Ioan Popovici-Bănățeanul: identity, national, transnational. Imagotypes and social imaginary

Abstract

Living in the Banat county, which belonged to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, during a regime which seriously influenced the Banat Romanians’ status, Ioan Popovici wrote a prose where the relationship with the other is not only interesting, but also complicated. As a result, the frontiers between identity and national, on the one hand, nationalism and xenophoby, on the other hand, are often fragile. Starting from a biography characterized by uprootedness, exclusions and alienations, our approach aims to present the mechanisms which have led to the creation of the social imaginary in Ioan PopoviciBănățeanul’s prose, caused by various geopolitical, cultural or mentality circumstances, constantly observed by the narrative discourse.