| Title | How to Domesticate a Georgian Goblin |
|---|---|
| Contributor | Paul Manning (author) |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.53288/0361.1.09 |
| Landing page | https://punctumbooks.com/titles/living-with-monsters-ethnographic-fiction-about-real-monsters/ |
| License | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ |
| Copyright | Paul Manning |
| Publisher | punctum books |
| Published on | 2023-05-11 |
| Long abstract | A fictionalized dialog assembled out of real folkloric narratives of various kinds, the paper acts as an overview of the various kinds of goblins in the folklore of the country of Georgia. A common motif of Georgian imaginings of human-goblin relationships revolves around whether the goblins are homeless (Chinkas, Alis) and therefore can be forcibly domesticated by cutting their unshorn hair or nails; or whether they have a home of their own somewhere (Kajis, Tqashmapa), in which case, they cannot be domesticated to become servants in your household. Each goblin type represents a kind of weird version of a known kind of human generic social other, and the imagined perilous social or sexual relationships one can have with them reveal anxieties about corresponding relationships with ordinary social others, particularly the very large number of female nymph-like spirits, which pointedly dwell on anxieties revolving around exogamous marriage to strangers and marriage by abduction. |
| Page range | pp. 133–151 |
| Print length | 19 pages |
| Language | English (Original) |
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Paul Manning is a Professor of Anthropology at Trent University in Canada. He is the author of three books, Strangers in a Strange Land (Academic Studies Press, 2012); Semiotics of Drinks and Drinking (Continuum/Bloomsbury, 2012); and Love Stories Language, Private Love, and Public Romance in Georgia (University of Toronto Press, 2015). Among his other ethnographic projects, he has written on the “spectral migrations” of various kinds of folkloric monsters in time and space, from Georgian goblins moving from village to the city (2012, 2014, forthcoming), how Cornish mining spirits (knackers) became Transatlantic mining spirits called Tommyknockers (2005), how Cornish Pixies became part of British fairylore (2016), to North American ghosts, spiritualist seances, and “weird” fiction (2017, 2018, 2020, 2021).