Dreams provide a concrete imagination of affective states such as desire and anxiety. 

In the context of the ongoing anti-governmental protests in Georgia, dreams of people actively involved in these protests provide insights into their affective states, on the one hand, and their perceptions of the protests, on the other. 

In a recurrent dream, Irakli is “punching something. The punch is finished, but I cannot feel the strength of my punch. . . . The feeling when you’re punching someone, and you can’t feel the strength, was much more uncomfortable for me than the falling.”

Falling is a common topic of nightmares, but doesn’t trouble Irakli, because he “likes speed” and “adrenaline.” What troubles him, instead, is the inefficacy of his actions, something that, as Irakli himself acknowledges, may mirror the declining effectiveness of the current protest against the Georgian government he identifies with. From this perspective, Irakli’s bodily experience expresses the condition of the protests. In a sense, his body merges with the body politic of the movement.

After more than a year of sustained protests against the authoritarian turn in Georgian politics, many activists have reached a state of exhaustion and disillusionment. These affective conditions sometimes surface in dreams and often articulate a sense of loss. 

In the fall and winter of 2025, I conducted sixteen interviews with political activists in Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital, collaboratively interpreting their dreams in conversation with them, following their own narrations and situating these interpretations within the broader context of their political activism. This essay emerges from these collaborative interpretations of dreams.

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While Irakli has lost his trust in his physical strength, others have lost their trust in their surroundings. For Nino, a young left-wing activist, it is precisely the lack of firm ground to stand on that troubles her in her dream. This unstable position is embodied by a balcony in a Soviet-era building, where, in her dreams, she inhabits it with her family. 

There was a protest, and my family and I were living in a really old Soviet building, a small three-story one, which for me somehow symbolizes Soviet industrial life, which was also good, but now it’s really dead. We were living on the third floor, and outside there was a protest march that we were watching. And yeah, my family went onto the balcony and waved flags [in support of the protests], and I went there too, and I felt that the balcony was really unstable. And I asked my mother if we should fix this balcony, and she told me we first need to repair the building’s roof and that we don’t have money for the balcony. And I was like, okay.

On the one hand, this dream demonstrates her self-perception as a somewhat distanced supporter, yet not as active as other members of the ongoing protests. On the other hand, the unstable balcony conveys how she perceives present-day Georgia: the very home one is defending is already in poor condition and in need of repair, and it might break down on its own because the means of maintenance are lacking.

Another dream that Lela, an activist embedded in LGBTQ circles, shared with me conveys a sense of losing control over the maintenance of one’s boundaries. For Lela, one such boundary is not cooperating with, let alone trusting, the police. Then, there was this dream:

So, yeah, in that dream I had weed [marijuana] with me, and the police stopped me for a search. And I was really scared, and this policeman, who was just a regular police officer, saw a dark car, like this black car [well known for the secret service], and he was scared too. And he told me that you need to say that you’re with me, and then you will be safe, and I will be safe too. And I felt this kind of fear that I had no other choice but to trust this policeman whom I was afraid of, but he was afraid of someone else as well. So, like, it was this big fear, and I was completely helpless in that situation. So, I was ready to trust this regular policeman, yeah.

The dream evokes a disturbing sense of complicity, of crossing boundaries that Lela considers essential for her well-being and mental stability: trust appears where it should not. As she explained, it was not only that she found herself ready to trust the young police officer, but that “in that moment, he actually felt like the most trustworthy and familiar person to me. I’ve felt something similar in very stressful situations before, for example, during police crackdowns, when someone I wouldn’t normally like suddenly feels close and reliable, simply because we are standing together against something.” 

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Unity in the face of a common threat can thus be perceived as highly irritating and deeply unsettling.

Disunity within family circles over current Georgian politics is equally irritating and unsettling. Kakha captures this tension in a dream he recounts, set at a banquet [supra], where his relatives and their acquaintances are joined by Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze of the Georgian Dream party because of his political and personal affiliation with a family member.

Kobakhidze and my relative were sitting at some kind of supra organized in either my relative’s house or our house; we were serving the food—my cousins, my sisters, and I. When I saw Kobakhidze, I refused to serve him food. He was sitting at the center of this huge table, and I got very angry in front of these people and refused to serve him a pastry. No one except me was concerned about his appearance or kind of resisting or saying something unpleasant about him. And I was so surprised, so angry, so pissed. And I just left everything, I mean, I left this place [where Kobakhidze was sitting]. When they left this supra, I was watching from inside, and at least a few people in the street started some kind of protest. And I was so happy that at least some people from this settlement were critical and expressed discontent that they were not happy that Kobakhidze was there.

The dream revolves around this moment of defiance. Kakha’s resistance is reflected in the protesters outside, people he identifies with. The spirit of resistance is fragile and, as described above, is also the source of a nightmare. Yet it is also what gives people like Kakha a sense of belonging.

All of these dreams explore affective states centered on profound feelings of irritation and insecurity: one’s own capacities, the ground one stands on, the solidity of one’s boundaries, and the viability of family bonds. These affective states are hard to bear. Yet they do not immobilize the dreamer; rather, they foster a reconfiguration of political positionality defined in opposition to an authoritarian regime.