Ioana Macrea-Toma

This reasearch focuses on the relationship between epistemology and politics during the Cold War through the political radicalization of a Romanian mathematician futurologist. Mihai Botez (1940-1995) was one of the most brilliant scientists tasked to lead core institutions in the 70s in Romania and he gradually became an opponent of the regime while analyzing its unrealistic socio-economic goals. This project will investigate the conditions for such a metamorphosis and the possibilities of transgressive criticism at that time: the real benefits of socialist modernization, the options of the professionals that matured at that time, and, finally, the connections between the intrinsic epistemic virtues of science and the rigors of political reflection and action. The combination of certain types of evidence will lead not only to internalist reconstructions of dissident trajectories, but also to the interdisciplinary connection of two lines of approach that are for the moment rarely intersecting: the dissident histories and the transnational expert studies. The project will have an important archival self-reflexive dimension, since it will try to reflect on the possibilities of conducting such intellectual biographies with the help of ideologically opposed archives, such as those of Radio Free Europe, of the socialist state, of international organizations, and of the communist secret police.