The horizons of Medea: economies and cosmologies of dispossession in Georgia

Abstract

Abstract Anthropologists have long reminded us that mythological cosmologies are regularly recruited to help make sense of the present. But how key mythologies perform such labour is remarkably less attended to in many studies. In this article I take up the long life of Medea, one of the principal female characters of Greek mythology surrounding the Argonauts, who is very much alive today in the Republic of Georgia. The character of Medea mediates contradictory imaginations, affects, and narratives attendant upon Georgia's recent political changes. For some varied sections of Georgian society, the Medea mythology conveys Georgia's connection to Europe, but it also channels the experiences of economic dispossession associated with postsocialist transformation and revolution. By exploring Medea as a profoundly flexible figure who can move across narrative and media forms, this article proposes new ways of conceptualizing contemporary mythological cosmologies that threaten to exceed and sometimes even overwhelm their political intentions, generating ambivalent outcomes.

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