Suchergebnisse

English summary

This article focuses on the Swedish literary canon debate preceding the Swedish government elections in September 2006. The debate was instigated by an article written by liberal politician Cecilia Wikstrom, in which she suggested reinstating an official Swedish literary canon. Wikstrom's article sparked an inflamed debate that took place in all major Swedish newspapers, stretching over a period of more than two months in the summer of 2006. Due to the article and the debate that followed, questions concerning culture and cultural politics were more prominently featured in the 2006 election campaign than in previous campaigns. In addition to analysing the different positions of the debate, this article also suggests that Wikstroms's article is an expression of an ongoing process in Swedish politics towards a more openly instrumental view on (national) culture and cultural expressions. Adapted from the source document.

The goal of this article is to examine what role literature played for Nicolae Ceausescu, Romania's political leader between 1965 and 1989. I focus on the period between 1968 and 1974, when the basis was laid for a cultural policy which was to be applied until the end of Ceausescu's reign in 1989. Such studies are easier to conduct today, when the archives of the Romanian Communist Party have been opened, and the protocols of Ceausescu's meetings with Romanian writers after his so called "Little Cultural Revolution" in 1971 have been published. What is especially salient is that Ceausescu saw literature, especially formalistically experimental literature, as a potential danger for his project of ideological repression of Romanian citizens. He also used literature and art in general in his struggle for independence from the Soviet Union and emancipation of Romanian identity. The results of Ceausescu's ideological turn in cultural policy were not at all positive for Romanian literature. Adapted from the source document.