Ilia State University
Associate Professor
Tbilisi/Georgia
salome.pataridze@iliauni.edu.ge
Abstract
Since the sociocultural framework is a determining factor in the construction and reconstruction of memory and recollection, and since women’s and men’s life experiences and self-perceptions differ, the stories they tell about themselves reflect these differences. Fivush and Buckner propose the hypothesis that women are more relationship-oriented and therefore perceive themselves as situated within a rich network of interpersonal connections, presenting themselves as socially and emotionally intertwined with those around them. Men, by contrast, are generally regarded as more autonomous in their orientation: they imagine themselves as independent of others and focus more strongly on individual goals and achievements.
These differences are often assumed to be rooted in formative developmental experiences. Women typically narrate life stories centred on people and relationships, as well as on their own emotions and those of others. Men’s narratives tend to place greater emphasis on individual achievements and are less likely to incorporate other people or emotional experience into the story. Men and women thus possess fundamentally different orientations toward the world and, as a result, construct their life stories around different aspects of experience and identity.
The aim of the present study is to identify and analyse the characteristics and defining features of a women’s culture of remembrance on the basis of Georgian women’s narratives and to determine their significance in the formation of twentieth-century collective memory. The research corpus includes works by Naira Gelashvili, Zaira Arsenishvili, and Nutsa Ghoghoberidze; films by Lana Ghoghoberidze; and the collection Portraits of the Prisoners of ALZHIR: From the History of Stalinism.
The selection of these research materials is determined by the following considerations:
• Since women’s narratives have not been adequately studied within memory studies, the research may bring suppressed and culturally marginalised counter-memories into public discourse and establish their significance and function within the culture of memory.
• Since identity is formed through the stories individuals tell about themselves, the study of images of the past and their interpretations in women’s narratives reveals how individual and collective identities were transformed and constructed, as well as what concepts of identity women authors are able to imagine and realise within social reality.
• Since memories are irreplaceable and unique, one person’s recollections cannot be equated with those of another. This means that an individual’s self-image is, to a certain extent, the result of the constructive capacity of memory.
The theoretical framework of the study draws on Jan Assmann’s concepts of “I” and “we” identity, Marilyn Chandler McEntyre’s notion of the “writing cure,” Aleida Assmann’s forms of memory stabilisation, and the concept of intermediality.
Keywords: remembrance; collective memory; forgetting; politics of memory; women’s culture.