Caietele Echinox, vol. 43, “Contemporary Eastern/Southeastern European Noir. Print-and-Screen Fiction, in a European and Global Perspective”, dir. C. Dobrescu, R. Eichel, S. Kalai, A. Keszeg & N. Nerci, 2023. 

Caius Dobrescu : Noir, Eastern Europe, and the Global Imaginary

Originally, the idea for the present theme issue of Caietele Echinox germinated in the hotbed of the DETECt project, which reunited fourteen universities from ten European countries around a research agenda that becomes apparent in the unfolding of the above administrative (but also poetic…) acronym: Detecting Transcultural Identity in European Popular Crime Narratives. The project explored the manner in which, on the lines of the free circulation of persons, capitals, and labour, a productive European circulation of rhetoric, narrative, symbolic, and thematic structures connected to crime fiction (in its extended understanding as literature, cinema, television, and all their imaginable hybridizations) could also be identified and described. The main working hypothesis was that the spreading rate of such production across the flexible inner borders of the European Union from 1989 to the present was indicative of both their impact on collective imagination, and of a rhizomatic identity dynamics exposing not homogenization, but complex, to time problematic, even contentious, but always relevant and vibrant intrication.

DETECt exercised its European comprehension through a policy of mapping and exploring the different geo-cultural and historical areas of our continental union. The task of covering, if not actually producing “Eastern Europe” was shared by academic representatives of the University of Debrecen and the University of Bucharest. And since one of the most convergent of the theoretical premises of the project was that noir might be the concept best suited to overarch the different subgenres and tendencies of contemporary crime narratives – together with our Debrecen colleagues we set the course for discovering and displaying East-European noir, mainly in its present but also in its historical hypostases. Our collaboration resulted in a number of project deliveries and scientific articles,¹ but we all agreed on the fact that there is still a great deal of work to be done, concerning actual comparative research on all the relevant fields (i.e. production, textual articulation, distribution, reception), but also for extending the network of scholars interested and with relevant expertise in these fields. The core expectation of the original concept of the present thematic issue of Caietele Echinox was that enlarging the network of scholars interested in East-European crime/noir fiction (equally implying the printed and screened varieties) is the only way of obtaining a more accurate image of the diverse regional developments. I embarked on this exploration together with dr. Sándor Kálai, who currently teaches at the Department of Communication and Media Studies of the University of Debrecen,² and dr. Roxana Eichel, my colleague at the Literary Studies Department of the Faculty of Letters of the University of Bucharest.

Continuer la lecture de Parution : Caietele Echinox, vol. 43 : “Contemporary Eastern/Southeastern European Noir. Print-and-Screen Fiction, in a European and Global Perspective” (dir. C. Dobrescu, R. Eichel, S. Kalai, A. Keszeg & N. Nerci) →

1. I would especially mention Caius Dobrescu, Roxana Eichel, Dorottya Molnár-Kovács, Sándor Kálai, Anna Keszeg, “A game of mirrors: Western/Eastern European crime series and the struggle for recognition”, Journal of European Popular Culture, no. 12(2), pp. 119-134, 2021. [↩]
2. In order to offer a hyper-concentrated suggestion of all the personal qualities that make Sándor a great research partner and an ideal intellectual friend, I will reproduce here the ending of his presentation of the site of his department: “His motto is the same as Georges Simenon’s: To understand and not to judge.” [↩]