დასავლეთი როგორც „ცარიელი აღმნიშვნელი“: პოპულიზმი თანამედროვე საქართველოში

Abstract

Georgia is among the countries to which identity crisis posed serious problems at the dawn of independence. Soon after declaring independence, the country fell into the chaos of civil war, which defined economic collapse, political, social and territorial disintegration. The situation changed in the subsequent period and, in parallel to strengthening pro-European political aspirations, the Georgian national project gradually acquired civil characteristics. It seemed to stand firmly on the path to Western integration. Despite this, the ghost of the colonial past still haunts Georgian society and poses existential challenges on the way to Western development. The research aims at analyzing the post-Soviet experience of the country in terms of the West’s role in the Georgian identity discourses. In the process of deconstruction of the Soviet system, Georgians started looking for new identity construction. From the time the idea of Georgia’s European origins and tight relations to the West was broken into the Georgian public discourse. The “Europeanness” still plays one of the key roles in Georgian identity discourse, but attitudes towards Europe are not unequivocally positive. To rely on the concept of Ernesto Laclau, the West has become an active empty signifier for the Georgian people, which has no clear content. Empty signifier refers to a certain category/term in society that does not have a clearly defined meaning, it is not filled with solid and unchanging content. The country’s post-socialist transformation has contributed to turning the West into a source of Georgian populism. Mobilizing public opinion around anti-Western and pro-Western narratives is one of the major trends of recent decades.