The Formation of Georgian National Discourse. Marking Models of Georgia and Russian Empire and National Self-identification in Georgian Literature of the End of the 18th and 19th Centuries.

Abstract

The thesis is a study of the history of representation of Georgian-Russian political relations in writings by Georgian classic writers of the late 18th and 19th centuries. Georgia has been deprived sovereignty for almost two centuries, being colonized by the Russian Empire, and later, becoming a part of the Russian-Soviet state of USSR. Georgia’s self-portrait was depicted in Georgian literature under the heavy ideological pressure from the Empiric discourse, and through interaction/contradiction with the image of the enemy. Within the literary texts the systematized set of cultural markers of Georgia and Russia was collected with the mission of ensuring the creation of normative knowledge and defining new proper benchmarks within the new historic order.

The thesis presents an analysis of the process of formation of Georgian national discourse by identification, classification and description of cultural markers through which Georgian literature could play an essential role in preserving national identity and activating the idea of statehood in collective memory. The research is based on main methodological principles of Imagology, and main approaches of National Identity Studies. As a result of the study the cultural markers of different types has been identified: original, invariable, and modified, some of them transformed into stereotypes; lexical composition of Georgian national discourse of pre-colonial and colonial periods has been identified; tables of classified markers has been created, which present various ways of shaping national discourse within Georgian literary texts.

The study presents from the new angle some topical issues within the areas of Georgian-Russian relations, Cultural Studies, Identity Studies.

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