Ivane Tsereteli
PhD in History
Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University
Associate Professor
Tbilisi, Georgia
Ivane Tsereteli
PhD in History
Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University
Associate Professor
Tbilisi, Georgia
Hero or Antihero: 1990s Georgian Political Leaders in Modern Texts
Events that occurred in 1990s Georgia are connected with the names of politicians. Attitudes and perceptions of political leaders change both over time and in different social spaces. The goal of this paper is to see how the mechanism of remember-forgetting fits in the process of constructing the symbol of the hero-antihero and why the perception of political leaders alters with change in social and political contexts.
From the figures of the 1990s, we chose Jaba Ioseliani. A doctor of science with a criminal past was one of the leaders of the civil conflict, which resulted in the overthrow of the legitimate government. Jaba Ioseliani is buried in the Didube Pantheon, which is the second most important symbolic burial site. He became a symbol of the fragmented Georgian society of the 1990s, whose perception began during his own life and continues to this day by creating different kinds of narratives or other memory places. According to us, Jaba Ioseliani represents the alteration between hero and antihero images and the meanings assigned to them.
Keywords: Hero, antihero, Georgia, political leaders.