Textualising Labour: Contemporary Romanian Poetry and Its Crisis of Realism

This article explores the formal and ideological dynamics of realism, autobiography, and autotheory in contemporary Romanian poetry, situating it within the evolving dynamics of capitalist division of labour. We argue that the “crisis of realism” manifests in two distinct yet dialectically intertwined forms: first, as an early reflexive mode rooted in autobiographical realism, which often obscures the structural determinants of socio-economic realities; and second, as a meta-social mode that converts realism into a practice of autotheory, integrating theoretical abstraction into poetic discourse. This dual crisis reflects the trajectory of Romanian poetry as it negotiates the socio-economic disorientation of post-socialist transition and the ideological pressures of neoliberalism. By examining the intersections of productive, reproductive, and artistic labour through frameworks from Lukács, Jameson, Kornbluh, and Mies, we demonstrate how these poetic modes both critique and reproduce the contradictions inherent in the contemporary labour system, offering new insights into the literary engagement with the material and ideological structures of late capitalism.