Batumi, Odessa, Trabzon. The Cultural Semantics of the Black Sea from the Perspective of Eastern Port Cities
150 years after the Crimean War, the Black Sea, with the Russian annexation of the Crimea in spring 2014, returned to the centre of world politics. The Black Sea region has, once again, become the scene of shifts in the basic order of Europe, reflecting its geopolitical importance as well as the strong symbolic and affective charge of the Black Sea. The project examined the deep cultural dimension of these current tensions, in which unresolved 19th century conflicts were reactivated as imperial legacies.
The specific approach of the project was to examine different (symbolically and affectively charged) imaginations of the Black Sea from the perspective of the three Black Sea ports of Batumi, Odessa and Trabzon. These cities had played a decisive role in the Oriental question of the 19th century and were also the focus of military and cultural conflicts.
The project was guided by three concepts: 1. cultural semantics—in the sense of charging spaces with affective meaning; 2. imperial legacies—understood as the historical dimension of current political conflicts, especially in view of the discrepancies between the spatial conceptions of imperial predecessor states (or those imagining themselves to be imperial) and the current states; 3. port cities—as privileged “exceptional places” in which the state order is disrupted and a distinct economic and cultural space is created.
Thus, from the perspective of the eastern port cities, the Black Sea region could be characterized as a connecting space that represents an alternative—albeit unstable and oscillating—spatial order to the imperial and national orders. It was shown that free ports especially, such as Odessa or Batumi, but also other port cities of the eastern Black Sea, are exceptional places in the economic sense, because they fall outside the economic order of a state, instead being part of an international trade order. They also developed a subversive and latently anti-imperial character, markedly different from the basic order of the tsarist empire. In addition to the economic one, port cities also have a cultural specificity that emerges, for instance, in literary texts such as Isaak Babels “Tales from Odessa.”
The project drew from and extended the findings of the research conducted from 2012–2015 in the project Cultural Semantics of Georgia between the Caucasus and the Black Sea, which was also funded by the Volkswagen Foundation.
A cooperation between the Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung (ZfL) and Ilia State University Tbilisi.
Fig. above: Black Sea map, source: Wikipedia
In Cooperation with the Ilia State University Tbilisi
Publications
Traumland Georgien
Deutungen zu Kultur und Politik
Zaal Andronikashvili
- Ed.: Port Cities as Contact Zones and Cities of Exception. Identity Studies in the Caucasus and the Black Sea Area. Tbilisi: Ilia State University Press (forthcoming)
therein: Traumatic Thalassophobia. Cultural Semantisation of Maritime Spaces in Georgia - Ed.: Black Sea as a Space of Literature and Culture. Tbilisi: Ilia State University Press 2019 (with Mzagho Dokhturishvili, Alexis Nuselovici, Bela Tsipuria)
- Šavi zǧvis ḳulturulisemanṭiḳa sakartvelos gadmosaxedidan [Cultural Semantics of the Black Sea from a Georgian Perspective], in: Zaal Andronikashvili, Mzagho Dokhturishvili, Alexis Nuselovici, Bela Tsipuria (eds.): Black Sea as a Space of Literature and Culture. Tbilissi: Ilia State University Press 2019
- Where is the other Georgia? How Contemporary Georgian History Can Be Told [in Georgian], 30 Apr 2019
- Editorial. Traumland Georgien, in: Osteuropa 7.3 (2018) (with Manfred Sapper, Volker Weichsel)
- Die Kolchis und das Meer. Elemente symbolischer Raumordnung Georgiens in: Osteuropa 7 (2018), 23–45 (with Franziska Thun-Hohenstein)
- Europa, Asien oder Grenzraum, in: Ästhetik und Kommunikation 174–175 (2018), 113–121
- Gerechtigkeit für eine Prinzessin, in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 6 Oct 2018, Nr. 232, L3 [On the Georgian Medea Myth]
- Georgische Literatur heute. Zwischen “kleiner Literatur” und Weltliteratur,” in: ZfL Blog, 14 Jun 2018
Giorgi Ghvinjilia
- Batumi, a Town of Inequality [in Georgian], 18 Mar 2017
Candan Badem
- Trabzon as a port city and point of exchange between the Russian and Ottoman empires, in: Zaal Andronikashvili (ed.): Port Cities as Contact Zones and Cities of Exception. Identity Studies in the Caucasus and the Black Sea Area. Tbilisi: Ilia State University Press (forthcoming)
- From Empire to the Republic. Cultural Semantics of Trabzon, in: Zaal Andronikashvili, Mzagho Dokhturishvili, Alexis Nuselovici, Bela Tsipuria (eds.): Black Sea as a Space of Literature and Culture. Tbilisi: Ilia State University Press 2019
Ekaterine Tchkoidze
- Russian empire’s strategy to make port-cities as contact zones (South Caucasus railway network and Batumi in the 1880s–1910s), in: Zaal Andronikashvili (ed.): Port Cities as Contact Zones and Cities of Exception. Identity Studies in The Caucasus and the Black Sea Area. Tbilisi: Ilia State University Press (forthcoming)
- Oil and Soil: the role of Batoum’s economic development in shaping of geopolitical significance of the Caucasus, in: Gelina Harlaftis, Victoria Konstantinova, Igor Lyman (eds.): The port-cities of the eastern coast of the Black Sea. From the Azov to the Caucasus, late 18th – early 20th centuries (forthcoming)
- The Black Sea in Georgian pilgrims’ writings (18th–19th cc.), in: Zaal Andronikashvili, Mzagho Dokhturishvili, Alexis Nuselovici, Bela Tsipuria (eds.): Black Sea as a Space of Literature and Culture. Tbilisi: Ilia State University Press 2019
- The Greeks on the Black sea coast and the Caucasus (1917–1921), in: Teona Iashvili, Ketevan Asatiani, Nino Badiashvili (eds.): Archival and Source Studies – Trends and Challenges. Tbilisi: Ilia State University Press 2019, 107–113
- “ra vaḳetet, ras všvrebodit” anu sakartvelos istoria meoce saukunisa [in Georgian: “What did we do, what did we push” or the History of Georgia in the 20th Century], in: Tamar Neparidze (ed.): resbublikis 100 celi – 26 esse [100 Years of the Republic – 26 Essays]. Tbilisi 2018, 205–211
- Roma e i georgiani nel contesto del pellegrinaggio cristiano (IV–XI ss.), in T. Grdzelidze (ed.): Roma e i Georgiani. Cultura Studium 109. Roma: Studium Edizioni 2017, 104–113
- Ṗolitḳuri orientaciis sakitxi me-19 sauḳunis kartul literaturaši vasil barnovis “armazis msxvrevis” mixedvit [in Georgian: The Question of Georgia's Political Orientation in Georgian Literature Using the Example of Vasil Barnov's “The destruction of Armazi”], in: Maia Baramidze, Manana Mikadze (eds.): Sprache und Kultur 5. Kutaissi, 519–525
Events
Media Response
Contributions
19 Sep 2016 Video
“Thalassophobia. Georgia and the Sea”
A conversation between Zaal Andronikashvili and Gogi Gvakharia in the program “The Red Zone,” a collaboration between Georgian Public Broadcaster 1 TV Channel and Radio Free Europe Georgia (in Georgian)
Video: © Radio Free Europe