Caucasian Prisoners, or How Georgian Intellectuals Invent Traditions and (re)Produce Meanings

Abstract

The author of the article analyses various cultural tactics, practices and strategies that Georgian intellectuals used for the invention of traditions and the (re)production of meanings. The author presumes that various cultural practices and social strategies of Georgian intellectuals became the main incentives for the transformation of traditional local groups into the Georgian modern nation. The history of the 20th century promoted the fragmentation of Georgian intelligentsia. The disintegration of the USSR, the resto-ration of state sovereignty and political independence of Georgia became powerful stimuli for the radical and deep fragmentation of the thinking-class into intelligentsia and intellectuals. The author states that intelligentsia and intellectuals coexist in modern Georgia simultaneously, but this social and cultural cohabitation is temporary because the intelligentsia became an endangered social and cultural category. Georgian intellec-tuals are genetic heirs of the old intelligentsia. The permanent voluntary and forced par-ticipation in the imagination of the nation and the invention of traditions as the for-mation and promotion of new myths brings together intelligentsia and intellectuals. The dynamics of the 20th century turned Georgian intellectuals into cultural hostages of modernization and processes of constant (re)production of the identities and meanings, including nation, space, freedom, independence etc.