Ilia State University
PhD Student, Invited Lecturer
Cultural Studies, Art History
Master’s Degree
Tbilisi, Georgia
tea.talakvadze.1@iliauni.edu.ge
Abstract
“The Narrative of Silence in Georgian Literature of the 1990s” is a research topic that examines the function of silence, unspeakability, and fragmented narration within the context of post-Soviet Georgian literature. The 1990s represented a period of profound political, social, and cultural transformation in Georgia, marked by civil war, economic collapse, identity crises, and collective trauma. These processes significantly influenced literary production, where silence emerged not merely as an emotional condition, but also as a narrative and aesthetic strategy. The study is based on the theoretical frameworks of cultural memory, trauma theory, and post-Soviet narrative studies. Particular attention is devoted to the ways historical trauma is reflected in the communication of characters, internal monologues, and the fragmented structure of literary texts. Silence frequently signifies not the absence of information, but rather an experience that resists complete verbalization. In this sense, silence becomes a form of expressing traumatic memory within the text. The research analyzes several important works of Georgian prose from the 1990s, in which characters exist within conditions of social alienation, emotional isolation, and moral disorientation. In these texts, silence reflects both individual and collective memory, creating a space in which post-Soviet reality is perceived as a permanent state of transition and instability. The study demonstrates that silence in Georgian literature of the 1990s functions not only as a thematic element, but also as an essential mechanism of narrative construction through which writers convey the crisis of the era, collective trauma, and the ongoing search for identity.
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