Ketevan Gurchiani | Ilia State University (original) (raw)
Papers by Ketevan Gurchiani
Tous droits réservés pour tous pays. La reproduction ou représentation de cet article, notamment ... more Tous droits réservés pour tous pays. La reproduction ou représentation de cet article, notamment par photocopie, n'est autorisée que dans les limites des conditions générales d'utilisation du site ou, le cas échéant, des conditions générales de la licence souscrite par votre établissement. Toute autre reproduction ou représentation, en tout ou partie, sous quelque forme et de quelque manière que ce soit, est interdite sauf accord préalable et écrit de l'éditeur, en dehors des cas prévus par la législation en vigueur en France. Il est précisé que son stockage dans une base de données est également interdit.
[Revue européenne des migrations internationales], Feb 9, 2023
Verdeckter Widerstand in demokratischen Gesellschaften. Eds. Ferdinand Sutterlüty, Almut Poppinga. Frankfurter Beiträge zur Soziologie und Sozialphilosophie, 2022
This paper analyzes the creative use of state regulations to counter the rapidly diminishing publ... more This paper analyzes the creative use of state regulations to counter the rapidly diminishing public spaces in Tbilisi, Georgia. People try to retake the urban space by creatively maneuvering different regulations. One such tactic is to plant trees of special value in areas marked as state property to avoid privatization of the place. The paper focuses on how the citizens of Tbilisi manipulate the laws governing the green spaces in the urban area and use gaps in different regulations for their ‘hidden transcript’ – to retake the public space by making it environmentally more valuable. By using these tactics, they exercise their right to the city. Green spaces have the potential of marking and reclaiming the territory, embody resistance, and control. The paper analyses how the relational agency of trees emerges. Relying on observation and in-depth interviews, the paper looks at “Greening” as a complex tactic. It particularly focuses on different purposes this practice serves, on the dynamic relationship between the main actors by looking at them beyond the established binaries of “strong” and „weak”, “human” and “non-human”. By using the genealogical approach, the paper also looks at how the tactics used against the Soviet state to maintain control over the land, still inform the tactics of urban resistance today.
Nationalities Papers, 2017
Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a Georgian village and supplemented by a range of interviews a... more Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a Georgian village and supplemented by a range of interviews and observations from different parts of Georgia, this paper explores the creative presence of religion in public schools. In 2005 and in line with the strong secularization and modernization discourse, the Georgian parliament passed a new law on education, restricting the teaching of religion in public schools and separating religious organizations and public schools; nevertheless, mainstream Orthodox Christianity is widely practiced in schools. The paper aims to show how Georgians use religious spaces in secular institutions to practice their identity, to perform being “true Georgians.” At the same time, they are adopting a strong secularization and modernization discourse. By doing so they create a new space, a third space, marked by in-betweenness. The study uses the theoretical lens of Thirdspace for analyzing the hybridity, the in-betweenness of practices and attitudes inherent for ...
Religious Education at Schools in Europe
Journal of Religion in Europe, 2021
Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a multi-ethnic village in Georgia, this paper shows how everyd... more Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a multi-ethnic village in Georgia, this paper shows how everyday peace is continuously reaffirmed in the tradition of inviting Muslim godparents to baptize Christian children. The Muslim godparents perform the roles of the chosen Christians while at the same time remaining Muslim. Hybrid local lay-religious practices around the ritual of christening are analyzed within a larger cultural semiotics that allows reciprocity of perspectives and, specifically in this context, enables the recruitment of non-Christians into the role of godparent. Religion serves as a ground for asserting peace.
Slavic Review
rescue him. Interspersed letters from an anonymous neighbor, whom Lidia decides to call Vespasian... more rescue him. Interspersed letters from an anonymous neighbor, whom Lidia decides to call Vespasian, add a different note. He describes himself as older and confined to a wheelchair; his final letter is misogynist and unpleasant. The narrator says little about these elements, but they definitely suggest thoughts about the place of entitled patriarchy in 1970s Yugoslavia, a kind of reverse image of the author’s feminism. Chains of sexual abuse recur in the novel, where a character who has been raped or assaulted then abuses another character. All and all Dogs and Others offers a deep but never didactic depiction of the consequences of earlier neglect and mistreatment. Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva shows up twice in the narration—once à propos of her suicide by hanging, and once regarding her shaved head at a moment in her adolescence, a detail so specific that Jovanović must have been reading Tsvetaeva’s memoir of Maks Voloshin, or a biography citing it. Perhaps Tsvetaeva is chosen as a female author who had sexual adventures with men and women; the novel’s queer content is important and quite unusual for its time. Sexual encounters, often violent and undesired but sometimes tender, are described matter-of-factly, and the sex involves lots of bodily secretions, especially snot, spit, and semen. Snot and spit appear frequently throughout the book, keeping the many tears of its characters during unpleasant interactions from becoming sentimental. This novel challenges its translator to preserve its great stylistic variety, as colloquial language mixes with sophisticated vocabulary. The latter can result in moments of genuine poetry, such as (briefly) “. . .for they are hymenopterous, timeless beings” (29). The (anti-)heroine and narrator, though not much like Jovanović herself, works in a library and is comfortable with elegant words or references to high culture. The translation’s style overall can be a bit more formal than it needs to be, as if following the Serbian precisely rather than using contractions as in colloquial English. Cox, who translates from Albanian and Hungarian as well as Serbian, maintains the many comma splices and run-on sentences with sharply swerving topics. He successfully conveys the unusual quality of the original style; for this reviewer the style lingered for a while agreeably in her own thinking after every reading session. Cox provides a short informal “In Place of an Introduction,” with a helpful list of the characters whose names begin with the letter M: almost everyone else important enough to have a name, besides the main character, her brother Danilo and her grandmother Jaglika. This (non-)introduction would not put off a non-academic reader, though I wonder how many non-academic readers might care to read such a book, which rewards wider knowledge of literature and feminist scholarship. A more academic afterword and a bibliography of Jovanović’s substantial publications—most still untranslated—follow the text of the novel itself. Dogs and Others will interest anyone interested in LGBTQ literature and history, women’s writing, Serbian or Yugoslav literature, and literature in general, though best for readers who can perceive the complexity of its intentions.
Journal of Religion in Europe
Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a multi-ethnic village in Georgia, this paper shows how everyd... more Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a multi-ethnic village in Georgia, this paper shows how everyday peace is continuously reaffirmed in the tradition of inviting Muslim godparents to baptize Christian children. The Muslim godparents perform the roles of the chosen Christians while at the same time remaining Muslim. Hybrid local lay-religious practices around the ritual of christening are analyzed within a larger cultural semiotics that allows reciprocity of perspectives and, specifically in this context, enables the recruitment of non-Christians into the role of godparent. Religion serves as a ground for asserting peace.
Kadmos, 2013
Heroism is universal and culturally specific at the same time. The need for a hero seems to be un... more Heroism is universal and culturally specific at the same time. The need for a hero seems to be universal and is found in every known culture. Though the need is universal, it is also culturally specific: how the heroes act, how they look, what the primary instrument of their heroism is. The environment, history, and culture play a significant role in defining the heroic patterns in different cultures. How good, strong or intelligent they should be, what they should do, or give up, or sacrifice in order to be called heroes, and what the limits of heroism are: all these factors are culturally defined.
Nationalities Papers, 2017
Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a Georgian village and supplemented by a range of interviews a... more Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a Georgian village and supplemented by a range of interviews and observations from different parts of Georgia, this paper explores the creative presence of religion in public schools. In 2005 and in line with the strong secularization and modernization discourse, the Georgian parliament passed a new law on education, restricting the teaching of religion in public schools and separating religious organizations and public schools; nevertheless, mainstream Orthodox Christianity is widely practiced in schools. The paper aims to show how Georgians use religious spaces in secular institutions to practice their identity, to perform being “true Georgians.” At the same time, they are adopting a strong secularization and modernization discourse. By doing so they create a new space, a third space, marked by in-betweenness. The study uses the theoretical lens of Thirdspace for analyzing the hybridity, the in-betweenness of practices and attitudes inherent for ...
Europe-Asia Studies
Abstract This article explores everyday religiosity in post-Soviet Georgia based on multi-sited f... more Abstract This article explores everyday religiosity in post-Soviet Georgia based on multi-sited fieldwork and applying a genealogical approach. It looks at the use of tactics in negotiations between priests and believers. The article sees negotiations, prevalent in domestic religiosity and embodied practices, as a continuation of everyday Soviet tactics, particularly informal networks (Blat) and moonlighting (Khaltura). To understand how negotiations lead to greater control and an increase in religiosity, the article explores important features of the Georgian Orthodox Church and its specific development. The article concludes that tactics in this specific context strengthen the more powerful and reproduce dependency.
A Handbook to Classical Reception in Eastern and Central Europe, 2017
Tous droits réservés pour tous pays. La reproduction ou représentation de cet article, notamment ... more Tous droits réservés pour tous pays. La reproduction ou représentation de cet article, notamment par photocopie, n'est autorisée que dans les limites des conditions générales d'utilisation du site ou, le cas échéant, des conditions générales de la licence souscrite par votre établissement. Toute autre reproduction ou représentation, en tout ou partie, sous quelque forme et de quelque manière que ce soit, est interdite sauf accord préalable et écrit de l'éditeur, en dehors des cas prévus par la législation en vigueur en France. Il est précisé que son stockage dans une base de données est également interdit.
[Revue européenne des migrations internationales], Feb 9, 2023
Verdeckter Widerstand in demokratischen Gesellschaften. Eds. Ferdinand Sutterlüty, Almut Poppinga. Frankfurter Beiträge zur Soziologie und Sozialphilosophie, 2022
This paper analyzes the creative use of state regulations to counter the rapidly diminishing publ... more This paper analyzes the creative use of state regulations to counter the rapidly diminishing public spaces in Tbilisi, Georgia. People try to retake the urban space by creatively maneuvering different regulations. One such tactic is to plant trees of special value in areas marked as state property to avoid privatization of the place. The paper focuses on how the citizens of Tbilisi manipulate the laws governing the green spaces in the urban area and use gaps in different regulations for their ‘hidden transcript’ – to retake the public space by making it environmentally more valuable. By using these tactics, they exercise their right to the city. Green spaces have the potential of marking and reclaiming the territory, embody resistance, and control. The paper analyses how the relational agency of trees emerges. Relying on observation and in-depth interviews, the paper looks at “Greening” as a complex tactic. It particularly focuses on different purposes this practice serves, on the dynamic relationship between the main actors by looking at them beyond the established binaries of “strong” and „weak”, “human” and “non-human”. By using the genealogical approach, the paper also looks at how the tactics used against the Soviet state to maintain control over the land, still inform the tactics of urban resistance today.
Nationalities Papers, 2017
Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a Georgian village and supplemented by a range of interviews a... more Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a Georgian village and supplemented by a range of interviews and observations from different parts of Georgia, this paper explores the creative presence of religion in public schools. In 2005 and in line with the strong secularization and modernization discourse, the Georgian parliament passed a new law on education, restricting the teaching of religion in public schools and separating religious organizations and public schools; nevertheless, mainstream Orthodox Christianity is widely practiced in schools. The paper aims to show how Georgians use religious spaces in secular institutions to practice their identity, to perform being “true Georgians.” At the same time, they are adopting a strong secularization and modernization discourse. By doing so they create a new space, a third space, marked by in-betweenness. The study uses the theoretical lens of Thirdspace for analyzing the hybridity, the in-betweenness of practices and attitudes inherent for ...
Religious Education at Schools in Europe
Journal of Religion in Europe, 2021
Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a multi-ethnic village in Georgia, this paper shows how everyd... more Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a multi-ethnic village in Georgia, this paper shows how everyday peace is continuously reaffirmed in the tradition of inviting Muslim godparents to baptize Christian children. The Muslim godparents perform the roles of the chosen Christians while at the same time remaining Muslim. Hybrid local lay-religious practices around the ritual of christening are analyzed within a larger cultural semiotics that allows reciprocity of perspectives and, specifically in this context, enables the recruitment of non-Christians into the role of godparent. Religion serves as a ground for asserting peace.
Slavic Review
rescue him. Interspersed letters from an anonymous neighbor, whom Lidia decides to call Vespasian... more rescue him. Interspersed letters from an anonymous neighbor, whom Lidia decides to call Vespasian, add a different note. He describes himself as older and confined to a wheelchair; his final letter is misogynist and unpleasant. The narrator says little about these elements, but they definitely suggest thoughts about the place of entitled patriarchy in 1970s Yugoslavia, a kind of reverse image of the author’s feminism. Chains of sexual abuse recur in the novel, where a character who has been raped or assaulted then abuses another character. All and all Dogs and Others offers a deep but never didactic depiction of the consequences of earlier neglect and mistreatment. Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva shows up twice in the narration—once à propos of her suicide by hanging, and once regarding her shaved head at a moment in her adolescence, a detail so specific that Jovanović must have been reading Tsvetaeva’s memoir of Maks Voloshin, or a biography citing it. Perhaps Tsvetaeva is chosen as a female author who had sexual adventures with men and women; the novel’s queer content is important and quite unusual for its time. Sexual encounters, often violent and undesired but sometimes tender, are described matter-of-factly, and the sex involves lots of bodily secretions, especially snot, spit, and semen. Snot and spit appear frequently throughout the book, keeping the many tears of its characters during unpleasant interactions from becoming sentimental. This novel challenges its translator to preserve its great stylistic variety, as colloquial language mixes with sophisticated vocabulary. The latter can result in moments of genuine poetry, such as (briefly) “. . .for they are hymenopterous, timeless beings” (29). The (anti-)heroine and narrator, though not much like Jovanović herself, works in a library and is comfortable with elegant words or references to high culture. The translation’s style overall can be a bit more formal than it needs to be, as if following the Serbian precisely rather than using contractions as in colloquial English. Cox, who translates from Albanian and Hungarian as well as Serbian, maintains the many comma splices and run-on sentences with sharply swerving topics. He successfully conveys the unusual quality of the original style; for this reviewer the style lingered for a while agreeably in her own thinking after every reading session. Cox provides a short informal “In Place of an Introduction,” with a helpful list of the characters whose names begin with the letter M: almost everyone else important enough to have a name, besides the main character, her brother Danilo and her grandmother Jaglika. This (non-)introduction would not put off a non-academic reader, though I wonder how many non-academic readers might care to read such a book, which rewards wider knowledge of literature and feminist scholarship. A more academic afterword and a bibliography of Jovanović’s substantial publications—most still untranslated—follow the text of the novel itself. Dogs and Others will interest anyone interested in LGBTQ literature and history, women’s writing, Serbian or Yugoslav literature, and literature in general, though best for readers who can perceive the complexity of its intentions.
Journal of Religion in Europe
Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a multi-ethnic village in Georgia, this paper shows how everyd... more Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a multi-ethnic village in Georgia, this paper shows how everyday peace is continuously reaffirmed in the tradition of inviting Muslim godparents to baptize Christian children. The Muslim godparents perform the roles of the chosen Christians while at the same time remaining Muslim. Hybrid local lay-religious practices around the ritual of christening are analyzed within a larger cultural semiotics that allows reciprocity of perspectives and, specifically in this context, enables the recruitment of non-Christians into the role of godparent. Religion serves as a ground for asserting peace.
Kadmos, 2013
Heroism is universal and culturally specific at the same time. The need for a hero seems to be un... more Heroism is universal and culturally specific at the same time. The need for a hero seems to be universal and is found in every known culture. Though the need is universal, it is also culturally specific: how the heroes act, how they look, what the primary instrument of their heroism is. The environment, history, and culture play a significant role in defining the heroic patterns in different cultures. How good, strong or intelligent they should be, what they should do, or give up, or sacrifice in order to be called heroes, and what the limits of heroism are: all these factors are culturally defined.
Nationalities Papers, 2017
Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a Georgian village and supplemented by a range of interviews a... more Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a Georgian village and supplemented by a range of interviews and observations from different parts of Georgia, this paper explores the creative presence of religion in public schools. In 2005 and in line with the strong secularization and modernization discourse, the Georgian parliament passed a new law on education, restricting the teaching of religion in public schools and separating religious organizations and public schools; nevertheless, mainstream Orthodox Christianity is widely practiced in schools. The paper aims to show how Georgians use religious spaces in secular institutions to practice their identity, to perform being “true Georgians.” At the same time, they are adopting a strong secularization and modernization discourse. By doing so they create a new space, a third space, marked by in-betweenness. The study uses the theoretical lens of Thirdspace for analyzing the hybridity, the in-betweenness of practices and attitudes inherent for ...
Europe-Asia Studies
Abstract This article explores everyday religiosity in post-Soviet Georgia based on multi-sited f... more Abstract This article explores everyday religiosity in post-Soviet Georgia based on multi-sited fieldwork and applying a genealogical approach. It looks at the use of tactics in negotiations between priests and believers. The article sees negotiations, prevalent in domestic religiosity and embodied practices, as a continuation of everyday Soviet tactics, particularly informal networks (Blat) and moonlighting (Khaltura). To understand how negotiations lead to greater control and an increase in religiosity, the article explores important features of the Georgian Orthodox Church and its specific development. The article concludes that tactics in this specific context strengthen the more powerful and reproduce dependency.
A Handbook to Classical Reception in Eastern and Central Europe, 2017
Handbooks to Classical Reception This series offers comprehensive, thought-provoking surveys of t... more Handbooks to Classical Reception This series offers comprehensive, thought-provoking surveys of the reception of major classical authors and themes. These Handbooks will consist of approximately 30 newly written essays by leading scholars in the field, and will map the ways in which the ancient world has been viewed and adapted up to the present day. Essays are meant to be engaging, accessible, and scholarly pieces of writing, and are designed for an audience of advanced undergraduates, graduates, and scholars.