The Time of the Gypsies: A “People without History” in the Narratives of the West (Katie

Trumpener)

Presentation By: Matt Gold

Katie Trumpener

• Currently a Professor of Comparative Literature at Yale University

• At the time of this article (1992), she was an assistant professor in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literature at University of Chicago

Overview

• This text focuses on how negative conceptions of Roma identity are created and reinforced through literature

• This literary misrepresentation has placed gypsies outside of a “western history” and created many stereotypes that persist to this day

German Constructions in the Shadow of the Third Reich

• She analyzes a photo album of her grandmother’s cousin Hetti in 1920’s Romania.

• These pictures show the juxtaposition of a Christian west and an exotic Gypsidom

• One picture in particular, a “pack of merry gypsies”—as the caption reads—is particularly telling.– The use of the term “pack” invokes animalistic or primitive behavior– They are selling strawberries and smiling– Family story says that they are smiling because they have never been

in a photo before

German Constructions Cont.

• This created an image of Gypsies as wondering through the scene without a social contract and outside the politics of the day

• This is how Hetti’s daughters talk about and remember gypsies. • They use nostalgia to restore innocence and hide the true,

historical reality of the Roma– Gypsies were slaves in Romania for many centuries and at the time the

picture was taken, were banned from traveling in groups larger than the nuclear family (or “packs” as Hetti would say)

– This image persisted even during the terrors of WWII– During WWII they used film propaganda to show gypsy camps in a good

light and again portray them as carefree and genial

German Constructions Cont.

• Even Jews, while in concentration camps together, have written about their gypsy prison-mates as closed off and un-effected.

• East German writer Franz Fuemann tries to come to terms with German racism in his auto-biography but only further reinforces it– He only briefly mentions them, and when he does he emphasizes how

hard it is to remember them. This again serves to lift them out of the historical scene

Post Enlightenment and the “literarization” of the Gypsies

• A summary of gypsy existence by Franz Liszt shows that images of laziness, separateness, and emotionless persist

• Described as a threat to enlightened civilization• A people with historical amnesia and the ability to spread it• What is at issue may be an ideological rejection of

nomadology.• History is always told from a sedentary point of view within

the confines of a state-apparatus• They were further misrepresented as writers began to link

travelling with crime• Their life-style is characterized as “un-productive”

Post-Enlightenment Cont.

• In a time that looked at people as representing a hierarchy of progress, the gypsies were seen as wanting to remain in “nature”, and not enter “history”

• Walter Scott’s Guy Mannering “supposedly” got its plot from a true story of gypsy kidnapping, which reinforced this stereotype

• In the 19th century with the advent of “fantastic writing”, the gypsies serve as a textual effect, often as vehicles of diabolical forces

• They are portrayed as holding up progress by inducing historical flashbacks on their western “civilized” counterparts

Post-Enlightenment Cont.

• Gypsies begin to play distinct roles in many genres which continued to shape misrepresented images of them

– For neoclassicism- a primitive democracy– For late Enlightenment- an obstruction to progress– Romanticism- a resistance to autonomy– Realism- a threat of changing ordinary life into relief – Modernism- a primitive energy– Socialism- a resistant cultural force outside the state

So What?

• The Roma have been greatly misrepresented in literature of the West

• Literature, and other means of transmitting information to the public can often play an overwhelming role in conception.

• Stereotypes build upon each other and can grow rapidly• We need to be conscious of this and not believe everything

we hear

Questions

• How have false conceptions of the Roma effected them historically?

• How can we start to reverse these stereotypes?

• How can we ensure our new conceptions are not false?