliade.

This Orthodox cult of organicity results in acertain “immediate trait,” in a “strong materialstructure” of the museographic discourse. It’sthe faith that “it’s good to have a least mediatedcontact with the object.” From a strictly aesthet-ic point of view, this goes back to a graphic trait,to the constant care for matters and textures, to

tactile challenges, the most non-mediated of all.Museographic discourse is thus a deeply object-related and visual one, and the exhibits are notcovered in words, as words do not occur betweenthem and the visitors.

There where these “principles” meet (even ifBernea stubbornly refused to speak about prin-ciples in his activity as a director of the muse-um), we find the central “solution” of the muse-um: “I put at the center of this museum ‘thepeasant’s icon’”- Bernea said many times(Bernea, 1996:10). “Here, the Romanian peas-ant is not an idol, he is not idolized. Here wemeet with his icon”—this underlines AndreiPlesu, in his turn, in the dialogue of “Cotidian-ul.” TThhee iiccoonn,, seen in its deeply and complexOrthodox sense, becomes an aesthetic precept.Objects are not “representations” of “a social orprofessional world,” but “presentations” (presen-ces) of a “spirit” about which they testify beyondtheir physical limits.

A postmodern practice? Experimental museography

“The testifying museography” (be it Chris-tian-Orthodox, apophatic, mystical etc...) that wepresented above is rather a register of principles,of stating the aesthetic criterion in religion. The“profane” side, so to speak, the “working” as-pect of this museographic vision comes as “ex-perimental museography”—an expression usedalmost to an equal extent by Horia Bernea andby his collaborators, alike. But, as Andrei Ple[unotes in the dialogue of Cotidianul, “experimentis one of the key concepts of modernity, but hereit acquires a rather bizarre sense. One usually ex-periments ssoommeetthhiinngg nneeww.. Here, we experimenttthhee oolldd..”” The apofatic trait of Christian mysticsbecomes the horizon of free creation, of a “flick-ering museography,” as Bernea liked to call it,which ceaselessly approximates exposure whichis, after all, game. Game, but not play, as we willsee.

“This exhibition builds itself through the


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next move,” notes Gerard Althabe, “ethno-graphic objects are detached from the social andsymbolic universe (traditional peasant) in whichthey were produced and used; the authors do notuse them as witnesses of this universe; it releas-es them of the significance of their origin and itregroups them in aesthetic compositions; thismovement turns the exhibit into a ‘work of art.’Therefore, we assist to the transmutation ofthese objects that were drawn from the muse-um’s store.” (Althabe, op.cit.:145).

“A museum”, claims Bernea in his turn,“may and we think it must be an act of creationthat transmits more than a simple sum of ex-hibits” (Bernea, 1996:12). The museum must be“a space which does not let the object to vege-tate,” as opposed to the widespread convictionthat leaving objects to just exist is “a scientificand correct option” (idem:8). In this sense, in-terestingly enough, Bernea uses comparisonsfrom music to speak about what he wants his vis-itors to see: he speaks about “themes whichcouldn’t survive in such a space, if ‘sung’ by ob-jects hidden in the store.” Bernea compares amuseum site with a “song” and, of course, he al-ways thought that one needs a good “ear” tohear what the object is saying.” Bernea treatedobjects like they were musical notes, if we wereto borrow his comparison, each with its ownsound, but which are subject to our creativeimagination to make a sym-phony. In otherwords, just like the sounds of a musical scale cancombine in endless and various ways in order tomake music, the objects of various museum col-lections are placed relationally, in order to makean exhibit. Here occurs the main differencewhich separates modern from “classical” mu-seums:

“Objects exposed in a village museum,whichever in the world, are placed in a reallight. It is about reconstructing, placing andrelating those objects as close to reality aspossible. It is a mimetic act, a diorama (...).And we place it in another context. How canwe make this object active again? Not in its

original context, as the Village Museum orany other museum tries. So, we are placingthe object under “n” instances”, we make itsay what it wouldn’t say otherwise, because itis a dead object, for the time being. So this isthe reason for all these trials, the entire set ofpresentations which may make a study for amuseum of the future. (Bernea, Cotidianul)

This “showing” of the objects in the muse-um, seen as a “magical, enchanting operation,”was meant to incite the visitor’s “sight,” the truesight that goes beyond “the physical limitation ofthe exposed object.” Through this, says Bernea,“the visitor is compelled to seize, at a subliminallevel, profound truths to which we normallydon’t have access” (idem:13). Truths which theauthors of the exhibit do not stage or enlighten(maybe because even they do not know them),but which they let transgress. The visitor istherefore invited to be part of the museographicwork, also participating, according to his wishesand possibilities, at the process of testifying thesense of the exhibit. He doesn’t keep the exter-nal relation of a mere spectator (Althabe,op.cit.:16).

This permanent game of museographs“showing” exhibits and of visitors “seeing them”has a power to mesmerize both actors alike. Forthe first ones it may mean, among others, the ev-eryday practice of the romantic myth of genius—while running the risk of the sorcerer’s appren-tice. For the other ones, it may (also) mean therare pleasure of their own freedom of interpre-tation and understanding—even at the risk ofbeing a snob. The refusal to take over or to cre-ate formulas, to stage and formulate serioustruths, the staging of the “experiment that is ina state of eternal beginning” has the way ofcharming us all.

The Romanian Peasant Museum’s “open”and systematically non-apodictic feature led to(relatively) numerous instances when it wasplaced in the context of post modernity. Somehave even seen analogies with Vattimo’s “weak


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thought.” Many more others saw in the halls ofthe Romanian Peasant Museum an equal num-ber of “outfits.” Jean Cuisenier, for instance,who has good knowledge of both Romania andthe museum, would recently praise the postmodernity of the outfits proposed by HoriaBernea and his collaborators, during an interna-tional colloquium. But Bernea is utterly explicitin this matter: “The things we did and intend todo in the future at the Romanian Peasant Muse-um have nothing to do with a void game, withcertain borderline phenomena from the contem-porary world, as the ‘outfits,’ for example. (...)That which totally differentiates them is thegiven element, the patrimony which is in action,but which we tame” (Bernea, 1996:14).7

In his vision, the museum refuses the“recipe, but not the style” (idem:8); moreover, it“follows the rraannggiinngg, not the oorrddeerr..”” (idem:7,my underlined words). The refusal of any“recipe” and of “order” is not the “void game”of post modernity, even though it is based uponan unfounded character of the game. Of a gamewhich must be played, though, within the“given” limits of a profound vision on the world,of a vision of “traditional man,” of what in Roma-nian is called “ranging.” A game in the indefinitesearch of the given sense, not one of freely as-signing significances. The experiment promotedby Bernea as a museographic strategy proves thusto be a free one only within the limits of an ori-ginal given situation: Andrei Plesu is perfectlyright when he says this is also a situation wheresomething old is being experimented!

Between a museum of a community and anart museum or on the ambiguity of TTrraaddiittiioonnaall MMaann

The Romanian Peasant Museum did notwant to become (again) an ethnographic muse-um of peasant in Romania. Logically enough, itdid not want to become a “community muse-um,” without being an “art museum”. But whatis it, then?

There is a classical antagonism, often formu-lated in the terms of a simple alternative: shoulda museum of this kind present its objects as ar-tifacts (handcraft objects, as we say), in their spe-cific ethnographic context (which is the ethno-graphs’ position), or, on the contrary, should itpresent them in such a way that they wipe outtheir cultural particularities (the lack of indica-tions about their being part of certain categories,about their functions and significances), in orderto spot and highlight their aesthetic quality as artobjects?

In order to evaluate the Romanian PeasantMuseum in this respect, we must start with anexample: a number of ceramic plates, of variousages, size and styles (some of which not of a “pat-rimonial” value), with no indication on theirplace of origin or their name, are making a“painting” in itself, when placed on a huge wall,one after the other. Its elements can be replacedat any time with other ceramic plates, withoutthis composition having to suffer any change ofsense or value. Moreover: this composition-poemseems to be a permanent incentive for the visi-tor: play with me, make your own creations withyour eyes!

An equivalent of the ceramic halls of any or-dinary ethnographic museum, this “composi-tion” raises the following central problem: arethe ceramic plates on the wall presented as art orhandcraft, or are they staged as art objects orethnographic objects? The answer seems to beambiguous: neither one, nor the other. Takenout of their ethnographic context, without anygeographical, historical or typological reference,the respective plates are almost explicitly deniedtheir statute of ethnographic object.8

Still, Kirschenblatt-Gimblett remarks that,“though multiple in the beginning, while ac-quiring an ethnographic status, objects becomesingular and, the more singular they become, themore they are ready to be reclassified andexposed as art” (Kirschenblatt -Gimblett,1991:391). From this perspective, traditionalbowls do not become, however, in Bernea’s artis-


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tic composition, a disciplined row of singulari-ties - one bowl of Horezu and one of Corund, forinstance - but they keep their multiple andanonymous character, thus avoiding their beinganalyzed as art objects.

And still, there is a certain beauty that issought and exhibited on scene. According toHoria Patapievici’s remarks in a documentarydedicated to the museum, while expressingBernea’s convictions, “each object must beplaced in the light of its own adequacy. If an ob-ject was made to bring porridge to one’s mouth,its destination - that is, its bbeeaauuttyy! - lies in its ca-pacity to bring porridge to the mouth of the per-son eating it” (our underlined expression). Ob-jects are what they are by means of theirpurpose, that is their original “role,” and this iswhat contributes to their authentic statute. Fur-thermore, this makes their “beauty;” therefore,authenticity is of an aesthetic nature.

But how can one establish if an object is au-thentic or not? And, furthermore, against whichelements are we to establish its authenticity?These would be only the first questions raised atonce by a positivist mind. This is what happenedduring the last TV show where Horia Bernea wasinvited and where I and Speran]a R`dulescu cor-nered him, in a delicate, but thorough manner,with such questions and objections. Without anyintention to offend us, during a short break,Bernea shrugged his shoulders and snapped atus, obviously annoyed: “If I look at certain ob-jects, I know if they are authentic or not!” Inother words, if you don’t, that’s it! But, as Crewand Sims specify: “authenticity does not pertainto factuality or reality. It is a matter of authority”(Crew and Sims, 1991:163). In the RomanianPeasant Museum, the “authority” was Berneathe artist, for whom the authentic cannot bemeasured, but seen, therefore, it depends uponaarrttiissttiicc aappeerrcceeppttiioonn, and not upon empiricalanalysis! When exhibiting it, interest does notfall on the truth of peasant society, but on thebeautiful of peasant culture, a different kind ofbeautiful, though, which lies in the authentic

meaning of objects, which seem to refuse theaesthetic autonomy. Can we therefore talk aboutan “art museum?”

Kirschenblatt-Gimblett proposes anothermore nuanced dichotomy: the one between “insitu” and “within context” approaches. “The no-tion of in situ entails metonymy and mimesis:the object is a past that stands in a contiguous re-lation with an absent whole that may or may notbe recreated” (idem:388). Therefore, seen as ap-proach, in situ museography does not necessari-ly refer to eco-museums or outdoor museums, asthe Skansen Museum, but to the constant prac-tice of metonymy and mimesis, whatever theirscale. The challenge is to create a representation“as close to reality as possible” of the exhibitedobjects. Is the Romanian Peasant Museum suchan in situ museum? Obviously not, as its favoritepractice belongs rather to poesis than mimesis.Therefore, are we dealing with an approach “incontext” (this means the ordering of objects aftera reference system imagined by the curator, andfrom this point of view there are “that many con-texts for an object, as are interpretation strate-gies?” (idem:390). In a way, yes, but only in away, for this “context” Bernea proposed— aswould be “windows,” for instance – is not anelaborate, explicit and clarified theoretical refer-ence frame, but it stays an open reference whichthe visitor must discover and even create.

The exhibition of a culture always hesitatesbetween exotisation and assimilation – as IvanKarp states: “I call exotisation an exhibit strate-gy in which differences prevail and an assimila-tion strategy, one which underlines the resem-blances” (Karp, 1991:375). To which of thesecategories does the Romanian Peasant Museummuseography belong? Hard to say. In a way, to asmall extent, it belongs to both categories: thereis a tendency for assimilation, to the extentwhere we aim for what is common and typical of“traditional man,” beyond its particular traits intime and space. However, there is a distancewhich “exotises” objects, to the extent which itexhibits a different world from our own, maybe


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even lost to us. But both dimensions melt in theambivalence of alterity and of the identity of“traditional man,” as well as in the natural in-tention of the exposure. But this alternative alsofails to help us much, in order to place Bernea’svision where it belongs, in the world of muse-ums.

So, we can but wonder why does The Roma-nian Peasant Museum seem to escape all theseclassifications and definitions? Why is it so hardto place this “traditional man” among the epony-mous characters of the museums? Maybe be-cause “traditional man,” as imagined by Bernea,does not actually exist, while the Romanian Peas-ant Museum isn’t actually a museum! Bernea’sconstruction does not reproduce any social worldand not even evokes it in any way; it only in-vokes an ideal world in which he believes andwhich he loves. The museum does not exhibittraditional man, but it produces traditional ges-tures. It doesn’t refer to the order outside themuseum, but it rebuilds it from inside.9

Authenticity does not refer to the exhibits,but to the action of exhibiting in itself, as themuseum rather exists through the gestures of itscreators, gestures that “experiment somethingold,” that freely arrange objects, within the lim-its of ranged objects, of the rules themselves. AsGerard Lenclud mentions, “everything happensas if tradition would not lie in ideas, but directlyin practices, as if this would be less a thinkingsystem, and more manners to do things”(Lenclud, 1987).

Bernea should have confessed to this, proba-bly, while paraphrasing Flaubert: l’homme tradi-tionel, c’est moi!

TThhee ppoolliiccyy ooff aauutthheennttiicciittyy:: aa hheeaalliinngg mmuusseeuumm

Therefore, no wonder the Romanian PeasantMuseum is hard to place in the alternative:“community museum versus art museum.” Al-though it uses both dimensions, the RomanianPeasant Museum does stage neither the truth ofethnographical museums, nor the beautiful of

art museums, but, in a certain sense, theggoooodd..1100 Therefore, what the museum invokesis ultimately AAuutthheennttiicc MMaann,, that is, the deepand unseen significance assigned to “traditionalman.” This significance expresses the hiddenmessianic dimension of the museum. It is, infact, the one which stirred the admiration andadversity with which the museum was seen fromits very beginning and we cannot understand itsstatute in Romanian society, without a detailedanalysis of this dimensions.

When wittingly asked by Gabriel Liiceanu ifthe Romanian Peasant Museum was (...) “notonly a gesture of memory, but also one of a fight-ing spirit,” “a polemic gesture oriented towardsthe present days,” Bernea admits: “It is. Why notadmit so? I see the state we’re in now, so I admitit is true.” It is not by chance that the museumwas perceived and presented once too often,both by its creators and by its many admirers, asa “rebirth”. And no one referred only to thestrict existence of the old Museum by the av-enue: in a secular, material world, which never-theless needs a rebirth more than ever,” saysHoria Bernea at the opening of the museum. Inher turn, Irina Nicolau is as explicit as she canbe: “In my opinion, Romanian society at the endof this century needs a healing museum dealingwith its diseased present (Nicolau, 1997)”.

But what is the disease that affects our mo-dern society?

These scars that the museum was supposedto heal were mainly aiming at communism -which is understandable. The Romanian PeasantMuseum was placed, shortly after the fall of com-munism, in the building which had sheltered forseveral decades a museum of the CommunistParty, our new national identity. The Commu-nist Party exposed in the halls of the Museum bythe Avenue its own genealogy. The haste withwhich the Museum by the Avenue was givenback to serve its initial purpose was meant toshow a historical recovery against communistusurpation. But Horia Bernea chose the “Chris-tian solution”: “I thought it was good to open


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the halls of the museum of the new “peasant’smuseum” with a serene exhibit, with an exhaus-tive message and a balanced style. After twodecades of huge destructions caused to the peas-ants by communism, a “political” tough exhibi-tion would have been in order, a story of horrorssuffered by the Romanian village. We didn’tadopt this justified approach, but full of verdicts,an approach full of tensions and adversities. Itwouldn’t have been too Christian to give avengeful answer to our new museum! We wouldhave started our new life with a sad note, underthe black light of revenge” (Bernea, 1996:5).

“Our diseased present” does not add up tothe Communist heritage, elegantly exorcised in aChristian way. It seems to have roots much deep-er in time, even in the French Revolution, a pastwhich is quite similar to that of Communist Ro-mania. “France has never recovered from theRevolution’s purifications”, Bernea and Nicolauremark in an article of the DDiilleemmaa magazine,written “at four hands”. France destroyed themost part of its noblesse and dignity, in favour ofOrtega’s “mass-man”. Part of the essence thatkept the French spirit from withering was de-stroyed. (apud Nicolau and Hulu]`, op.cit.:53).Secularity which became scientific atheism hasits origins in those early modern times. There-fore, the evil is much more deeply rooted, inHoria Bernea’s opinion and for many of his com-petent admirers this can be named simply““mmooddeerrnniittyy..”” To this and to the “mass-man” itproduces one can oppose the AAuutthheennttiicc mmaann..

Of course, Bernea was not an ideologist andthe museum he imagined isn’t a political state-ment. However, it is an ideology in act, whichhas had and still has an influence on Romaniansociety and which can be understood only if it isplaced again in the context from which it wasborn: a sincere and deep critic of late modernity.

Therefore, what does Bernea have againstmodernity and why does he oppose it?

An important clue in this sense comes fromBernea himself, when he says that “the museumis about ranging, not order.” Or, unlike “order”-

a human creation -”rearranging” is alreadygiven, is a cosmic order that existed before man,independent from man. Therefore, “traditionalman” would be the inhabitant of this world of“rearranging.”

In the dialogue of the CCoottiiddiiaannuull daily, An-drei Ple[u adds in his turn something essentialin this sense: “the specificity of this type of uni-verse is that it doesn’t have its meaning in itself.It is entirely organized by comparison to a mean-ing which, while it is not external from a spatialperspective, is separate and has a radiant and or-dering function. It is a world which is not self-sufficing, not centered upon itself; it is not cen-tripetal and egolatre. It is a world which acceptsto live in a very coherent and serene ddeeppeennddeenn--ccyy with a higher principle which constitutes itspremise, while the modern worlds are living inthe euphoria of their sufficiency.” Let’s try tofollow this lead of “dependency” which woulddefine “traditional man’s” world which Berneaconstantly refers to, a world which is differentand opposed to “modern worlds”, which are cen-tripetal and self-sufficient.

Psychology makes a typological distinction,elaborated by Rotter (1966) between that whichused to name eexxtteerrnnaall and iinntteerrnnaall llooccuuss ooffccoonnttrrooll,, respectively: (“He that is born to behanged shall never be drowned” may prove “ex-ternality”, while “what goes around comesaround” may show “internality”). More precise-ly, we are dealing with a projection of the“source of control”, of the aaccttiivvee pprriinncciippllee, soto say, in a correlative, but external instance ofthe individual (God, an institution, the fatheretc.) or in an internal instance, typical to the in-dividual himself (personality, reason, will etc.).From this point of view, not only individuals,but entire populations may differ in tendency,while being more or less “externalist” or “inter-nalist”, as a whole. Moreover, we can use this al-ternative in order to sketch the passage throughmodern ideology11 from a perspective which isuseful to the present discussion.

From the perspective of Man (and not of the


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individual!) there are two basic possibilities: thatthe origin of control lies either outside Man (it isof an external, previous and higher nature, het-eronomy, or it is placed within Man itself, havinghim as origin, autonomy). In other words, the“reason” is projected either in the World, orwithin Man. In the first case, we can talk abouta given order of the World (or cosmocentrism,which in Romanian is defined by the beautifulword “rânduial`,” or “ranging”). In the secondcase we speak about an order that was instatedby Man - anthropocentrism. This is precisely theintuitive difference which Bernea identified be-tween “ranging” and “order”: “ranging” is givento man who will thus be able to do “what is inorder”, while “order” is Man’s creation, whothus becomes the measure of his freedom toorder his own life.

These two fundamental ideological types in-volve two different types of rationality. In thecase of a cosmocentric order of the World, builtbefore and independently of Man, the latter canbut ceaselessly guide himself according to the re-quirements of this order. He can only do whatwas “settled”, in conformity with the “ranging”of the World, as this was conceived from its ori-gins. It is therefore rational for us to direct ourunderstanding efforts towards the origin of thisorder and to be guided by the deeds of others inthe past, who were as “dependent” on the rang-ing of the world as us. Therefore, having itsfoundation in the past, as sole source and guar-antee of knowledge, rationality is retrospective.On the contrary, in the case of an anthropocen-tric rule of the game, of Man’s autonomy in theWorld, it is rational for us to choose those ap-propriate means in order to attain—in a more orless distant future—Man’s autonomous aims andthe order that he tries to impose upon himself.We can talk in this case about a prospective ra-tionality (forward looking, as G. Becker wouldsay). Correspondingly, the behavioral rule will bethat of habit, in the first case, and of project, inthe second.

From this perspective, the “modern worlds”

about which Ple[u talks when he opposes themto “traditional man” are the result of this greatpassage - from being dependent upon cosmocen-tric ranging and from heteronomy to an anthro-pocentric and egotistic understanding of Man’sautonomy. Does this mean that, by opposition,“traditional man’s” world is the pre-modernworld of heteronomy and habit? No. And this isthe source of many a great confusion: this is theworld of habitual communities! Tradition - and,with it, “traditional man” -is an invention ofmodernity, precisely one of its versions. Thepeasant, especially if and to the extent which heis “authentic,” is not “traditional,” but just...peasant, the member of a habitual peasant com-munity. The tradition which we assign to thepeasant world is a compensatory construction ofthe modern worlds, as habitual worlds tend todisappear and as they lose the “dependency”that these worlds have in common. According toHobsbawm, at the beginning of his book whichhe dedicated to inventing traditions, “in thissense, ‘tradition’ must be clearly distinguishedfrom ‘habit,’ which rules over the so-called ‘tra-ditional’ societies.” (Hobsbawm, 1983). Tradi-tion is a selection and, at the same time, its re-sult, while it operates from present to past, inorder to transform the past into a reference ofthe present.

“In order to define a tradition, we mustgo from the present towards the past, and notthe other way round, in order to understandit not as a vis a targo, whose effect will beperceived by us all, but as a point of view thatwe have today on what was before us. I don’twant to say that to recognize a tradition is toinvent it. The past must endure, so that wemay take what was good from it. We can’t dowhatever we want with it. But the past setsonly the interior limits, upon which dependonly our interpretations of the present.”(Pouillon, 1975)

That which opposes a “diseased” modernityis not a pre-modern factual state - particularly,


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the habitual world of peasant societies - but acritical modern perspective, an alternativemodernity to which its own rationality patterncan be applied, one which we could name aprospective-retrospective pattern (Mih`ilescu,2003): as would say “the friends of the muse-um”, this sui generis rationality “makes experi-ments with the past” in a “polemic gesture con-cerning the present,” which aims at “healing”this present. It is a critical modernity for whicha paradoxical name was found: a conservativerevolution - or, more simply, conservativethought, which, outside and beyond the subjec-tive area, wants to be a well-tempered rationality,a “compromise” between the habitual fixedstructure of retrospective rationality and the per-ilous enthusiastic acts of prospective rationality:“Between the rigid lack of horizon and themacabre passion of hasty modernity,” arguesIoan Stanomir, reiterating Virgil Nemoianu’sthought about conservatism—the policy of delaybrings to the horizon of the community’s behav-ior a caution which offers the necessary lapse oftime for discovering the valid elements of secu-lar heritage. Retrospection is a shortcut to theheart of today’s world. The conscience of the ex-istence of a patrimony reorders contextually thedilemmas of the globalization fin-de-siecle.”(Stanomir, 2004:114).

The symptoms of the “disease” identified inthis contemporary world, which wants to behealed by such a conservative ideology bear dif-ferent names, from the artificialism invoked byTonnies, to the relativism blamed by “thefriends of the Romanian Peasant Museum.”12 Itsetiology seems to be governed by (relative) con-sensus: the drift of in-dependent modern man,detached from the heteronomy that kept himbound to an exterior and “active principle,”while feeding him these higher and mutual sens-es. It is the theme of “tradition” and of continu-ity, seen as opposed to “revolution,” which iscentral for conservative thought, in general, ex-pressed in Romanian conservative thought bythe recurrent theme of “organic development.”

About this theme, Horia Patapievici stated thefollowing: “obviously, the model of synchroniza-tion through imitation (Lovinescu, n.n.) is infe-rior to that proposed by Titu Maiorescu in his“theory of shapes without content” (Patapievici,2004:89).

Where does the Romanian Peasant Museumplace itself in this ideological landscape?

On the one hand, Bernea’s founding actdeeply affected the conservatism (and not theconservative thought!) of the “priests” of ourethnographic patrimony, while his gesture wasunconsciously perceived as treason—therefore,even harder to forgive. With their deep knowl-edge and love of and for the peasant world,Bernea and his team at the museum were in away, “of them;” they only assigned their knowl-edge and love a different significance, thereforeruining the very legitimate character of knowl-edge and love practiced by the “priests” of thepatrimony. The authenticity of Bernea’s gestureaims at the norm of “traditional” life, and not atthe reality of habitual life, often mistaken byethnographs. As we have seen, Bernea’s exhibi-tion was founded neither on an empirical-ethno-graphic knowledge of the “peasant”, nor on a na-tional dimension of the “Romanian people,”which is precisely the foundation of the legiti-mate national ethnography and of its adjacentmuseography. However, it was not foreign mat-ter, it wasn’t something different, an importednotion of post-modernist anthropology, for in-stance. It wasn’t a case of ignorance or lack ofpatriotism, either. It was the worst of it: heresy!Therefore, right after Bernea’s death (followedby that of Irina Nicolau), there followed, almostnaturally, a restoration period, which had almostnothing to do with communism and its resent-ments: it was only the annulment of the heresyitself and a forceful come-back of the prodigalson within the true, eternal national ethnology,which is still at the heart of the Romanian na-tional identity. This restoration tendency whichstill goes on and will do so is not (only) a pro-blem of petty individual games, but a fundamen-


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tally strategic one, pertaining to the nation’sidentity - therefore, to the legitimate nature ofits defenders!

On the other hand, without wanting it orknowing it, Bernea offered a conservative visionwhich is beautiful, if we may say so. It’s not afaithful representation of the social life we havehere or elsewhere, but a presentation of whatIoan Stanomir calls in his paper dedicated to

conservative consciousness, “the marks of tradi-tional normality” (Stanomir, op.cit.203). There-fore, it is no wonder that a large group of intel-lectual elites in Romania, who are very sensitiveto conservative values, have gladly found them-selves inside Bernea’s museum, while this muse-um was actually foreshadowing that which could-n’t manifest itself as solid contemporaryconservative thought.13


5 Irina Nicolau has a much wider representation of this„traditional man“. „Conceived as a version of Euro-pean medieval civilization, the Romanian peasant, seenas traditional man, is also formed as an extension ofcertain ancient cultures, and he is organically linked tothe Mediterranean world, to civilizations which can befollowed from India to Bretagne“, she says (Nicolauand Hulu]`, op.cit.:21)

6 During the same round table of Cotidianul, priest Comanshared another vision on this subject: „As a priest andtheologist, I thought about the existence of a peasant’smuseum and, especially, about what the peasant repre-sents, in this instance of making the subject of a muse-um. I see him as a positive challenge to the world ofthe city, in general, and to the cultural world, in parti-cular. In this sense, I would propose a parallel betweenwhat represents the village spirituality and what repre-sents our modern spirituality - which you seem toblame in some sort. We should discuss the terms of thismeeting and the dialogue between authenticity-truthand straying-falsity. (...) The image of the world, as re-vealed to us here, in the museum, is the one proposedby Orthodox theology. If you want, this image is in an-tagony with Western theology, which produced a men-acing civilization (...). Still, I believe in the peasant spir-ituality, as it is presented here. (...) This peasant’smuseum proposes a life centered on Christ, as per-ceived by the Orthodox spirit, and not otherwise.“ Theinternal or external „ideologists“ of the museum didnever develop, to my knowledge, such a discoursebased on the opposition between truth and straying,having Orthodoxy as the only way to authenticity, butthey didn’t publicly reject it, either...

7 In a dialogue with Irina Nicolau, published in the thirdnumber of Martor magazine, 1998, Bernea gives a nu-ance to his unwillingness to use „outfits“: „I cannotbut admit that the outfit, as a genre, produced very in-

teresting works. I think it may have a future in theworld of museums (p. 225). A few pages further on,Bernea states that „these must not become a tempta-tion, (...), it must not break the dams towards a randomsubjectivity“. (p. 228).

8 We should not mistake „the peasant’s object“ which be-longs to a peasant community with the „ethnographicobject,“ a result of a selection which is justified in onesense or another, made by an expert among the objectsof the peasants’ world. We should also mention the hor-ror Bernea had in front of those „mannequins“ seen asrealistic objects, frequently used by ethnographic mu-seums.

9 Horia Patapievici guesses a part of this dimension when,in a documentary dedicated to the museum, he statesthat such a museum „would prevail or fall according toits capacity to gather around it, at certain dates, peopleable to reproduce objects in it.“ Patapievici was actual-ly referring to the craftsmen’s fairs, but he was intend-ing to state much more. The museum is what it isthrough the authenticity of its exhibits—in other words,through the conformity with the traditional origin andfunction of the peasant objects of its collections. Butthis authenticity must be reproduced outside the mu-seum, in the real world, so that the museum may lastand preserve its sense and function. Therefore, shouldthe museum give life (and probably revive) and main-tain „an authentic world,“ beyond its museographicworld?

10 Relevantly enough, Andrei Ple[u ends the film dedicat-ed to the Romanian Peasant Museum, confessing that,to him, entering the Museum evokes every time theembodiment of the laws of the city, from Plato’s dia-logue.

11 We use the term ideology in the sense in which MaryDouglas (1986/2002) speaks about „the cognitive di-mension of institutions“ or in which André Petitat

NNootteess

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ALTHABE, Gérard: “Une exposition ethno-graphique: du plaisir esthetique, une leçon poli-tique”, Martor, 2, 1997, pp.144-165

BERNEA, Ernest: Cadre ale gândirii populareromâne[ti, Cartea Româneasc`, Bucure[ti, 1985

BERNEA, Horia : “Ideile tematice ale expozi]ieide baz` a Muzeului }`ranului Român”, RevistaMuzeelor, 4, 1996, pp.5-16

BERNEA, Horia et Nicolau Irina: “L’installation.Exposer des objets au Musée du Paysan Roumain”,Martor, 3, 1998, pp.223-238

BLAGA, Lucian: Trilogia cunoa[terii, Funda]iaRegal` pentru Literatur` [i Art`, Bucure[ti, 1943

BLAGA, Lucian: Trilogia culturii, Funda]iaRegal` pentru Literatur` [i Art`, Bucure[ti, 1944

CREW, Spencer and Sims, James : “Locating Au-thenticity: Fragments of a Dialog”, Ivan Karp andSteven D. Lavine (eds.), The Poetics and Politics ofMuseum Display, Smithonian Institution Press,Washington and London, 1991, pp. 159-175

DOUGLAS, Mary: How Institutions think, Syra-cuse University Press, Syracuse, New York, 1986

KARP, Ivan: “Culture and Representation”, IvanKarp and Steven D. Lavine (eds.), The Poetics andPolitics of Museum Display, Smithonian Institution

Press, Washington and London, 1991, pp. 11-24KIRSCHENBLATT-GIMBLETT, Barbara: “Ob-

jects of Ethnography”, Ivan Karp and Steven D.Lavine (eds.), The Poetics and Politics of Museum Dis-play, Smithonian Institution Press, Washington andLondon, 1991, pp. 386-443

MIH~ILESCU, Vintil`: “Omul locului. Ideologieautohtonist` în cultura român`”, în

GROZA, Octavian (volum coordonat de), Teri-torii. (Scrieri, dez-scrieri), Paideia, Bucure[ti, 2003,pp.167-212

PATAPIEVICI, Horia Roman: Discern`mântulmoderniz`rii. 7 conferin]e despre situa]ia de fapt, Hu-manitas, Bucure[ti, 2004

PETITAT, André: Secret et formes sociales, PUF,Paris, 1998

ROTTER, J. B., “Generalized expectancies for in-ternal versus external control of reinforcement”, Psy-chological Monographs, 80, no. 609, 1966

STAHL, Henri H.: Eseuri critice despre culturapopular` româneasc`, Editura Minerva, Bucure[ti,1983

STANOMIR, Ioan: Con[tiin]a conservatoare. Pre-liminarii la un profil intelectual, Nemira, Bucure[ti,2004


(1998) speaks about ideology as „transcendence of theconventional“; in other words, as the last reason to sup-port a given society or social life, in general.

12 Anca Manolescu - another important collaborator of theRomanian Peasant Museum team, embraces this per-spective when she writes in a recent issue of the cultu-ral journal Dilema veche: „Postmodern thinkers arecautious when thinking about Plato and the traditionhe created. They resent the conviction that there is anessence of realities that is superior to concrete mani-festations, that founds them. Seen as ‘essentialism,’ thisview is accused of metaphysical authoritarianism, oflack of respect towards the living diversity of the worldwhich seem humiliated on the field of ideas. They alsoresent Plato’s ‘axiological monism,’ which regroups val-ues in a transcendent unity; they resent his politicalelitism, seen as an enemy of democracy, of an open so-ciety, which would legitimate, who knows, even the to-

talitarian state“ . We can easily read between the linesthe „disease“ of which post-modernity suffers in thisrespect.

13 Such a political thought and opinion seem to take shape,lately. In a recent article in Dilema Veche, for instance,Sever Voinescu would round them up: „I don’t want toelude the meaning of this article (...). I want to transmitto all those who share conservative values that they aremore than they imagine and that Romania needs themand their abilities, and, most of all, their moral sense.“Obviously, we are dealing with the „true conserva-tives,“ not those of Voiculescu’s; party, we are talkingabout „people of the conservative electing group“ who„have their favorite authors, as Mr Baconski and Pat-apievici, as well as a political project that I look uponwith some hope.“

BBiibblliiooggrraapphhyy::

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editura martor muzeul Țămartor.muzeultaranuluiroman.ro/wp-content/uploads/... · bernea in his...

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