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Paper short abstract

This presentation analyzes the dreams of Georgian political activists as expressions of lived experience under perceived authoritarianism. It shows how dreams articulate political anxieties and hopes, and highlights dream analysis as a form of prefigurative politics.

Paper long abstract

The politics of Georgia’s ruling party, Georgian Dream, is increasingly experienced by its opponents as a nightmare—a nightmare of creeping totalitarianism grounded in the powerlessness of those subjected to it. This metaphorical nightmare finds expression in nocturnal dreams. On the one hand, such dreams reflect and illuminate the present political reality; on the other hand, they articulate the positionality of the dreamer within this reality, enabling critical reflection upon waking.

In this presentation, I examine the dreams of Georgian political activists and their ways of making sense of them. Focusing on political activists means that the nightmares and dreamworlds discussed here are not representative of Georgian society as a whole; rather, they concern a specific group of individuals who actively oppose the current political system. The analysis explores how these dreams relate to political engagement and lived experience under conditions perceived as authoritarian.

In some cases, dreams express wishful thinking and portray the imagined success of political struggle. More frequently, however, they articulate deeply seated anxieties, giving form to scenarios of what could happen, but what should not. Dreams thus function both as sites of emotional processing and as imaginative engagements with political futures.

By examining these dream narratives, the presentation pursues three aims: first, to advocate the integration of dreams into the methodological toolkit of anthropological research; second, to emphasize the interrelatedness of nocturnal dreaming and daytime political activity; and third, to conceptualize dream interpretation as a form of prefigurative politics.