SUMMARY:

In a brief essay, Paul Manning comments on the article by Harsha Ram published in this issue of Ab Imperio. Manning stresses the carnal (“material semiotic”) dimension of the historical supra as the ritual of unruly feasting, a nondiscursive social practice of communication. The process of symbolic acculturation and appropriation of the supra by the nascent Georgian nationalizing discourse (described by Ram) was accompanied by “domestication” of the wild parties. Not only was the supra now structured by a rigid ceremonial ritual, it was also relocated to the domain of private spaces of family homes. Thus, it became an institution of modern public culture (whether Russian imperial or Georgian national) as part of the integrated private sphere, after it had been “domesticated” and regulated. The case of the supra thus refutes the series of clear-cut binary oppositions formulated by Partha Chatterjee and employed by Ram, especially between the inner and the outer, the public and the private.