თბილისის ომი და სამოქალაქო დაპირისპირება: ჰერმეტულად დალუქული ნარატივები

Abstract

The paper aims to comprehend one of the crucial and painful events of the modern history of Georgia – Tbilisi war and civil confrontation. It defines the process of formation of the traumatic narrative and the influence of collective trauma on the identity transformation and uncovers whether the war was institutionalized. The research is based on different types of sources (documents, memoirs, oral histories, interviews, monumental and functional areas of memory), as well as factual materials and theoretical judgements presented in various pieces of research. They are comprehended within the framework of theories of cultural trauma and collective memory. The study demonstrates that the collective memory of the Tbilisi war and civil confrontation was not clearly constructed. The carrier groups (Alexander, 2004: 11-12) did not manage to ascribe a strong meaning to the event and to form its symbolic representation in the shape of the impact narrative (Assmann, 2015: 54-57). As a result, the sealed narratives (De Waal, 2003: 125) of the confronted groups were formed due to diff erences in their aims regarding identity transformation (Hirsch berger, 2018: 1). It turned out impossible to reach a consensus between them. For the supporters of Zviad Gamsakhurdia’s government, the trauma still is not placed in the past and they keep to live in this process; representatives of the confronted side are prone to forgetting of the hard experience of the past, they call to the society for reconciliation and orientation toward the future. The civil war as a traumatic event blew up the basic tissue of social life and damaged the prevailing sense of communality (Alexander, 2004: 4). However, it was not placed into the system of cultural meanings; the corresponding prefiguration – an old stimulus in the sphere of resonance – was not found. Referring to A. Assmann, the civil war destroyed a fabric of resonance, created a new hot core (Assmann, 2015: 47) overwhelming energy of which has to be reworked across generations. It lingered in the collective memory as a negative scheme that reinforced the traumatic influence of the event. Therefore, even after thirty years, the war refuses to go away, bursts abruptly into the present and is experienced as if it happened just yesterday.