“TSKHINVALI REGION” AND “AUTONOMOUS REPUBLIC OF ABKHAZIA” AS “LIEUX DE MÉMOIRE” AND INVENTED TRADITIONS IN THE MODERN GEORGIAN POLITICAL IMAGINATION (2018-2019)

Abstract

The author analyzes the invention of traditions in modern Georgian nationalism in the contexts of the imagination of the “Tskhinvali region” and the “Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia” as inseparable parts of the imagining political body of the Georgian nation. The methodology is based on the principles proposed in the inventionist turn in the interdisciplinary Nationalism Studies. The author analyzes the problems of imagination of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as parts of Georgia in contexts of legal attempts to legitimize the Georgian affiliation of these territories, political and cultural tactics and strategies of Georgian intellectuals, used by them in their attempts to integrate Abkhaz and Ossetian narratives into the imagined Georgian political and geographical canon. The author believes that the invented traditions in the Georgian case can be defined as heterogeneous intellectual, social, political and cultural practices of the imagination of Abkhazia and South Ossetia as subjects of the Georgian political space and parts of imagined symbolic Georgian geography. The activities of the “government” of these regions, which are imagined by their supporters as “governments in exile” are discussed in the text. The author believes that the traditions of Georgian nationalism, the high level of consolidation of society, and legal incentives, including the Law on Occupied Territories, became the incentives that turned South Ossetia and Abkhazia into invented traditions of political imagination in Georgian nationalism. It is shown that the invented traditions of modern Georgian nationalism are diverse and range from different versions of ethnicity to various political constructs. It is assumed that the active debates in Georgian society about the role and place of Abkhazia and South Ossetia turned these regions into invented traditions and places of memory of modern Georgian identity. The author believes that the activities of the “governments” and other administrative structures of the “Tskhinvali region” and the “Autonomous Republic of Abkhazia”, controlled by Tbilisi, are mainly ideological, propaganda and informational in their nature, because they invent and depicture images of these regions in the Georgian centred system of coordinates.