| Title | Human Devils: Affects and Spectres of Alterity in Eerie Cities of Georgia |
|---|---|
| Contributor | Tamta Khalvashi (author) |
| Paul Manning (author) | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.33134/HUP-13-4 |
| License | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ |
| Publisher | Helsinki University Press |
| Published on | 2021-12-13 |
| Long abstract | This chapter focuses on traditional folk devils in the form of goblins and spectres in cities of the Republic of Georgia. The goblins and spectres are traditional figures of local folklore that have not disappeared with modernity but rather re-emerged through new anxieties and moral conditions. Moreover, while devilry is often perceived as humans taking on non-human (or devilish) characteristics, the chapter presents a case where the opposite is actually at stake, namely where non-human entities such as goblins take on human characteristics. In describing this, the authors add a fascination aspect to how folk devilry and panic or anxiety may intertwine. |
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Tamta Khalvashi is Professor of Anthropology at the Ilia State University, Georgia. She received her doctorate from Copenhagen University and worked as Fulbright Scholar at New York University. Her research explores the issues of infrastructural breakdown and repair, and intersection between film, fiction and ethnography. She is currently working on a multimedia research project entitled The Jarti (scrap metal) Hunters and co-editing the book A Sea of Transience: Politics, Poetics and Aesthetics Along the Black Sea Coast.
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, University of Toronto Press, 2015). In addition to guest-editing or co-editing 3 volumes for Language & Communication and co-editing one for Ethnos, he is past co-editor of the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology (2007-2010) and current editor of Semiotic Review (2012-present). His research interests involve linguistic and semiotic anthropology of Wales, Georgia, and historical anthropology of the 19th century in Wales, Georgia and elsewhere, as well as North American ghosts and Spiritualism.