SPACES OF EXCHANGE AND TRANSITIONAL IDENTITIES IN LITERARY AND CINEMATIC REPRESENTATIONS OF THE REGIME CHANGE. Transition Narratives in the Bolse vita and A hóhér háza (House of the Executioner)

Abstract

The study explores the poetics of spatial and identity transitions in post-communist Hungarian literature and film, focusing on Ibolya Fekete’s movie Bolse vita and Andrea Tompa’s novel The Executioner’s house (A hóhér háza). Drawing on theories by De Certeau, Augé, and Bourriaud, it interprets the practices of exchange and mobility as symbolic resistances to totalitarian structures. Through an interdisciplinary approach combining spatial studies and cultural theory, the paper argues that these narratives reconstruct the experience of the 1989 regime change as an ongoing process of translation, transgression, and reterritorialization.