Sociologie Românească, Vol. II, no. 1-2/2002, pp. 76-99.
Mitificare și demitificare: Modernizarea valorilor culturale, mitul eminescian și dispute intelectuale în România post-comunistă
Mythicizing and Demythicizing. The modernization of cultural values, the Eminescian myth, and intelectual debates in post-communist Romania
Norbert Petrovici
Abstract (Rezumat în limba engleză): In this paper we argue that de-mythification in Easter Europe is a way of doing cultural reforms. In addition, we outline a model of how intellectual myths are working. The norms and the values operating in these countries are one of the most important resources of the ongoing transitions, and the intellectuals are one of the most important agents that manage them. The intellectual myths use the basic values of the intellectual fields and their redefinition has a direct impact on the society through the opinion makers and through curricular reforms. Using a thematic content analysis and some data obtain through questionnaire, we are describing the structure of the positions of some Romanian intellectuals with regard to the myth of Mihai Eminescu (the Romanian foremost poet), and then we draw a structure of the myth. The data are indicating that the structure of the myth is a function of the process in which are engaged the agents, mythification and demitification, and is stratified in a common semantic core and a variable semantic periphery. The victorious fraction of these kinds of battle can diffuse their own definitions, or in other words, they access power. The state is indirectly part in this confrontation by his institutional aid that is being given by different political fraction of the intellectual elite. A practical conclusion is that the state can intervene more strongly in the modernization of the values of the intellectual field assisting those orientations that are more open to modernity.