Cogent Arts & Humanities

2006

In this article, six individuals who come from war-affected societies in different parts of the world are sharing their experiences and views on war through individual narratives. Based on these war narratives, the article, in particular, explains how memories of past experiences remain, while there are cognitive shifts in one's view of one's present life. While most literature argues that the pain of the far reaching consequences of war lasts many years, yet, based on the narratives that people in this article discuss, feelings related to war may shift from hopelessness to optimism, for example, or from helplessness to becoming more committed to peacebuiding. In this context, war narratives are able to generate a discourse of inward change. This article will highlight at least, three major factors that contribute to these cognitive and emotional shifts, namely: peace education in higher learning; being in a relatively safe environment, that is, being away from war; and an e...

Routledge eBooks, 2023

The full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine that began on 24 February 2022 was preceded by an eight-year hybrid war. Ukrainians consider the 2022 invasion an intensification of armed combat, not its beginning. A hybrid war differs from a conventional war in that it involves low-grade, ongoing violence in multiple forms. Along with military hardware, in a hybrid war, disinformation and deception are weaponized to undermine peace, social solidarity, and any sense of individual or communal well-being. The use of such means to resurrect political domination and neo-colonial means of governing are effective because the media rarely recognize such slow, covert forms of violence, even when they are methodically pursued. As a result, a hybrid war courts little response from the international community beyond verbal scolding. Unconventional warfare calls for unconventional weapons in response. This article analyzes how, when faced with a steady onslaught of aggression during a hybrid war from 2014-2022, empathy was mobilized and weaponized to confront and endure the stresses and horrors of war. In Ukraine, military chaplains emerged as key agents charged with initiating empathic processes that served dual and diametrically opposed purposes to facilitate the will to endure war among soldiers and civilians alike. Empathy became a form of soft power used to win a hard, hybrid war. Beyond weapons, empathy-understood as the ability to imagine, grasp, and anticipate the thoughts, feelings, and sensations of others-constitutes a potentially incisive edge. In this case, it was a weapon of the weak, but one that was highly effective. We offer an analysis as to how and why military chaplains continue to be key agents charged with cultivating an empathic impulse that pivots from fostering in-group solidarity among soldiers and co-nationals by drawing on certain forms of sociality to identifying and excluding a radical enemy Other in the name of morally empowered defense of the homeland. This article draws on ethnographic research Wanner has conducted on everyday religiosity since 2014, which included in-depth interviews with eight chaplains, and ongoing research Pavlenko has conducted as a Ukraine-based

Kalina Yordanova is a psychotherapist. She holds a MA degree in Clinical Psychology from Sofia University " St. Climent Ohridski " , a MA degree in Central and East-European Studies from UCL and a PhD in Psychoanalysis and Anthropology from UCL. In 2016, she joined Doctors without Borders (MSF). Kalina Yordanova works with victims of torture, domestic violence and trafficking in people. We live in times when the pain from the WWII is still with us. Yet, it seems we have not learnt our lessons and – despite our claims to be civilized creatures-we allow wars to rage. Why does this happen? Civilization and war are incompatible. Yet, one is not born " civilized " but learns to be such. Much earlier than that though, which is to say earlier than we learn how to live with other people according to some shared principles and laws, we possess one basic characteristic: ambivalence. Ambivalence is the tendency of every human being to love and hate the same object. This is why we hurt those we love. Ambivalence cannot be uprooted but we can become aware of it in order to control it. Yet, we refrain from such awareness because it means insights into our own cruelty and desire to use and abuse the others. The fact that the pain from the WWII is still with us does not necessarily mean learning from experience. Learning from experience means feeling responsible for the consequences of armed conflict and the condition of our planet as an interconnected system. This means an insight into the fact that everyone is responsible for both the reparation and the damaging of the world around. One explicit example of the absence of critical feedback about the way Western governments support the wars and even facilitate terrorism is their condemnation of the Islamic State along with large deals of high-tech weaponry between Great Britain and Saudi Arabia, for example. The lack of understanding of our own contribution to what is threatening us is visible also when a 9-year-old African boy is risking his life during a night hunt of endangered species and his prey reaches the table of an exquisite French restaurant for 100 EUR per meal. This state of affairs has a cost and everyone will have to pay a share. Sadly, once our reality testing is disrupted, it is difficult to restore it, because it is very convenient to project the evil onto an alleged enemy, thus adopting the feeling of having the right to act. It is true that those who do not remember history are doomed to repeat it, but it is also true that facing our own responsibility for events in history means painful insights and the need to relinquish a comfortable life we have taken for granted. It seems that for contemporary people, it is almost impossible to give up on something desired, to postpone gratification and not to immediately act in order to meet their needs. How can people, societies and the world as a whole be healed in the aftermath of war? Is there some universal recipe or guidelines at least? Access to ambivalence, I think, is crucial for the healing process. From the perspective of participants in a global system of relationships, everyone must be aware of their own position in this system; 1 Bulgarian version available at

OMEGA - Journal of Death and Dying

The research evidence shows that war had many detrimental effects on the mental health, wellbeing, and social functioning of the people of Kosova, which is similar to the findings in many other postconflict societies. However, there are few studies focusing on the process of meaning-making of war experiences and their impacts on resilience and growth. This phenomenological study aimed to explore the lived war experiences of citizens of Kosova from the perspectives of three generations (grandparents, parents and children) through semistructured interviews, which were conducted with 37 participants. Thematic analysis revealed that the journey of the meaning-making of war experiences in Kosova is rather dynamic and reflects the context in which each generational cohort lived and grew. The findings provide a deeper understanding of the strategies used by each generation for meaning-making and how these strategies contributed to resilience and growth. The implications for mental health c...

TelevIZIon, 2023

In a qualitative study, 21 Ukrainian children (who had come to Germany as refugees) were asked about their experiences of the beginning of the war and their perceptions of the current situation. The article summarizes the role of the media and what children would like to see on television in this context.

BRAIN. Broad Research in Artificial Intelligence and Neuroscience, 2024

The relevance of the article lies in the need to study the moral side of war and the mobilization of world resources in the context of educational philosophy. In the context of metaphysics, war has an anti-materialistic, spiritual meaning and is "a certain test for the nation", which can be a manifestation of artificial intelligence. It is during war that society fights for the highest principles of civilization, not for the state or its ambitious aspirations. Both war and heroic experience can awaken deep forces connected to the foundations of race. On the contrary, materialists, especially Marxists, saw the cause of wars solely in social-class inequality and the antagonistic confrontation "between labor and capital." At the same time, war in society is not just a phenomenon of armed struggle guided by politics, a way of achieving one's goals with the use of armed violence. It is followed by a change in the course of numerous social processes and the involvement of economic, ideological and other forces of society in the struggle. War tests the economic and organizational strength of every nation. Therefore, it is important to understand the war as provoking a moral shock in Ukraine and mobilizing world resources in the light of the philosophy of reason. Its impact on social development is associated with a significant disruption and change in the usual functions and nature of the existence of elements of this or that social organization.

Journal of Education Culture and Society

Aim. To define and describe the positions of Ukrainians in their attitude to the war on Russia and reflection of this attitude in the discourse of daily life in wartime. Concept/Methods. 25 transcripts of semi-structured interviews subjected to thematic analysis. Relying on the categories identified through thematic analysis, the criteria differentiating the attitude of Ukrainians to the war, viz. personalization/depersonalization, media practice of content consumption, assessment of the so called “we-they-relationship”, reflection on the changes in daily life, the process of adaptation to changes, ideas of exemplary behavior were established. Results and conclusion. The analysis of the results enabled to outline the problematic field of assessment of the attitude of Ukrainians to the full-scale war on Russia and reflection of this attitude in the discourse of daily life in wartime. Relying on the criteria differentiating this attitude, three typical positions in the attitude of Ukr...

2019

Millions of people have been affected by wars and violent conflicts in twentieth century Europe. Individuals, communities and countries live with the memories of these troubled pasts and the emotions that come with it. In some cases there is an accumulation of troubled pasts: for example, the countries that were part of the former Republic of Yugoslavia experienced two World Wars, the communist authoritarian regime and the Balkan wars in the span of one century. How are troubled pasts used to deepen perceived divisions and legitimize radicalization or inclusion? What psychological processes can contribute to mutual understanding, resilience and the acknowledgement of troubled pasts? These questions have become more urgent in the present political climate. This symposium presents a multidisciplinary perspective on the way European societies deal with troubled pasts. The presentations are followed by a discussion

Pragmatism Today, 2023

In my paper, I develop a phenomenological and pragmatist reflection on the fragility of liberal democracy’s moral foundations in times of war. Following Judith Shklar’s conception of the “liberalism of fear”, the legitimacy of the liberal-democratic order is seen as grounded in experiences of suffering caused by political violence. It is also assumed that the liberalism of fear delivers an adequate conception of the normative foundations of the European project. With the help of phenomenologists such as Edmund Husserl, Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Michel Henry, the paper ants to philosophically deepen the liberalism of fear by outlining a theory of “pathic evidence” as a normative foundation and the concept of a common “flesh of the political” as a shared moral sensitivity that sets boundaries to political conflict as well as the political imaginary, excluding what I call the production of “monumental meaning”. It then examines the question which political conditions are needed for this evidence to become a shared, communal criteria of ethical thought, and considers inner and outer challenges to the transmission and reproduction of this evidence in time, drawing especially on John Dewey’s ideas of democratic communication and social intelligence. In the current war, the following problem appears as crucial for the “soul” of European democracies which are confronted with the need to respond to Russia’s attack: How can a political morality grounded in pathic evidence be sustained, once it is challenged by an aggressor who, out of cultural and political reasons, shows a higher level of toleration towards violence? Besides aggression from an external foe, there are also temporal dynamics that further the loss of the inhibiting force of pathic evidence from the inside. As it shall be argued, boredom can be such a factor. The paper concludes by drawing conclusions for the current war in Ukraine.

Plekhanov A.A., Herasimau U.K. The formation of Ukrainian literary canon on the Donbass war: emotional matrices of non-combatants // Etnograficheskoe Obozrenie. 2021. No 4. P. 175–190, 2021

The article examines the representation of non-combatants in Ukrainian literature in the context of formation of a literary canon on the Donbass war. The research focuses on the literary practices instrumental in reconstructing the experience both of the displaced persons and of the civilians trapped in war zones, and aims to show how this experience is reflected in emotional matrices. We draw on the data collected during the 2016-2018 fieldwork in Ukraine, and attempt to analyze it conceptually in the perspective of the interdisciplinary field of studying history of emotions, associated with the work of William Reddy, Barbara Rosenwein, and others. By employing both anthropological and literary approaches, we explore the key texts of the contemporary Ukrainian literature on the subject of war in the East of Ukraine. We argue that the theme of experience of the civilians and the displaced persons, running through the emergent narrative canon, may come to constitute its dominant part.