Over the Wall/After the Fall: Post-Communist Cultures through an East-West Gaze by S. Forrester M. J. Zaborowska E. Gapova (review)

Abstract

I42 SEER, 84, I, 2006 Forrester,S., Zaborowska,M. J. and Gapova, E. (eds). Over theWall/After the Fall. Post-Communist Cultures through anEast-WestGaze.Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, 2004. xi + 320 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Selected bibliography.Index. $30.00 (paperback). THEdeclared goal of Over theWall/After theFallis to markout the boundaries of a new discipline- post-socialist studies and distance itself from the traditionof Slavicstudieswhich privilegesRussiaover othercountries,regions and nations of Eastern Europe. Drawing on theoretical references from cultural studies, gender and postcolonial studies, the authors promise to problematize a homogeneous Eastern European identity bringing into focus questionsof gender, classand ethnicitytypicallyneglected in theinvestigations of the region. They see the fall of the BerlinWalland the breakup of the EastWestbinary as opening up new theoreticalspaceswhere the questionsof postI989 and post-Communistculturalidentitiescan be addressed,and where the differencewhich is EasternEuropecan emerge in place of the tropesand signs of the Cold War. With the authorityofpersonalexperience ofthe regionand strongacademic credentials, the editors of OvertheWall/AftertheFall seem particularlywellequipped for the ambitious and laudable taskof bringing into focus the EastWest gaze and interrogating the post-socialist condition. The editors are: Magdalena Zaborowska, a Polish academic who teaches African-American studies in the US; Sibelan Forrester,an American professorof Russian, and Elena Gapova who lives and lectures in Belarus and specializes in gender studies. It is strikingthat, out of fifteen contributorsto the book, only two (Elena Gapova's and Vera Sokolova's)representvoices of the scholarswho actually work in Eastern Europe. One contributor, Rainer Gries, who is based in Vienna and writes in German (his is the only text translated into English), represents the Western European perspective. Given the importance of Eastern Europe for its Western neighbours and the historic tendency of Eastern Europeans to make Western Europe their main reference point, the absence of voices from Europe in the declared East-Westgaze is problematic. With most of the contributors based in the American academia (the enigmatic 'Benni Goodman', the author of the postface, is a case apart as his identity is not disclosed) the privileging of the American perspective on Eastern Europe has some profound consequences for the whole post-socialist project. Individual chapters cover a wide-range of topics and include analysis of travel writing, language and identity politics, architecture and the city, branding, lifestyle and everyday, gender and sexual politics, representation and also engagement with traditional cultural practices such as theatre and visual arts. The status of the various opening texts and their contents is uncertain. As we proceed through overly complex introductions,the postmodern discourse of word play, bracketing and flexible meanings gains an awkward force. Twice, we begin with a close reading of poems by the Polish Nobel laureate, Wislawa Szymborska,each poem signallingsome of the intellectualobjectives REVIEWS 143 of the book, the ways in which they are to be interrogated and the kind of cultural hierarchies which we are about to encounter. The poems are powerful,the readingless so. While we can hearloud and clear the personal and intellectualoutpourings of Zaborowskaand Forrester,thevoice of Gapova seemsconspicuouslyabsent from the framing of the project. The validity of the claim about the dialogic nature of the project and its decentred and self-reflectedEast-West gaze is thus undermined. With Forresternot contributing any essays, and Gapova's voice silent throughout all introductions, Zaborowska's presence is most prominent. The collective editorial voice is fragmented, internally conflicted and at times confused. It switches abruptly between theoretical interludes and references and personal anecdotes and autobiographicalruminations.At the same time, some straightforwardsignpostingregardingthe content and nature of the chapters to follow is obscured and instead in the final part of the introductionwe aretreatedto a kindof a manifestoof thepost-socialiststudies project.And thisiswhere the realproblem starts. The term 'post-Communist', rather effective in the title, is transformed within the body of the text into 'postsocialist',and the discussion of its fluid articulation is relegated to a footnote. The parameters of discourse and the claimed East-Westgaze of the volume and the theoreticaland historicalbases of the proposed field of postsocialist studies are thus rendered uncertain, creating confusion as to the objective of the book and the intellectual tools with which it is to be treated. The term post-socialism...