Modernism/modernity 12.3 (2005) 543-545

Over the Wall/After the Fall: Post-Communist Cultures through an East-West 
Gaze. Sibelan Forrester, Magdalena J. Zaborowska and Elena Gapova,  eds. 
Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004. Pp. xi + 320. $60.00 (cloth); 
$30.00 (paper).

      This book is a collection of essays which seeks to extend the field of 
post-socialist cultural studies by presenting Eastern European societies to 
an academic audience through theoretical frameworks that it can understand 
whilst, at the same time, uncovering "some of the inherent biases and 
limitations of these theories" (25). The collection treads new ground by 
bringing to the fore the work of scholars whose own life trajectories leave 
them somewhere "between" Eastern Europe and "the West" and, particularly, by 
paying significant attention to these authors' own positionality. In this 
sense the book achieves its objective of reaching beyond "the primitive 
opposition of East/West" and re-presenting this engagement as a "hybrid and 
dialogic project" (30). Some authors are more aware than others of the 
relations of power which structure this dialogic project, however, and the 
retention of the notion of dialogue itself remains an inhibitor in any 
radical move beyond the notion of a binary relationship.

      The partial nature of the escape from this binary is evident in the 
slippage in terminology throughout the book between recognition of the
experience of individual countries, of specific regions, and of individual 
and community experiences of change, and the desire to generalize the
discussion to that of a more generic "post-socialist," "post-communist," or 
"Eastern European" space. Moreover, while the intention of the editors is to 
provide "thick description" and bring local intellectual currents into 
dialogue with those in the West, many of the chapters are deeply concerned 
with North American identity and experience. This is central to the Andaluna 
Borcila chapter which discusses the way representations of Eastern Europe 
participate in the production of narratives of both Eastern European 
identity and American identity and of Anca Roscu's chapter on Kaplan's 
"Balkan Ghosts." It is also a key sub-theme of David Houston's essay on 
Frank Gehry's Netherlands National Building in Prague, Halina Filipowicz's 
chapter on the marketing of Polish theater in the post-1989 period as well 
as of the contributions by Silverman and Krainak (see below). Given the 
commitment of the collection to taking seriously the authors' positionality 
and the underlying premise that "the other" is always partially constitutive 
of new cultural identities in the post-socialist space, this is 
understandable. In some contributions, however, the slippage between notions 
of "the West," "America," and of "diasporic experiences" is problematic; in 
Borcila's chapter a set of very specific representations of Romania are 
re-presented as narratives of Eastern Europe as a whole whilst the
significance of these representations for re-embedding tropes of American 
identity is generalized to "the West."

      The book is full of theoretical allusion but the level of sustained 
engagement with cultural theory is not uniform. To be fair, the reader is
warned in the introduction that some chapters are "artistic texts" rather 
than "'properly' scholarly pieces." However, while Krainak's article is put
in the "artistic" basket, it is perfectly accessible and meaningful to the 
humble academic, whilst other chapters such as that by Magdalena Zaborowska 
on reading "constructions of history" through reconstructions of the Warsaw 
cityscape are linguistically dense but evidentially thin. The final chapter 
by "Benni Goodman"-which does come with the "artistic" warning label -is a 
reminder that cultural studies comes in many different shapes and forms; 
this is not a chapter to be read between exam scripts. In sharp contrast, 
Mark Andryczyk's discussion of the Bohemian set of Lviv in the early 1990s 
is essentially descriptive of the phenomenon and fails to engage with either 
western subcultural theory or with more culturally sensitive writings by 
post-socialist scholars such as Aleksei Yurchak's work on irony in 
(sub)cultural practice. Andryczyk's respondents thus appear to the reader as 
"untainted" by the commercial aspects of post-socialist cultural production
in a way that sits ill at ease alongside more critical readings of the 
workings of both socialist and (globalized) post-socialist spheres of
cultural production by other contributors (see, for example, Silverman's 
contribution and Johnston's piece on heteroglossia and linguistic
neo-colonialism in post-socialist Poland). Vera Sokolova also provides an 
interesting overview of the representation of women and sexuality in the
post-socialist Czech Republic, but one that sits within a theoretical 
framework that is assumed rather than explored. Lisa Whitmore's chapter
tracing the destination of marginalized authors and artists associated with 
the Prenzlauer Berg scene after 1989 is also essentially descriptive and 
opportunities to explore clear thematic commonalities between this chapter 
and those by Krainak and Andryczyk are not taken by any of the three 
authors.

      There are also some real gems in the collection-in particular those 
chapters which pick up on the fascinating articulations between emergent
post-socialist identities. Elena Gapova's contribution, for example, 
explores the articulation between class and national identity through a
discussion of the role of language in intellectual discourse on Belarusian 
nationhood. Carole Silverman's discussion of the "reinvention" of Bulgarian 
female singing, in contrast, focuses on the intersection of gender and class 
in post-socialist identity in a nuanced and thoughtful piece. Indeed, both 
Silverman's chapter and that of Rainer Gries on the re-branding of East 
German consumer products in the early 1990s provide extremely successful 
case studies which allow the exploration of a range of complex relations of 
production, consumption and identity (gender, national, global-local).

      As with all edited volumes there is a certain unevenness in scope and 
quality of contributions and, arguably, the editors of this particular
collection might have guided the reader better through the thematic 
continuities and internal ruptures that become apparent in the process of
reading. However, this is the nature of the genre and the positive side of 
the coin is that almost every reader will find their own personal "gems"
within this wide-ranging collection of essays on contemporary culture in 
post-socialist societies.

Hilary Pilkington
Centre for Russian and East European Studies, The University of Birmingham