Cyber Experience as a Resource for Making Alternative

Worlds in the Georgian Postmodernist Novel Chewing Dawns: Sugar-Free

Abstract

The paper analyses a contemporary Georgian novel – Zura Jishkariani’s Chewing Dawns: Sugar-free. The novel belongs to the sub-genre of bio-punk. The aim of the paper is to identify the defamiliarized and ironized socio-cultural processes taking place in the contemporary Georgian society, considering the narratological concept of alternative worlds and the theoretical framework of conceptual metaphor. The outcomes of the research draw the cultural-intellectual orientations of contemporary Georgian society. Based on these two conclusions, the paper aims to find an age-long similarity between the socialpolitical challenges of the 1920s and the contemporary problems of the Georgian society. Research has proved that numerous systems of values have been deconstructed and carnivalized by means of a play with alternative worlds. The development of the world depends on the activation of the human brain capacity, which ensures the cognition of the “higher reality“. The literary text under analysis reflects current achievements in cognitive sciences. The mental trips reflect the capacity of the human brain. The text describes the protagonist’s aspiration towards manipulating and stimulating the human brain. This is
the only way to overcome the banality of life. The manner of narration and the idealization of the aim serve the purpose of describing the revolutionary spirit