National narratives and new politics of memory in Georgia

Abstract

This paper examines three dominant forms of national narratives concerning the fate of the Georgian nation: the old or classical narrative concerning the salvation and rescue of the Georgian nation despite imperial aggression; the narrative of the ‘Rose Revolution’ telling of the birth of a new nation; and a third narrative of the Georgian Christian Orthodox Church. The first narrative was favored by the old socialist intellectuals and has been eclipsed by the second narrative favored by ‘new intellectuals’. Likewise the Orthodox narrative is not anchored on ancient Georgian churches but the new Shrine of the Trinity in Tbilisi. The paper argues that all three narratives embody realms of memory in Georgia and are vital to the understanding of impulses behind Georgian politics. It also suggests that Georgia has not so far undergone a full secularization in the Western sense and has been unable so far to construct new secular realms of memory though the old secular realms associated with the Shevardnadze era have been devalued. The article concludes by briefly discussing the significance of the Georgian intellectual Merab Mamardashvili whose grave in a common cemetery demonstrates the possibility of ‘spontaneous’ or ‘vivid’ memory.

Keywords:

• narrative
• Perestroika
• semiotic
• intelligentsia
• nationalism
• memory
• deconstruction
• authority
• secularization
• monumentality

Notes

 1. Today there are available mainly two ‘local’ versions: one of the versions is associated with ‘an old’ (‘Soviet’) intelligentsia; the other is shared by Zviad Gamsakhurdia's divided and scattered followers.

 2. F.B.J. Kuiper, ‘Cosmogony and Conception: A Query’.

 3. Zurab Konstantines dze Tsereteli (Georgian: zurab wereTeli, Russian: ; born 4 January 1934 in Tbilisi) is a controversial Russian-Georgian painter, sculptor and architect who holds the office of President of the Russian Academy of Arts.

 4. About Tsereteli's Moscow monuments, see the brilliant article: B. Grant, ‘New Moscow Monuments, or, states of innocence’.

 5. About the significance of religion in contemporary Georgian national discourse, see: S. Serrano, ‘Religion in Contemporary National Discourse’; P. Manning, ‘Materiality and Cosmology: Old Georgian Churches as Sacred, Sublime, and Secular Objects’.

 6. There is not any left intellectual movement discourse, or speaking more precisely, it is absolutely marginalized.

 7. Simultaneously, due to serious redistribution and rearrangement of the business sphere, there appeared a new alliance between authority and business. However, this issue is beyond the scope of this paper.

 8. P. Nora, ‘Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire’, 7.

 9. Nora, ‘Between Memory and History’, 8–9.

10. http://forum.ge/?showtopic = 33578515.

11. P. Manning suggests that ‘one reason that they can is that the socialist state made some attempt to keep the national narrative separate from the state socialist narrative, so that the pantheon only contains ‘cultural’ national intelligentsia and not, for example, state nomenklatura. This was partly because the national narrative provided the cultural teleology for the technocratic rule for the Soviet state, allowing the persistent misrecognition that somehow the national narrative was independent of the state narrative under socialism’ (oral commentary).

12. ‘Your spirit and deeds are immortal in the memory of Russia, but why I outlived you my Love!’ (Chorogolashvili, Mtatsminda, 54).

13. http://www.pol.ge/archive/okupaciis.html.

14. [Merab Mamrdasvili, On Proust].

15. Nora, ‘Between Memory and History,’ 14–15.

16. Nora, ‘Between Memory and History,’, 19.