Demonizing the Sensible and the ‘Revolution of Our Generation’ in Rosia Montana

Abstract

‘Save Rosia Montana’ is an emblematic socio-ecological movement in post-communist Romania. It started in 2000 as a local reaction against what was projected to be the largest open-cast gold mine in Europe; it has gradually grown into a national movement with global networking. Activists have been consistently accused of acting under the impulse of an emotional luggage which could function as an impediment to understanding the ‘real’ issue, that of Romania's development. While the corporation claims to present the ‘real’ story articulated in the supposedly objective discourse of rational science, the choice to take a stance out of other beliefs has been demonized as emotional. This article will make a critical discourse analysis of corporate texts and Rosieni's testimonies to highlight what appears as ‘legitimate’ versus ‘illegitimate’ discourse, how some phrases are presented as self-evident rationales while others are dismissed as inappropriate or ‘emotional’. Rosieni have created visibilities for new things, objects, languages, and projections that have been downplayed by the post-communist political context. The conflict is not just over cognitive aspects or valuation languages but also over how one is allowed to feel, what one is allowed to enjoy (doing), how is one supposed to live (spend time), what Ranciere calls the ‘distribution of the sensible’.

Keywords:

• post-communism
• movements
• aesthetics

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Funding

I want to acknowledge support from the FCT Portugal (University of Coimbra, CES) and Marie Curie ITN [grant PITN-GA-2011-289374-ENTITLE], European Network of Political Ecology.

Notes

1 See the website ‘Adopt a House at Rosia Montana'. http://www.adoptaocasa.ro/en/ (Retrieved 2014, January 8).

2 The tradition of the green-fest (HayFest) started in 2004 as an initiative of the movement ‘Save Rosia Montana’ coordinated by the local NGO Alburnus Maior. See ‘Rosia Montana ca o mare scena la FanFest 2010' (‘Rosia Montana as a big stage at FanFest 2010', in Green Report, 22 June 2010), http://www.green-report.ro/rosia-montana-ca-o-mare-scena-la-fanfest-2010/ (Retrieved 2014, January 1). For more, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1Kb4SwX43o ( Retrieved 2014, February 20).

3 Legislative proposal, http://www.senat.ro/Legis%5CPDF%5C2013%5C13L304S1.pdf ( Retrieved 2014, April 3).

4 In Romanian it is ‘Nu corporatia face legislatia!’. See, for instance, one of the many YouTube recordings of the protests, during the 15th day of protests (Retrieved 2013, September 15), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUi8YYMhSgY (Retrieved 2014, May 6).

5 Open letter to Renate Weber and the Soros Foundation, 28 August 2007, http://www.rmgc.ro/cautare/?language=ro&q=Open+letter+to+Renate+Weber (Retrieved 2009, September 20).

6 Mine your own business: The dark side of environmentalism, 2007, http://www.mineyourownbusiness.org/ (Retrieved 2007, July 17).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Irina Velicu

Irina Velicu is a political scientist working on socio-environmental conflicts in post-communist countries at the Center for Social Studies, University of Coimbra, Portugal. Irina has previously worked as a Marie Curie Experienced Researcher within the ENTITLE European Network of Political Ecology coordinated by Institute for Environmental Science and Technology (Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona).