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7. Subjunctive Materialities
- Temple University Press
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CHAPTER 7 Subjunctive Materialities What’s going on? Muni wakes up when I reach his apartment at around 2:00 p.m. He meets me by the door. “Did you hear what one of Putin’s advisers said yesterday?” he asks, continuing without waiting for a reply. “He said that Russia will go to war with Georgia again on the sixth of June.” He gets dressed, and we go to Gosha’s house. On the way we pass a building with a sign saying, “Batumi City Hall.” “It used to be one of Abashidze’s buildings,” Muni explains. “Officially it was a pool hall, but unofficially everybody knew it was where you went to buy drugs. It was Abashidze’s son who ran it.” Gosha is just waking up as we reach his house. We sit at a table where I put my recorder. “I’ve been sleeping for the last twenty-four hours,” Gosha says in a rusty voice, “I haven’t smoked or taken pills or had coffee. I feel sick.” Muni wants to check the statement of Putin’s adviser on the Internet, but Gosha’s computer isn’t working. “Vavo sat here all night yesterday looking at porn; there were probably five hundred windows open with porn—horse porn, vegetable porn, tennis porn, table leg porn, all kinds of porn—and now the computer has a virus,” Gosha notes wryly. Muni tells him what Putin’s adviser said about the possibility of another war. Gosha says it annoys him that Georgians always blame the Russians and never take any responsibility themselves. “Even during the war, everyone was complaining, and even those who were at the border ran away. They have no courage. In France and Russia things were changed because people dared to; Russia won over Napoleon and Hitler because people went to battle and were killed—they knew that people would [have to] die if they were going to win. It’s not like that here. Here people fight the war only in front of their TV. They see that the Russians are here, and they hurry home to eat and drink wine, drink wine, drink wine, and complain about things 148 • Chapter 7 and about Russia. I’m proud to be Georgian; even in Russia, when I was attacked by some skinheads, I still said I was Georgian. But there are no intelligent people left in this country; they all left. Then there is Saakashvili. If you only knew what he does—oh, Martin, you wouldn’t believe it. He lies, and people believe him.” Muni smiles and briefly applauds Gosha’s speech. “For centuries,” Muni says, “Russia and Armenia were our friends and Turkey was our enemy; today it has all turned around. When I was small I read in my schoolbooks that Turkey was an enemy. They are not an enemy anymore, but I can’t just change my opinion. Have you seen what they are doing by the bulvar? The new buildings? The big hotel? It’s terrible. I think it’s Saakashvili’s mother’s project, and it’s her house.” Uncertainty and speculation often surrounded discussions about events on a broader societal and political level. although my informants generally held that they were not interested in politics, they would at times recount stories they had heard on the news. emil sometimes eagerly watched CNN when he visited me to find out when the international financial crisis would be over, and Muni sometimes showed me clips that he had come across on the Internet featuring russian or Georgian political statements about the possibility of another armed conflict. actual participation in political activities and engagement with party politics, however, was almost nonexistent. there were two reasons for this. First, the political sphere was often seen as a “dirty business” fraught with lies, corruption, and immorality. Second, there was a general sentiment among my informants that little could be changed. at the local elections in late 2008, emil was the only one I knew of who actually voted, and he did so only as a favor to his neighbor, an active member of the local branch of a national party. When we talked about it a few days later, emil did not remember which party he had just voted for. Interest in the political was more a matter of concern about where things were going and how this would affect their individual lives. Such concerns were particularly well reflected in the way...