Gvantsa Jobava prepares to speak in a digital edition of the Tbilisi International Book Fair presented by the Georgian Publishers and Booksellers Association during the COVID-19 pandemic. Image: Guram Muradov
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
‘Our Weapon Is Our Knowledge’
Now more than two months into her two-year term as president of the International Publishers Association (IPA), Tbilisi’s Gvantsa Jobava is not only very familiar to the international member-associations of the IPA, but she’s also familiar with the political discussions that tinge so many of the world body’s conversations and programming.
Her native Georgia has been in an uproar since the ruling “Georgian Dream” party was charged by opposition parties with rigging the parliamentary election. By November, Georgian Dream had announced that it would suspend talks on the country’s long-sought accession to the European Union. Demonstrators have persevered with regular protestors despite government crackdowns.
“And you see the young people” who are on the streets to demonstrate, Jobava says, “with books. Because they don’t want to lose the time. Because it’s several hours of standing in the cold weather, and usually you see young people sitting somewhere in a corner—or even standing—and reading books.
Street protests in Tbilisi require “several hours of standing in the cold weather, and usually you see young people sitting somewhere in a corner—or even standing—and reading books.”Gvantsa Jobava, IPA president
“It’s so amazing, and we say that this is our side of the protest: very talented intellectual people, loving reading books in different professions, standing there for their country and saying that we are not aggressive. We don’t use any weapons. Our weapon is our knowledge, our minds, and our education. This is how we oppose our very aggressive situation. Even we say you can find no justice in the country right now because there are no courts working and the police are not working for justice. They are working for a regime, for a dictatorship.
“So there are these two different things happening right now, and we are proud that people choose books to show themselves who they are and what they’re fighting for. This is such a great accomplishment for the publishers and for books themselves and for the readers—to be able to do this together and say, ‘Our weapon is our knowledge.’ That’s just wonderful. It’s the way to go.”
Related article: At Norway’s WEXFO: Democracy and the Freedom to Read. Image: Publishing Perspectives, Porter Anderson
Clearly, the “trinity of freedoms” recognized by the IPA’s programming and ethos—the freedom to publish, the freedom to read, and the freedom of expression—are values that Jobava lives daily close to. And what she sees in those young Georgians carrying their books with them to their demonstrations has a direct corollary to the “Democracies Depend on Reading” program being spearheaded by the World Expression Forum (WEXFO, June 2 and 3) and its founding CEO Kristenn Einarsson, who is IPA’s freedom to publish chairman.
A new program (more on this soon) is bringing together the energies of WEXFO and OsloMet University in Norway; Madrid’s Fundación Germán Sánchez Ruipérez (GSR); Germany’s Johannes Gutenberg University at Mainz; and Slovenia’s Škrateljc, and University of Ljubljana. This new collaboration, supported by IPA, finds an essential statement in these lines of the Ljubljana Reading Manifesto, familiar to Publishing Perspective‘s internationalist readership:
“Today’s sophisticated society is not just the product of reading; it depends on reading for its survival and continued resilience. … Reading is our culture’s central training technique for cognitive and social behavior and a precondition for a properly functioning democracy.”
It’s this bold, new statement of a reading-democratic axis that Jobava sees nightly on the streets of Tbilisi in those young Georgians carrying their books with them in their demonstrations.
‘Only Together and Not Separately’
Jobava—who frequently mentions how much her predecessor Karine Pansa helped prepare her for the IPA presidency — is known by her colleagues both in Georgia and in so many publishing markets of the world, for her energy, her humor, her warmth, and her by her colleagues both at home in Georgia and in so many publishing markets of the world, Jobava at London Book Fair next week will demonstrate the breadth of observation her own market’s struggles have taught her to deploy.
On March 13 from 11:15 a.m. and 12 p.m., she’ll speak on LBF’s Main Stage in a session titled Turning the Page: Publishing’s Role in Keeping the Focus on Sustainability. She’s being joined in the discussion by Mary Glenn, chief of the United Nations’ Publications. And in one of the program’s most bracing points, Jobava and Glenn will help develop the growing understanding in international work that the pushback against the achievement of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) has a great deal to do with challenges to democracy proliferating in so many of publishing’s world markets.
Gvantsa Jobava and Mary Glenn
Committee members and association members of IPA in recent years have become increasingly aware that “sustainability” goes beyond where a publishing company might procure the most ecologically sound paper or how to reduce its staff’s carbon footprint. The 17 goals include efforts to combat poverty, promote gender equality, defeat hunger, establish affordable and clean energy, reduce inequalities, a push for “decent work and economic growth” educational availability and advancement for everyone, and more.
Jobava perceives that the 17 SDGs clearly support the broadest interpretation of the importance of copyright, which protects the work of authors and publishers; and the freedom to publish, which in essence makes it possible for writers and their publishers to produce their work for the societies that need it.
“If we consider the ongoing political situation,” Jobava says, “as well what we see in the world and the whole environment around us, the question is how we can be useful for the society? And also, my thoughts go to the question of how IPA can be more useful for our members and for society as well.
“One of my strong messages will be that if we really want change, if we really want to make our environment better, we can do it only together and not separately.”Gvantsa Jobava, IPA president
“Of course, we’ll try our best to make sure that all our members find value in being members of IPA and the work we do, because it’s quite broad. We cover a lot of topics, and sometimes it’s difficult to follow all the activities of IPA, so one of my interests is also to make sure that we do everything to spread that information in the countries in which we’re represented. And to try to work together.
“One of the most important things about IPA is this unity. And I think that it’s not only about IPA, but it should also be important in all our national associations.
“This model, of course, works in IPA as well, because if we want to achieve something, if we want to achieve the change, we can’t do it alone.
“So one of my strong messages will be that if we really want change, if we really want to make our environment better, we can do it only together and not separately.”
‘How To Stand Up to a Dictator’
As reported by PEN International; Maryam Ugrekhelidze at the Voice of America; the BBC’s Rayhan Demytrie; the International Federation of Journalists; Deutsche Welle’s Maria Katamadze and various other news media, the Georgian journalist Mzia Amaglobeli was detained by the state in January on allegations that she attacked a police officer during protests. She maintained a 38-day hunger strike in detention. She has denied guilt.
Today (March 5), the Batumi City Court denied release to Amaglobeli as citizens outside the court protested the decision. The charges under which she is being held could lead to a sentence of four to seven years in prison.
“Mzia Amaglobeli is the regional head of the Georgia Media Group,” Jobava says. “She’s wonderful woman, and so she’s in jail right now and waiting for her verdict, and she might stay, might have to stay there for several years. And she was also on hunger strike.”
Nevertheless, Jobava says she sees one answer to the question of book publishing’s role in the ordeal of Mzia Amaglobeli.
When Amaglobeli was taken into custody, Jobava says, “She took the book by Maria Ressa, the Nobel Peace Prize winner.” How To Stand Up to a Dictator: The Fight for Our Future (HarperCollins, 2022).
“Amaglobeli didn’t say anything. She was just keeping the book with her,” a fact captured by Formula TV via the Associated Press in a February 4 report. Amabhlobeli’s photo with Ressa’s book is the third image in AP’s gallery on the article by Sophiko Megrelidze and Dasha Litvinova.
“So with this message,” Jobava says, “she started the whole campaign, bringing the book as a weapon, a kind of inspiration. So this is how our protest looks like right now. And I’m really proud to see that in this situation, books have found their role, how they can useful.”
Gvantsa Jobava at the Georgian collective stand at the 2024 Frankfurter Buchmesse. One of the points Jobava emphasizes is the fine cooperative relationship the publishers in Tbilisi have developed. Image: Yevhenia Perutska
More from Publishing Perspectives on the International Publishers Association is here; more on London Book Fair is here; more on copyright is here; more on the freedom to publish is here; more on the World Expression Forum is here; more on reading is here; and more on democracy and reading is here.
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