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oa Unsettling vulnerability in the wake of violence
- Source: Linguistic Landscape, Volume 11, Issue 2, Apr 2025, p. 118 - 134
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- 08 Mar 2024
- 19 Nov 2024
- 16 Dec 2024
Abstract
In this essay, I write about the multifaceted dimensions and reverberations of violence (Navaro et al., 2021b) of Russia’s war against Ukraine, spanning from 2014 to the present day. Drawing on previous studies of semiotic landscapes, which emphasize a relational approach to people and places (Peck et al., 2019), I analyze ethnographic materials in the form of field notes collected during research in Crimea in 2019. This is done to reflect on the character of the violence to which people and landscapes become exposed. Three analytical vignettes describe the remnants of violence, which take on various guises of Russia’s war and highlight the vulnerability of both people and landscapes. At the end of the essay, I propose approaching these processes poetically, and viewing them through the lens of mutual vulnerability — a concept that considers the relationality of vulnerability as a phenomenon, encompassing the vulnerability of both people and landscapes.
