ქართული სამზარეულო – „გამოგონილი ტრადიცია“

Abstract

The goal of Esma Kunchulia’s work – “Georgian Cuisine – Invented Tradition” is to understand the essence of national cuisine and discuss it according to cultural studies, memory studies and modernist theories of nationalism. This work is the first attempt to analyze the national cuisine in the framework of different theories. According to the author of the article, national cuisine, as one of the symbols of the nation and a marker of national identity was created in the era of the formation of nations and became a part of the “great narrative” of the nation. The author considers the collection of dishes as an “invented tradition” by the “imagined community” and suggests that the “national cuisine” with the form and emotion it has today did not exist before the “formation” of nations. The research shows that, for a modern person, national cuisine is a constituent part of the nation’s identification system, the symbols and the codes. Being a national symbol, the national cuisine carries an emotional load characteristic of the national culture for a member of the nation and treating it “wrongly” is as “dangerous” as mistreating other symbols. Esma Kunchulia's work will be interesting for researchers of collective identity and cultural memory of the nation.