Proceedings of the 16th International Conference on Humanities, Psychology and Social Sciences
Year: 2024
DOI:
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Moral Landmarks and Taboo in Georgian literature
Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University
ABSTRACT:
In modern reality, the Soviet narrative is being actively researched, while the period when the imperialist rule was coming to an end is being actively discussed. In the age of freedom or the so-called “slavery”, the purpose of literature is relevant to become a dictate of those values that are often forgotten in a conformist society when national identity is being formed. And the identity of a nation entirely depends on the narratives found in its collective memory. The democratic reality, the free space, the open borders showed that the topics that were taboo in the totalitarian era a few decades ago – honor, conscience, faith, morality – were presented by the literature of the 70s and 80s through allegoricality and parables. However, taboo historical traumas have only been discussed openly since the end of the 20th century. The research topic also refers to the research of the 70-80s and seeks answers to the following questions: How are taboo topics represented in the Georgian literary reality of this period against the background of the search for identity; What is the concept of taboo in relation to cultural heritage, in the context of totalitarianism; Awaiting the transitional period, does literature return to the national narrative in terms of modernism; Defining cultural narratives based on the nation’s collective memory; On the basis of cultural identity, how are the boundaries of national identity marked in a conformist society; Why literature needed an allegorical-parable description of moral landmarks in the conditions of slow censorship.
keywords: Cultural narratives, national identity, taboo, totalitarizm