Hostility and the Aftermath of Memory: The Romani in Securitate Files

• In Event: Contesting the Memory of Romanian Communism: Gender, Ethnicity, and Law in Post-Communist Mnemonic Struggles

Abstract

The archives of the Romanian State Secret Police (Securitate) provide critical material to examine the state's construction of the so-called “G*psy problem” during communism and its associated dynamic of social hostility supported and manufactured by the state. This study interrogates the political and institutional mechanisms that mobilized “hostile functions” through the deliberate production of a “deficit discourse” that stigmatized and othered the Romani minority. Archives reveal how stigma and its associated state hostility were embedded in language, hermeneutic strategies, and institutional frameworks. Manufactured “hostility to norms of social coexistence” justified the deployment of a polyopticon model of social control, reinforcing exclusionary and repressive socio-political mechanisms. The study explores how this archival (de)construction of stigma and social hostility extends into post-memory politics, perpetuating societal attitudes that shape contemporary structures of discrimination.

Author

• Delia Popescu, Le Moyne College