Corruption, Șmecherie, and Clones

Abstract

Chapter 5 explores socialist and postsocialist technoculture in Romania, focusing on both retrospective and speculative accounts of what transpired and what could have transpired beyond the purview of the state, capitalist transition, and the Siliconized present. Against a backdrop of anticommunist anti-corruption politics, the chapter looks to deviant and underground computing practices of the 1990s and 2000s, some of which perhaps could have thwarted Silicon Valley imperialism’s reach. While describing a collaborative speculative art piece by Veda Popovici and Mircea Nicolae entitled Istoria (Nu) Se Repet? (History [Does Not] Repeat Itself), it peppers in speculative and retrospective ethnographies of hackers, scammers, computer cloners, and political artists who illustrate practices of ?mecherie—a Romanian word with Romani roots connoting street-smart ingenuity and cleverness. These ?mecherie narrations, technocultures, imaginations, and speculations, the chapter suggests, corrupt Siliconization and queer technofuturity.