Per Vintilă
10.7340/anuac2239-625X-4213
Ricordo di Vintilă Mihăilescu (1951-2020).
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In memoriam
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2020-07-29
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10.7340/anuac2239-625X-4213
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                                                    2020 | ANUAC. VOL. 9, N° 1, GIUGNO 2020: 9-65



                                                                                   IN MEMORIAM




Moment de convivialité lors de séjour sur le terrain, aôut 1983, Novaci (Gorj), Roumanie. De
gauche à droite: Alexandru Sigheti (informaticien), Radu Răutu, Vintilă Mihăilescu, Ioan
Oprescu (linguiste). Courtesy of Radu Răutu.


For Vintilă
Edited by
Filippo M. ZERILLI, Bogdan IANCU, Monica STROE


Contributions of
Marianne MESNIL, Radu RĂUTU, Cristina PAPA, Zoltán ROSTÁS, David KIDECKEL &
Raluca NAHORNIAC, Cătălin A. STOICA, Ellen HERTZ, Bogdan IANCU & Monica STROE,
Ger DUIJZINGS, Maria Voichiţa GRECU, Anamaria IUGA & Corina IOSIF, Alex BĂLĂŞESCU,
Steven SAMPSON, Cătălina TESĂR, Dumitru BUDRALA.




This work is licensed under the Creative Commons © Filippo M. Zerilli, Bogdan Iancu, Monica Stroe (eds)
For Vintilă
2020 | ANUAC. VOL. 9, N° 1, GIUGNO 2020: 9-65.
ISSN: 2239-625X - DOI: 10.7340/anuac2239-625X-4213
FOR VINTILĂ                                                                                    11




Vintilă Mihăilescu: Respirer et écrire1
De l’ethnographie à l’anthropologie

Marianne MESNIL
Bruxelles
marianne.mesnil@skynet.be



   Vintilă Mihăilescu écrivait comme il respirait. Et plus que cela, il respirait
comme il écrivait. Et il le savait bien, lui qui, confronté à une maladie redou-
table, se voyait menacé d’être privé d’air. Pour lui, écrire était donc une
fonction vitale. Et il a écrit “jusqu’au bout du chemin”.
   Dans Ambos Mundos, l’essai sur son voyage à Cuba, qu’il a choisi pour être
traduit en français2, Vintilă rappelle les trois étapes bien connues que dis-
tingue Claude Lévi-Strauss dans son Anthropologie structurale: ethnographie,
ethnologie, anthropologie. En pratique, certains, ethnographes de vocation,
font un travail de terrain remarquable mais ne vont pas nécessairement au-
delà de la collecte des données. D’autres considèrent le terrain comme une
étape obligée de leur carrière, afin de pratiquer une ethnologie nationale
(dans le cas des Pays de l’est, pour le moins)3. D’autres (ou les mêmes) enfin,
souhaitent construire, à partir des deux premières démarches, un discours
comparatiste et universel sur “l’Homme en société”, bref, une anthropologie.
Ces trois étapes, parfaitement complémentaires, sont rarement exercées de
manière égale par un seul et même chercheur.
   Pourtant, Vintilă était cet anthropologue complet, et il le fut avec
constance et passion. Passion du terrain: qui a partagé avec lui cette expé-
rience ne peut qu’avoir constaté sa jubilation à se trouver en immersion dans
un milieu paysan ou urbain. Passion, aussi, pour la lecture, à la découverte

1. Sous-titre d’un ouvrage du Dr. F.B. Michel (Le souffle coupé. Respirer et écrire, Paris, Galli-
mard, 1984) consacré à de grands écrivains ayant souffert de pathologie respiratoire.
2. Voir Vintilă Mihăilescu, Ambos Mundos. Court traité d’anthropologie borgésienne, traduc-
tion de Marianne Mesnil, Paris, Ed. Petra, 2020.
3. Voir Vintilă Mihăilescu, sous la direction de, De ce este România astfel? Avatarurile excep-
tionalismului românesc [Pourquoi la Roumanie est-elle “comme ça”? Les avatars de l’excep-
tionalisme roumain], Iaşi, Polirom, 2017.

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12                                                               MARIANNE MESNIL


de réflexions sur l’“Autre” par les autres. Passion, encore, pour l’écriture qui
l’incitait à exercer une anthropologie du quotidien dont il faisait la matière
première de ses célèbres “Pilules”, chroniques hebdomadaires de la revue Di-
lema. Passion enfin, pour la transmission orale à travers un enseignement
qui a suscité, chez ses étudiants, nombre de vocations.
   Et à travers toutes ces pratiques, Vintilă se révélait cet homme complet “à
trois niveaux”: profondément roumain, balkanique et universel.

Veillée aux quatre coins du monde
   La disparition de Vintilă Mihăilescu était prévisible. Jusqu’au bout, on
avait voulu croire que le Héros tuerait le Dragon de la Mort! Mais on savait
trop bien qu’il n’en serait pas ainsi. Et pourtant, lorsque, au lendemain du
printemps, la nouvelle apparu sur les réseaux sociaux, ce fut une onde de
choc qui parcourut la constellation de l’anthropologie roumaine. Partout
dans le monde, là où les anciens étudiants de Domnul Profesor s’étaient éta-
blis, s’organisa une priveghi (veillée funèbre) par Internet. Et ceux qui s’y
sont exprimés ont dit leur désarroi, leur sentiment d’avoir été abandonnés.

Ne méprisez pas!
   Pourtant, les relations de V.M. avec son milieu professionnel furent loin
d’être un long fleuve tranquille! Et l’on peut aisément le comprendre si l’on
pense à ce que fut la carrière du chercheur avant 1989. Sans vouloir m’appe-
santir sur ces années de plomb, il faut imaginer ce que fut, pour cet intellec-
tuel, héritier d’une tradition familiale où l’on parlait quatre langues “à la
naissance”, ce qu’était la confrontation quotidienne avec la bêtise et/ou
l’opportunisme néostaliniens. Le domaine de l’“ethnographie et du folklore”
(dénomination officielle jusqu’en 1989), fut particulièrement touché par
l’emprise idéologique qui s’accentua encore dans les années 1980. Dès l’ap-
parition du Festival Cîntarea României (Le Chant de la Roumanie), en 1975,
ces instituts de recherches cessèrent de faire partie de l’Académie Roumaine
pour être rattachés au Ministère de la Culture et devenir un outil de propa-
gande à la gloire du Danube de la pensée! Fort heureusement, V.M. avait une
formation de psychologue. Et, à ce titre, il avait obtenu un poste de cher-
cheur à l’Institut d’anthropologie (physique) Francisc Rainer. C’est dans cette
“niche” qu’il réussit à couler des jours relativement tranquilles loin des ter-
rains de récolte du “nouveau folklore” dans lequel les travailleurs, paysans et
ouvriers confondus en un Homme nouveau, étaient censés chanter les
louanges du Conducator. Ce sont ces années que V.M. mit à profit pour effec-


2020 | ANUAC. VOL. 9, N° 1, GIUGNO 2020: 9-65
FOR VINTILĂ                                                                             13


tuer ses propres recherches de terrain et rédiger sa thèse de doctorat qui
(pour raisons de “mauvais dossier” à la Securitate) ne put cependant être
soutenue à l’Université de Bucarest qu’après 1989, dans un climat d’hostilité
peu banal dont j’ai gardé le souvenir!).
   Personnellement, je n’ai connu Vintilă que tardivement, quelques temps
seulement avant la Chute de Ceauşescu. C’est à “Elefterie” (la rue où habi-
taient alors ses parents, tous deux médecins), que Radu Răutu (lui aussi, “ré-
fugié” à l’Institut Rainer, échappant ainsi au “folklore nouveau”) m’a fait
connaître Vintilă. J’ai le souvenir de cette brève rencontre plutôt distante,
pas vraiment enthousiaste et par trop solennelle, où V.M. nous reçut “barri-
cadé” derrière l’imposant bureau de son père! Rien alors, ne pouvait laisser
supposer que résulterait de cette entrevue, une collaboration de plus de
trente ans! Le dernier acte de celle-ci fut la traduction en français de l’un des
derniers ouvrages de V.M., celui qu’il a lui-même choisi pour se faire
connaître en occident: Ambos Mundos. Court traité d’anthropologie borgé-
sienne, est une sorte de Journal où, dans ses réflexions anthropo-philoso-
phiques, à l’occasion de son séjour à Cuba, il croit bon de revenir avec insis-
tance sur cette expression: Ne méprisez pas!
   Sans doute, n’en déplaise à ses relations privilégiées avec ses étudiants ou
anciens étudiants auxquels il réservait toujours un accueil privilégié, V.M. a-
t-il trouvé matière à réflexion sur une certaine “culture du mépris” qui n’a
pas fini de traverser les relations sociales en Roumanie!

L’explosion de Noël 1989
   Revenir à Bucarest dans les mois qui ont suivi les événements de dé-
cembre 1989 était une expérience unique. Ce fut, pour moi, l’occasion de re-
voir tout le milieu des ethnographes et folkloristes que j’avais fréquenté du-
rant les vingt dernières années. Ce fut un véritable choc de redécouvrir ces
collègues qui, à l’image de la ville elle-même, semblaient émerger de la gri-
saille pour se parer de sourires et de couleurs vives! On osait s’embrasser, se
parler; les visages ternes et fatigués avaient fait place à une vie débordante,
trop longtemps contenue, qui ne demandait plus qu’à s’exprimer. Les projets
fusaient de toute part, on se coupait la parole... Bref, j’assistais à la résurrec-
tion d’une ville4! Et c’est dans ce contexte que j’ai revu Vintilă.
   Comme la plupart de ses collègues, il sortait de ce long isolement et avait
hâte de rattraper le temps perdu. L’heure était à la collaboration. Toutes les
propositions furent adoptées: la Société des Européanistes (créée à Bruxelles

4. Malheureusement, cet “état de grâce” fut de brève durée. Un an plus tard, l’enthousiasme
et l’espoir avaient déjà fait place à la désillusion.

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14                                                                           MARIANNE MESNIL


dans les années 1980) ouvrait son antenne à l’Est et V.M. en devenait le re-
présentant. Se succédèrent les Journées d’Ethnologie européenne comparée de
Bucarest, Sofia, Budapest et les publications qui ont suivi; les programmes
européens de Tempus et Copernicus; et surtout, les Terrains croisés destinés
aux étudiants, dans un triangle d’échanges particulièrement actif entre Bu-
carest (Vintilă Mihăilescu et les Caiete de etnologie), Perugia (Cristina Papa et
la Missione etnologica italiana in Romania)5, Cagliari (Giulio Angioni et la re-
vue Europaea. Journal des Européanistes) et Bruxelles (Marianne Mesnil et les
“Correspondances” de Civilisations).
   Mais tout cela ne fut, pour V.M., qu’un volet de son activité. Il fut de tous
les colloques, de toutes les réunions, de tous les séminaires où se dévelop-
pait un intérêt pour l’anthropologie d’une Europe de l’Est devenue soudain
“accessible”.
   Dans le paysage des sciences humaines de Roumanie, il y aura, incontes-
tablement, un “avant” et un “après” Vintilă Mihăilescu, même si l’Université
de Bucarest n’a jamais offert à cette personnalité majeure de l’Intelligentzia
roumaine d’être ce Domnul Profesor, titre qui lui a été attribué “ailleurs”, à
nouveau, dans une “niche”6 où il a pu s’adonner pleinement à sa passion
d’enseigner.
   Et puisque, dans ces jours tristes, c’est le moment de se souvenir d’un
beau dicton roumain qui incite à “faire de l’humour à propos du malheur”
(sà fac haz de necaz), rappelons cette petite blague qui circulait dans le mi-
lieu des étudiants en anthropologie de Bucarest:
      Quelqu’un demande à un jeune homme ce qu’il veut faire dans la vie. Réponse:
      anthropologue.
      A quoi il s’entend répliquer:
      Mais on en a déjà un: Vintilă Mihăilescu!

   En ce début de printemps 2020, Vintilă Mihăilescu a cessé d’écrire et de
respirer. Mais il a semé à tout vent: des livres, beaucoup de livres. Et, sur-
tout, une nouvelle génération d’anthropologues qui a surgi en Roumanie et
parcoure aujourd’hui le monde en prolongeant son enseignement. Longue
vie à cette postérité!



5. Voir notamment La ricerca antropologica in Romania. Prospettive storiche ed etnografiche,
sous la direction de Cristina Papa, Giovanni Pizza, Filippo M. Zerilli, Napoli, Edizioni Scien-
tifiche Italiane, 2003.
6. Vintilă Mihăilescu a enseigné l’anthropologie au SNSPA (École Nationale d’Études Poli-
tiques et Administrative, Bucarest).


2020 | ANUAC. VOL. 9, N° 1, GIUGNO 2020: 9-65
FOR VINTILĂ                                                                        15




Du terrain au concept
Radu RĂUTU
Bucarest / Otopeni
rautur@gmail.com



   Ma collaboration avec Vintilă Mihăilescu commence par une rencontre
basée sur une interminable histoire de recherche de terrain, chacun de notre
côté, avec notre propre expérience (moi avec une expérience de terrain eth-
nographique et folklorique, et lui avec son expérience de terrain sociolo-
gique), une histoire qui s’est ensuite concrétisée à travers une amitié person-
nelle et professionnelle. Je me souviens du moment où s’est passée cette en-
trevue décisive. C’était durant la période de grande pénurie, vers le milieu
des années ‘80 du siècle passé, dans un contexte que je qualifierais aujour-
d’hui d’humoristique. Le mazout de chauffage faisait alors défaut du fait que
le régime communiste avait décidé de faire des économies drastiques pour
rembourser la dette extérieure en un temps record (ce qui, c’est un comble, a
pu être réalisé avec succès). Dans sa nouvelle demeure de la rue Teleajen à
Bucarest, Vintilă se chauffait au mazout, une denrée que chacun tâchait de
se procurer au marché noir. Pour lui, se posait en outre, le problème de l’ins-
tallation de chauffage dont l’injecteur tombait souvent en panne et prenait
feu. Il fut donc contraint de trouver un autre moyen de se chauffer. Une amie
commune, A.L., qui nous avait déjà fait nous rencontrer étant donné notre
passion partagée pour la recherche de terrain, a suggéré à Vintilà de m’appe-
ler à l’aide pour lui fournir un chauffage électrique. Et c’est ainsi que s’est
consolidée notre amitié...
   Je passe sur les avatars d’une expérience personnelle, une syncope dans
ma biographie: je fus congédié de l’Institut d’Ethnographie et Folklore de
l’Académie Roumaine pour la “faute” d’avoir eu une soeur partie en France
afin de subir un traitement contre le cancer. C’est suite à cela, et après un
long enchaînement d’événements heureux que je suis arrivé à travailler dans
l’équipe d’anthropologie culturelle de Vintilă au Laboratoire d’Anthropolo-
gie de l’Institut Victor Babeş de Bucarest. J’ai participé avec lui aux re-
cherches faites dans la zone d’Olténie subcarpatique - zone de Gorj, monta-
gneuse et pré-alpine, recherches finalement concrétisées dans le volume
Fascinaţia diferenţei. Anii de ucenicie ai unui antropolog (Fascination de la dif-

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16                                                                    RADU RĂUTU


férence. Années d’apprentisage d’un anthropologue), signé par Vintilă. Aux
recherches faites à Novaci (région de Gorj) ont participé nombre d’invités,
personnalités de la vie scientifique et culturelle, ou collaborateurs de Vintilă
qui ne travaillait pas encore à l’université, mais amenait néanmoins des étu-
diants en vacances d’été pour les initier à l’anthropologie de terrain. L’une
de ses idées, qu’il a poursuivie avec persévérance avant de se retrouver à
l’université, fut l’importance qu’a le terrain dans la formation d’un véritable
anthropologue.
   Après 1990, lorsque Vintilă quitta le Centre de Recherches Anthropolo-
giques de l’Académie Roumaine Francisc I. Rainer (le Laboratoire de l’Insti-
tut Babeş avait acquis son indépendance, en étant directement lié à l’Acadé-
mie Roumaine) pour devenir conférencier auprès de la Chaire de Sociologie
de l’Université de Bucarest, puis professeur d’antropologie et directeur du
Département de Sociologie de l’Ecole Nationale d’Etudes Politiqus et Ad-
minstrative (SNSPA), l’expérience estivale s’est poursuivie avec les étu-
diants, donnant ainsi naissance à une véritable Ecole de jeunes anthropo-
logues. De fait, il a réussi à créer une section d’Anthropologie dans le cadre
du SNSPA. Dans ces expéditions/expériences de terrain, se sont impliqués (à
l’invitation de Vintilă), de vieux et prestigieux professeurs, tel que l’acadé-
micien Vladimir Trebici, apportant avec lui l’expérience directe de l’Ecole de
Dimitrie Gusti, tout comme celle du professeur Mihai Pop lui aussi, ancien
membre des équipes du célèbre sociologue.
   C’est à l’instigation du professeur Mihai Pop, et selon le souhait et l’intia-
tive de Vintilă, qu’un beau matin de mars 1990, dans le bien connu bureau
du professeur Mihai Pop de la rue Caragea Voda, au coeur du quartier huppé
de Bucarest, a pris forme, dans un enthousiasme collectif, la Société d’An-
thropologie Culturelle de Roumanie (SACR), enregistrée sous cette appella-
tion par la Décision 750 du 15 mars 1990, au Tribunal du Secteur 1 de Buca-
rest. Le professeur Mihai Pop ayant refusé d’être président de la société,
c’est tout naturellement Vintilă Mihăilescu qui l’est devenu et le professeur
Pop en a été membre d’honneur. Je figurais parmi les vingt membres fonda-
teurs... Ont suivi d’innombrables discussions, rencontres scientifiques et
même, l’organisation de congrès avec participation nationale et internatio-
nale. Nombre de nos communications et articles ont trouvé place dans le
Year Book of the Romanian Society of Cultural Anthropology / Annuaire de la
Société d’Anthropologie Culturelle de Roumanie. En 1993 eut lieu une réorga-
nisation plus méticuleuse, tant en ce qui concerne le statut organisationnel
et administratif, que l’aspect scientifique, le projet étant notamment de créer
un site internet, ce qui, chez nous, pour l’époque, était une démarche pion-
nière.


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FOR VINTILĂ                                                                       17


   Un exemple du “style” de Vintilă, apparaît dans la formulation de son in-
vitation à participer à la construction de ce site, où il indique que l’on peut
adresser “des commentaires, suggestions et injures; cordialement, Vintilă
Mihăilescu”.
   Après que Vintilă ait quitté le Centre d’Anthropologie, en 1993-94, nos
préoccupations scientifiques se sont diversifiées dans d’autres directions,
Vintilă poursuivant une trajectoire de plus en plus fructueuse, qui l’a conduit
à jouer de nouveau rôles socio-culturels (directeur du Muzeul Ţăranului Ro-
mân-Musée du Paysan Roumain-, bourses de recherches...) et il a commencé
à écrire de manière de plus en plus approfondie mais aussi plus attractive.
Ses chroniques hebdomadaires dans Dilema veche d’Andrei Plesu, rassem-
blées pour la première fois dans Socio hai-hui, semblent avoir préparé le ter-
rain pour l’apparition d’autres volumes tels que: Antropologie. Cinci introdu-
ceri.(Anthropologie. Cinq introductions); Scutecele naţiunii şi hainele împăra-
tului (Les langes de la nation et les vêtements de l’Empereur); Povestea mai-
danezului Leuţu (Histoire du chien de rue Leutsu); Despre noua ordine domes-
tică şi criza omului (A propos du nouvel ordre domestique et de la crise de
l’Homme). Dans Hotel Ambos Mundos, il met face à face l’expérience commu-
niste en Amérique Latine avec l’expérience communiste roumaine. Son
amour et sa passion pour le culturel et social vivants ont malheureusement
eu pour couronnement son dernier livre, paru en 2019, intitulé: În căutarea
corpului regăsit. O ego-analiză a spitalului (A la recherche du corps retrouvé.
Une auto-analyse de l’hôpital). L’exploration du monde hospitalier semble
venir en préfigurtion de l’expérience pandémique que nous vivons tous ac-
tuellement.
   Par une ironie du sort, la vie professionnelle de Vintilà a gravité autour de
deux coordonnées fondamentales de la société roumaine en transition:
l’éducation et la santé, longtemps absentes de l’agenda public de la politique
roumaine, bien que fondamentales pour la société et son avenir. Il s’est dé-
dié avec générosité à la construction d’une Ecole de jeunes anthropologues,
car il avait compris que l’éduction est la pierre angulaire d’une société fonc-
tionnelle et démocratique. D’une certaine manière, Vintilă nous a laissé le
deuxième thème comme dernière volonté, en confiant à son ami Andrei
Pleșu qu’il est “entunnelé” dans l’univers hospitalier...: il effectue une ana-
lyse fine du système sanitaire, de la réforme duquel dépend, en dernière ins-
tance, le sort de chaque citoyen roumain, qu’il soit lui-même politicien ou
homme d’affaire versé dans le capitalisme d’Etat. “Homme social” possédant
un sens aigu des réalités, Vintilă savait ce qui est possible d’un point de vue
bureaucratique et ce qui ne l’est pas; c’est ce qui lui a permis de réussir là où


                                        2020 | ANUAC. VOL. 9, N° 1, GIUGNO 2020: 9-65
18                                                                 RADU RĂUTU


d’autres auraient échoué dans leurs projets. Lors d’une émission célèbre
(Garantat 100%, TVR), Vintilă a qualifié avec humour l’évolution du pouvoir
économique en Roumanie, avec la note d’optimisme qui le caractérisait: il
existe en Roumanie des entrepreneurs qui construisent leur succès grâce à
un travail assidu; il en connait quelques-uns, donc probablement qu’il y en a
beaucoup d’autres mais, sûrement, comme il le reconnaissait également à
demi-mot, d’un point de vue social, ceux-là proviennent, sans exception, des
rangs de ceux qui “ont été en bons termes avec le régime précédent”.




2020 | ANUAC. VOL. 9, N° 1, GIUGNO 2020: 9-65
FOR VINTILĂ                                                                          19




Vintilă, antropologo e museografo impegnato
Cristina PAPA
Fondazione Angelo Celli per una cultura della salute, Perugia
cristina.papa@unipg.it



   Vintilă Mihăilescu apparteneva alla mia generazione, anche se era un po’
più giovane di me e invece nel rapporto con lui mi pareva ci fosse un distacco
quasi generazionale. Vintilă aveva l’aspetto di un uomo d’altri tempi, con
una barba incolta che lo faceva assomigliare a un personaggio risorgimenta-
le, i capelli ribelli e lo sguardo per lo più accigliato e perplesso così che di-
mostrava più anni di quanti non ne avesse. Ma ciò che mi faceva percepire
quel distacco, quando lo conobbi, era il fatto che aveva trascorso tutta la sua
vita sotto un regime autoritario quello di Ceauşescu, un’esperienza che io,
nata in Italia nella fortunata generazione del dopoguerra, non solo non ave-
vo avuto ma che riuscivo con una certa fatica a immaginare, archiviandola in
un passato remoto. Ho incontrato molte persone che avevano vissuto quel
periodo ma ciò che rendeva Vintilă straordinario, anche a differenza di altri
colleghi universitari romeni, era la sua consapevolezza di quello che stava
accadendo e di quanto era accaduto e una grande capacità di riflessione criti-
ca. Una consapevolezza che era maturata nel suo ambiente familiare, una fa-
miglia di intellettuali e professionisti, il più noto il nonno un importante
geografo umano, da cui aveva preso il nome, poliglotta e con frequenti rap-
porti internazionali come accadeva agli intellettuali romeni più in vista pri-
ma dell’arrivo di Ceauşescu, ed evidentemente anche nel suo lavoro di antro-
pologo.
   Incontrai Vintilă quando per la prima volta andai in Romania, a due anni
dalla caduta di Ceauşescu, per partecipare al convegno internazionale Ethnolo-
gie de l’identitè, identité de l’ethnologie che si tenne a Bucarest tra il 3 e il 6 lu-
glio del 1991. Il convegno era organizzato dalla Societé des Européanistes e
dalla Societata de Antropologie Culturală din România da poco costituita,
presieduta da Mihai Pop e di cui poi Vintilă divenne il secondo presidente.
Marianne Mesnil era il trait d’union che collegava le due società. A lei mi
aveva presentato Italo Signorini all’Università di Roma La Sapienza l’anno
prima, dove da poco avevo cominciato a insegnare Storia delle tradizioni po-

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20                                                                    CRISTINA PAPA


polari. Marianne Mesnil, un’antropologa dell’Université Libre di Bruxelles,
studiosa da tempo della Romania aveva incontrato Vintilă nei suoi soggiorni
sul terreno e da allora si era costituta tra loro una intensa solidarietà scienti-
fica, in cui io fui coinvolta attraverso le molteplici iniziative, che Marianne
animava, la più importante delle quali fu la Societé des Européanistes.
   Nel 1995 Jean Cuisenier introducendo il numero di Ethnologie française
dedicato alla Romania (România. Construction d’une nation) descriveva il cli-
ma di quegli anni in Romania osservando che “ciascuno a partire dalla posi-
zione che occupa è più o meno impegnato nel processo di rottura con il vec-
chio regime o all’inverso nel processo di restaurazione di questo regime”
(Cuisenier 1995: 334). Vintilă, quanto a lui, era impegnato nel processo di
rottura e non si preoccupava di assumere in modo appassionato posizioni
scomode o conflittuali. La prima rottura su cui si impegnò era quella con
l’etnologia praticata in Romania durante il regime comunista dal Secondo
dopoguerra all’89, che era improntata a un folclorismo ingessato nell’esalta-
zione di un mondo contadino privo di contraddizioni, depositario dello spiri-
to popolare e della nazione che si identificava con il villaggio isolato e mon-
tano e di cui la famosa ballata Miorița è diventata esemplare. La difficoltà ad
avere rapporti con l’esterno e l’utilizzo da parte del regime della cultura po-
polare come forma di legittimazione della nazione e del proprio potere ren-
deva l’etnologia romena, che io incontrai agli inizi degli anni Novanta, parti-
colarmente chiusa alle influenze esterne e impermeabile ai cambiamenti che
erano intervenuti nelle etnologie europee. Vintilă non fu mai un folclorista e
la sua battaglia, a lungo isolata, si identificò con l’affermarsi dell’antropolo-
gia culturale in Romania. Il faticoso sviluppo di questa disciplina in questo
paese è bene esemplificato nell’articolo scritto da Vintilă nel numero già ci-
tato di Ethnologie française, dove ricorda le sue prime ricerche in alcuni vil-
laggi romeni quando poco più che ventenne era ricercatore al Laboratorio di
antropologia di Bucarest. Si trattava di un laboratorio composito, dove per
antropologia si intendeva l’antropologia fisica, in cui erano presenti filosofi,
psicologi, sociologi, eredi della tradizione di Gusti, un laboratorio si potreb-
be dire di scienze sociali a cui Vintilă apparteneva in quanto psicologo di for-
mazione. L’articolo racconta un percorso iniziatico in cui gli interrogativi le-
gati alla comprensione dell’alterità umana e alla costruzione delle differenze
via via si sciolgono superando una serie di ostacoli e di inciampi, mettendo a
confronto tradizioni di studi diverse, affrontando le critiche più o meno in-
dulgenti. Alla fine di questo percorso si trova l’antropologia “dalla psicologia
all’etnografia, passando per la linguistica o la biologia a forza di coabitare e
comunicare, abbiamo inventato la nostra antropologia” (Mihăilescu, Răutu
1995: 356).


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FOR VINTILĂ                                                                                 21


   Un percorso dunque non scontato fatto di tentativi e di aperture, l’oppo-
sto di quello della etnologia romena del tempo costruita sui canoni e sulle
certezze, e che ha condotto l’antropologia culturale in Romania a confron-
tarsi con quanto avveniva fuori dai propri confini nazionali e a trovare una
propria strada. Vintilă favorì e promosse l’incontro con le antropologie di al-
tri paesi sia europei, in particolare la Francia, l’Italia, il Belgio ma anche gli
Stati Uniti. La sua scelta si inseriva perfettamente all’interno delle politiche
dell’Unione Europea che dopo l’89 si indirizzava verso l’allargamento dei
propri confini favorendo la circolazione dei giovani, l’incontro e il confronto
a livello universitario, della ricerca e dell’istruzione. È lungo questa strada
che con Vintilă abbiamo organizzato convegni, stage di terreno con studenti
e docenti di varia nazionalità, i “terrains croisés”, scambi di docenti e stu-
denti e abbiamo dato vita nel 2005 al Dottorato internazionale di etnologia e
antropologia (AEDE). Si è trattato di una esperienza promossa dall’Universi-
tà di Perugia in collaborazione con l’Université Libre di Bruxelles, l’Universi-
té di Paris X-Nanterre e la SNSPA di Bucarest, dove Vintilă insegnava alla fa-
coltà di sociologia e a cui ha contribuito con passione e intelligenza. Un’e-
sperienza, in cui si sono formate, attraverso il confronto tra diverse tradizio-
ni di studi, nuove generazioni di antropologi, che oggi insegnano nelle uni-
versità europee e statunitensi.
   Un’altra rottura non meno importante fu quella che vide impegnato Vin-
tilă sul fronte museografico in particolare nel periodo 2005-2010 in cui fu di-
rettore del Museo del contadino romeno1. Sul fronte museografico si com-
batté una battaglia che non fu solo scientifica ma anche politica. Le innova-
zioni introdotte da Horia Bernea un artista divenuto direttore del museo
dopo la riapertura furono radicali. A Bucarest nel 1991 visitai la mostra La
croce, una mostra di grande effetto che si ispirava alla museografia di Hai-
nard a Neuchâtel. Una museografia concettuale da un lato perché sollecitava
a comparare e riflettere, dall’altro che mirava a suscitare emozioni attraverso
una attenta scenografia e scelta degli oggetti. Questa radicalità suscitò una
reazione sia in una parte dell’opinione pubblica che di alcuni dei funzionari
del museo tanto che alla sua morte cinque anni dopo si aprì un periodo di re-
staurazione che vide diventare direttore uno storico che tornò a far valere i
classici canoni museografici. Toccò di nuovo a Vintilă, grazie al prestigio e

1. Nato come Museo nazionale delle antichità nel 1864 a Bucarest, divenne nel 1906, essen-
dosi arricchito di molte collezioni etnografiche, Museo di etnografia, arte nazionale, arte de-
corativa e industriale. Venne chiuso nel 1951 durante il periodo comunista, per fare posto al
Museo del partito comunista romeno, mentre le sue collezioni furono trasferite nel Museo
del villaggio, museo all’aria aperta sempre a Bucarest. Dopo l’89 il museo riaprì nella sua
sede originaria con il nome di Museo del contadino romeno.

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22                                                                   CRISTINA PAPA


alla notorietà nel frattempo acquisiti a livello di opinione pubblica e come
interlocutore delle istituzioni nazionali, cinque anni dopo assumere il ruolo
di direttore e portare la ricerca antropologica al centro della riflessione mu-
seografica confrontandosi nello stesso tempo con gli orientamenti museo-
grafici a livello internazionale. Vintilă, un uomo che non si sottrasse alle sfi-
de del suo tempo, un intellettuale combattente oltre che antropologo fecon-
do. È così che mi piace ricordarlo.

RIFERIMENTI BIBLIOGRAFICI
Cuisenier, Jean, 1995, România: La Roumanie et le domaine culturel roumain,
     Ethnologie française, 25, 3: 333-341
Mihăilescu, Vintilă, Radu Răutu, 1995, Mettre sa tente au milieu de son village.
     Grandeur et misère d’une ethnologie domestique, Ethnologie française, 25, 3:
     354-376.




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FOR VINTILĂ                                                                              23




Vintilă and the roundtable
The “antropological” moment 1986

Zoltán ROSTÁS
University of Bucharest
zoltan.z.rostas@gmail.com



   I must confess that I have not come to terms with Vintilă’s departure. He
meant a lot more to me and to our independent research group, the “Gusti
Cooperative”, than people know. Therefore, I cannot convey here how much
we will miss him.
   On the other hand, I know that this brief consideration cannot be
postponed. He was not the books he published, just like no talented field
researcher can render everything s/he has lived. In fact, he was in the field
all the time – in villages and in cities, on construction sites and at
conferences, in pubs and in hospitals: everywhere. In Gorj1 and in Cuba.
   And he has constantly been a catalyst, ever since his student years, when
he took part in the setting up of the student journal Universitas, through the
immense effort of organizing a research team in the 1980s, and especially of
getting the party research approval, to establishing, after 1989, a real trend
in anthropological research, without significant institutional support.
   In this short note I recall an event that took place in 1986, when I published,
in a cultural magazine, the text of a roundtable with a group of researchers
who worked at the Department of Cultural Anthropology from the Bucharest
Institute of Anthropology. It was a time when, alongside other distortions,
the discipline of sociology had entered a period of downturn and I, as editor
of social sciences, started to tackle certain topics from an anthropological
perspective. I myself had adopted this approach in the attempt to
reconstruct the daily life of the Gustian school2 using oral history.

1. County in Southern Romania.
2. Dimitrie Gusti was a Romanian sociologist who, during the interwar period, started a new
trend of empirical sociological investigations in villages of Romania, leading a large group
of multidisciplinary researchers.

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24                                                                            ZOLTÁN ROSTÁS


   Consequently, I asked Vintilă to gather his colleagues for a discussion
about the research carried out by the group. It was not easy, because the
group included a few psychologists who had been traumatized by the
“transcendental meditation” scandal3. Eventually, the dialogue was a
success, for it reflected the group’s by and large anthropological approach,
despite their mostly philosophical and psychological education. Those who
took part in the discussion were Matei Stîrcea-Crăciun4, Gheorghiţă Geană5,
Mihai Golu6, Vasile Dem. Zamfirescu7, Vintilă Mihăilescu and I. It would, of
course, be worth publishing and examining the entire roundtable transcript,
but in the space provided here I will only include Vintilă’s responses and
provide a summary of the debate.
   The roundtable dealt rather intensely with the scholarly identity of
cultural anthropology. The discussion started with a presentation of the
development of various anthropologies starting in the nineteenth century.
Despite the obvious differentiation, in Romania, at least in the 1980s,
physical or biological anthropology was still the best-known, especially
because of Francisc Rainer’s research activity; he was also the founder of the
Institute of Anthropology. Precisely Rainer’s research was the topic of the
heated debate that ensued around the old topic of whether it was possible to
link anthropometrical data to cultural manifestations. Then the discussion
was widened to the relationship between nature and culture and,
unsurprisingly, to philosophical anthropology, which had important
representatives in Romanian culture. The dialogue also included opposite
opinions vis-à-vis the development of autonomous anthropologies versus
the necessity of their integration, going as far as expressing hopes regarding
the help provided to anthropology by the new trend in ethology.
   It was at this point that Vintilă stepped in:
      I believe that the independence, the autonomy of branch disciplines was
      fostered not only by the lack of research methods, but also by the nature of
      human behavior. Since there is behavior connected to culture and behavior
      connected to biology. The use of ethology can emphasize one course or the
      other. I am not sure whether such a position can be supported, but the truth is

3. Name given to the anti-intellectual reprisals undertaken by the communist regime in
1981, which eventually resulted in the dissolution of the Bucharest Institute of Psychology.
4. Matei Stîrcea-Crăciun, researcher at the “Francisc I. Rainer” Institute of Anthropology of
the Romanian Academy.
5. Gheorghiţă Geană, researcher at the “Francisc I. Rainer” Institute of Anthropology of the
Romanian Academy, after 1989 he supervised PhDs in philosophical anthropology.
6. Mihai Golu, psychologist, professor at the University of Bucharest, he was minister of
education and later minister of culture in the beginning of the 1990s.
7. Vasile Dem. Zamfirescu, psychoanalyst, professor at a private university in Bucharest.


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FOR VINTILĂ                                                                                 25

      that not even anthropologists themselves know exactly where this vast field
      begins and where it ends. However, in my opinion, this is natural and rather
      easy to explain. In the course of its history, anthropology, as a discipline,
      defined itself in situational, not in logical terms. For the British who did social
      anthropology, the key issue of research was explaining kinship and only at that
      point they started to move closer to culture. The Americans were interested in
      the careful examination of culture, but they constantly tried to build bridges
      between the different dualities, dichotomies, such as those implied, for
      instance, by the relationship between individual and society. This is why they
      initiated a separate orientation that dealt with the relationship between
      personality and culture. To what extent they succeeded in overcoming these
      opposites is a totally different matter. Fact is that they rarely managed to
      maintain a balance. The research often deviated to sociologism or
      psychologism. Several research fields were professed as independent
      disciplines, which further contributed to this feeling of fragmentation.
      For instance, urban anthropology has its own institutions and its own separate
      congresses. There is linguistic anthropology, political anthropology, anthropology
      of education, geographic anthropology, etc. But I believe they have a common
      denominator. And the common denominator in all of these is nothing more
      than an anthropology perspective, even if it is not explicated as such. Of
      course, we should elucidate what an anthropology perspective means. In my
      view, it is a distinct reading or understanding of human behavior, in which a
      person is studied and described in certain temporal and spatial contexts. And I
      emphasize “certain” in referring to the spatial and temporal context, because
      anthropology has always been preoccupied by the direct or indirect attempt to
      rethink the concept of human nature. So far, human nature has been
      understood in terms of the category put forth by philosophical anthropology,
      but there is a growing demand now to empirically elucidate this concept.
      In this respect, it is worth calling to Margaret Mead’s research, which showed
      that puberty – viewed as a natural and therefore necessary stage of development –
      is merely a cultural construct, because its features, its characteristics could not
      be unequivocally identified within the sample of cultures under investigation.
      As a result, it was once more proven that the human phenomenon must be
      explored in real existing historical contexts or – as I have already mentioned –
      the human being must be considered under certain temporal and spatial
      coordinates. This perspective is common in all anthropological approaches.
      However, what sets them apart can be reproached or attributed to the fact that
      no anthology has been put together in order to unify the various approaches.
      Currently, there are only fortuitous alliances between the different fields of
      research, for instance between philosophical anthropology and social
      anthropology.

  His speech stimulated the debate even further, so the psychoanalytical
perspective was brought up we talked about the results achieved by
Bronisław Malinowski, as well as about the contrasting ones, reached by
Géza Róheim. Then the discussion went on to emphasize the comparative
method in anthropology, which should, however, lead to criteria, models and


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26                                                                            ZOLTÁN ROSTÁS


principles that would unify, and not set apart the different branches of
anthropology. At this point of the debate, one of Vintilă’s questions – “But
this need, does it not require a new definition of the human being?” – guided
the debate towards the topic of philosophical anthropology. Thus, the issue
of the human being was outlined – from Aristotle to Arnold Gehlen, in this
way wishing to overcome the traditional view about the human being,
common in the philosophy of culture.
   At some point, the roundtable discussions moved toward the relationship
between individual and its surrounding objects. These topics were hardly
investigated at the time and led the dialogue to applied anthropology, such
as ergonomics, etc. In this framework, we talked about the misperception of
the research field of anthropology and its use in politics, indicating that the
anthropologist could be misjudged as colonial public officer. Quite the
opposite, we surmised, anthropology contributed to overcoming the
Eurocentric perspective in approaches to cultures, thus bestowing moral
value upon science.
   Towards the end of the debate, we talked about the studies undertaken at
the institute. We spoke, briefly, about the research carried out in Vrancea
region8.
   Vintilă complemented this synthesis, articulating more clearly the study
he directed:
      We cannot take on an exploration of the individual as a whole, we can, at best,
      try to explore as many aspects of human existence as possible. How successful
      that is, it remains to be determined. But I want to tell you that we have
      investigations undertaken not only in Vrancea, but also in the county of Gorj.
      However, here we follow a somewhat different model and that is why our
      endeavor cannot be considered ethno-psychological. We aim at building
      bridges over the chasm between nature and culture. This is the reason we tried
      to put together a truly multidisciplinary research team.
      Alongside social and physical anthropologists, the team includes specialists in
      various fields, such as sociology, psychology, linguistics, folklore, and
      philosophy. Each of us is working in his own field but is also actively aware of
      the anthropological perspective. This perspective is our common denominator.
      By analyzing the results achieved from a multitude of perspectives, we will be
      able to reveal the idiosyncrasies of the forms of behavior. From social aspects
      to values, from cultural representations to demographic behavior, all human
      manifestations can be analyzed. The relationship between them leads to a new
      anthropological type. The cooperation between several approaches and
      professions is necessary, because, insofar as an anthropological type arises, it
      will immediately be transferred to another level of analysis, problematization,


8. County in Central-Eastern Romania.


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FOR VINTILĂ                                                                                27

      approach. If fifty years ago Professor Rainer only guessed that the results of his
      research could be correlated to results attained by social scientists, now we can
      undoubtedly ascertain that we benefit from hypotheses that testify to the
      relationship between different levels. We do not have certainties, but we are
      discernably closer than Rainer was.

  The roundtable concluded by recalling the plan of an encyclopedia of
anthropology that the team from the institute was working on.

                                              ***

   I hope that remembering this moment (published in Bucharest, in the
Hungarian cultural magazine A Hét, on the 20th of March 1986, year XVII, nr.
12, pp. 8-9) is only the beginning. The duty of Vintilă’s friends is to
reconstitute his extraordinary life.




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FOR VINTILĂ                                                                         28




Vintilă on Vintilă and the current crisis
David A. KIDECKEL
Central Connecticut State University, New Britain, CT USA
dakideckel@gmail.com

Raluca NAHORNIAC
University of Maryland, College Park, MD USA
raluca.nahorniac@gmail.com



   Vintilă is gone, but Vintilă remains… in our hearts, our thoughts of
history, culture, and language, in our reminiscence of our own passages and
transitions. For the two of us, he was instrumental in our meeting and our
marriage, in our careers and our writing, in our understanding of society and
our place in it. We write to summon him one more time to broaden our lives
and understanding by his authenticity, decency, verve, and criticality.
   Beyond the personal, generalizing Vintilă Mihăilescu’s contributions is
daunting. Vintilă was protean. At one and the same time he was scholar,
teacher, public intellectual, institution builder, linguistic avant-garde, and
above all father, husband, and friend. We are at a loss for words to approximate
his significance-to ourselves, to Romanian social science, and to the legions
of individuals whose lives he affected. However, knowing Vintilă, he would
categorically reject our hesitancy to write. We can hear him now, in his high-
pitched interrogatory, an espresso in one hand and one of those silly slim
cigarettes he chain-smoked before becoming ill this last time in the other:
“What are you waiting for? Get on with it.”
   Vintilă’s oeuvre helped to essentially create and define social anthropology
in contemporary Romania. Monographs and readers offered meditations as
varied as those on sociological reasoning and social change (Socio Hai-Hui,
2000) and the recent take-down of Romanian exceptionalism (De ce este
România astfel, 2017). Meanwhile the regular columns he wrote for Dilema
Veche chronicled the fads and foibles of Romanian society as it made its
rough passage from Ceaușescu’s Epoca de Aur to the challenges of post-
socialism. Any attempt to categorize his contributions seems condemned to
insignificance by the reach and complexity of his ideas, the play of his
language, and the joy and exasperation with which he approached each of
his concerns.

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29                                                 DAVID A. KIDECKEL, RALUCA NAHORNIAC


   Thinking of this challenge to speak to Vintilă’s meaning for us, for others
who knew him, and for those who didn’t, we recognized the futility of a
broad analysis of his contributions. Instead, we decided to shift our gaze to
examine some of his own thoughts and words about the meaning of his own
life. Vintilă’s last book, În căutarea corpului regăsit: O ego-analiză a spitalului
(2019), roughly translated as “In Search of a Found Body: A personal analysis
of the hospital” seems especially well suited for this endeavor. The title
consciously reflects Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past
(Romanian: In Search of Lost Times) and, in keeping with Proust’s spirit, is
often a meditation on seemingly small, but significant moments of Vintilă’s
life seen through the lens of his on-going hospital stay. For example,
remarking on the many people who cared for him in the hospital he
analogized the nurses who watched over him with an innkeeper where he
stayed when he was a student, who funded a party for his student guests,
without concern for payment.
   Though the package is Proust, the substance of Vintilă’s understanding of
his circumstances and their meaning to him, integrates Foucault on
biopower, expressed in the totalizing institution of the hospital, and Freud
on how the ego responds when confronted with mortality. Taken together
this approach brings to the surface Vintilă’s lifelong concern, both personal
and professional, for the circumstances and experiences of individuals
encapsulated, shaped, and in many instances oppressed by formal
institutions of power. His work at SNSPA (the Romanian National School for
the Political and Administrative Sciences) and as Director of the Romanian
National Peasant Museum echoes his hospital experiences. Though Vintilă
was more a subject of creation than an object of interest in the institutions
in which he practiced, his frustrations at both institutions, even in the midst
of his setting them on solid footing, provide a vivid analogy to his
intellectual “success” at making sense of the hospital and medical system
even as his biological self was waning.
   In the midst of his waning physical being Vintilă was particularly critical
of Romanian medicine generally, though not in a blameworthy way, but
more in a sigh of resignation for its failure to either treat illness or patient
effectively. We read his critique of medicine as one of post-socialist
Romanian institutions generally. Thus, he rejected totalizing institutional
control by refusing to provide personal information to the doctors, and
instead wrote such information in his journals (with those notes resulting in
this last book). Vintilă was especially critical of the neoliberal turn in
medical practice (and Romanian life) which, he says, Romanian medical
institutions adopted to avoid responsibility for the provision of timely and


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FOR VINTILĂ                                                                         30


effective care. As a broadside against the present contradictions of Romanian
life, Vintilă claimed it folly to encourage self-actualization and self-
management of individual health where people are often poorly informed
about medical actualities and illness is often treated folklorically; wearing
garlic to escape one’s ills, seeking out miracle beet juice treatments, or
subscribing to anti-vaccination with alacrity.
   This critique of Romanian medicine must be understood in the context of
Vintilă’s Romanian identity. Throughout his career he was constantly
committed to improving the country by a critical gaze at its institutions,
cultural peccadillos, and shortcomings of leadership. This spirit of Romania
suffuses through the volume in small ways and large, as it does in Vintilă’s
many other works, both in celebration and critique of diverse aspects of
Romanian life. Some hospital observations were painfully humorous, like
Ana’s visit to the commissary seeking an envelope, where she was informed
that there were many different sized envelopes since there were many
different sized bribes necessary for medical personnel.
   Ana, it must be noted, was more than a supporting player in Vintila’s life.
She was also Vintilă’s interlocutor, sounding board, amanuensis, helpmate,
partner-in-crime (sneaking him an occasional cigarette) and co-sufferer. Her
strength and wisdom throughout Vintilă’s life, and especially in the midst of
the grief and pain of his extended hospital stay, are noteworthy and her
contributions to his thought and work deserve mention in their own right.
   Ever the anthropologist, Vintilă’s hospital musings emphasize his
approach to knowledge that recognizes how the field is everywhere we are.
He inspires us with the idea that “To understand the hospital, you have to
live within it.” His sociologically informed analyses layered with nuanced
anthropological approaches, such as in his analysis of hospital admission as
a classic rite of passage, reinforce his commitment to Aristotle’s maxim that
“the unexamined life is not worth living.” Throughout the volume, as in his
books, his teaching, and Dilema commentaries, he inspires us with close
attention to the social and cultural significance of small things. For example,
philosophizing on the need for personal space and intimacy in the decidedly
non-intimate atmosphere of the hospital launches him on an extended
discussion comparing his hospital bedside nightstand with the chest at the
foot of his bed in his childhood bedroom. His observation (and photograph)
of the artistry of a transfusion bag as the sun filters through it is simultaneously
redolent with sadness and beauty, like so many of his other musings on
Romanian life.
   The book’s lengthiest chapter by far concerns “Illness, hospital, and
defense mechanisms.” This chapter’s heft is a clear sign of Vintilă’s abiding
interest in how best to come to terms with his own impending fate.

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31                                                        DAVID A. KIDECKEL, RALUCA NAHORNIAC


Distanced discussions of the psychology of defense mechanisms of patients,
family members, doctors and other health personnel pair with lengthy
ruminations about personal experiences. Not surprisingly, as his students,
friends, and colleagues could readily attest, Vintilă most often called on
humor to confront his fraught circumstances and he probed deeply about its
attraction and personal and social meaning. Invoking his childhood, Vintilă
sees his sense of humor as an effective means to escape his father’s
domination. As he writes, humor helped him to know his place… to not
worry about being a powerful person, but a measured one, thus allowing him
to contend with the powerful, but to still keep them at a distance. As Vintilā
observes, humor especially enables the solidarity necessary to confront
hierarchies of power. But this effective confronting of power is lost in the
contemporary transformation of humor, a social mechanism, to “having
fun,” an act stripped of both psychological and political affect.
   Above all, as Vintilă says of himself, humor enables one to be neither
overwhelmed by death nor inebriated with life. Thus, reading this last effort
from this most authentic man in the midst of the global coronavirus
pandemic, offers us essential tools to meet the current challenge; criticism,
laughter, personal introspection, and an ethnographic sensibility. Thank
you, Vintilă, for your insight, your fortitude, and your humor. You are sorely
missed.

REFERENCES
Mihăilescu, Vintilă, 2000, Socio Hai-Hui: O altă sociologie a tranziției, București,
      Paideia.
Mihăilescu, Vintilă, 2019, În căutarea corpului regăsit: O ego-analizā a spitalului, București,
      Polirom.
Mihăilescu, Vintilă, ed, 2017, De ce este România astfel? Avatarurile excepționalismului
      românesc, București, Polirom.




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FOR VINTILĂ                                                                           32




Midwifing cultural anthropology in post-communist
Romania
Cătălin Augustin STOICA
National University for Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest
astoica@politice.ro

   Like others invited to honor Vintilă Mihăilescu’s memory, I too, will rely
on personal encounters with him. I met Vintilă in the early 1990s, while I
was an undergraduate student in sociology at the University of Bucharest. At
that time, some of my colleagues were talking about a “hip” or a “cool” guy,
who was teaching in the Department of Psychology but was rather inclined
towards sociology and anthropology. To begin with, his bearded, jeans-
wearing, hippie-look made him stand out among other professors. (His funky
vests and flowery shirts also deserve special mention.) He had established an
independent research center called “The Social Observatory” and, during
summer vacations, he was organizing fieldwork trips for students willing to
go native in Godforsaken villages or in derelict, deindustrialized, and
poverty-stricken cities throughout Romania. I did not know what was he
actually doing during these fieldwork trips but his students were speaking
highly (if not religiously) of him. In fact, the fascination with him earned his
students the nickname “Vintilă’s Witnesses” – a nickname that, obviously,
circulated only among his group’s outsiders, like myself.
   Through some fortunate circumstances, Vintilă invited me to present a
research project at the second annual conference of the Romanian Society
for Cultural Anthropology, which he co-founded. After that conference, we
grew close and I began to understand some of the reasons why he was so
loved by his advisees, even though I never became a “member” of his
“Witnesses” group. First, in contrast to other Romanian academics of his
generation, Vintilă was a down-to-earth and open person. With his gracious
wife Ana, he would organize parties for his students at their home –
something that was non-professorial by local “academic distancing”
standards and therefore awesome.Second, he always seemed to have time for
his students and conversations usually took place in fairly unconventional
settings, over a coffee or a drink, at some beer garden or in a hip bar.

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33                                                       CĂTĂLIN AUGUSTIN STOICA


Students would bring to the table not only their academic issues but also
their personal troubles. Third, he had a remarkable patience. He was able to
listen for hours to fairly preposterous, vaguely formulated, and/or outright
aberrant research ideas coming out of his students’ mouths. And, to my total
bewilderment as a chance witness to few such discussions between him and
his students, he would do this with a straight face. His comments were non-
judgmental and always generously encouraging (again, to my astonishment).
Retrospectively, I think that his heroic patience was due to his curiosity
about people and the desire to learn about new things. During these
conversations, Vintilă would also cast his net, fishing for bright minds, fresh
ideas, and news about current trends among his younger interlocutors. I
came to realize that his curiosity was the real engine behind his dedication
to anthropology and his efforts to organize, over the years, tens of fieldwork
sessions for his students. Fourth, in contrast to other people from his
“generation,” Vintilă did not seem to have power ambitions. In the early
1990, some local social scientists rapidly achieved positions of power in the
new government or in institutions of higher education. Vintilă, however, was
not among these new powerful academics of the day, even though, as far as I
know, he did possess the symbolic capital to claim such positions of
authority in the new regime. Actually, he seemed rather amused by the post-
communist grandstanding of some of his peers, whom he knew intimately
from before 1989. Also, “authority” was something that Vintilă liked to mock
and playfully undermine, especially when dealing with arriviste colleagues
who were power tripping post-1990.
   After graduating from the University of Bucharest in 1996, I went to the
Central European University for a Master-degree and subsequently to
Stanford University for my PhD. During my eight years of absence from
Romania, I stayed in touch with him mostly indirectly, through some friends
who were former students of him. Every now and then, when I was visiting
Romania, our paths crossed. Things in the country were changing at more
rapid pace than in the early 1990s and so was Vintilă’s career. He had moved
from the Department of Psychology at the University of Bucharest to the
Department of Sociology, within the same university. His popularity among
students, his irreverence towards authority, his independent stance and his
non-conformism brought him into conflict more rigid and powerful
colleagues in the Department of Sociology as well. He eventually left the
University of Bucharest for the National University of Political Studies and
Public Administration (SNSPA), where he co-founded the Sociology
Department and the first Masters Degree program in the country in (cultural)
Anthropology.


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FOR VINTILĂ                                                                      34


   During all this time, he continued to do what he knew and loved best:
teaching new generations of students and initiating them in what he
believed to be the amazing world of doing fieldwork. Vintilă – a city boy
from a well-to-do, reputed family of academics – seemed fascinated with the
rural world, with all its traditions, superstitions, and – at times -- odd ways
of life. A bon viveur who always fancied a glass of țuică (a homemade plum
brandy), a peasant-style lamb steak or a fish soup prepared by locals from
the Danube Delta, Vintilă, however, did not glorify “tradition.” He deemed
“tradition” something that was “invented” in the sense of Hobsbawm (1992).
Furthermore, in a pure anthropological tradition, he was interested in the
clash between (communist and post-communist) modernization processes
and “traditional” practices and mindsets. Thus, he would persistently search
for the unintended effects of the decoupling processes between new and old
institutional forms. Such effects were more visible in rural parts of the
country but he found and analyzed them in urban settings as well (see, on
this point, his works on urban ethnographies and his collaboration with
architects and urban planners).
   By the early 2000s, many students from the first two generations of his
“Witnesses” had gone to continue their studies at different universities in
Europe and the US, with notable results. While informally, Vintilă was well
known and appreciated by students and academics throughout the country,
his association with the intellectual weekly Dilema (The Dilemma
subsequently, Dilema Veche [The Old Dilemma]) made him famous among the
large public. Specifically, since 1998 until his untimely death, this magazine
would host his weekly articles in which he would analyze various (current)
issues and controversies from a socio-anthropological perspective. The
background title of his section was “Socio hai-hui” – a Romanian word-play
that approximately means “Socio-wanderings.” It was through this weekly
section that Vintilă brought sociology and anthropology to the masses, so to
speak. Written in an accessible language without, however, vulgarizing
matters, Vintilă’s vignettes challenged many classist, racist, and ethno-
national stereotypes, which were widespread among the country’s highly
educated, pretentious upper-middle class, which also formed the bulk of
Dilema Veche’s readership.
   In 2005, when I returned to Romania, Vintilă was one of the few people
who lent me a helping hand. Having a PhD in Sociology from Stanford
University did not mean much in the eyes of the local academic world.
Instead of minimal welcoming gestures, my Stanford degree did not sit well
with some people, especially those from my own generation, who had to
craft their careers in Romania through politicking and playing nice to the

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35                                                         CĂTĂLIN AUGUSTIN STOICA


senior professors who, like in the old days of communism, were still calling
the shots in many parts of the local academia. Thanks to his recruiting
efforts, I eventually became an assistant professor of sociology at SNSPA, in
the Department of Sociology, having Vintilă as my “boss” (i.e., Head of the
Department). Along with him, other colleagues, and hundreds of students, I
participated in numerous research projects that were enthusiastically
initiated by him, such as the “Social Mapping of Bucharest”. During the
years spent as his colleague, we fought together several battles against
political maneuverings and against absurdist bureaucratic regulations.
   During the last ten years or so, Vintilă changed. Although he remained
dedicated to students and continued to organize fieldwork sessions, he
started to allocate more and more of his time to his editorial projects. He
would publish or coordinate various volumes feverishly, at an amazing pace
of one book per year. His works sold well, especially those that dealt with
public anthropology, in the style of his articles from Dilema Veche. Seeing
him so absorbed in his writing efforts, a good friend commented that he acts
as if he is preparing his own posterity. To us, this was odd because, in our
eyes, Vintilă was still young and somewhat immortal. Why would a person
like him prepare for posterity? There was still wine to drink, fieldwork trips
to take, stuff to discuss, and life to enjoy. Posterity?!
   Along with other contributors to this issue, I am now in the difficult
position of talking about Vintilă in the past tense and discuss about his
legacy. First of all, obviously, there are his books and articles. On this aspect
of his legacy, I think that his works will stand the test of time aided by
Vintilă’s playful, accessible writing style, and his unmatched, insightful
descriptions. Second, through his efforts and writings, Vintilă had a crucial
contribution to the birth and institutionalization of cultural anthropology in
Romania. Along the lines of Michael Burawoy’s (2005) calls for a public
sociology, Vintilă believed that anthropology too should not remain
confined to academic ivory towers. In his view, anthropology had to provide
answers to the challenging questions raised by the current, rapid global
transformations. Finally, Vintilă’s most important legacy, in my opinion, is
represented by the generations of students he enthusiastically nurtured to
professional maturity. Many of them now teach anthropology or conduct
anthropological research in various public and private institutions, in
Romania or abroad. For quite a few people I personally know, meeting
Vintilă was a life-changing event, which literally saved their then-seemingly
hopeless careers, and helped them find their calling.




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FOR VINTILĂ                                                                    36



REFERENCES
Burawoy, Michael, 2005, For Public Sociology, American Sociological Review,
    70, 1: 4-28.
Hobsbawm, Eric, 1992 [1983], Introduction: Inventing Traditions, in The In-
    vention of Tradition, Eric Hobsbawm, Terence Ranger, eds, Cambridge,
    Cambridge University Press: 1-14.




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FOR VINTILĂ                                                                       37




Hommage in fine in-fini
Ellen HERTZ
Université de Neuchâtel
Ellen.Hertz@unine.ch


   Vintilă nous a quittés. Cela ne devait pas se produire, il était trop jeune, il
avait mille projets à accomplir encore, tant de choses à observer, tant de
choses à dire, à nous dire, à nous faire dire. Et c’était inévitable, car il était
une espèce en voie de disparition.
   Je l’ai connu en 1999 par le biais d’un autre de son espèce, le prof. Christian
Giordano, aujourd’hui disparu. Les deux spécialistes du “bloc soviétique”,
aujourd’hui disparu, avaient joint leurs forces pour un séminaire de troi-
sième cycle organisé par les départements d’anthropologie de la Suisse ro-
mande et pour laquelle la jeune docteure que je ne suis plus a servi de coor-
dinatrice.
   Vintilă ne croyait pas dans la notion de “bloc”, Christian ne croyait pas
dans celle de “soviétique”, et ni l’un ni l’autre dans la notion de “professeur”.
Mais c’était beau, et bien, et bel et bien dans leur compagnie qu’une dizaine
d’étudiants et moi-même avons passé deux semaines ensemble en Rouma-
nie, une équipe à Cluj, une autre à Timişoara, une troisième à Bucarest. Nous
avons flâné, visité, bavardé, bu, dansé et rebu: c’était magique, nous étions
transportés. Mais transportés où? Comment décrire les espaces où Vintilă
savait nous amener, des espaces qu’il voyait et créait, qu’il créait en voyant,
des espaces plus vrais que réels?
   Ce n’est pas simplement qu’il avait du charisme. Sa capacité à créer des
espaces était plus qu’un talent personnel, une compétence issue de la force
de sa personnalité énorme, même si c’était également cela. Plus fondamen-
tal à mes yeux était la conjonction de son regard, en même temps actif et té-
moin, avec le monde qu’il voyait. Plus que le “savoir-voir”, il pratiquer
l’“oser-voir”; voir sans rationalisation mais sans banalisation, sans héroïsa-
tion mais sans misanthropie. Joueur, un brin cynique, Vintilă prenait ce
monde absurde et tragique au sérieux.



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38                                                                    ELLEN HERTZ


   C’est ainsi qu’il voyait le Palais du Parlement créé par Ceaușescu, qu’il
prenait la pleine mesure de sa monstruosité et qu’il nous la rendait présente.
C’est ainsi qu’il voyait les ruses et les ressources des populations rurales
qu’il étudiait – roms, gadje, paysans, ouvriers, tous insistant sur leurs ori-
gines locales datant des temps immémoriaux mais prêts à quitter leur pays
natal à la première occasion. Attendri et agacé, il respectait leurs vérités; il
voyait des créatures créatives et il voulait nous les présenter. C’est égale-
ment ainsi qu’il se promenait avec nous dans les rues de Bucarest, attirant
notre attention tour à tour sur des balcons et des pots de conserves, des
plantes vertes et des meutes de chiens errants, comme pour dire: “c’est notre
présent que je vous présente, mais je ne vous garantis pas qu’il soit présen-
table”.
   Depuis 1999, j’ai n’ai eu que quelques occasions de passer du temps avec
Vintilă: lors de colloques essentiellement (à Montréal, à Paris, à Tartu), lors
d’un séminaire de recherche que j’ai organisé sur le patrimoine immatériel,
et lors d’une soutenance de thèse dans mon institut à Neuchâtel – ville dont
il disait sans détour qu’il préférerait mourir qu’y vivre tant elle manquait de
“vie”. Je me suis également rendue à Bucarest à quelques reprises pour di-
verses raisons, où j’ai constaté avec admiration sa capacité à survivre à des
situations politiques multiples et variés en gardant toujours le cap, et en
maintenant sa pratique d’une anthropologie rigoureuse, attentive aussi bien
aux grandes dynamiques de la mondialisation qu’aux minuscules appropria-
tions des acteurs locaux. Le respect qu’il suscitait autour de lui était palpable
– toujours du respect, jamais de la crainte ni de la flagornerie.
   Toutes ces occasions m’ont marquée et m’ont laissée sur ma faim: j’aurais
voulu plus, plus de temps pour flâner, visiter, bavarder, boire, danser et re-
boire. Nous avons parlé à plusieurs reprises de projets à monter ensemble,
toujours avec un enthousiasme perceptible et un calendrier vague. Avec le
recul, je crois que ce “plus” dont je rêvais était également celui du monde
dont venait Vintilă, un monde aujourd’hui disparu, dont on se souvient à
peine – et cela d’autant moins que nous vivons l’hallucinante crise du coro-
navirus – mais qui a bel et bien a existé, contrairement au “socialisme réel”.
Ce fut un monde façonné par la Guerre froide, soit par la croyance, partagée
par les deux “blocs”, dans le progrès technique et civilisationnel, dans la li-
néarité de l’histoire et dans son heureux dénouement. Quelle folie, vu d’au-
jourd’hui!
   Spécialiste de la Chine, ayant vécu en République populaire pendant la
période maoïste, je voulais travailler avec Vintilă sur les “posts”: sur les nou-
velles formes d’expérience et d’existence rendues possibles par la chute du


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FOR VINTILĂ                                                                       39


communisme, mais également sur les pertes – des espoirs, des simplismes,
des grands récits, de la croyance dans une amélioration possible du fonction-
nement des sociétés humaines. Je voulais aussi travailler avec Vintilă sur
l’avenir, car j’avais besoin du regard qui voit sans esquiver. J’aurais tant vou-
lu discuter avec lui des menaces et des souffrances qui nous guettent, de la
poignée de fous qui nous gouvernent, de la sur-rationalisation des institu-
tions, de la virtualisation des espaces, de l’instrumentalisation des discours.
   Et maintenant? Comment vais-je faire pour voir dans un monde où il n’y a
plus Vintilă pour regarder?




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FOR VINTILĂ                                                                             40




Do you like where I brought you?
Disenchantment and re-enchantment in Vintilă Mihăilescu’s
anthropological teachings

Bogdan IANCU
National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest
bogdan.iancu@politice.ro

Monica STROE
National University of Political Studies and Public Administration, Bucharest
monica.stroe@politice.ro



   In the summer of 2002, I (Bogdan) travelled with Vintilă to Rovinari coal
mining area, his first fieldwork site back in the 1980s, that was also to
become my first fieldwork. I was part of the second class of the MA in
Anthropology, founded by him in 2000 at the National University of Political
Studies and Public Administration. We travelled in an old second-hand BMW
which he had received from a friend. I was terribly nervous to be traveling
hundreds of kilometres in the front seat next to the man whose weekly
Dilema1, column I had read every week and not know what smart things to
say during my time as a co-pilot. The Joe Dassin album on repeat playing on
the car’s failing cassette player helped. Vintilă often had his head in the
clouds and had left all other cassette tapes at home as he had hastily left
Bucharest for Rovinari right after a mild heart attack had put him in the
hospital.
   We reached Hotel Rovinari (in fact a dormitory for the workers at the
nearby thermal power plant) in the evening, on the background of a bleeding
sunset caused by the coal dust that was filling the air. We took a short
recognition tour through the town with rusty street stalls, grey buildings and
fragmented pavement after which we returned to our “hotel”. My colleagues
were cleaning their chairs full of the ubiquitous black dust and were waiting
for the cafeteria’s opening hours, to sample its two-dish menu. After dinner,
Vintilă invited us to a meeting on a patch of grass across the street, next to
the railway, where we kept a close eye on the potential attack of mosquitoes
1. A Romanian weekly magazine that covers culture, social topics, and politics.

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41                                                           BOGDAN IANCU, MONICA STROE


and ticks. After everyone gathered, Vintilă asked in a dry, amused tone: “Do
you like where I brought you? / Vă place unde v-am adus?” There was silence,
broken by the occasional mine trucks that would stir the last clouds of dust
in passing. It was not clear to us whether that was a trick question, so the
answers emerged timidly. We had a field meeting which lasted until 4 in the
morning, because Vintilă wanted to listen carefully, for half an hour each, all
the first impressions of those who had arrived earlier. At 8:30 in the morning
a new meeting would follow before the start of the first official day of
fieldwork.
   In order to save some of the research money to spend on food, Vintilă
decided that he and I would share the hotel room. Vintilă stayed behind on
the balcony, in the dim light, to put down some research directions to
explore in the following ten days. Every now and then he would ask if I
remembered what this and that person said. Around 5:00 in the morning I
fell asleep in the whistling sound of the thermal power plant.
   What followed was a week of interviews in teams of two with people who
had either worked or were still working in the open mines of the area and
were living in the town that had sprung up in the 1980s. Vintilă and his
colleagues had done fieldwork there at the height of industrial development.
We listened to the confessions of a world emerged from the coal mine,
assembled hurriedly from scratch, with all the resulting social costs, further
amplified by the policies of shock therapy of early postsocialism. In the
evenings, Vintilă would listen, amused and slightly irritated, to our never-
ending introductions: “they are all nostalgic for communism here, they all
vote with Vadim!”2. He suggested that we might take a step back and try to
understand the social causes that fuel these discourses: “You know, the
phantom of communism cannot explain everything”.
   A week after our return to Bucharest, Vintilă summoned us for a final
research meeting. My colleagues, Ana, Raluca, Gabriel and I have confessed
that we were considering returning to Rovinari as soon as possible, because
we were fixating over the research topics that we had opened and failed to
properly answer. It had been in fact Vintilă who had subtly but intensely
fuelled our state of feverish unrest. He called us the next day to say that he
had managed to secure a small grant to support our second week-long
fieldwork trip. Our second trip to Rovinari resulted in four anthropological
research projects for our dissertations and a plastic washing basin in which
we used to wash our coal dust-soaked clothes during our stay. The basin was
later auctioned at a raffle during a master party.

2. Vadim Tudor, at that time leader of the ultranantionalist party Partidul România Mare,
PRM.


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FOR VINTILĂ                                                                      42


   Fieldwork was a seminal part of Vintilă’s view on teaching anthropology.
We had the privilege to participate yearly, as either students or research
assistants since 2002 (Bogdan) and 2008 (Monica): Dobrodja, the Danube
Delta, Bukovina, Transylvania, Oltenia. The master’s curricula would be
adjusted every couple of years, but the collective summer fieldwork
remained the backbone of the programme. Students typically looked forward
to it with emotion and anticipation.
   “Do you like where I brought you?” He would always open the fieldworks
with this question. It was his way to explore the capacity of adaptation and
of going out of one’s comfort zone for a period of time that would allow for
at least simulacra of the depaysement theorised by Marc Abélès.
   The fieldwork would always deliver the expected effect: a transformative
experience of decentring. At the end, participants had experienced the
revelation of meeting the Other and had learned to overcome layers of
physical, emotional and moral limits. The more precarious the fieldwork
conditions were, the more radically transformative was the fieldwork.
Always rural or small-town based, the fieldwork had a cathartic effect on
students, especially since many were coming from those urban, middle-class
backgrounds prone to either idealisation of the countryside or to a complete
lack of awareness about poverty and marginality. Reaching out of one’s
comfort zone was but one of the lessons that Vintilă would seek to expose
students to. Exchange, ethics, humility, solidarity, the confrontation of
privileges and prejudice were additional take-aways. He would often let
people learn their own lessons, but the fieldwork experience was not solely
about personal transformations and self-referential intellectual revelations.
Most times the researches would produce follow-up researches, academic
articles, volumes and, often, a life-changing resolution to leave everything
behind and become an anthropologist.
   Vintilă’s fieldworks were the lab from which several dozens of the
Romanian anthropologists emerged, moving forward to worldwide PhDs and
research and teaching careers.
   What used to be the norm for the MA fieldwork increasingly became a
luxury. In the last few years before falling ill, Vintilă was unable to come to
terms with the culture of audit that squeezed the fieldwork experience into
absurd standards that would force us to account for everything from fiscal
proofs of official accommodation, food bills, bids for offers from providers of
services. The opportunities for Vintilă-style collective fieldwork became
more scarce as formal project applications became the only solution to
finance them.


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43                                                    BOGDAN IANCU, MONICA STROE


   Lack of funding of social sciences worldwide, lack of students’ time,
overlapping projects, a relentless labour market, all meant that the
revelations of the fieldwork became accessible to few and the academic
career path was a less frequent choice for his students. What remained
unchanged was his relentless pursuit to share anthropological knowledge to
an audience as wide as possible, to make people from as many field as
possible – architecture, journalism, business, psychiatry, film making etc. –
use the anthropological lens.
   He was always close and informal in relation with his students. He was
“Teach” to all of us and possessed the great skill of creating learning
communities; he was the soul of the master parties, the late night beers and
the fieldwork camp fire.
   Back in 2000, the MA in Anthropology had been the first programme of
graduate studies in Anthropology in Romania and to this day it remains one
of a handful. Its creation was a great milestone in Vintilă’s lifetime pursuit
to professionalise anthropology and to establish it as a discipline in its own
right, detached from the shadow of sociology and ethnology.
   An avid observer of society and acutely aware of the shift towards image-
based communication and the increasing need to document social realities
with visual means, he pushed again for an institutional innovation. In 2013
he conceived and initiated the foundation of a new MA programme, in Visual
Studies and Society, which has since functioned parallel to the MA in
Anthropology. He was joined in this new adventure by Iosif Kiraly,
prominent visual artist and professor at the University of Arts.
   Always provoking, creating disruption, advocating for inclusiveness,
questioning elite assumptions and often going against the grain of dominant
intellectual voices, Vintilă’s pedagogical lessons remain a source of
inspiration for those whom he has shaped as students and influenced as
colleagues. The bulk of the students still come from a diversity of
professional and educational backgrounds, ranging from the humanities to
technical fields. What they seek are answers; what we still aim to provide, in
keeping with Vintilă’s heritage, is the ability to ask the right questions and
to think anthropologically, no matter the field.
   “Do you like where I brought you?” Vintilă is the one who has brought
many of us – professional or amateur anthropologists – here, in the realm of
anthropological understanding and then left in pursuit of other destinations.




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FOR VINTILĂ                                                                           44




Life is beautiful...!
Ger DUIJZINGS
Universität Regensburg
ger.duijzings@ur.de

   Working as an anthropologist both in the former Yugoslavia and Romania,
I sometimes experienced subtle forms of what I would like to call academic
“xenophobia”. By this I do not mean the explicit intolerance that comes
from various nationalist circles or the extreme right (although that may exist
in academic circles too). I am referring here to the vague discomfort or
unease colleagues, especially from an older generation, in the countries
where I worked (Serbia, Kosovo, Bosnia or Romania) may express when some
odd “foreigner” has things to say about their societies. How can an
“outsider”, who does not even speak the language properly, possibly
understand “us”, “our” mentality and culture. Nevertheless, I have also been
lucky to encounter exceptions to this prototype, and one of these was the
late Vintilă Mihăilescu, who, as soon as I was introduced to him – at the time
he was director of the Romanian Peasant Museum – asked me whether I was
perhaps willing to organise a workshop under the auspices of the museum,
giving me carte blanche regarding the topic. It was in this welcoming
atmosphere that I organised the Bucharest Urban Anthropology and
Ethnography Workshop together with Liviu Chelcea and Vintilă. It brought
together a group of scholars, anthropologists, sociologists, architects, and
urban planners – including several of Vintilă’s students working in
Bucharest – to discuss the pros and cons of ethnographic fieldwork in post-
socialist cities1.
   Vintilă opened the workshop with an introduction, reflecting on the
trajectory of Romanian ethnology through the prism of his own career –
moving “from the village to a block of flats”. After doing fieldwork in a
village, as Romanian ethnologists were traditionally supposed to do, he began
exploring a neighbourhood in Bucharest; this anthropological “displacement” was
not unproblematic, as he told, as it raised eyebrows amongst colleagues who

1. An overview of the topics and themes discussed at the workshop was published in:
Colloquia. Journal of Central European History (Cluj-Napoca), XVIII, 2011, 131-149 (“The
Bucharest urban anthropology and ethnography workshop”).

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45                                                                   GER DUIJZINGS


were of the opinion that it was not the task of ethnologists to do fieldwork in
urban settings. Through his non-conformist move into urban contexts,
thereby pushing the “parochial” boundaries of his and other disciplines, he
established himself as a free-thinking innovative anthropologist who
embraced the entire human condition. A continuous thread of his career was
indeed the exploration of rural and urban connections, identifying urban
footprints on rural communities, under-mining the notion of rural
homogeneity.
   This is indeed what I remember best about Vintilă Mihăilescu: his open
and curious mind, his unpretentious and inclusive embrace of people, of
whatever social standing and background, be it (foreign) academics or non-
academics. As he pointed out at the workshop, in the village the ethnologist
may have had the pretension to be “somebody” (especially in the light of his
or her expected role in terms of helping to facilitate the ongoing process of
nation-building), whereas in the city the ethnographer was a kind of
“nobody”, surrounded by so many other scholars from various competing
disciplines. Vintilă did not care being a “nobody”, on the contrary, he
accepted the challenge and preferred this position of relative freedom and
lack of obligation towards some proscribed national agenda.
   Although as a scholar, he was rooted in his local (Bucharest) and national
(Romanian) context, he was genuinely open to the rest of the world, spoon-
feeding his many “pupils” (generations of master and doctoral students in
anthropology, urban studies, architecture, landscape design, and other
disciplines) the same principles. The fact that Bucharest has a vibrant
community of smart young (and sometimes not so young anymore)
anthropologists, is certainly one of his key achievements. He was not only a
very good communicator and imaginative author, who wrote numerous
thought-provoking essays and books for large audiences until the very end of
his life, he was also an inspirational teacher, who “fathered” dozens of
admiring “children” raising them to intellectual maturity. I always was
impressed by the way students simply adored him, and saw him as their
intellectual beacon and reference point. He attracted students from many
other disciplines, like architecture, urban planning and landscape design: he
was indeed a role model and an outstanding example of how it is possible to
cross disciplinary boundaries, engage in public debates, and make the
discipline relevant in an interdisciplinary field. He had so much believe in
the discipline, that he never succumbed to the self-referential and “esoteric”
theoretical leanings characteristic for quite a few contemporary anthropologists.
Vintilă Mihăilescu was, as it were, the Romanian version of Thomas Hylland
Eriksen.


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FOR VINTILĂ                                                                       46


   He was on top of theoretical trends in the rest of the world, and fresh and
uncomplicated in his responses, hardly ever without a bit of irony and
humour, and a boyish, slightly naughty and always disarming smile on his
face. He was in his element doing fieldwork, as I experienced a number of
times. For several years in a row, we spent some days together in the town of
Câmpulung-Muscel, where we were tutoring (although “un-disciplining”
would have been the better word here) international groups of film-makers,
who already had experience in making films, in a summer school for
anthropological cinema (Longocampo Dox, later the Cineimpact Film
Summer Academy) organised by film-maker (and Vintilă’s student) Ionuţ
Piţurescu. I discussed the specifics of anthropological research in small cities
and Vintila’s task was to introduce participants into the intricacies of
Romanian (domestic) life showing them the large houses Romanians build
nowadays. Our last joint initiative, which was in fact Vintila’s idea, was to
organise a comparative workshop on these post-socialist “pride houses” in
South-Eastern Europe, paid for by remittances from abroad, for which he
himself coined the apt, and fun title “Home Big Home”. Although we did
receive funding, we were forced to postpone and finally cancel the workshop,
since Vintilă fell ill.
   One of the last times we spent some more time together, “in the field” as
it were, was in the Autumn of 2017 in Regensburg, where we presented the
ten best films produced at the Film Academies in Câmpulung-Muscel, during
a two-day festival in a local cinema (under the title “Romania raw:
innovative documentary cinema”). I remember our visits to several
traditional beer halls, such as the “Brandl Bräu”, one of the very oldest in
town, where at the end of the evening (as almost all guests had left) a
waitress joined us at the table, donating a last round of schnapps, and yet
another one, extending the nice and convivial conversation she had with this
professor from Romania into the small hours. The following evening, we
were to be found in the “Kneitinger” on the Arnulfsplatz, which was packed
with locals dressed up in “lederhosen” and “dirndls” singing and drinking
beer, surrounded by a deafening sound of Bavarian brass music. Sitting at a
table near the entrance, where Vintilă could smoke his cigarette, we had one
or two drinks. He enjoyed and welcomed this outburst of local folklore with a
smile as yet another once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to do some participant
observation in another “global village”. He did not say this aloud, but his
sparkling eyes exclaimed “Life is beautiful…!”. I must admit, it has now
become a bit less beautiful without him.



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FOR VINTILĂ                                                                                   47




Le maître et l’art de tisonner
Maria Voichiţa GRECU
École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales / Université de Picardie Jules Verne
maria.grecu@gmail.com



                                                      Le feu est intime et il est universel
                                                                                Bachelard

   Une photo, un terrain, d’innombrables souvenirs.
   C’était il y a une vingtaine d’années, dans les montagnes Parâng, à une
vingtaine de kilomètres de la ville principale du bassin minier de la Vallée du
Jiu. On s’y trouvait nombreux – quelques enseignants et deux bonnes di-
zaines d’étudiant.e.s en sociologie ou en anthropologie venu.e.s de Bucarest,
Sofia, Bruxelles et Perugia – à l’occasion d’un stage de terrain collectif et
plurinational de trois semaines. C’était le cinquième “terrain croisé” organi-
sé par la Société des Européanistes depuis le milieu des années 1990. Un des
plus difficiles aussi, selon le professeur Vintilă Mihăilescu, l’un des fonda-
teurs de ce projet singulier dont l’objectif pédagogique présentait une carac-
téristique particulière: l’apprentissage de l’enquête ethnographique était in-
trinsèquement lié à une confrontation des regards des apprentis anthropo-
logues du pays d’accueil et étrangers. Au terme d’une semaine de recherches
dans le bassin minier, les tensions étaient devenues, pour certains, insup-
portables. À l’inconfort du dispositif d’enquête qui exigeait, d’une part, d’in-
cessantes négociations au sein des équipes et une remise en question perma-
nente de ses propres certitudes, et d’autre part, diminuait les possibilités de
trouver une position “hors-jeu” pendant les temps hors-travail, s’ajoutait
l’inconfort d’un terrain en temps de crise: nous étions tous en proie à un
sentiment croissant de frustration et de confusion face au désarroi profond
des habitants d’une région secouée par l’effondrement brutal de la principale
industrie locale. C’est pourquoi, à l’issue d’une semaine d’enquêtes, nous
fîmes une petite pause et nous rendîmes à la montagne. On avait tous besoin
de prendre du recul. On avait besoin de l’air frais et d’un cadre qui pouvait
favoriser une décrispation des relations et un rapprochement au-delà des
différences culturelles et d’approche théorique et méthodologique.

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48                                                               MARIA VOICHIŢA GRECU


   C’est pendant ce refuge à la montagne que fut prise une photo qui m’est
très chère et dont je souhaite parler. Sur l’image, le dos courbé, penché au-
dessus d’un amas de branchages, Vintilă Mihăilescu dresse soigneusement
un feu de bois. Il glisse entre les bois quelques rameaux pendant que les
flammes s’emparent timidement du bûcher. De son visage on n’aperçoit que
son front large et ses sourcils bien denses et noirs, raidis par la concentra-
tion. Il est absorbé par sa tâche, il s’y applique. Ses gestes révèlent le sa-
voir-faire, alors que sa posture indique la dépense du corps. Dans mes souve-
nirs, je le revois s’agiter pendant la soirée, chercher des branchages secs
dans la forêt, s’assurer qu’on en a assez pour pouvoir raviver le feu et le faire
durer, ou encore s’assurer qu’on a suffisamment de bières, viande, bananes
et autres trésors à frire et à flamber, afin de pouvoir discuter, chanter et lais-
ser libre cours aux rêveries jusque tard dans la nuit, en toute tranquillité.
Éclairés par le flash de l’appareil photo, le feu et la silhouette de l’anthropo-
logue se détachent sur le fond obscur de la petite clairière de montagne. En
arrière-plan, on aperçoit quelques jeunes femmes et hommes, mes amis et
collègues étudiants, assis sur l’herbe.
   Cette image éclaire bien qui était ce professeur que les étudiants dési-
gnaient en toute amitié par son prénom ou tout simplement par l’abrévia-
tion profu’ (“le prof”) lorsqu’ils parlaient de lui. On n’y voit, certes, ni le sou-
rire affectueux ni le regard perçant et généreux qui le caractérisaient si bien.
On ne le voit non plus dans la posture d’enseignant, de maître à la parole en-
voûtante qui a converti à l’anthropologie de nombreuses promotions d’étu-
diants. On n’y décèle non plus, enfin, aucun signe témoignant de sa carrière
universitaire entre 1990 et 2020, ou des multiples fonctions qu’il a exercées
et qui ont contribué à sa renommée nationale et internationale: fondateur
du premier master d’anthropologie à Bucarest; chercheur infatigable et écri-
vain scientifique au style fluide, imagé et bien personnel; fondateur de re-
vues d’anthropologie offrant sans relâche son appui pour la création de col-
lections de publications en sciences sociales; chroniqueur hebdomadaire ap-
précié pour une revue culturelle, et auteur de nombreux articles journalis-
tiques où il s’attaque avec raffinement, et parfois avec virulence, à toute
forme de dogmatisme; ou encore, personnalité publique engagée dans la vul-
garisation anthropologique qui, dans ses écrits et conférences, décortique
avec élégance les significations des faits socio-culturels les plus anodins ou
les plus insolites. Sur la photo on voit, en revanche, Vintilă l’homme de ter-
rain. Pas dans l’exercice proprement dit du métier d’ethnographe mais dans
la pratique des chemins de détour du métier, qui étaient, pour lui, sinon plus
importants du moins tout aussi formateurs et nécessaires que les activités de


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FOR VINTILĂ                                                                       49


recherche en elles-mêmes. Faire un feu de bois sur le terrain était, pour Vin-
tilă – comme j’allais l’apprendre dès ce premier stage ethnographique au-
quel j’ai participé –, quelque chose d’indispensable. Qu’elle soit de quelques
jours ou de quelques semaines, à la campagne ou en ville, l’enquête de ter-
rain avec lui a toujours comporté au minimum une rencontre autour du feu.
C’est là une des constantes de sa pédagogie du terrain. Faire un feu de bois
lors de nos enquêtes collectives, le dresser, l’allumer et l’entretenir, c’est
une responsabilité qu’il a toujours épousée avec joie et une fonction qu’il n’a
pendant longtemps jamais déléguée à quelqu’un d’autre.
   Je ne me souviens plus qui est l’auteur de la photo. Un oubli fortuit qui ré-
sonne avec l’émotion que je ressens lorsque je la regarde: l’image m’appar-
tient, comme elle appartient, certainement, à toutes celles et ceux qui ont
fait du terrain et ont appris l’anthropologie avec Vintilă. Elle saisit, d’une
certaine façon, le sens profond de sa démarche: l’anthropologie a été pour
lui intimement liée à l’idée de partage. Si son langage théorique et descriptif
a souvent été celui du paradigme du don, cela est dû tout autant à un choix
épistémologique qu’à un impératif intime: celui de faire don de soi. Vintilă
s’est toujours donné entièrement. Ceux qui l’ont eu comme enseignant et di-
recteur de thèse, l’ont aussi connu comme chercheur, écrivain, ami, fin
connaisseur de musique et de littérature, amateur de romans policiers, dan-
seur, gourmet, voyageur. Vintilă a été un de ces rares maîtres qui sont à la
fois professeur, élève et ami. Un maître sans véritables disciples mais bien
fourni en camarades et apprentis. Un intellectuel qui n’a jamais manqué
d’humour et que j’ai souvent entendu dire qu’il n’a pas créé d’école mais un
folklore, une sorte de folklore familial et de confrérie.
   Je ne saurais rendre compte en quelques mots de l’héritage que nous a
transmis Vintilă. Excellent connaisseur de la Roumanie et des Balkans, il a
été néanmoins, avant tout, un généraliste ouvert à toutes les découvertes,
prêt à étudier les objets les plus variés. Érudit doué d’une grande vitalité et
d’une capacité de travail impressionnante, il a toujours manifesté une curio-
sité insatiable pour l’humain. Même pendant son confinement à l’hôpital il
s’y est penché avec une attention aiguë – constamment revigorée par le sou-
tien indéfectible d’Ana, sa femme. De cette épreuve ont émergé, en quelques
mois, deux livres, deux derniers ouvrages où l’anthropologue tourne son re-
gard successivement vers son propre corps et vers le monde qu’il habite.
Dans le premier, intitulé “À la recherche du corps retrouvé. Une égo-analyse
de l’hôpital”, Vintilă transforme son internement pour cause de leucémie
foudroyante en une occasion inédite de faire du terrain. Les conditions d’en-
quête, dit-il non sans une vitale auto-ironie, correspondent au modèle mali-
nowskien d’investigation: le dépaysement absolu, l’immersion de longue du-

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50                                                          MARIA VOICHIŢA GRECU


rée et l’observation participante lui étaient garantis. Le deuxième livre,
quant à lui, est né de la confrontation entre, d’une part, une préoccupation
de longue date pour la question de la domesticité et pour ce que signifie être
acasă (dont le français “chez soi” n’est qu’une traduction approximative), et
d’autre part, l’expérience personnelle des retours à la maison après de
longues périodes d’hospitalisation, retours chaque fois plus provisoires et
incertains. C’est peut-être à la lumière de ce dernier ouvrage que la descrip-
tion que j’ai faite ici de Vintilă s’éclaire le mieux. Échafaudé patiemment et
habilement, ce livre complexe et ludique non seulement rassemble – englo-
bant aussi quelques textes d’anciens étudiants –, mais invite à continuer la
réflexion sur le sujet traité. Un peu à l’image d’un feu que l’on ne voudrait
pas voir s’éteindre.




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FOR VINTILĂ                                                                              51




De neînlocuit
Corina IOSIF
Muzeul Național al Țăranului Român, Bucureşti
corinaiosif@yahoo.com

Anamaria IUGA
Muzeul Național al Țăranului Român, Bucureşti
anaiuga@gmail.com


                                                Vintilă este un mare iubitor de oameni
                                                                       Ana Mihăilescu

    Într-una din zilele trecute am discutat despre ce a însemnat Vintilă
Mihăilescu pentru noi. Mai jos, gândurile noastre.
    Corina: Îmi tot vine în minte o replică a profesorului Mihai Pop
(mărturisesc că nu mai știu dacă am citit-o undeva sau mi-a citat-o cineva),
care, îndemnat să-și scrie memoriile, a replicat: „De ce să-mi povestesc
viața, când a fost atât de frumoasă?” Cam tot așa mă întreb și eu acum: ce
oare să povestesc despre Vintilă şi de ce, când ce ar fi de spus despre el este
împrăștiat și împărțit, împărtășit și încolțit în amintirile, etapele de viață și
experiențele atâtor generații de studenți, masteranzi, doctoranzi,
colaboratori, toți fiindu-i, în feluri diferite, prieteni. M-am apucat și am făcut o
lista (cam alandala...):
   • În jurul lui Vintilă au roit oameni de tot felul. Așa cum era, colocvial și
       sclipitor, erudit (într-un mod subversiv) și ca peștele în apă, atât la
       crâșmă, cât și în comisiile de doctorat, și, în general, oriunde punea
       piciorul, Vintilă îi seducea pe cei care apucau să îi stea prin preajmă.
   • A fost cel care a deschis poarta intrării antropologiei sociale și culturale
       în Universitatea românească. Nu cred că ar fi putut exista un alt om mai
       potrivit pentru a o face. Despre asta ar avea mai multe de spus Iulia
       Hașdeu, Alex Bălășescu, Gabriela Coman, Lena Stan, Adina Ionescu-
       Muscel și tot restul generației lor.
   • În primii ani de la înființarea Muzeului Țăranului Român (ale cărui
       începuturi nu pot fi evocate decât ca niște „vremuri magice”, așa cum
       spunea Marius Caraman), Vintilă a fost catalizatorul principal al
       prezenței studenților lui din mai multe locuri și generații în viața
       muzeului. Grație lui, aceștia au putut colabora cu studenți străini și, tot
       grație lui, primii tineri români au plecat în „Occident” să învețe

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52                                                  CORINA IOSIF, ANAMARIA IUGAMARIA


      (despre) antropologie în universități în care disciplina avea deja istorie.
      Și despre asta ar fi multe povești de spus. Cam atunci, prin 1991, l-am
      cunoscut și eu pe Vintilă. De abia venisem în muzeu. N-aș putea
      identifica o situație anume în care să fi înțeles, distinct și copleșitor, cu
      cine ai de-a face cu adevărat atunci când începeai să ai un dialog cu
      Vintilă. Știu doar că, în 1994, când mi-am început, practic, doctoratul,
      îmi era deja clar că formarea mea în antropologie nu (va) exista fără
      discuțiile cu el. Despre anii aceia își aduce foarte bine aminte și
      Dominique Belkis.
  •   A făcut parte din zeci de comisii de doctorat în Franța, Canada și prin
      alte părți. Vreau să spun că, pentru primele generații de antropologi
      români, era cam de neconceput o susținere de teză fără Vintilă în juriu.
  •   Cred că a scris sute de scrisori de recomandare. Mie mi-a scris-o pe
      ultima de care am avut nevoie acum câțiva ani. (Pentru că poziția de
      cercetător în instituția în care lucram era foarte joasă, am tot avut
      nevoie de „recomandări” până aproape de bătrânețe). I-am dat telefon
      și i-am zis: „Iartă-mă că-ți fac asta, că te pun la muncă de pe-o zi pe
      alta, dar îmi trebuie. Cred c-o să fiu nevoită să-ți tot cer recomandări
      până ies la pensie!…” Mi-a răspuns: „Sigur, se face!” A doua zi dimineața
      era gata scrisoarea. Solicitudinea lui era întotdeauna promptă. În
      situații de felul acesta niciun fel de „mulțumesc” n-ar fi fost de ajuns.
      Vintilă a continuat, până la sfârșit, să gireze și să protejeze dezvoltarea,
      pe toate ogoarele, a semințelor pe care el le-a sădit.
  •   A rămas aproape de toți cei pe care i-a format, de aproape sau mai de
      departe, fără ca vreodată să-i tuteleze. Despre asta nu știu ce ar mai
      putea fi spus. Așa cum îi ziceam într-un mesaj (după ce ne cam
      certasem), generozitatea lui (cu toate că e impropriu spus, pentru că nu
      era „un generos”, așa era el!), care se activa de câte ori i se cerea sfatul
      sau ajutorul, era imposibil de compensat, pentru că nu prea existau
      echivalente „la schimb” pentru ce avea Vintilă de oferit.
  •   Vintilă își împărtășea, își dăruia ideile, părerile, opiniile, așa cum
      respira (ca Irina Nicolau, de altfel).
  •   E teribil de frustrant, şi mi-e greu, să vorbesc despre el la trecut.
  •   În pofida momentelor de dezacord sau de defazare, alături de Vintilă
      știam (și nu numai eu) că putem fi împreună în „echipa cu care trecem
      prin viață” (cu formula profesorului Aurel Codoban, în care nici el nu
      mai crede acum). S-a creat, în felul acesta, o rețea, o „lume a lui Vintilă”,
      cum foarte inspirat a numit-o Bogdan Iancu. Într-un fel foarte special,
      grație deschiderii lui față de oameni, mulți îl considerau prieten sau se
      considerau prietenii lui.


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FOR VINTILĂ                                                                       53


  • Una dintre lecțiile importante pe care le dădea Vintilă celor care îi
    stăteau în preajmă era: să nu disprețuiești. E adevărat, simplu și direct,
    ce a spus Ana, soția lui, despre Vintilă. Putea să judece pe cineva, dar
    niciodată nu disprețuia. Putea să discute cu oricine, să înțeleagă pe
    oricine (nu cred că formația lui de psiholog avea vreun rol în asta, cred
    că așa era, pur și simplu, dăruit de natură). Așa că în jurul lui s-a
    format, prin tranzitivitate, un fel de spațiu lărgit al conexiunilor dintre
    oameni. Persoane mai mult sau mai puțin compatibile unele cu altele,
    oameni din medii diferite și de generații diferite, au ajuns să comunice
    în virtutea și în numele apropierii lor de Vintilă.
  • Mai înainte de a fi un antropolog instruit (și un intelectual de mare
    ținută), Vintilă era un antropolog talentat. Era foarte prezent în
    cotidian, în viața generațiilor în formare, în viața studenților lui. O
    anumită categorie de sociologi, antropologi ori etnologi îi datorează
    formarea nu numai profesională, ci, mai în întregul ei, maturizarea
    personală. Sunt mulți cei care, fără să-i fie cu adevărat discipoli, de
    fapt, i-au fost. În sensul că aceștia sunt toți cei care, după dispariția lui
    au rămas în mod virtual, cum spuneam într-o rețea de posibile
    conexiuni profesionale.
  • Avea o formă de generozitate, izvorâtă din convingerea că oamenii
    trebuie să aibă șansa să își dezvolte ce au mai bun în ei. Și îi și ieșea!
    Din cauza asta este astăzi de neînlocuit, independent de calitățile lui
    intelectuale, care și alea sunt de neînlocuit; independent de talentul lui
    pedagogic, care nu poate fi suplinit cu niciun alt fel de pedagogii.

   Anamaria: Pentru mine, Vintilă Mihăilescu rămâne directorul meu de
suflet. Câțiva ani după ce nu a mai fost director al Muzeului Țăranului
Român am continuat să îi spun „Domnule director” și am găsit cu greu o
formulă nouă de adresare; nu îmi fusese niciodată profesor, așa că nu-i
puteam spune „Domnule profesor”. De altfel, aceasta a fost un regret al meu,
însă am considerat că am avut parte de îndrumarea lui în toți anii în care a
fost directorul meu. Cu atât mai mult cu cât, în tot acest timp, a știut mereu
să ne dea tuturor celor din muzeu încredere în creativitatea noastră.
   Cu orice propunere veneam la el, întotdeauna ne încuraja, pentru că vedea
potențialul din ideile noastre. Când m-am dus prima dată să îi povestesc
despre colaborarea pe care o aveam cu biologii suedezi, cu care deja de ani de
zile mergeam pe teren, încă de dinainte să lucrez la muzeu, a fost atât de
entuziasmat de ideea colaborării dintre cele două științe, biologie și
etnologie, încât m-a susținut imediat. A început, astfel, cumva,
instituționalizat, o colaborare minunată cu Anna Westin și Tommy
Lennartsson, dar și cu Vintilă Mihăilescu, pe a cărui părere ne bizuiam, mai

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54                                                  CORINA IOSIF, ANAMARIA IUGAMARIA


ales că era persoana care ne propunea de multe ori concepte, idei, soluții, cu
care ulterior am lucrat intens. Așa a fost cu „cheese-scapes”, un concept pe
care ni l-a oferit pe tavă în urma unor discuții cu privire la un posibil proiect
despre relația dintre biodiversitate și practici pastorale. Apoi, îmi amintesc
cu mare plăcere cum, într-un februarie geros din 2011, cu munți de zăpadă
pe marginea drumului, Vintilă Mihăilescu a prezidat cu atât de mare căldură
Conferințele de la Șosea (o idee care i-a aparținut tot lui), așa cum făcea de
obicei. Cu ocazia aceea, Anna, Tommy și cu mine am prezentat primele
rezultate ale cercetărilor noastre interdisciplinare. Tot ceea ce a spus atunci
a fost atât de natural și atât de pertinent, cum numai Vintilă Mihăilescu știa
să spună, pe orice temă de discuție pe care o aborda: din orice frază, cumva,
transpărea experiența sa extraordinară. Chiar dacă nu mai era directorul
nostru, însă tocmai pentru că a fost, cumva, mentorul nostru în cercetarea
aceasta interdisciplinară, ne-am bucurat că a acceptat să inaugureze
expoziția din 2016, „Tradițiile și tranzițiile fânului”. Atunci am venit spre
publicul larg cu rezultatele cercetărilor făcute cu biologii suedezi, dar și cu o
echipă lărgită, pentru că între timp ni se alăturaseră Bogdan Iancu și Monica
Stroe. La propunerea lui Vintilă Mihăilescu, evident, pentru că unul din
marile sale talente, așa cum spunea și Corina mai devreme, era să pună
oamenii în legătură. În jurul său se creau rețele de oameni cu interese
comune, rețele de oameni care nici nu ar fi crezut vreodată că au atât de
multe lucruri care îi apropie.
    Multe din proiectele și activitățile pe care le-am avut, iar pe unele încă le
mai continuăm la muzeu, au fost propuse de Vintilă Mihăilescu. Așa a fost, de
exemplu, cu proiectul „Puzzle. Povestea vecinilor”, când, în 2008, au fost
organizate un număr de 10 seri culturale, în care minoritățile din București se
prezentau, dar și în care un număr de aproximativ 80 de voluntari au
descoperit aceste comunități. Un proiect cu rezultate memorabile, toate
pornind de la ideea sa de a descoperi moștenirea culturală orașului nostru. Un
alt proiect extrem de interesant, ultimul pe care l-a propus muzeului, a fost cel
în care se puneau în valoare ceea ce a numit „tradiții creative”, noile direcții în
care meșteșugurile sunt valorificate, într-un mod creativ, dar care, până prin
2017, parcă erau într-un con de umbră. Vintilă Mihăilescu le-a adus la lumină
și le-a văzut potențialul. Le-a adus parcă în față, pentru a le pune pe un făgaș
nou. Cumva, ideile sale erau de fiecare dată revoluționare și vizionare.
    Vintilă Mihăilescu a fost, mereu, cu un pas înaintea timpului său.




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FOR VINTILĂ                                                                      55




The Go-Betweener
Alec BǍLǍŞESCU
Royal Roads University, Victoria, BC
alec.balasescu@gmail.com



   It was the early summer of 1994, in an amphitheater at the University of
Bucharest. Young students of Sociology were presenting their essays and
research papers to a jury formed by mainly unknown professors to me. I was
just finishing my first year of study, and my presentation was of an
ethnomethodological experiment having at its core questions regarding the
social perception of HIV/AIDS in Bucharest among students. Philadelphia,
the movie treating the same social issue was just out. The presentation
gained me two things: a comparison with young Tom Hanks (the star of the
movie), and a meeting in the break with a bearded guy who was in the jury. It
went like this:
   I was talking to some of my colleagues, and this professor with 1970s
glasses and a beard (whom I have seen watching me attentively from the jury
stand during my presentation) approached me. He was surrounded by few
students. He told me that he is doing anthropological research during
summer time in Romanian villages, together with a team of students, and he
asked me if I would like to join. I jumped instantly on the opportunity, for
reasons that are perhaps a little too long to explain here. Suffice is to say
that going to countryside for me was a first step into experiencing exoticism,
and to heal my frustration caused by the fact that all my grandparents lived
in towns and cities (as opposed to those of most of my childhood friends who
had a “country” to go to every summer). It turned out that the bearded
professor was Vintilǎ Mihǎilescu, and that from that moment on I joined the
“Social Observatory” team and embarked in a journey that ultimately lead
me to earn a PhD in University of California, Irvine, and become an
anthropologist ironically specialized in urban phenomena. As Vintilǎ
Mihǎilescu would say, quoting Devereux: it is your trip from anxiety to
method.



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56                                                               ALEC BǍLǍŞESCU


    Professor Mihǎilescu had a unique capacity for networking. In the early to
mid 1990s, the Social Observatory developed into a platform of exchange
with other European Universities, and our countryside mini-fieldworks
developed from local to international, and from self oriented to cross
pollinating perspectives on the same phenomena observed. During these
fieldworks students from Romania, Italy, France, Belgium, and Bulgaria
would meet and explore both the realities of rural settings in various corners
of Europe, and their own reality of young researchers from different
backgrounds looking at the same social phenomena. These were the seeds of
Terrains Croisés -- crossed fieldworks -- that became a tradition for a while.
Vintilǎ had also a unique capacity to make us aware of the fact that the two
realities are not separated, that the observer and the observed constitute a
continuum generating the fertile soil for anthropology to emerge as
discipline.
    At that time, in the early 1990s, this was a trailblazing activity. The
European mobility is now perceived as a normal fact of life among students
in Bucharest. For our generation though, it was a pioneering activity that set
the standards of what it was to come. Without exaggeration I can say that
Vintilǎ Mihǎilescu was one of the architects of European integration for
social sciences, facilitating the contact and reflective practices between
students from Romania, France, Belgium, Italy, and Bulgaria. The younger
generations may perceive this differently, and add countries to the
constellation. The certainty is that the students with whom he worked along
the years became highly mobile, became in turn trainers for other people, be
it in Anthropology or in other disciplines, and they contributed significantly
to the field in Europe or the US.
    Did Vintilǎ do all these programmatically or instinctually? I would say
that it was a little bit of both, he programmed instinctually, and he
instinctively programmed. And this is because after all he was the perfect
go-betweener. He brushed fields, combining anthropology and psychology,
he moved graciously between institutional environments and countries, he
never missed an opportunity to combine theory and practice – most of the
time letting theory emerge from practice –, and not least he moved between
emotions and rationality in his pedagogic approach. What stayed with me is
the fact that he taught anthropology as a method of inquiry that generates
knowledge about the self and the other with the ultimate manifest goal of
problematizing both notions and making them fuse in the end, and not as a
set of predetermined notions to be learned. While he was not the most
rigorous person I met in terms of academic discipline, Vintilǎ Mihǎilescu


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FOR VINTILĂ                                                                      57


definitely excelled in applying this method to both the reality he lived and
performed in, and in transmitting it to his students. It is the method of go-
between, and he embodied it perfectly, in a way resembling The Storyteller
character in the homonymous book by Vargas Llosa. Like the Storyteller
(himself an ex-ethnologist), Vintilǎ kept telling stories to remind us that we
are part of the same tribe, the vast tribe of humanity, despite differences, or
precisely due to them. We’ll miss his stories, this is a fact...




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FOR VINTILĂ                                                                      58




On Vintilă Mihăilescu
Steven SAMPSON
Lund University
stevensampsondk@gmail.com


   I first met Vintilă in 1980 while I was doing fieldwork on local village
leaders at the Communist Party Training School Ştefan Gheorghiu. I was
introduced to him by Nicolae Gheorghe, the Roma sociologist who found a
sympatic relationship and intellectual support with Vintilă and his
colleagues. For Vintilă to have a relationship with someone like me at that
time involved some personal risk (my Secu dossier has photos of Vintilă and
me), but he gladly took these risks in stride, as always with an optimistic
attitude mixed with a bit of WTF. Through four decades, we remained in
contact, meeting in Romania, in Copenhagen where I live, and at various
international conferences. I followed Vintilă’s career, especially after 1989,
as he single-handedly set about establishing a modern cultural anthropology
in Romania, as he fought with the intellectual Old Guard in the Romanian
academic milieu, as he revitalized the Museum of the Romanian Peasant,
and wrote books and articles for Dilema. Somehow, in between all this, he
did teaching, defended Romanian intellectuals from accusations by Western
colleagues, conducted a lot of field work, and organized field schools for
students. He produced anthropologists who were colleagues, not disciples.
He gave lectures on topics ranging from the anthropology of play (which we
should take seriously), to the anthropology of sarmale. How did he get all
this energy? He visits Cuba and writes a book. He reads that “Romania e
altfel” and comes out with a response. He gets very, very sick… and trying to
stay alive, and still manages to writes a book about his own body. He does
more on his vacations and while he is sick than most of us do in our good,
secure jobs. Where did this energy come from? It is an old story about the
sources of inspiration. One kind of inspiration comes from others: we travel,
we meet people, we read new books, do research, try new things, and we
discover things, try to make sense of them, and then communicate to others
in books, articles, newspaper columns, lectures. But there is another source
of inspiration, it comes from being inside yourself, being in isolation, or

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59                                                               STEVEN SAMPSON


being around a small circle of people for a long time, the long meditations
when you are chain smoking, as he did. This internal exile was certainly the
case for many groups of Romanian intellectuals before 1989. It was also the
case for Vintilă and his little gașcă of colleagues within psychology,
philosophy, sociology and cultural anthropology. Perhaps it comes from
being a chain smoker. Smokers are now forced to go outside, where they
stand for 10 minutes in exile, with other smokers. It is a kind of enforced
passivity (at least before we could look at our phones). But perhaps a kind of
enforced inspiration. The last time Vintilă and I met was in 2018, at the
Society for Romanian Studies meetings in Bucharest. Vintilă gave a keynote
speech emphasizing the continued relevance of the Romanian peasant. You
don’t hear much about peasants any more. You hear about precarity, or
welfare state, or resilience, or migration, or identity, or all this fucking
neoliberalism. But peasants? Who cares. Vintilă cared. His lecture on
peasants reminded me of Isaiah Berlin’s famous essay, The Hedgehog and the
Fox. According to an ancient Greek poet, a fox knows many things, but a
hedgehog knows one important thing. Vintilă loved his peasants. He stayed
with them. He was a hedgehog. But read his books and essays, have a
conversation with him, and you find that he was also a fox. A hedgehog and
a fox. Vintilă was both.




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FOR VINTILĂ                                                                        60




The Man, the Teach, the Director
Cătălina TESĂR
University of Bucharest / National Museum of the Romanian Peasant, Bucharest
catalinatesar@yahoo.com

   As I am writing this piece from Vintilă’s former home study, I am carried
to evoke the man he was to me. I owe Vintilă one of my two jobs, and the
house in which I live. In 2006 I graduated the MA program in Anthropology
run by Vintilă in Bucharest and enrolled in my first state job. After only six
months of persisting in a delusional belief that I could make use of my
anthropological knowledge in a recently established state-run institution for
Roma culture in Bucharest, I resigned from my position. That summer
Vintilă warmly received me in his chalet in Bușteni at the feet of the
Carpathian Mountains, where he used to retreat for his holidays. Over a cup
of coffee, he compassionately listened to my complaints and
disappointments, and offered me a new job at the National Museum of the
Romanian Peasant (thereafter NMRP) where he was named Director one year
before. I shall come back to the experience of working alongside Vintilă at
the named museum shortly. For now, suffice to stress that Vintilă was
forthcoming and caring, and not just on that one occasion. Ten years later he
sold me, much below the market price, the house in which he and his family
had resided for three decades. I basically paid for Vintilă’s house, a one floor
light and airy flat in an interwar building with a garden and a cozy study at
the attic, a bit more than the price for which I sold my gloomy cramped flat
on the ground floor of a communist block in Bucharest.
   I somehow repeatedly failed to show my gratitude for Vintilă’s gestures of
the greatest kindness and gentleness towards me, since our relationship was
oft-times restless and uneasy. Although Vintilă was a maverick and a free
thinker, he did not particularly take a liking to other mavericks. He was a
man of deeds and an exploratory pioneer of institutional changes; and he
expected his deeds to be praised, not challenged. Once his tenure of five year
directorship at the museum was over, Vintilă ran a PhD program in Romani
studies at the National University of Political Studies and Public
Administration, in Bucharest, and later contributed to the establishing of an


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61                                                                 CĂTĂLINA TESĂR


MA program in the field, dedicated to students of Roma origin. Although I
have always advocated for the inclusion of classes on Roma history and
culture in the University curricula, I was opposed to the enclavisation of
Romani studies. I have thus entered into a debate with Vintilă that resulted
in not being on speaking terms for quite a while. As his MA student, I also
used to challenge Vintilă to the point of keeping a silent treatment towards
each other for some time. Looking retrospectively and on the long run,
Vintilă replied my rebellious streaks over his authority with gestures of
human kindness.
   As it happened with most of his students spread across several
generational cohorts, it was Vintilă who ignited the flame of anthropology in
me. He was the unconventional Teach who basically institutionalized
anthropology in post-socialist Romania. In the early 2000, when I was doing
my BA in Philology, students from different departments – and I include
myself here –, sat in Vintilă’s classes at the Faculty of Sociology, University
of Bucharest, taking in his lectures on the interwar Sociological School from
Bucharest, and on the promises of rural studies. We all dreamt of doing
fieldwork with Vintilă. He was not a field worker in the conventional sense of
British anthropology, i.e. a lonely researcher dedicated to a field-site and its
people for a long period of time. Following in the footsteps of Gusti’s School
of Romanian Sociology that promoted interdisciplinary research in rural
areas, Vintilă established the practice of collective fieldwork for
anthropology students in Bucharest. Doing fieldwork with Vintilă became a
rite of passage that many of his students undertook before going abroad for
doctoral studies, and thus before undertaking their own individual fieldwork.
Unfortunately I didn’t have the chance to do fieldwork with Vintilă. The year
when I enrolled in – at that time only MA in Anthropology in Bucharest –,
lead by Vintilă, he was much too caught in his new position as a Director of
the Museum and did not find the peace and time to undertake the customary
summer fieldwork. That very academic year, he was rather absent from the
classes. Yet he had good grounds for being absent from the MA classes, being
on a mission at the museum, as I was to find out once I started working
there.
   At the museum, Vintilă was a path-breaker of his times: he basically
aimed at turning it from a museum – temple into a museum-forum, as he
liked to frame it. To better illuminate Vintilă’s ideas about museography and
about his undertakings at the NMRP, an abridged history of the museum is
needed. The NMRP opened in the early 1990s, only several weeks after the
downfall of Ceaușescus, on the premises of the ex-Museum of the


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FOR VINTILĂ                                                                      62


Communist Party. The latter in its turn replaced in early 1950s, a museum of
ethnography and national art established at the beginning of the 20th
Century that reflected the epoch’s preoccupations of making of the peasant a
symbol of the local nationalism building. The MNRP was thus, ideologically
speaking, both a victory over the communist past, and an ode to the inter-
war ethnocentric cosmology. The handful of people who imprinted its vision
were anti-communist fighters who sympathized with right wing ideas
eulogizing the national ethos. The first director of the museum, artist Horia
Bernea and his team conceived a (still in place) display in the form of a work
of art whose aims were twofold, first to beautify the peasant and his material
culture steeped in orthodoxy, and second to take the peasant out of his
history and of his society. The result was an innovative display that did away
with explanatory labels and museum cabinets for offering a sensorial
phenomenological experience of the archetypal, ahistorical Romanian
peasant. Since its inception the NMRP was both in its aesthetics and scope, a
display of revanchism that targeted the restoration of the values confiscated
from the bourgeoisie by the communists, and the attraction of an exclusivist
audience of cultural elites.
   Once he was named Director, Vintilă took pains in bringing a new breath
to the museum. First he wanted to broaden the audience, by seizing the
museum from the hands of the elites and opening it to regular people. In
other words, he wanted the museum to cater for society at large, and he
envisaged that the museum became as vivid as the society. He turned the
cinema hall that used to run on a closed circuit, into one of the most popular
cinematographs in Bucharest. Then, under his directorship a café-pub
opened on the premises of the museum. These were spots that attracted the
youth which Vintilă dreamt to draw close to the museum. These initiatives
of him raised a wave of resentment amongst the conservatory senior
members of staff that could not come to terms with the coexistence of the
material symbols of orthodoxy with the café-pub, in the courtyard of the
museum. Throughout his directorship, Vintilă had to navigate through the
resistance to any slight change in the discourse of the museum, which the
old guard showed. He started off a series of public conferences on the
premises of the café, meant to broadcast anthropological research, to the
large public: Conferințele de la Șosea (Public Anthropology Talks). In the last
years I have been doing my best to carry on with this series of conferences.
   Vintilă strove for changing a museum of culture into a museum of society.
Both in the public discourse, and in situ, Vintilă made daring attempts at
debunking the a-temporal, archetypal Romanian peasant, and bringing him
back on the track of history. In the mass media he trumpeted the “death of

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63                                                              CĂTĂLINA TESĂR


the peasant”: that was, the demise of the unchanging peasant and its
replacement with his transient hypostasis. This came as a crushing blow not
only to the old guard in the museum, but to a whole Romanian conservative
intelligentsia that relied on interwar imaginaries of that same archetypal
peasant that the museum had been initially dedicated to. Under his
supervision and in collaboration with young researchers and curators, I
coordinated the manifesto project of Vintilă’s intellectual program of de-
bunking the peasant: Piața de artizanat (The Marketization of Traditions),
comprising research, a temporary exhibition and an international conference
housed by the museum. I keep lively memories of how reluctantly the
conservative staff of the museum received the our exhibition that put on
display contemporary heterogeneous kitschy handicrafts, instead of the
customary aesthetic artefacts of national art.
   Although the work on the above mentioned project was exhausting all the
more so it was thwarted by the old guard in the museum, Vintilă succeeded
in making it appear enjoyable and easy going. Either consciously or
unconsciously, Vintilă gave a sense of play, to our work. He did away with
institutional stringencies and allowed us to work remotely, which meant at
that time, from the museum café, not from the office. Vintilă never
interrupted the football games that my male colleagues played during office
hours, and he sometimes stepped in the play. Either because Vintilă
engineered the task assignment to feel like cooperation or because I have
never ceased to learn from him, I always failed to address him with the
formal “Mr Director”. Even as my superior he was still my Teach. At the end
of an exhausting year of work during which I never came to grips with the
conservatory minded staff and just before leaving Bucharest for undertaking
PhD studies in London, I wrote a letter of resignation from my job at the
museum. Looking into my eyes, Vintilă tore it up and ensured me that I shall
be grateful to have a job upon my return from London – which I was. Vintilă
the man secured a job, and then a house – two places of stability – for me
the restless.




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FOR VINTILĂ                                                                        64




Vintilă rămâne
Dumitru BUDRALA
Astra Film Festival, Sibiu
budrala@astrafilm.ro

   Zeci de studenți ai profesorului Vintilă Mihăilescu, care începeau aventura
descoperirii antropologiei culturale la master de antropologie, toamna, chiar
din primul an, erau aduși de el și expuși chiar din primele săptămâni la
experiența Astra Film Festival în Sibiu, într-un oraș din Transilvania, unde
trebuia să se deplaseze din București. O săptămână de vizionare de filme
documentare produse în toată lumea, care expuneau pe ecran mare realități
din habitate etnoculturale / sociale diverse din lume, de la perspective și
abordări macro și până la surprinderea celor mai fine intimități ale trăirilor
într-o ecuiație socială dată. Spațiul festivalului s-a potrivit de minune să
introducă masteranzii pe terenul de unde se situa el, și de unde privea
lumea, și unde era în elementul lui, profilului profesorului Miihăilescu. În
primul rând pentru că Vintilă a rămas intelectualul geniun, care, surprins de
un fenomen social în mod natural, era incitat să găsească o explicație, o
citire săpând adânc, observând asocieri bazate pe detalii aparent minore. La
discuțiile care se încingeau după filme, fie în sala de proiecție, fie la un pahar
de vorbă participau și studentii. Era cea mai bună introducere a lor în
gândirea și practica antropologiei culturale.
   Îmi este imposibil să-mi amintesc toate ipostazele din cei 26 de ani, în
care el a fost permanent prezent la Astra Film Festival în Sibiu. Împletea
vorbe, conecta oameni, înfiripa noi și noi dimensiuni ale ideilor. Vintilă la un
pahar, și cu tigara/pipa, înconjurat de studenți, Vintilă în juriul festivalului
sau cu microfonul în mână în fața audienței, contribuind în multe feluri la
devenirea și menținerea aventurii Astra Film, și, nu în ultimul rând, prin
prezența lui împreună cu zeci de studenți la festival.
   În aceste momente, rememorez povestea începutului prieteniei noastre,
înainte ca el să fie un renumit profesor și un antropolog deschizător de
drumuri, iar eu director de festival și regizor de documentare.
   L-am întâlnit pe Vintilă la o conferință la Baia de Fier, în 1986. Din start,
am simțit că avem multe în comun, că împărtășim aceeași viziune asupra
lumii și, din două vorbe, am înțeles că el este omul cu care în sfârșit pot să
discut și să reflectez asupra culturii pastorale în care eu trăiam atunci, dar pe
care o și studiam în același timp.

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65                                                                 DUMITRU BUDRALA


   Imediat s-a născut ideea pentru prima noastră aventură. Ca profesor într-
un sat din Mărginimea Sibiului, aveam intrare la oameni, iar Vintilă avea o
camera de filmat video, un VHS, o chestie rară pe vremea aceea, primită de la
fratele lui din Elveția. Așa că am pus la cale să filmăm nunțile ciobanilor. Era
un amestec de mai multe chestii pe care le împărtășeam: ne plăcea terenul,
ne plăcea să privim, să observăm viața, viața de la sat, era și o distracție într-
un fel. Evident era și destul de obositor și stresant de cele mai multe ori.
Filmam amândoi toată noaptea. Trebuia să umplem două casete de câte 3 ore
fiecare. Înainte de-a se face ziuă, scoteam ultima casetă din cameră, montată
gata, și o predam mirelui. Apoi făceam “aruncările”, ne lingeam rănile și
împărțeam frățește câștigul.
   Nu cred că am fotografii cu noi doi acolo, ca filmangii de nunți ciobănești.
Avem nenumărate poze cu el la Sibiu, la Astra Film Festival. Avem însă o
fotografie cu fetele noastre și cu copii lui Giorgio Ficarelli, în vara lui 2006,
când Giorgio ne-a invitat la casa lui de vacanță la Copșa Mare. Giorgio a
chemat un căruțaș din sat pentru o plimbare, toți copiii au vrut în căruță, dar
dintre adulți doar Vintilă s-a încumetat să meargă cu căruța. El era gata tot
timpul să iasă “la teren”. Ar merita să facă cineva un eseu mai larg despre ce
însemna pentru Vintilă terenul. Sunt sigur că pofta și disponibilitatea lui de
a merge pe teren, de a ieși din confortul obișnuinței, l-a inspirat, a făcut din
Vintilă un gânditor creativ. Unul care avea capacitatea de a analiza, de a
pătrunde în esența lucrurilor, de a tălmăci și de a traduce sensurile adevărate
ale anumitor cutume și tradiții din mentalul colectiv.
   Ne-am văzut ultima dată la AFF Sibiu 2017, ne-am amintit de vremurile în
care am fost filmangii de nunți și am plănuit să adunăm de la miri toate
casetele VHS filmate de noi înainte de ’90 și să facem un film despre nunțile
ciobănești din vremurile alea. Dar n-a fost să fie.
   Nu întâmplător se folosește pentru prima dată priveghiul online tocmai la
Vintilă. Cel dus, în cultura populară, avea parte 3 zile și 3 nopți de priveghi,
înconjurat de familie și de comunitate, pentru rememorarea vieții lui.
   Multe, multe povești și proiecte vom continua cu Vintilă, asta e sigur,
oriunde și în orice formă va fi posibil. În primul rând fiindcă el a reușit să
sădeasca emoția și pasiunea citirii lumii folosind cheia gândirii
antropologice la zeci de studenți, care răspândiți în România și lume duc mai
departe această minunată practică de reflexie, pe care el a cultivat-o de
atâtea decenii.
   Vintilă – profesorul, Vintilă – antropologul, Vintilă – un minunat
partener de dialog în vorbe și în scris. Vintilă al fiecăruia personal și al
tuturor.
   Drum lin, prieten drag!


2020 | ANUAC. VOL. 9, N° 1, GIUGNO 2020: 9-65
