Young People and Collective Trauma in Georgian Fiction about The Abkhazian War and The 2008 Russo-Georgian War

Abstract

Abstract:The ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia has brought the attention of Western academic discourses to the long history of Russian colonialism, cultural dominance, and military aggression. Ukraine has not been the only victim of Russian invasions in the last few decades. The following article depicts the voice of Georgia, a small country with a population of 3.7 million people that has also experienced the horror of war from its neighbors. This article focuses on studying the depictions of traumatized adolescents with the use of trauma theory and children's literature studies in two texts about the Abkhazian war (1992–1993) and the 2008 Russo-Georgian war: Nugzar Shataidze's "Journey to Africa" (2004) and Tamta Melashvili's Counting Out (2010). This article showcases that the discussed narratives reflect global trends in children's literature and literary trauma theory. I argue that Georgian fiction fits the pluralistic approach of the literary trauma theory, delineating individual stories intertwined with culturally and socially specific narratives. The examined texts are replete with geographic places, social values, and specific environments that shape Georgian society's collective trauma. Besides, adolescents are the central figures that expose the psychological, physical, and mental suffering that wars bring to society.