Wounds that won't heal: cartographic anxieties and the quest for territorial integrity in Georgia

This paper examines the role of territorial integrity narratives in the Republic of Georgia, which currently features two separatist territories - Abkhazia and South Ossetia - which are de facto independent and have begun to receive limited international recognition. Political rhetoric is further buttressed by various government policies and practices that help transmit the message of territorial integrity to the Georgian public. Cartographic anxieties, or the preoccupation and fear of a country's loss of territory, is a central feature of Georgian nationalist discourse. Referring to the loss of territory as amputation exemplifies the cartographic anxieties displayed in Georgia. Specifically, I will focus on the role of political discourse, maps, patriotic youth camps and billboards and other elements of the landscape, documenting how they help to reproduce the discourse of territorial integrity. It is precisely these discourses and practices that reproduce territorial integrity narratives and construct the entire Georgian territory (including Abkhazia and South Ossetia) as integral to Georgian national identity, enabling the separatist regions to be understood as wounds that won't heal.