_tan — Giorgi, many thanks for agreeing to the interview.
GM — Thank you for your interest.
_tan — Can an act of remembrance be neutral and unbound by certain political contexts, given that memory is often instrumentalized to achieve political ends? In our age, it is common for individuals to be selective about what they recollect, and to present these past events to their benefit. Can we then speak of recollection as a standalone phenomenon?
GM — In terms of recollection in a political context, it is typical for certain individuals to fabricate particular memories, which is a conscious act of deception. It is unlikely that anything else occurs at this level other than the manipulation of one’s own memory. I find it far more interesting when a subject recollects a past event in such a way that no other alternative exists in their mind. In such cases, one is certain that their recollection of the event and the event itself are identical. What makes this especially interesting is that one can hardly speak of a bias and lack of objectivity in these kinds of scenarios. It is merely a state of affairs, a fact, the content of which is determined by the unconscious mind (we are already in a position to make reference to this psychoanalytic concept). The subject is under the impression that their act of recollection brings forth events as they took place in the past, whereas what manifests instead are impressions. These recollections expand: they gain structure through narrative. One could say that a story emerges, which inevitably contains a portion of truth. Perhaps we should rather say that these recollections are true; however, we are not dealing here with historical truth, but rather psychological truth. This kind of psychological truth is far more interesting than a conscious act of lying or fabrication of historical facts.
If you allow me to expand the domain of our discussion, one could say that all we have elaborated thus far is essentially fuel for effective forms of manipulation. Consider the YouTube programme called ‘The Birth of Georgia’; it often features political figures who speak about events which took place during the nineties [in Georgia]. I also remember events these political figures try to retell, and today it is possible to compare their narratives with historical narratives through specific sources. These past occurrences are not confined to the realm of subjective impressions of these political figures; in some sense, these events constitute the fabric of a collective form of knowledge. By comparison, it becomes clear that most of the narratives these figures communicate are, in fact, fabricated. These fabricated narratives emerge to justify certain political ends.
We should take care to keep these two phenomena separate: on the one hand, a conscious act of deception in the service of a political goal; on the other, remembrance of past events in such a way that we are convinced of their infallibility. What occurs in our psyche seems far more important, and far more stable to us than that which actually took place. One could say that all fictional worlds consist entirely of such impressions and “false” memories.
_tan — Thank you for your stimulating reflection. Given that you mentioned authoritarian regimes and techniques of manipulating memory, this bridges to our next question. What conceptual resources can we strategically mobilize from philosophers and critical thinkers to help us combat the ways authoritarian regimes distort temporality, given that new forms of authoritarianism are emerging?
GM — It is fascinating to observe how every major political event alters our systems of chronological reckoning; they alter the existing timeline itself. Let us recall certain historical facts, insofar as they have been passed down through the ages. To begin with, we may consider the first significant reform of the calendar, which was initiated by Julius Caesar, who baptized the month of July in his own name. Cicero responded by saying, “Tomorrow begins the spring equinox, if by decree of Caesar!” On the one hand, it is hubris to think oneself capable of changing the course of time, but it is more important that every founding of a new political system alters how time is reckoned; the past is thus annulled, and one begins anew. A case closer to our own time is that of the French Revolution, which also changed how we keep a calendar. The French Revolution ushered in a new epoch, erasing all that came before. The Soviet Union replicated this act through the October Revolution. I fondly recall the tear-off calendar that hung on the wall as a remnant of my childhood. I adored it, for each new page contained an interesting bit of information on the back side. Along with the date, this calendar also recounted the amount of days that had passed since the October revolution.
Now I realize that something of the utmost importance has slipped my mind. After mentioning Julius Caesar, I forgot to mention the advent of Christianity. Christianity effectively nullified everything that came before it and began recording history from Christ’s date of birth. In itself, the birth of Christ is more of a mythological event, yet it signifies that all events which took place prior are of lesser or no significance; history begins with the birth of Christ. Many such time-altering events mark history. Certainly, in the Biblical tradition, history begins with creation, and similar narratives appear throughout the Middle Ages.
Now, let us turn to authoritarian regimes and their means of manipulating temporality. I believe that these manipulative techniques are the vestiges of modernity; they seem to work less effectively in our current “postmodern” condition. Regardless, contemporary right-wing radicalism does not shy away from references to a past “golden age” or a paradise lost. Such reference appears most prominently in Trump’s famous slogan, “Make America Great Again.” To which period in history does this ‘again’ belong? Of which ‘again’ do we speak here? Trump’s slogan is of course deeply connected to the famous mythological formula: in illo tempore, meaning “in those primordial times.” The Georgian counterpart to this expression may be: “იყო და არა იყო რა” [once upon a time]. The central point is that at a certain moment in the distant past an event of the utmost significance took place; whether this event actually took place or not is of little interest. What matters is that history begins at that particular juncture; what came before is insignificant.
The past that these radical ring-wing groups keep referring to is not a real past. It is simply a form of mythological consciousness invading our present age, an age in which it no longer has any power. It does not work because we live in a new age, in which suspicion and skepticism toward this kind of mythological consciousness are strongly felt.
The second point I want to make is that politicians often instrumentalize history maliciously. This is, of course, nothing new; using historical narratives to support one’s arguments is a well-established strategy. For example, Stalin’s epoch invoked the so-called “historical lands” as a form of political argumentation. However, this tendency itself was conceived in the nineteenth century. It then becomes a political argument that Turkish territories in fact belong to the Soviet Union, given that these territories were taken from Georgia or Armenia, however many centuries ago. But history changes, does it not? We cannot claim that a territory belongs to a certain group or state on the grounds that this territory once belonged to the aforementioned group or state. These kinds of arguments rest on mystification and a deliberate misreading of historical realities. What is being mobilized here is not the past, but an argument that justifies political interventionism. In accordance with Stalin’s formula, appropriated by Vladimir Putin, Ukraine never existed as a sovereign entity; Ukrainian land is Russian land through and through; it is the Kyivan Rus. This is nothing but a misconstrued and ideologically motivated historical narrative. Furthermore, to which epoch does the aforementioned narrative make reference? Let us assume that the Kyivan Rus stands in some form of continuity with the modern state of Russia; there is at least a ten-century gap between these two entities, if not more. To claim that one has a right to territorial disputes regarding some land, given that this land belonged to them more than ten centuries ago, is nothing short of absurdity. We may ask: what, then, is the connection between modern Russia and the Kyivan Rus? The answer is that there is none. Every modern nation or state results from endless synthetic and diffusional processes, whether cultural, ethnic, anthropological, or otherwise. All these processes and elements we have dealt with thus far can be used effectively to justify expansionist, interventionist, or imperialist ends.
_tan — You touched upon several fundamental concepts: myths, acts of mystification, and narratives. It seems that being selective about what we choose to remember or forget contributes to the formation of our identity. The mechanism I have just outlined is always present in some form, yet it is rarely highlighted or made explicit. Are there any countermeasures? Perhaps there exists a resource which would allow us to at least thematize this kind of problem as a problem?
GM — The countermeasures of which you speak have always existed, to greater or lesser extent. I am referring to narrow intellectual circles, whose efficacy has been significantly diminishing in our present age. In my opinion, intellectuals exerted influence over public opinion until the 1960s, perhaps the 70s at the latest. We now live in a drastically different time, one in which intellectuals hold little to no authority in public discourse. The power and authority lie in the hands of transnational corporations, which shape our political and social realities. To be more precise, the so-called “big capital” sets the rules for the game.
We must acknowledge that certain political agents produce all forms of collective memory, and that these collective memories have little to do with actual memory or even actual history. Collective memory refers to a past articulated by certain intellectuals and political entities; it projects our present predicament into a non-existent historical past. Traces of this kind of projection appear in antiquity and the Middle Ages, but they take on a new meaning in modernity with the advent of the French Revolution. All of this has deep affinities with nationalism; as nations emerge, they begin to weave the fabric of their own narrative identity. The goal of such nation-states is not to conduct a historical investigation to excavate a plausible image of the past, but rather to shape their nation’s collective memory on which collective identity can subsequently be founded.
The case of Georgia is of special interest here, given that it emerged as a nation in the middle of the nineteenth century (1860’s). After the annexation of Georgia in 1801 by the Russian Empire, Georgia practically ceased to exist. Meaning there was no state one could refer to as the Georgian state, and its fragments were absorbed into different parts of the Russian Empire. A new generation had to come along to reinvent Georgian sovereignty and cultural identity. This new generation introduced a number of key concepts, including მამული (fatherland) and სამშობლო (homeland). All of these notions came into fruition in the nineteenth century; they are old words, the renewed meaning of which was modeled on French thought. This newly formed identity then becomes fused with a Soviet, state generated form of collective memory.
The cultural and historical memory that was created in the Soviet period is one that Georgia carries to this very day. It is sometimes difficult to communicate this to the wider public, but the narratives and conceptual schemas that underpin modern Georgian society are products of the twentieth century. They do not stand in continuity with a historical tradition dating back centuries.
_tan — The question of temporality becomes central to what you have said thus far. In philosophy, we encounter a distinction between cosmological and phenomenological temporalities. Cosmological time is measured through clocks, calendars, and dates, whilst phenomenological time is more concerned with our lived experience. Thinkers such as Reinhart Koselleck and Carl Schmitt draw on political theology in order to illuminate the eschatological nature of our subjective experience of time. What is the relevance of political theology for understanding our current political predicament in the context of temporality?
GM — Political theology is characterized by intentionality, and if we take Schmitt as our point of departure, we could say that it is eschatological. Meaning that within the politico-theological framework, history flows in a particular direction. This eschatological trait in politico-theological frameworks derives from Judaeo-Christian intentionalism. Schmitt is of central importance here; if one were to capture his central thesis in a single phrase, it would be this: the coming of the Antichrist is inevitable, but there exists a force that holds it back. Schmitt draws on the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, attributed to the Apostle Paul; this letter contains a famous passage about restraining forces that keep lawlessness at bay. Lawlessness is one of Schmitt’s central concepts and aligns well with his juristic sensibilities.
The concept of lawlessness has a double meaning in Schmitt’s framework: on the one hand, it signifies a state in which a subject exists outside the law; on the other, it is deeply connected to a more theological idea of godlessness. Here we see a point of convergence between the religious law in the Hebrew tradition and Graeco-Roman law. At this juncture it is appropriate to introduce another central notion, that of the katechon, the restrainer. The katechon has the power to delay the arrival of the Antichrist, and it can do so for an indefinite amount of time. As long as the katechon is present, lawlessness will not ensue. Schmitt makes his case while drawing heavily on early Christian writers, and he claims that this force of the katechon is the empire.
As he puts it in one of his later interviews: “As long as the empire exists…” In the spirit of universalism, the empire manifests itself as the Catholic church. Despite his dark past, Schmitt remains devoutly universalist. It is for this reason that the universalist religion of Catholicism is of far greater significance to Schmitt than the substantive questions of Christian theology itself.
How can we begin to grasp this notion of lawlessness, which the katechon serves to prevent? It is the empire, insofar as it is the expression of the katechon, that holds back the lawlessness of nationalism and separatism, because these phenomena stand in direct opposition to the integrity of the empire. Schmitt unapologetically defended empires even in the aftermath of the collapse and destruction of the Third Reich. Instead of changing his position, Schmitt looked for new forces, a new katechon that had the power to prevent the coming of the antichrist.
Notwithstanding Schmitt’s right-wing, conservative views, he enjoys a high degree of popularity amongst left-wing theorists, including political scientists and philosophers. Partly because, in times of political crisis, the relevance of political theology resurfaces in an archetypal manner. In the twenty-first century, this archetypal resurfacing becomes visible when George W. Bush begins to evoke God in his rhetoric following the attacks of 9/11. Bush revived a form of political theology through his conviction that whilst bombing Afghanistan and Iraq, he was in fact carrying out God’s will.
Another interesting case is the COVID-19 pandemic, the gravest of crises, which restored the relevance of Schmitt’s notion of the state of emergency. The root of the German *Ausnahmezustand *stands for, on the one hand, Zustand, meaning “state” or “condition”, and Ausnahme, meaning both “emergency” and “exception.” The state of exception lies outside the norm, yet it unveils something regarding an implicit order. The state of exception opens up the possibility for the sovereign to return everything to its natural rhythm, yet what reveals this natural state is, in fact, the state of exception itself. I would argue that Schmitt’s concept of the state of emergency goes beyond the framework of legal philosophy and has deep metaphysical implications; this concept cannot be contained within the frameworks of political theory and law. It is undoubtedly a metaphysical concept, composed of the tension between the normative order and the disintegration of that very order.
I am convinced that contemporary forms of authoritarianism (whether they be Russia, Trump’s America, or Erdogan’s Ottoman fantasies) are quite outdated in their use of political theology. No matter how strongly Putin and his supporters proclaim that their actions serve some higher purpose, it will never be sufficiently convincing for modern society. I believe it is crucial to address our inability to experience political theology. Why is it that these politico-theological concepts no longer exercise their former power over contemporary societies?
_tan — Thank you for a rich and nuanced response. If I recall correctly, it is Jacob Burckhardt who claims that power is in itself evil. We encounter a similar expression in the early writings of Paul Ricœur, who replaced the word power with the word state. What are your thoughts on the intrinsically evil nature that all power structures carry within themselves? Is it possible to conceive of power structures and institutions without attributing negative connotations to them?
GM — Yes, Burckhardt makes this remark in his lectures (“Reflections on History”), and it appears in various different formulations throughout his works. The phrase itself sparked a lot of controversy, and Schmitt was the one who sounded the alarm. According to Schmitt, Burckhardt’s thought opens the door to anarchy, against which we must guard ourselves at all costs. If we replace the notion of power with that of the state, we arrive at Thomas Hobbes, the first major theorist of the modern era. Hobbes argues that individuals voluntarily sacrifice certain freedoms to procure security and other means of survival. In his autobiographical writings, he famously remarks that he was born a twin to fear. Here Hobbes is referring to the fear of chaos and instability. In order to prevent such disorder from ensuing, one must erect a kind of mechanical monster, the Leviathan as Hobbes calls it, which is endowed with the task of protection. Yet the Leviathan must also punish, restrict, and enforce the law through violence. The alternative is a state of lawlessness and a *bellum omnium contra omnes *(a war of all against all).
We find a similar framework, albeit less programmatic and more descriptive, in Freud’s work. For Freud, the process of, shall we say, “humanization” is catalyzed by the introduction of prohibitions. Correspondingly, culture stands in contradistinction to freedom. The restriction of freedom and introduction of prohibitions are the cornerstones of what we today call culture. The individual arises out of a confrontation with this set of norms and prohibitions… I pause here as I do not wish to attribute too much grandiosity to the individual. Yet it must be stressed that individual freedom is the act of rebellion against the normative background of one’s culture; those who transgress this boundary become the exception, they become the sovereign.
Whilst Georges Bataille’s nominal conception of sovereignty stands in opposition to sovereignty’s political dimension, I still hold that the frameworks of Bataille and Schmitt bear many resemblances towards one another. For Bataille, sovereignty becomes transgressive when the rules are broken. It is not an absolute sovereignty, but rather something that can only be realized at the individual level.
While this may not fit as a direct analogy, Arundhati Roy’s words come to mind: she states that today we, the intellectual class, have lost our freedom of expression and the power of critique. We have lost it as we depend too much on grants, salaries, and our employers. If we do not abide by the rules of society and state outright that a Genocide is taking place in Gaza, we may not get the funding or grant to pursue any of our academic projects. Therefore, we have no choice but to forsake our freedom of expression in order to receive funding, and even to simply subsist. The bar has shifted dramatically from the early twentieth century, when freedom of expression was much more protected and cherished, to our time; today, practically all academics and non-academics alike are on the lookout to procure some kind of advantage or favorability.
_tan — I would be interested to hear your views on the liberatory potential of art. In what ways can art serve as a politically viable tool? Schmitt’s book ‘Political Romanticism’ sheds important light on the dangers of aestheticizing political discourse and political action. Theodor Adorno famously defended the thesis that art’s goal is to disturb the society in which it exists by exposing the nightmare this society actively partakes in daily. What is the significance of art in the context of politics?
GM — When discussing the de-aesthetization of art, the first person that comes to mind is Walter Benjamin. Schmitt’s influence is strongly felt in Benjamin’s writings, whilst Adorno is steeped in Benjamin’s thought. As the editor and chief of Benjamin’s oeuvre, Adorno purposefully withheld some of Benjamin’s writings from the public eye, including the correspondence between Benjamin and Schmitt. These letters were later published by Jacob Taubes, who reproached Adorno for fabricating the image of Benjamin in the public imagination. Here the political context is quite revealing: Schmitt, who was a member of the Nazi Party, and Benjamin, who was persecuted by the Nazi’s because of his Jewish ancestry. Given the natural antagonism between these two figures, the image of Benjamin would suffer if the correspondence between these two ever saw the light of day.
In Benjamin’s Theses on the Philosophy of History, we find numerous allusions to and quotations from Schmitt’s Political Theology, which are linked to the problem of the state of emergency. The state of emergency was in fact that state in which Benjamin was forced to exist during the last years of his life.
Now, to approach the substance of your question: highlighting the value of art as a form of aesthetic education is one of the tasks that the modern era set before itself. Of course, in ideocratic states, art enjoys no such freedom; however, state art still exists. Here we run across an interesting boundary: state art cannot be free; it serves to secure the state’s interests through propaganda. Let us once again compare the theatrics of the Stalinist era with the odious and grotesque figures of Vladimir Putin. There was great art back then [in Stalinist Russia]; even in that propagandistic environment, great art emerged. The bleak and totalitarian landscape of the Soviet Union still offered potential for a kind of artistic retaliation. Let us recall the formula I have articulated at various points in this interview: for a transgression to become actualized, a prohibition must first be in place; the one serves as the condition of possibility for the other. That is to say, it is precisely in the age of totalitarianism, in the Soviet Union, that we see art of staggering depths emerge.
Ideological art should not be belittled either. Soviet monumentalism does little to move me emotionally, and we know it comes with certain stock formulas, but those formulas were executed at an extremely high level. Figures such as Shostakovich and Eisenstein undertook ideological artistic projects; these are absolute giants of the art world. Again and again, the question is who carries out the work and in what manner.
It is also important to note figures such as Bulgakov, Pasternak, and especially Platonov. Platonov was a genius of ungraspable depths, an individual persecuted in the most extreme ways and who practically died through malnourishment. Needless to say, these great men and women did not come into being ex nihilo; these artists were saturated in the cultural atmosphere of their time. There are, of course, individuals who focus all their efforts on adapting to the repressive system in which they exist; what drives them is a fear of persecution and violence. But these repressive structures are at the same time the conditions of possibility for transgression, as if the opportunity presented itself served up on a silver platter. Conversely, transgression becomes increasingly difficult in societies free from such tyrannical power structures. In such circumstances, one carves out an act of rebellion vis-à-vis the rules imposed on them by bourgeois society.
So to your question I answer: yes, of course art is painful. That which soothes us and caresses us is something else; it is a genre that Adorno detested with his entire being, and which he never lived to see come into its full fruition. In* Dialectic of Enlightenment*, Adorno refers to the radio; television was not yet the mass product it is today. Our age complicates matters significantly, with the advent of TikTok and incessant scrolling. Amongst the suffocating mechanisms of totalitarian states, new kinds of heroes are born. When a society is beaten down and trampled upon by a repressive ruler, it develops an appetite for protest and even martyrdom. Here it is fitting to evoke the ancient Greek concept of kairos. It refers to circumstances that enable a person to commit a self-sacrificial act and be baptized in the hallway of fallen heroes.
However, in non-repressive and free societies, things are quite different. It is no longer so obvious that one is battling an evil monster in the guise of the state. Instead, new forms of moral decay begin to manifest: commerce, the accumulation of capital, and corruption on an unimaginable scale. Arundhati Roy rightly argues that these environments do not prompt people to protest, they are instead ideal grounds for fostering competition. Instrumental reason begins to reign supreme, and people are no longer treated as ends in themselves but only as means. Furthermore, a certain kind of language begins to predominate, in which terms such as “selling oneself” and “making smart investments” become standard currency. Yet the most paradoxical thing of all is that the two groups of people most successful at adjusting to these types of societies are none other than intellectuals and artists.
_tan — Given that human beings always exist in a nexus of political, cultural, and institutional forces that shape their identities, what room is there for either individual or collective forms of responsibility?
GM — [pause] … As you can see, this is not an easy question to answer; we stumble into a kind of philosophical paradox. It is certainly true that we are, to a large extent, ‘subjectivized ’, to borrow a term from Louis Althusser and Michel Foucault. Our consciousness is shaped by forces entirely outside of our control; how then can we secure freedom of choice or responsibility? A productive and original framework for approaching this kind of problem can be found in the writings of Merab Mamardashvili, a thinker of the late Soviet period. One hallmark of his philosophy is the importance he attributes to the labour of the self. In Mamardashvili’s anthropological vision, the human being is not a readily available state of affairs; rather, the struggle to become human consists in rethinking one’s moral landscape and willingly bearing the burden of responsibility. If we are to make informed decisions, we must become aware of the manifold processes that contribute to our subjectivization, and create freely and spontaneously in spite of them.
With reference to the previous question regarding art, to be an artist is to trespass rules and to introduce elements of chaos. Because artists break from the social norms of their time, the societies in which they exist find them absolutely insufferable. We must be careful, however, not to turn what I have said thus far into a kind of mechanical formula or recipe. Artists most often break away from existing norms to preserve their own being. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, we could say it is a line of flight; a conscious act of self-destruction which is far removed from naive stubbornness. It is a choice for which one pays the highest price. All notions of individuality presuppose a society against which the individual must stand in order to identify themselves as such.
We may refer to Mamardashvili’s notion of wonder, which he draws on from Aristotle. Wonder refers to the experience of awe in the face of a morally sound character; this is because we live in a world where lying, hypocrisy, and greed are quite prevalent. It is possible to experience this kind of wonder when presented with the figure of Jean Genet, whom Sartre referred to as “Saint-Genet.” Genet was a citizen of no community; he opposed the liberal- democratic values with which he grew up in the West, and supported the Algerian anti-colonial struggle, the people of Palestine, as well as the Black Panthers. Genet knew his actions would excommunicate him from virtually all Western communities, but he chose to stand by his principles.
Today we live in a culture that is motivated to quell all thirst for rebelliousness, and to “domesticate” people into obedience. Due to external pressures exerted on intellectuals, these intellectuals are unwilling to speak out against the tragedy that is taking place in Gaza. Here we may once again refer to the words of Arundhati Roy, who claims that as long as intellectuals depend on grants and funding for their livelihood, it is not possible for them to speak out against important matters earnestly. When an individual speaks their mind while knowing there might be institutional backlash, they demonstrate what responsibility and the labour of the self truly look like.
_tan — It seems that freedom has a dual character: how it is actualized in everyday life and how it is conceived metaphysically on a more abstract level. Our preconceptions of freedom are shaped by films and books, yet a lack of freedom can bring an individual to the point of anguish. When we strive for freedom, we do not fully understand what we are seeking, but we are often convinced it is worth pursuing. Perhaps this question has been asked many times, but it would be valuable to hear your perspective: what does it mean for freedom to be so intimate and elusive at the same time? And how do human beings manage to strive after something which they do not understand?
GM — Let me begin by repeating that the notion of freedom is tightly interwoven with a broader modernist project, especially with the aforementioned égalité, fraternité, liberté. We are discussing a notion of political freedom expressed through the concept of liberté (liberation). In philosophy, we also speak of ‘negative freedom,’ which means freedom from something. In juxtaposition with the latter, freedom also carries in itself a more violent meaning, which has to do with subjugation and repression of the weak by the strong. In today’s world, positive freedom can only be actualized by egotistical and narcissistic billionaires (and even trillionaires), who have the power to impose their will onto others in the name of freedom. This binary concept of freedom no longer suits the current political and socio- economic landscape. Contemporary society often fetishises freedom, and this fetishisation begins to take on cynical connotations; fetishisation is today inevitable due to our subjectivised predicament.
We often hear the rhetoric of freedom being the highest attainable good, it brings to mind Franz Kafka’s story A Report to an Academy. This story features an ape that becomes sufficiently “advanced” to communicate complex ideas to human beings, and defends the view that humanity should not overvalue freedom. Because of the socio-economic environment we find ourselves in today, it becomes increasingly difficult to speak meaningfully about freedom. Individuals such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and other oligarchs can impose their ideas about freedom onto others through political and economic power, but the vast majority of people have no say in these matters. There is yet another portion of society that is convinced they have the right idea of freedom, yet they are so indoctrinated with cheap, meaningless labels that for them freedom essentially amounts to some form of selfishness or egotism. Because we exist in an oligarchical world order, egotism is increasingly becoming the main object of fetishism. The interests of seven and a half or eight billion people do not count one iota in comparison to the tyrannical will of the oligarchs.
To understand our current predicament, we must grasp the main philosophical tenets of neoliberalism. First, neoliberalism is the standardization of an egotistical attitude toward the world, in which the other is seen as a competitor to be trampled and swallowed alive.
In the past, collective goals guided the hopes and behaviours of organized human society, whereas today humanity is no longer driven by such regulative ideas. In this regard, Georgia’s example is quite striking. The individuals who support the existing Neo-liberal framework with the greatest zest are those who are Neo-liberalism’s greatest victims. It is difficult to understand why the people of Georgia admire and even love the elite classes of society because of whom they were not only born into poverty, but also grew up in poverty and, in most cases, remain there for the entirety of their lives. This predicament is not unique to Georgia; however, what is distinct about the Georgian case is that people resent their circumstances so much that they choose to identify with those they see as successful. This facilitates the illusion that if a person works sufficiently hard to achieve their goals, they too will become a member of this winning class.
I don’t intend to frame the problem of freedom in dialectical terms. However, I truly believe freedom is only achievable in circumstances that seek to thwart it. It is difficult to imagine what freedom looks like in an environment relatively free of authoritarian and oppressive mechanisms. Such an environment usually fosters inflated personalities. Furthermore, with any cause for moral outrage, the condition of possibility for freedom is lost. If we consider the example of human sexuality, it is not in itself a value-laden phenomenon. Contemporary Georgian society often judges moral issues with an implicit set of normative criteria: traditional (meaning positive) and non- traditional (meaning negative). It remains to be seen which so-called Georgian values are traditional and which are not, but for now, let us stick to these mythologized narratives about Georgia’s moral landscape. We cannot identify something as a value based on whether it is a norm or a transgression of that norm; values arise when a society imposes certain restrictions, and certain members of that society act in spite of them.
To illuminate the phenomenon of restrictions and transgressions further, we refer to Jacques Lacan. In Lacan’s framework, there exists the notion of “father-version” (père-version/perversion). Put simply, it means that the father figure forbids you to do something, but you do it anyway, and that is how you ground your identity. Lacan stresses that no perverse phenomenon can manifest without its repressive counterpart.
The framework presented above helps us think through the gap between normative and descriptive states of affairs. A physical or biological occurrence that holds no normative value would gain such value if it carries in itself this element of perversion. The act itself must, by definition, be misaligned with the social order in which it takes place. Today, these kinds of acts are often reactionary, which is why they are so difficult to discern. Repression plays an important role in forming an individual’s inner world, and whilst this world may be vain and empty in itself, it still holds the potential to facilitate bold and creative action.
_tan — It would be interesting to touch on the philosophical dimension of language, and perhaps we could approach it in two separate but related ways. The first concerns the efficacy of the Georgian language (and of language in general) for philosophical reflection. Heidegger famously defended the thesis that philosophy can only be practised in German and Ancient Greek; today, most would view this framework as highly problematic. Is there such a thing as a philosophically ripe language, and if so, how can Georgian ever become one?
My second question concerns language as it appears in our lived experiences, and especially post-colonial contexts. Frantz Fanon saw language as having liberatory potential, if mobilized appropriately. Today we often see cases in Georgia where local people refuse to speak Russian, which aligns somewhat with Fanon’s thesis. In the case of Georgia, what is the relevance of language in the context of liberation from its colonial heritage?
GM — That is quite a vast question. Not so many Georgian people speak Russian nowadays to begin with; the inertia of the Soviet era has now been replaced by something else, or so it seems. In 2014, when I returned to Tbilisi, the first thing that struck me was the muddled English. By this I refer to the employment of English words when these are clearly not necessary, for equivalents are available in Georgian. This is a colonial symptom: on the one hand, I try to escape my colonial past and deny it; on the other hand, I am almost ashamed to speak fluent, pure Georgian, and I clutter the language needlessly.
I call these “unprocessed words”: things people cannot pin down or articulate in Georgian, which infiltrate as a foreign body. Then again, the Georgian language is itself significantly constituted of foreign borrowings: Iranian loanwords, and Armenian, Arabic, Turkish, Latin, Greek and, later, Russian words. And now, English has been incorporated into the list. This process can also be perceived as a search for identity. For instance, during the Soviet Union, Georgians used to speak Russian among themselves; by doing so, they emphasized that they belonged to the elite. Oddly enough, hardly anyone spoke decent Russian, but being so young, I thought that was just how things were supposed to sound.
This brings me back to the first part of your question: how special are the Greek and German languages? Obviously, a similar German reception began as early as with Herder, at the end of the 18th century, and the idea that they stood close to the ancient Greeks was later taken up by the German Romantics as well. This idea was reserved for a very select few who wielded immense influence on the culture of their time.
Alternatively, some languages represent hubs for active intellectual work within specific fields. Thus, they come to generate a broader vocabulary and more untranslatable terms. That is precisely how we use Greek, Latin, German, or French words today.
Another point deserves our attention here. As an author writing in Georgian, you have to consider that there might not be a local audience engaged with these topics. You, perhaps, wish to reach a larger audience… but thinkers such as Žižek write in English, after all, and not in Slovene. Slovenia is a nation of only two million people; its linguistic reach is rather limited. Hence, if Žižek had written exclusively in Slovene, we probably would not even have known who he is. On top of that, English holds hegemony in the international arena. Authors are increasingly compelled to publish in English, regardless of whether their subject matter endures translation. Such a dynamic ultimately degrades philosophy, which must transform its nature to squeeze into a narrow English template.
I remember how my teachers’ generation of German philosophers despised this global Anglicization, and their outrage persists. Viewed this way, even the German language has been colonized by English. Though in a postcolonial world, regarding Germany as colonized sounds cynical, I merely want to highlight the linguistic parallel.
Language also evolves from within, as an artificial literary standard and as its natural dialects or sociolects. While a dialect is often the most natural form of expression, it often remains subordinate to the literary norm. Who shall understand me if I write in dialect? Pier Paolo Pasolini, for instance, wrote his debut poetry collection in Friulian, making it completely inaccessible to most Italians.
The same question can be asked within the context of the Georgian language: which is the natural language - the literary language, or the regional one? I do not find it easy to adapt to a new language for everyday communication. When I arrived in Germany, I already knew German, but I spoke in an overly academic, bookish way. My German friends often teased me, as it sounded so unnatural. Bookish language betrays you instantly; it becomes obvious that this is a language that you have learned, a lifeless language.
_tan — Perhaps this question is a little naive, but against the background of Kant’s three famous philosophical questions: What can I know? What ought I to do? What may I hope? is there a new question of equal weight that you would consider adding?
GM — [Laughs]… certainly not.
This brings to mind Søren Kierkegaard, who challenged Hegel to explain, using his heavy books, why he broke off his engagement to his fiancée, Regine Olsen. Time itself dictates these particular questions. Each epoch, each historical period, introduces unique inquiries that belong to that moment alone. And as epochs change, older questions turn less relevant. It is essential to seize the right moment when posing specific questions becomes possible.
To what extent can we say that there are eternal questions? I find myself highly skeptical of this idea. Historically, the question “Who am I?” is relatively new, whereas “Where do I come from?” is ancient, the starting point of human memory. The concept of origin, of where we come from, was the very subject of my dissertation. Yet, as I think of how to elaborate on this theme, I realize I still cannot quite break into that familiar field from which something interesting could simply be formulated.
Why do we need to know this, and why does this question carry such a charged existential weight? It is directed precisely toward identification with something, with a certain community or collective. To come from some place means to belong to a specific group. This theme extends beyond a mere social status; I would prefer to call it an “existential status.”
_tan — As we arrive at this final question, I want to invoke philosophy in a broader sense: in your view, does it command a place in our current landscape?
GM — I believe that philosophy has never really had a ready-made place in the world, ever since Thales and the Pre-Socratics. While the Sophists mastered these dynamics and carved out practical functions for philosophy, true philosophers have always claimed, discovered, and invented that space for themselves.
Each historical era invents a place and a function for itself. Athens is precisely the place where philosophers wielded a decisive hand: one tutored a king, another founded the Academy, a third was sold into slavery and put to death. Since execution has entered the conversation, it is Socrates who manufactures the social function of the philosopher; up until that point, no such role existed. He invents this place by pestering the ones around him: a citizen walking around in peace, only to be stopped and interrogated relentlessly… That is real philosophy, and it is by no means driven by any prior need. Nietzsche grasped this aspect most deeply. The philosopher’s existence defies causal necessity; rather, the philosopher is the one who destabilizes and gets on everyone’s nerves.
I have witnessed this myself, the phenomenon of Mamardashvili, although I was very young at the time and could not appreciate it appropriately. Only later did I piece it together from memories. Nobody really loved him. People decided to claim him enthusiastically down the road. In truth, even his colleagues wondered, “Who on earth is this man?” Because he was a true philosopher, pure and simple. A true philosopher invents their own function and seizes that place. Naturally, this has nothing to do with academic philosophy or university coursework. It is utterly farcical when, after a few study years, they hand us a bachelor’s diploma and declare us philosophers. They might as well issue credentials for prophets and mystics. Institutional certification or validation does not capture, nor govern the practice of philosophy.
Consider the era of classical German idealism, in which Kant, Fichte and Hegel suddenly appeared. Of course, these spaces of thought were forged through continuous efforts of these thinkers; they certainly did not inherit any of it ready-made. They did not appear out of a vacuum; before them there was already a tradition formed by Leibniz, Spinoza, and Descartes. Nonetheless, they pioneered their own unique domains, inventing their own place and function.
Boris Groys has a thesis that Plato’s idea of a state ruled by philosophers was actualized through the Soviet Union, where intellectuals came along and invented a system. Look at the first generation of Bolsheviks. Its founders were all philosophers and intellectuals who wrote ceaselessly and tried to put their books into practice (including Stalin, the least educated of the group). Or consider Mao Zedong, who owned what was probably the largest personal library of all. He actually lost power in part because he shut himself away for years of reading, entirely consumed by developing his own philosophical theories.
In the recent past, the last major explosion of intellectual and philosophical life occurred in the years of French post-structuralism. Young people came along then; they claimed the space, they created it themselves. Although huge academic institutions were already firmly established, these thinkers were not interested in merely occupying vacant, pre-existing slots. Instead, they wanted to create new spaces of thought, which often happens against a background of cultural synergy. Moments as important as these tend to arise all at once.
Even in a small nation like Georgia, everything of lasting value has been born out of synergy. During the post-Stalin period of the 1960s and 70s, a wave of intellectuals and poets appeared at the same time, sparking the sudden rise of Georgian cinema. Although censorship was fierce and the pressure was enormous, everything created in this sphere was of high quality. This ties right back into the true position of the philosopher. That place is never mapped out beforehand; everyone whose name has stood the test of history had to create their own place and function.
_tan — Thank you so much, Giorgi, for your time and this valuable conversation.
GM — Thank you. I also found the entire experience overly engaging and stimulating.