Secret Police Files from the Eastern Bloc - Between Surveillance and Life Writing (Hardcover)

New essays exploring the tension between the versions of the past in secret police files and the subjects' own personal memories-and creative workings-through-of events. The communist secret police services of Central and Eastern Europe kept detailed records not only of their victims but also of the vast networks of informants and collaborators upon whom their totalitarian systems depended. Theserecords, now open to the public in many former Eastern Bloc countries, reflect a textually mediated reality that has defined and shaped the lives of former victims and informers, creating a tension between official records and personal memories. Exploring this tension between a textually and technically mediated past and the subject/victim's reclaiming and retrospective interpretation of that past in biography is the goal of this volume. While victims' secret police files have often been examined as a type of unauthorized archival life writing, the contributors to this volume are among the first to analyze the fragmentary and sometimes remedial nature of these biographies and to examine the subject/victims' rewriting and remediation of them in various creative forms. Essays focus, variously, on the files of the East German Stasi, the Romanian Securitate (in relation to Transylvanian Germans in Romania), andthe Hungarian State Security Agency. Contributors: Carol Anne Costabile-Heming, Ulrike Garde, Valentina Glajar, Yuliya Komska, Alison Lewis, Corina L. Petrescu, Annie Ring, Aniko Szucs. Valentina Glajar is Professor of German at Texas State University, San Marcos. Alison Lewis is Professor of German in the School of Languages and Linguistics, The University of Melbourne, Australia. Corina L. Petrescu is Associate Professor of Germanat the University of Mississippi.

General

Imprint:	Camden House
Country of origin:	United States
Series:	Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture
Release date:	December 2016
First published:	2016
Editors:	Valentina N. Glajar (Royalty Account) • Alison Lewis • Corina Petrescu (Customer)
Contributors:	Alison Lewis • Aniko Szucs (Contributor) • Annie Ring (Contributor) • Carol Anne Costabile-Heming (Customer) • Corina Petrescu (Customer) • Ulrike Garde (Contributor) • Valentina N. Glajar (Royalty Account)
Dimensions:	229 x 152 x 24mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Hardcover - Cloth over boards
Pages:	252
ISBN-13:	978-1-57113-926-9
Categories:	Books > Language & Literature > Literature: history & criticism > Literary studies > From 1900 Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > International relations > General Books > Humanities > History > World history > From 1900 > Postwar, from 1945 Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political control & freedoms > Political control & influence > Political oppression & persecution > General Books > History > World history > From 1900 > Postwar, from 1945
LSN:	1-57113-926-5
Barcode:	9781571139269

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