The friends so far, the foes so near? Ambiguities of Georgia’s othering

Conclusion

Georgia's identity is constructed in differentiation from and identification with external Others. In the following diagram, this ambiguous process of constructing the Other against the Self shall be recapped. At the same time, certain symmetries in the process get visualized, since we look at three forms of othering: 1) negative as well as 2) positive othering which is both targeted externally. As a by-product of the first, there also exists indirect othering directed inwards:

Looking at its immediate neighbors, Russia and Turkey respectively serve as important references for otherness to Georgian Westernness and otherness to Georgian Orthodoxy. This relatively straight forward relation gets blurred not only by a “spillover effect” of othering to either the secessionist entities South Ossetia and Abkhazia, but also by a transmission to its domestic Muslim minority in Adjara. In addition, the matter gets further complicated by certain characteristics of Russia and Turkey, which disrupt their solely negative othering. Since both countries represent elements of Orthodoxy (Russia) and Westernness (Turkey) as well, they function also as objects for identification and are thus positively othered. That leads to a rather complex relational net, where one and the same object can be perceived as a positive as well as a negative Other. This construction therefore stays incomplete and controversial. Since the same ambiguity is found in Georgia's main components of the Self as well, I have argued that the reason for this flexibility can be found precisely in the very construction of Georgian identity. Since Georgian Orthodoxy and Westernness are mutually exclusive in certain respects, despite all rhetoric and attempts, their equally strong existence in Georgian society cannot be a matter of fact, but rather a matter of permanent recalibration to either of the two extremes.

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