UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, 7th Annual International Postgraduate Conference
Inclusion Exclusion
Saturday 18 February 12:00 – 1:30: Panel J1: Changing Identities
Lauren E Ninoshvili (Columbia University): ‘Creative rituals of self-inclusion: women and the Georgian supra in New York City’
Today the Georgian supra, an ancient table ritual involving elaborate toasts, song, dance and the consumption of large amounts of food and wine, is helping members of Georgia’s young New York City diaspora to negotiate the two very different worlds in which they are invested. The supra serves as a culturally viable space in which emotions specific to the diaspora, such as nostalgic sentiment and feelings of social solidarity, can be freely expressed. Given that the supra is primarily a rite of male sociability, yet cannot take place without the food that women prepare and serve, this expressive practice has historically functioned as a key site for the construction of gender identities. While existing scholarship on emotion might lead one to believe that women’s effective exclusion from the practices of toast-making and drinking precludes them from sharing in a dearly valued emotional experience, in this paper I describe how Georgian women in New York are gradually devising an alternative social structure to facilitate their own inclusion in the important emotional experience of the supra.
In the kitchen, Georgian women laugh, tell stories, gossip, and generally foster an atmosphere of harmony and conviviality parallel to that which is enjoyed by men at the supra table. Often the talk that takes place in steamy, cluttered kitchens during the supra is of a sort that would be taboo for men gathered around a banquet table. While male participants are culturally quite constrained in the kinds of comments they can make and the conversations they can initiate at the supra table, female participants are free to pick and choose where they will locate themselves physically at any given moment, and hence can be more selective as to the types of discourses in which they will engage. Indeed, women are constantly moving back and forth between, physically traversing and metaphysically mediating, "public" and "private" spaces in their own, and others’, homes. They transcend each of these spaces by moving between them, both literally and symbolically, in ways that men cannot.
Based on fieldwork observations in both New York City and Georgia proper, I conclude that judgments as to whether or not women are actually excluded from participation in the emotional experience of the supra are contingent on context and perspective. By describing the empowering rites of female self-enfranchisement currently taking place in one community, I challenge popular feminist notions of Eastern European women as perpetually self-sacrificing martyr-types. The disjunctures between traditional and modern, and rural and cosmopolitan, notions of gender come into clear focus when viewed through the lens of the supra in New York City. With this mind, I strive in my study to shed new light on the ways in which migrant groups from the former socialist states are using expressive culture to orient themselves socially and symbolically in their newly adopted homelands.
NOTE: All pages will print in printer friendly format automatically
The 7th Annual International Postgraduate Conference School of Slavonic and East European Studies sponsors links page
