roles between Communists and Nazis after World War II conveniently displaced any blame from the ‘nation’ while portraying it as the victim of either of the two extremist ideologies. The new heroes of the nation after 1989 were anti-Communists or local fascists who may have fought against Communism, such as Marshal Antonescu, who ordered the deportation of Roma and Jews in Romania. Pressure from Jewish communities has put an end to what was becoming a national admiration of Antonescu, who sent tens of thousands of Jews and Roma to their deaths.
The pictorial display inside the museum at the 2002 Roma Fair, ‘Între o Del şi o Beng’, was an exercise in NGO historiography. It aimed to offer ‘an image-based excursion through the material and spiritual aspects of Roma culture in its happy or miserable interaction with Romanian culture, from social fracture to resolidarization and intercultural dialogue’ (Jurnalul Naţional, 2002, 1). The display included exoticized representations of Roma by non-Roma. Such bohemian representations of Gypsies need to be approached cautiously, and to be treated as artistic conventions rather than as historical referents. In the nineteenth century, Gypsies became a favourite topic for Western artists, who projected onto them their own condition as outsiders in an increasingly mercantile society (Brown 1985). Romanian artists joined this trend, portraying exotic and beautiful Ţigănci who were often presented as lustful and oversexualized; some of these portraits featured in the exhibition. The oversexualized and idealized images of Roma women on display were also similar to current representations in Gypsy soaps on television.
Through an invocation of the past, this display at the fair offered a critical analysis of such representations by juxtaposing them with historical documents about slavery and the Roma Holocaust. From a minor history perspective, the juxtaposition of Roma representations by non-Roma with historical documents about slavery and the Holocaust cuts across the forgetting of Roma history and critiques the stereotypical representations of Roma. However, by exercising their hegemonic ignorance, visitors could still enjoy the consumption of Roma culture and images that complied with neoliberalism and globalization and that maintained the citizenship gap for Roma.
Minor Histories and Social Etymologies: ‘Ţigani’ and Slaves
Through its name – ‘Mahala şi Ţigănie’ (‘Slums and Gypsydom’) – the Roma Fair signalled that it brought together low and high culture, by bringing the slums and Gypsydom to the centre, and thus implying a reversal in the ordering of centre and periphery within the city of Bucharest. ‘Mahala şi Ţigănie’ indexed the social etymology of two words, both of which are derogatory in Romanian today. ‘Mahala’, a Turkish word, initially meant a Turkish district or quarter, and later became a synonym for ‘slum’ with an Orientalist undertone. ‘Ţigăn/ie’ is used negatively in the Romanian language to imply a place or a group characterized by disorder and chaos, irrespective of the ethnicity of its inhabitants.
The organizers of the fair were inviting the audience to rethink the meanings of these words within the precincts of a museum that had erased the histories they represented (Ţigani, like all other ethnic minorities, had been absent from the museum; and both ‘Ţigani’ and ‘mahala’ were associated with negative foreign cultural influences, from the Roma and the Middle East respectively). However, depending on the participants’ perspectives, the hegemony of ethnonationalism in the museum and the commodification of Roma cultural elements under neoliberalism framed this project in ways that threatened to undermine its radical potential.
‘Ţigan’ meant ‘slave’ in Moldavia and Wallachia until 1856, and the terms were used interchangeably until slavery was abolished in the second half of the nineteenth century. The territories of Moldavia and Wallachia, part of today’s Romania, were the only European region – at least from the fifteenth century onwards – where Ţigani were slaves.6 These histories continue to be silenced or perfunctorily addressed, and for these reasons the derogatory meaning of the word is unleashed when non-Roma choose to call Roma ‘Ţigani’, a term that has preserved its connotations of lower social status into the present day. Today the social etymology of the term is rarely discussed, yet it continues to be used by non-Roma, and even prescribed as an alternative to the ethnonym ‘Roma’, as mentioned above. In what follows I will trace the social etymology of the term and uncover the ‘histories that have found quiet refuge’ in it (Stoler 2009, 35).
Although the initial migration of Roma from India and the Middle East approximately 1,000 years ago is a more or less generally accepted hypothesis, their arrival in the Romanian territories from the Balkans and the origins of slavery represent points of contention in Romanian historiography, and by extension in Romanian politics. Different theories exist in Romania as to whether Roma were slaves before or became enslaved after their arrival in the Romanian territories. Non-Roma Romanian historian Viorel Achim (1998) argues that Roma were slaves in medieval Bulgaria and Serbia, before they entered Romanian territories. Non-Roma historian Nicolae Grigoraş, on the other hand, maintains that Roma who migrated to Wallachia and Moldavia became enslaved after their arrival. Some free Roma even sold themselves after crossing the border into Wallachia in order to pay their debts, or else became enslaved by marrying slaves (Grigoraş 2000, 79). Roma scholar Nicolae Gheorghe refutes the thesis that Roma had slave status prior to their arrival in the Romanian territories. He argues that this hypothesis attempts to shift the blame for the Roma’s marginalization and to characterize it as an innate condition (Gheorghe 1983, 15).
Beyond these controversies about the origins of Roma slavery, it is undisputed that Roma were the individual property of the crown, the nobility (boyars) or the monasteries, and they appeared on property inventories alongside cattle and goods in Moldavia and Wallachia (Mircea 2000, 61). Whether their owner was the crown, a noble or a monastery, slaves were always at the mercy of their owners, and potentially subject to any kind of mistreatment except killing. Documents legalizing the donation or purchase of a slave were as official as any other property act of the time. For the dominant class under Romanian feudalism, slavery was a stable and solid institution strengthened by Church support. The princes and nobles who were slave owners endowed monasteries with large numbers of slaves and thus gained these religious institutions’ endorsement of slavery. Monastery slaves were the most numerous and the most oppressed (Grigoraş 2000, 85).
The first documents to attest to the existence of Roma slavery date from the fourteenth century for Wallachia and the fifteenth century for Moldavia. Grigoraş argues that Roma slavery originated with the enslavement of captives during the wars against Tatars; although initially slaves were named ‘Tatars’ – a term gradually replaced with ‘Ţigani’ – Grigoraş contends that the slaves had always been Roma. A relatively small number of Roma came to the Romanian territories from east of the Denester River, where fights with the Tatars took place. Most Roma arrived in Wallachia and Moldavia in the fourteenth century by crossing the Danube to the north, because of wars in the territories of present-day Bulgaria and Serbia. When they entered Romanian lands they became slaves and property of the crown because of legislation regarding Ţigani (Grigoraş 2000, 77).
Roma were considered foreigners, and their situation differed from that of local serfs, who were destitute and often tied to the land. During slavery, laws upheld strict distinctions between slaves and free people through the regulation of mixed marriages. Free people who married slaves became slaves, and the offspring of mixed marriages were born slaves (Grigoraş 2000). The categories ‘slave’ and ‘serf’ distinguished between slaves, serfs and free persons, and the policing of the boundaries between these categories ensured the maintenance of the institutions of slavery and serfdom.
Historian Viorel Achim (1998) lists five different Roma groups during slavery, groups that have maintained the same or similar denominations in the present. Goldsmiths, later known as Rudara, were the property of the prince, and over time had to give up working with gold, which was scarce, in favour of woodcarving. Lingurara, or spoon makers, also fabricated wooden objects, and were the property of either the prince or nobles. Ursara, or bear handlers, were nomads who
