Relational Self-Representations of Queer Lives and Political Oppression in Romanian Life Writing

The article examines four autobiographical works written in the second half of the 20th century. The texts chart their authors’ experience of non-heteronormative identity construction alongside a history of political oppression during the communist regime in Romania. In addition to self-identifying as homosexuals and reflecting upon the interconnection of their sexuality, cultural background and discourse position, Ion Negoițescu, Mihai Rădulescu and Petre Sirin, who knew each other well, were part of a larger network of like-minded friends and interacted intensely with key figures of the Romanian interwar intelligentsia. The analysis looks at their texts through the lenses of performativity, positionality and relationality and shows that, despite their genre heterogeneity, Negoițescu’s unfinished autobiography, his correspondence with Radu Stanca, Rădulescu’s posthumous collection of autobiographical writings and Sirin’s auto/biographical account of his relationship to Rădulescu can all be read as relational life narratives. On a formal level, the posthumous publication of the texts dislocates the life writers from their autonomous position through shared authorship with the editors. On a content level, every life writing piece analysed here combines performative narrative self-construction with representations of personal relationships. A close reading of the texts reveals how engaging with stigmatized homosexual experience and at the same time adjusting to conservative stances of the Romanian high culture disrupts the linear narrative of autonomous self-development and provides accounts of queer subjectivity that challenge both rigid genre and gender boundaries.