Recurring exceptionalism. Protochronism, cultural autarky, and national identity in (post)socialist Romania

Abstract This article locates the socialist cultural policy of protochronism within the broader narratives of national self-thematization that framed the emergence of semiperipheral Romania as a modern nation-state. I start from an overview of how traditional Romanian nationalism was resourcefully mobilized both during and before Nicolae Ceauşescu’s rule, mutating into cultural autarky due to the increased centralization of local political economy during the final communist decades. Correlating Verdery’s Bourdieusian approach and a constructivist understanding of nationalism, protochronism is depicted as a rampant cultural expression of the nation-building process unfolding in socialist Romania from the late 1950s onwards. I exemplify the most striking ideas of its practitioners, as presented in the cultural press and theoretical texts, before questioning its main renditions within postsocialist historiography. Finally, I trace the link between protochronism and the contemporary Romanian radical right, highlighting their embeddedness in the ever-pressing project of ethnonational identity (the inception of which precedes the interwar period, its most widely invoked attendant). I argue that construing protochronism within these historical parameters is conducive to discerning which of its historiographical inertias are retained by contemporary Romanian culture, and how they are mobilised to various—and most often illiberal—political ends.