Captive and the Gift , livre ebook

213

pages

English

Ebooks

2011

Écrit par
Grant Bruce

Publié par
Cornell University Press

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213

pages

English

Ebooks

2011

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Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne En savoir plus

Publié par

Cornell University Press

Date de parution

15 janvier 2011

Nombre de lectures

EAN13

9780801460197

Langue

English

Poids de l'ouvrage

19 Mo

The Caucasus region of Eurasia, wedged in between the Black and Caspian Seas, encompasses the modern territories of Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia, as well as the troubled republic of Chechnya in southern Russia. A site of invasion, conquest, and resistance since the onset of historical record, it has earned a reputation for fearsome violence and isolated mountain redoubts closed to outsiders. Over extended efforts to control the Caucasus area, Russians have long mythologized stories of their countrymen taken captive by bands of mountain brigands. In The Captive and the Gift, the anthropologist Bruce Grant explores the long relationship between Russia and the Caucasus and the means by which sovereignty has been exercised in this contested area. Taking his lead from Aleksandr Pushkin's 1822 poem "Prisoner of the Caucasus," Grant explores the extraordinary resonances of the themes of violence, captivity, and empire in the Caucasus through mythology, poetry, short stories, ballet, opera, and film. Grant argues that while the recurring Russian captivity narrative reflected a wide range of political positions, it most often and compellingly suggested a vision of Caucasus peoples as thankless, lawless subjects of empire who were unwilling to acknowledge and accept the gifts of civilization and protection extended by Russian leaders. Drawing on years of field and archival research, Grant moves beyond myth and mass culture to suggest how real-life Caucasus practices of exchange, by contrast, aimed to control and diminish rather than unleash and increase violence.The result is a historical anthropology of sovereign forms that underscores how enduring popular narratives and close readings of ritual practices can shed light on the management of pluralism in long-fraught world areas.

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Publié par

Cornell University Press

Date de parution

15 janvier 2011

Nombre de lectures

EAN13

9780801460197

Langue

English

Poids de l'ouvrage

19 Mo

The Captive and the Gift

To view this image, please see the printed book.

Prometheus BoundPeter Paul Rubens. Philadelphia Museum of Art, purchased with the by W. P. Wilstach Fund, 1950.

The Captive and the Gift

Cultural Histories of Sovereignty in Russia and the Caucasus

Bruce Grant

Cornell University Press Ithaca and London

A volume in the series Culture and Society after Socialism edited by Bruce Grant and Nancy Ries

A list of titles in this series is available at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu.

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.

First published 2009 by Cornell University Press First printing, Cornell Paperbacks, 2009

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data

Grant, Bruce, 1964– The captive and the gift : cultural histories of sovereignty in Russia and the Caucasus / Bruce Grant. p. cm. — (Culture and society after socialism) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 9780801443046 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 9780801475412 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Caucasus—Civilization. 2. Caucasus—Relations—Russia. 3. Russia—Relations—Caucasus. 4. Caucasus—Relations—Soviet Union. 5. Soviet Union—Relations—Caucasus. 6. Sovereignty— Social aspects—Caucasus. 7. Sovereignty—Social aspects— Russia. 8. Sovereignty—Social aspects—Soviet Union. I. Title. II. Series: Culture and society after socialism.

DK509.G724 947.5—dc22

2009

2008052552

Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetablebased, lowVOC inks and acidfree papers that are recycled, totally chlorinefree, or partly composed of nonwood ﬁbers. For further information, visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu.

Cloth printing Paperback printing

10 9 8 10 9 8

7 6 5 7 6 5

4 3 2 1 4 3 21

For JeanVincent

Enchainment is a condition of all relations based on thegift.

Marilyn Strathern,The Gender of the Gift

Preface Acknowledgments

1. Promethean Beginnings

Contents

2. Histories of Encounter, Raidings, and Trade

3. Noble Giving, Noble Taking

4. Rites of Encounter: Brides, Brigands, and Fire Bringers

5. Captive Russians

6. Caucasian Reﬂections

7. From Prometheus to the Present

Glossary References Index

ix xix

1 19 43 63 91 124 156

163 165 185

Preface

“We gave them so much” (Stol'ko my im dali). A Ukrainian friend with whom I had once studied in Moscow wrote me a few years back to describe her return to a seaside resort in Abkhazia, in the Republic of Georgia, on the Black Sea coast. She had spent time there as a child in the early 1970s and was taken aback by the declining state of basic infrastructure after years of postSoviet economic stress, exacerbated by the struggle between breakaway Abkhaz and central Georgian forces. “We gave them so much, and yet, everywhere you looked, you could see what they had done with whatwegave them. It was clear how things turned once they decided that we were no longer needed.” She underlined the word “we” in a familiar and genuine turn of phrase that I heard spoken this way more than once in Russia, to distinguish the Slavic majority from a Caucasus region that seemed to show little re morse for the collapse of the USSR. Twenty years earlier, “we” signaled all Russians, Ukrainians, Abkhaz, and Georgians under a shared Soviet project. Yet for all its remarkable internationalism, it was a project that

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