Books by Florentina Andreescu
This article looks at how the family's libidinal economy gets deployed in cinematically rendered ... more This article looks at how the family's libidinal economy gets deployed in cinematically rendered practices of space. It identifies the balcony as a space of release from fraught interactions within the family and the cage as an intrusion within the strictly surveyed space of the household, as a small heterotopia within the affectually dystopic family space.
Psychotherapy & Politics International , 2022
Russian society’s perception of the invasion of Ukraine is strikingly incompatible with the actua... more Russian society’s perception of the invasion of Ukraine is strikingly incompatible with the actual events. This article reflects on the surreal representation of Ukrainian war in Russian media and its powerful grip on a large part of the nation. Socialized in a universe of propaganda and conspiracy theories, the Russian citizenry appears simultaneously cynical and gullible, and above all highly receptive to Kremlin’s manipulations. Succumbing to this conspiratorial universe of meaning, alters one’s perception of the world. Thus, on the one hand, the feeling of reality is diminished, to the extent that the Ukrainian people’s war suffering is rendered merely a performance by crisis actors, while the extensive destruction of Ukrainian cities is seen as staged film sets. On the other hand, the feeling of reality is heightened and charged with mysterious signification, generating a sense of a crystal-clear sight into the nature of politics and society. To understand human experiential stance in this surreal world of virtual representation, the article engages with psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist’s (2019, 2021) and clinical psychologist Louis Sass’ (2017) exploration of schizophrenia in modern society.
This article explores facial disfigurations and the alterations they trigger in the shared social... more This article explores facial disfigurations and the alterations they trigger in the shared social space. It places an emphasis on trauma associated with acquiring severe facial wounds, as well as with coming in visual contact with disfigured faces. These themes are explored through three layers of analysis. The first analytical angle is the author’s personal account of an encounter with a severely wounded face, which she experienced as profoundly altering her identity and social space. The second angle of analysis stresses the structural underlay of one’s experience of an embodied face. The article engages with a Lacanian framework which informs that one’s face is formed in three ontological registers: the symbolical face, the imaginary face, and the real face. When the face is disfigured and the eyes do not look back – instead an abyss returns the look –one’s own subjectivity is threatened as one is disquietly made aware of what Jean-Paul Sartre (1992) and Jacques Lacan (1988) called the gaze. The third layer of analysis includes various accounts of mediating trauma of disfigurement, such as disfigured soldiers’ experiences, as well as additional examples borrowed from films, novels, and art shows. Together they aim at showing different trauma closure techniques used at the personal and social levels.
The proposed volume is a critical intervention into the archive of female identity; it reflects o... more The proposed volume is a critical intervention into the archive of female identity; it reflects on the ways in which the Central and Eastern European female ideal was constructed, represented, and embodied in communist societies and on its transformation resulting from the political, economic, and social changes specific to the post-communist social and political transitions. During the communist period, the female ideal was constituted as a heroic mother and worker, both a revolutionary and a state bureaucrat, which were regarded as key elements in the processes of industrial development and production. She was portrayed as physically strong and with rugged rather than with feminized attributes. After the post-communist regime collapsed, the female ideal’s traits changed. As the consumer-oriented societies began displacing the state-dominated command economies of the communist period, the female ideal lost its close association with the state’s authority and with the industrial production and instead took on the feminine attributes that are familiar in the West’s consumer-oriented societies. As a result, the post-communist female ideal is tightly connected to various commodities (fashion products and luxury items), while the female herself has become a commodity in both marriage markets and illicit sexual exchanges associated with prostitution and sex trafficking.
The book analyzes the transition from communism and a planned economy to democracy and capitalism... more The book analyzes the transition from communism and a planned economy to democracy and capitalism focusing specifically on the case of Romania. Though informed by the comparative politics and international political economy literature on nationalism and democratic transition, it looks at transition from an integrated cultural and psychoanalytical angle. More specifically, it analyzes how the transition is reflected in the cultural space of films. The research highlights the importance of films as a crucial arena for political struggles within society: struggles over basic definitions of the nation, state, (gendered) self, and symbolic 'Other'. This is accomplished by building on the theory of cinematic nationhood and via the method of relational constructivism combined with insights from Lacanian psychoanalytic theory. The proposed book regards films as forms of communication as well as forms of fantasy, in the psychoanalytic definition of the term.
Informed by the data offered by one hundred films produced over the last forty years in Romania, the book concludes that the cinematic representations of the nation and state, (gendered) self, and symbolic 'Other' changed significantly during periods of political, economic and social change. The book proposes a model for analyzing the different aspects and mechanisms of these cinematic representation changes. This model is based on three elements of interest: the discourse prevalent in society, the topology of commonplaces and the structure of fantasy. A second aspect that structures the research includes the three time frames of analysis: communism, transition and post-transition.
Papers by Florentina Andreescu
AI & Society, 2024
Everyday life is increasingly restructured by algorithms that participate, not only as medium, bu... more Everyday life is increasingly restructured by algorithms that participate, not only as medium, but also as partners, co-creators, mentors, and figures of authority, in our affective and creative experiences. Their agentic capacity is enabled by big data capitalism as well as through the newly acquired ability to generate meaning (text) and visuals (images, videos, holograms). AI technology engages with aspects of existence that constitute the core of what it means to be human. Promising transcendence of existential givens it induces an illusory sense of safety, as it brings us even closer to a confrontation with constitutive ontological complexities. For instance, AI technology commits to a transcendence of mortality, luring humans to envision the possibility of “digital resurrection” and of acquiring immortality via a merger with machines. Seduced by the seeming omnipotence manufactured for us in the digital world, which molds itself to our wishes, we end up questioning not only our agency and freedom but the very fact of being alive. In addition, in the current epidemic of loneliness, in which inter-human connections are thinning out and our reliance on chatbots for friendship, care, and romance increases, humanity is confronted with the state of fundamental isolation and the desire for intimacy and community. This article meditates on AI technology’s tendency to colonize aspects of life that are at the core of humanity, namely meaning, freedom, death, and intimacy, as well as on the societal risks associated with fundamentally altering our understanding of these matters.
Alternatives: Global, Local, Political, Feb 1, 2014
Palgrave Macmillan US eBooks, 2013
Psychotherapy and Politics International, Dec 16, 2022
Russian society's perception of the invasion of Ukraine is strikingly incompatible with the actua... more Russian society's perception of the invasion of Ukraine is strikingly incompatible with the actual events. This article reflects on the surreal representation of Ukrainian war in Russian media and its powerful grip on a large part of the nation. Socialised in a universe of propaganda and conspiracy theories, the Russian citizenry appears simultaneously cynical and gullible, and above all highly receptive to Kremlin's manipulations. Succumbing to this conspiratorial universe of meaning alters one's perception of the world. Thus, on the one hand, the feeling of reality is diminished, to the extent that the Ukrainian people's war suffering is rendered merely a performance by crisis actors, while the extensive destruction of Ukrainian cities is seen as staged film sets. On the other hand, the feeling of reality is heightened and charged with mysterious signification, generating a sense of a crystal-clear sight into the nature of politics and society. To understand the human experiential stance in this surreal world of virtual representation, the article engages with psychiatrist Iain and clinical psychologist Louis Sass' (2017) exploration of schizophrenia in modern society.
Psychotherapy & Politics International
Russian society’s perception of the invasion of Ukraine is strikingly incompatible with the actua... more Russian society’s perception of the invasion of Ukraine is strikingly incompatible with the actual events. This article reflects on the surreal representation of Ukrainian war in Russian media and its powerful grip on a large part of the nation. Socialised in a universe of propaganda and conspiracy theories, the Russian citizenry appears simultaneously cynical and gullible, and above all highly receptive to Kremlin’s manipulations. Succumbing to this conspiratorial universe of meaning alters one’s perception of the world. Thus, on the one hand, the feeling of reality is diminished, to the extent that the Ukrainian people’s war suffering is rendered merely a performance by crisis actors, while the extensive destruction of Ukrainian cities is seen as staged film sets. On the other hand, the feeling of reality is heightened and charged with mysterious signification, generating a sense of a crystal-clear sight into the nature of politics and society. To understand the human experiential...
Short Film Studies
No Bikini playfully reveals the inherent human complexities that render the body simultaneously a... more No Bikini playfully reveals the inherent human complexities that render the body simultaneously a site of discipline and shame as well as one of freedom and enjoyment. This article explores Robin’s embodied experience of her symbolic sex change. It does so via three Lacanian ontological registers, namely: imaginary, symbolic and real.
Theory & Event, 2018
Abstract:This article explores the ways in which global capitalism, enabled by developments in tr... more Abstract:This article explores the ways in which global capitalism, enabled by developments in transplantation technology, cuts into human flesh, leading to reimagining bodies as complex assemblages of various replaceable parts. It traces the extent to which, the ontos of the human vanishes into this fragmented flesh, that manifests an existence which is no longer tied to the presence of the human body. It further reads the fictive kinship narratives, weaved between donors and receivers, as social responses aimed at suturing the traumatic ruptures of our embodied reality and at accepting the disconcerting hybrid body as one's own.
Societies
This article proposes an analytical framework that highlights embodiment’s ontological complexiti... more This article proposes an analytical framework that highlights embodiment’s ontological complexities and the ways in which the securitization of the body, during the COVID-19 pandemic, brought our embodied existence under the scrutiny of the invasive gaze of multiple social authorities, framing public and private modes of being as existential security risks. It engages with the research developed by psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist and clinical psychologist Louis A. Sass on schizophrenia, tracing the extent to which COVID-19 reshaped reality displays a dynamic akin to this mental disorder, through its abnegation of embodied presence, retreat into virtual register, and abnormal interpretations of reality. To spotlight this dynamic’s consequences, the article explores three interconnected features of schizophrenia, namely hyper-reflexivity, diminished self-presence, and disturbed grip on the world. These help to contextualize the ways in which a large segment of the population in the Unit...
Opening up Bodies for Harvest: Embodiment and Global Capitalism, 2018
This article explores the ways in which global capitalism, enabled by developments in transplanta... more This article explores the ways in which global capitalism, enabled by developments in transplantation technology, cuts into human flesh, leading to reimagining bodies as complex assemblages of various replaceable parts. It traces the extent to which, the ontos of the human vanishes into this fragmented flesh, that manifests an existence which is no longer tied to the presence of the human body. It further reads the fictive kinship narratives, weaved between donors and receivers, as social responses aimed at suturing the traumatic ruptures of our embodied reality and at accepting the disconcerting hybrid body as one's own.
This article proposes an analytical framework that highlights embodiment’s ontological complexiti... more This article proposes an analytical framework that highlights embodiment’s ontological complexities and the ways in which the securitization of the body, during the COVID-19 pandemic, brought our embodied existence under the scrutiny of the invasive gaze of multiple social authorities, framing public and private modes of being as existential security risks. It engages with the research developed by psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist and clinical psychologist Louis A. Sass on schizophrenia, tracing the extent to which COVID-19 reshaped reality displays a dynamic akin to this mental disorder, through its abnegation of embodied presence, retreat into virtual register, and abnormal interpretations of reality. To spotlight this dynamic’s consequences, the article explores three interconnected features of schizophrenia, namely hyper-reflexivity, diminished self-presence, and disturbed grip on the world. These help to contextualize the ways in which a large segment of the population in the United States responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. To that end, the article highlights the development of a virtual universe of conspiracy theories, shaping a citizenry which, akin to schizophrenics are simultaneously cynical and gullible, manifesting a vehement distrust of aspects of life that need to be implicit, while readily embracing conspiratorial worldviews.
From Communism to Capitalism, 2013
This chapter proposes a model for analyzing transformations of films as fantasy formations trigge... more This chapter proposes a model for analyzing transformations of films as fantasy formations triggered by radical social change. It sees fantasy as a key social element that is constituted by, and constitutive of a social grammar. The model stresses that trauma associated with radical social change such as revolution and transition in our case, but also market collapse, radical economic reform, genocide, or acts of terrorism, has the potential to radically transform fantasy formations. This is the case because trauma violently opens passageways between registers that were once discrete, facilitating unforeseen connections (Luckhurst 2008, 3). In other words, the "Symbolic" gives way to the Real, interrupting and distorting the habitual processes of symbolization and narrativization through which personal and national memories and identities are woven (Broderick and Traverso 2011, 5). After discussing radical social change as a traumatic event and three key elements of fantasy-discourse, topography of commonplaces, and structure of fantasy-this chapter proposes four ways in which trauma can be dealt with in fantasy formations.
The role played by myth has not been discussed within the literature on transitional societies. I... more The role played by myth has not been discussed within the literature on transitional societies. I argue in this paper that myth is an important aspect of society for it is a very potent form of communication and of understanding the world. Myth is the form of communication that addresses the whole human being, his or her rational thinking as well as emotions, consciousness as well as unconscious, allowing myth to be involved in the way individuals perceive the world and in the way they act in the world, by playfully distorting different meanings trusted by rational thought, transforming language into metalanguage^1. Myth is considered particularly relevant within a society that is in a process of renegotiating its structure (revolution, transition, war), process that releases usually intense emotions, which emotions call for mythical thinking. This paper will offer a review of the literature on transitions as well as on myth and will investigate the roles that myth performs within s...
This chapter1 focuses on the space of the nation as presented in the films produced in Romania du... more This chapter1 focuses on the space of the nation as presented in the films produced in Romania during communism, transition to democracy, and democracy. It starts with the assumption that space is not constant throughout history and that furthermore our relationship to space reflects historical change. Space experiences history alongside living beings, and carries within it testimonies and stories that could be accessed (Puṣca 2009, 245). This chapter attempts to track precisely how the human relationship to the space of the nation changed during the Romanian transition. My analysis addresses the cinematic space, the rules that exist within it, and the authority of the space, as well as the specific ways in which identities are created and integrated in such cinematic spaces. I trace the persistence of a number of spaces in films produced under different political regimes and transformations or substitutions of spaces, as well as the changes of rules and authorities. The chapter ill...
Uploads
Books by Florentina Andreescu
Informed by the data offered by one hundred films produced over the last forty years in Romania, the book concludes that the cinematic representations of the nation and state, (gendered) self, and symbolic 'Other' changed significantly during periods of political, economic and social change. The book proposes a model for analyzing the different aspects and mechanisms of these cinematic representation changes. This model is based on three elements of interest: the discourse prevalent in society, the topology of commonplaces and the structure of fantasy. A second aspect that structures the research includes the three time frames of analysis: communism, transition and post-transition.
Papers by Florentina Andreescu
Informed by the data offered by one hundred films produced over the last forty years in Romania, the book concludes that the cinematic representations of the nation and state, (gendered) self, and symbolic 'Other' changed significantly during periods of political, economic and social change. The book proposes a model for analyzing the different aspects and mechanisms of these cinematic representation changes. This model is based on three elements of interest: the discourse prevalent in society, the topology of commonplaces and the structure of fantasy. A second aspect that structures the research includes the three time frames of analysis: communism, transition and post-transition.