The Czech theatre

Item consists of a digitized copy of an audio recording of a Vancouver Institute lecture given by Marketa Goetz-Stankiewicz on October 31, 1981. Original audio recording available in the University Archives (UBC AT 991).Arts, Faculty ofCentral, Eastern, and Northern European Studies, Department ofUnreviewedOthe

Rhetorical Crossings of 1989: Communist Space, Arguments by Definition, and Discourse of National Identity Twenty-Five Years Later

The Romanian political scene at the end of 1989 calls for a critical rhetorical perspective to understand how totalitarian politics clash with revolutionary changes and how communist space, so ambitiously crafted to cover an entire country’s public sphere, influences, if at all, a free(d) discourse on national unity. Examining official discourse on the cusp of revolutionary changes in Romania, in December 1989, this study argues that the concept of rhetorical space along with the enthymematic argument by definition of “we the nation” capture rhetoric in action, showing complex discursive crossings that legitimize the relationship between rhetoric and history at such times. Thus, the relationship between rhetorical space and the “we the nation” political argument, when applied to Romanian political discourse of 1989, reveals challenges that continue to feature the unsettledness of postcommunist discourse twenty-five years later