The horizons of Medea: economies and cosmologies of dispossession in Georgia

Abstract

Anthropologists have long reminded us that mythological cosmologies are regularly recruited to help make sense of the present. But how key mythologies perform such labour is remarkably less attended to in many studies. In this article I take up the long life of Medea, one of the principal female characters of Greek mythology surrounding the Argonauts, who is very much alive today in the Republic of Georgia. The character of Medea mediates contradictory imaginations, affects, and narratives attendant upon Georgia's recent political changes. For some varied sections of Georgian society, the Medea mythology conveys Georgia's connection to Europe, but it also channels the experiences of economic dispossession associated with postsocialist transformation and revolution. By exploring Medea as a profoundly flexible figure who can move across narrative and media forms, this article proposes new ways of conceptualizing contemporary mythological cosmologies that threaten to exceed and sometimes even overwhelm their political intentions, generating ambivalent outcomes.

Presidential Elections in the South Caucasus: Political Transformations, Imagined Unity, and Memory Discourses

“…She notes that Medea of the Golden Fleece and the Argonauts myth helped demarcate Georgia's imagined national borders and at the same time created a foundational relationship with Europe, albeit one that involved contradictory narratives. The concept of Medea simultaneously projected a world of better possibilities, although becoming part of Europe, migration or simple interaction often proved problematic for Georgians (Khalvashi, 2018). At the same time, the goal of the practice of creating new monuments in post-revolutionary Georgia was a kind of decolonization or de-Sovietization of urban space, which was combined with the search for Europeanness hidden in the national mythology (Khalvashi, 2019).…”

Game of tax: Rethinking the relationship between redistribution and reciprocity through a Georgian tax lottery

“…Tax reforms have developed along with the liberalization of the Georgian economy (cf. Khalvashi, 2018). Yet, corruption remains a major problem (Transparency International, 2015), and there remains widespread suspicion among citizens toward heavy‐handed public authorities (Mitchell, 2009, 177).…”