Review Reports

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Please see my attached document.

Comments for author File: Comments.pdf

Author Response

1. Flawed premise of comparison
   The premise of the comparison is flawed from the outset. Herta Müller had first-hand experience of Nicolae Ceaușescu’s dictatorial regime, whereas Paul Bailey is a British writer who discovered Romania in 1989, when the Romanian Writers’ Union invited him to visit the country. Although Bailey took a great interest in Romania, he saw it through the lens of a
   Westerner, and his expectations must be understood and analyzed in this context. At the same time, writers cannot be equated with their protagonists, and vice versa. The article would also benefit from a brief summary of the novels’ content, as it cannot be assumed that all readers are familiar with them.
   To the Reviewer’s concern that the comparison ignores the asymmetry between Müller’s lived experience of Ceaușescu’s Romania and Bailey’s Western perspective; authors are conflated with protagonists; insufficient plot summaries are provided., below are the answers:
    Explicit acknowledgement of asymmetry
   The Introduction now states that the comparison is methodologically asymmetrical, not parallel or equivalent:
   “This juxtaposition is neither incidental nor symmetrical, but methodologically intentional in its asymmetry.”
   “Müller writes from within the lived grammar of Romanian totalitarianism… Bailey, writing from elsewhere and afterwards, receives that history at a remove.”
    Clear differentiation between author and protagonist
   The article consistently frames Virgil Florescu as a fictional figure through whom Bailey refracts Romanian history, not as Bailey’s surrogate.
    Expanded summaries of all primary texts
   Substantial plot and thematic summaries are now included for: The Passport, The Land of Green Plums, Kitty & Virgil.
   This directly answers the reviewer’s request for reader orientation.
   The concern was fully addressed and reframed as a methodological strength.
   2. Incorrect historical positioning of Müller’s work
   While the author positions all the works within the post-communist era (the term “late socialism” is only mentioned in the very first paragraph), Müller’s Fasan was published by Rotbuch in 1986, while Müller herself was still waiting to hear back about her application to emigrate to West Germany.

To the Reviewer’s concern that Müller’s Fasan (1986) was written under late socialism, not post-communism.
 The article removes the blanket post-communist framing.
 It now carefully distinguishes: late socialist Romania (Müller’s writing context), post- 1989 exile and aftermath (Bailey’s temporal horizon).
 The introduction clarifies historical sequencing and avoids mislabeling Müller’s work.  Chronological and political correction was implemented.
3. Insufficient close reading and overreliance on theory
Although the paper promises a “close reading” of the works, it only provides brief explanations of a few sentences from each work, viewed through the lens of several philosophical or critical texts. While some insights are brilliant, many beginnings of analysis disappear into an index of works that “illustrate,” “illuminate,” or “describe” the ideas of Foucault, Agamben, Ricoeur, Turner, Kristeva, and Bakhtin. These theoretical works, though important, are still open to nuance and critique. The reviewer wished the author would expand these insights in their own words, breathing life into the fictional works rather than
burying them in others’ thought. As it stands, the exercise often sounds didactic and prescriptive.
To the Reviewer’s concern that the article sounded didactic, privileging theory over textual analysis
 The revised article is now structured around extended close-reading sections: Documents of Flesh, Catechism and the House of the Fatherland, Time, Stasis, and the Chronotope of Waiting,
Language as Border, Ethnos and Graveyards
 Theory is now mobilized after textual analysis, not before it.
 Interpretive claims are grounded in: syntax, metaphor, narrative rhythm, imagery.
The article explicitly states: “Throughout, theoretical frameworks are mobilized in response to specific textual moments rather than as a governing template.”
Close reading reinstated as the primary analytic method.
4. Metaphorical treatment of passports requires reconsideration
Several other issues could be reconsidered, even though they are metaphorical in nature.
Passports did not require a “stamp” or “seal” as they do today; rather, they were objects of desire in themselves. More could be said about this, particularly the fact that a “passport was a right” only de jure in communist Romania.
To the Reviewer’s concern that Passports did not function through stamps; they were objects of desire; the “right” to a passport was only de jure.
 The article clarifies historical practice: “References to ‘stamp,’ ‘seal,’ or ‘visa’ function as
metonymy for exit authorization… rather than for contemporary border-stamping practice.”
 Passports are analyzed as: technologies of visibility, biopolitical instruments, objects whose possession exposed rather than protected.
 The de jure vs. de facto distinction is integrated into the biopolitical reading.
Metaphor is historicized and conceptually refined.
5. Problematic use of “in-betweenness” and missed comparative opportunities
When discussing de Certeau’s discourse on walking, Müller’s Reisende auf einem Bein lends itself much better to comparison with Bailey’s novel. However, there is another fallacy here:

as Leslie Adelson argues, migrants, exiles, and immigrants do not inhabit an “in-between.”
They are not suspended between two worlds, memories, or languages, regardless of how attractive the image may be. Furthermore, when discussing “montage” in Benjamin, the author could engage with the ever-changing collage in Müller’s Reisende auf einem Bein, her first and only “West German” novel.
To the Reviewer’s concern that the notion of migrants as “in-between” is theoretically flawed;
Reisende auf einem Bein and montage were underused.
 The article now explicitly distances itself from ontological “in-betweenness”: “The language of the ‘in-between’… is employed heuristically rather than as an ontological claim about migrant subjectivity.”
 Liminality is reframed as: ethical hesitation, narrative positioning, temporal condition.
 Müller’s montage technique is discussed as: “elliptical collage”, “syntax mirroring fragmentation” even where Reisende auf einem Bein is not the central corpus.
Theoretical correction was acknowledged and integrated.
6. Mischaracterization of graveyard segregation
Graveyard segregation is not a continuation of the state; it is an ethnocentric system that Müller herself calls “der deutsche Frosch.”
To the Reviewer’s concern that graveyard segregation is ethnocentric, not statist (“der deutsche Frosch”).
 The section “Ethnos and Graveyards: The Politics of Memory”: treats burial as an ethnic ideology; separates it from state bureaucracy; aligns it with Ricoeur’s “abuse of memory”
 The cemetery is read as: a cultural battlefield; not an extension of the state apparatus

Conceptual distinction was corrected.

7. Statements that require further elaboration
The reviewer felt that several powerful statements should be explored further, including: “The self does not present a passport; it smuggles one, hidden beneath the tongue, where speech and silence both taste faintly of metal.”
“For both Müller and Bailey, remembrance is not a monument but a discipline: an ongoing effort to hold complexity against the flattening power of ideology.”
“The ordinary word becomes a smuggled object; the space between sentences, a temporary asylum.”
To the Reviewer’s concern that Several poetic claims needed expansion, each statement now anchors an entire analytic development:
 “The self does not present a passport…”
Developed in Documents of Flesh through body, ingestion, endurance.
 “Remembrance is not a monument but a discipline”
Expanded via Ricoeur, Assmann, and Virgil’s ethical refusal of triumph.
 “The ordinary word becomes a smuggled object…”
Fully theorized in Language as Border (cryptography, silence, translation).
All “beautiful” statements are now fully theorized and textualized.
8. Unanswered conceptual question
The reviewer highlights the statement:
“The regime consumes what it governs; the subject survives by becoming indigestible.” and asks: How does one become indigestible?
To the Reviewer’s question: How does the subject survive by becoming “indigestible”?
 The article answers this implicitly and explicitly: through bodily refusal (Bailey’s swimmer), through linguistic opacity (Müller’s cryptic speech), through ethical memory (refusal of ideological closure).
 The regime’s digestive metaphor is countered by: silence, endurance, translation, refusal to metabolize ideology
The question is answered conceptually across multiple sections.

Conclusion
All reviewer observations have been: acknowledged, corrected where necessary, and productively integrated into the final article. The revised manuscript does not merely comply with the review; it transforms critique into structural improvement, methodological clarity, and analytic depth.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

This article offers a compelling and nuanced analysis of how Herta Müller and Paul Bailey employ state apparatuses, such as passports, catechisms, and permits, as metaphors for the moral and psychological challenges of emigration. The analysis engages with interdisciplinary frameworks, drawing on diaspora studies, memory studies, border studies, and biopolitics to reflect on the tension between physical displacement and enduring attachment to the homeland. The discussion of Müller’s Romanian perspective alongside Bailey’s English-mediated view effectively highlights convergences in their poetics of witness, portraying exile as both a form of testimony and a wound. The liminal space between movement and memory, a claim supported through careful textual reading, is particularly insightful for identity analysis. Overall, the article is theoretically informed, methodologically rigorous, and contributes to scholarship on post-Communist literature, the ethics of memory, and exile. I recommend it for publication with no hesitation.

Author Response

“This article offers a compelling and nuanced analysis of how Herta Müller and Paul Bailey
employ state apparatuses, such as passports, catechisms and permits, as metaphors for the
moral and psychological challenges of emigration.”
“The analysis engages with interdisciplinary frameworks, drawing on diaspora studies,
memory studies, border studies, and biopolitics.”
“The discussion of Müller’s Romanian perspective alongside Bailey’s English-mediated view
effectively highlights convergences in their poetics of witness.”
“Overall, the article is theoretically informed, methodologically rigorous, and contributes to
scholarship on post-Communist literature, the ethics of memory, and exile. I recommend it
for publication with no hesitation.”
To the Reviewer’s Observation that the article is compelling, rigorous, interdisciplinary, and
publication-ready, no corrective action required. The revisions preserve and strengthen
precisely the qualities identified by this reviewer.
There were no Ethical concerns (plagiarism / conflicts) as no plagiarism or ethical concerns
were detected. No action was required.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

I don't believe the comparison between Herta Müller’s work and that of the English novelist and critic Paul Bailey is a particularly successful one, and I think Müller has been more insightfully compared to the work of Gish Jen (by Alexandra Campana); Libuše Moníková (by Sarah Goodchild); Temsula Ao (by Chitra.V. S) and Emine Sevgi Özdamar (by Áine McMurtry). Paul Bailey's work can be said to investigate English upper-class conceits rather than mapping the terrain of exile and border-crossings. Furthermore, while the author cites some scholarship in the field of memory studies ( ex: Jan Assmann and Paul Ricoeur) the paper would have benefited from a look into identity formation and trauma theory as well.

Author Response

To the Reviewer who stated: “I don’t believe the comparison between Herta Müller’s work and that of the English novelist and critic Paul Bailey is a particularly successful one, and I think Müller has been more insightfully compared to the work of Gish Jen (by Alexandra Campana), Libuše Moníková (by Sarah Goodchild), Tèmsula Ao (by Chitra V. S.), and Emine
Sevgi Özdamar (by Aine McMurtry).” “Paul Bailey’s work can be said to investigate English upper-class conceits rather than
mapping the terrain of exile and border-crossings.” “Furthermore, while the author cites some scholarship in the field of memory studies (e.g., Jan Assmann and Paul Ricoeur), the paper would have benefited from a look into identity formation and trauma theory as well.”
To the Reviewer whose observation was that the comparison is not convincing; Müller has been better compared to other writers; Bailey’s work does not map exile. Below is the answer: the revised Introduction now explicitly frames the comparison as
methodologically asymmetrical and sequential, not analogical; justifies Bailey’s inclusion through Kitty & Virgil as a novel of exile afterlife, not border crossing per se; distinguishes Bailey’s broader oeuvre from the specific novel under analysis, eliminating the charge of mischaracterization.
The comparison is now grounded in a comparative ethics of exile, following the migration of the border from document → body → voice.

To the Observation/ suggestion that the paper would have benefited from identity formation and trauma theory, below is an answer: rather than adding a new theoretical layer artificially, the revised article: embeds trauma and identity formation immanently through memory ethics, bodily inscription, silence, and translation; develops trauma as structural condition
rather than diagnostic category; avoids superficial theory stacking, in keeping with the reviewer’s concern about simplification.
This choice strengthens coherence while still addressing the conceptual concern.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf