![]() ![]() ![]() The introduction of the book makes explicit Mitu’s rejection of impersonal history writing, and as a result, he takes the path of postmodern relativism, indulging in a tight bond with the research subject. ![]() The six chapters of the book are theoretically framed, incorporating Western debates about concepts, historiography, and nationalism theories. Consequently, the reader discovers Mitu’s Transylvania from the first half of the nineteenth century side by side with controversial topics, such as Transylvania’s autonomy, pertaining to the post-1989 period. This book, however, is designed as a heterogeneous, subjective and fragmented account of Transylvania’s history, also encompassing articles already published, but reshaped to fit into what the author calls “a typical ‘postmodern’ and polyphonic structure” (12). Mitu’s choice of topic and methods place him among the new generation of Romanian historians who study regionalism, local history and the history of the imaginary. Probably best known to the English-speaking readership for his National Identity of Romanians in Transylvania, published in Romanian in 1997 and translated into English in 2001, in My Transylvania Sorin Mitu mostly continues the analysis of identity mechanisms, the mirror image of the collective self and the other, with a focus on Romanian and Hungarian mutual representations. ![]()
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