Emptiness

The Place and Space of Emptiness: An Experiment in Collaborative Ethnographic Comparison

Authors: Dace Dzenovska, Dominic Martin, Volodymyr Artiukh

Location: Latvia, Russia, Ukraine

Emptiness is a term used by residents of eastern Latvia to describe life in places that are losing their constitutive elements, such as people, jobs, schools, shops, and transport connections. In this article, we transform the emic term “emptiness” into a portable analytic and undertake ethnographic comparison of resonant processes and experiences in eastern Latvia, eastern Ukraine, and the Russian Far East. We argue that emptiness is both a historical formation and a novel and increasingly common spatial coordinate in the shifting landscape of political and economic power. It is also a possibility for theory-building from the postsocialist periphery about the contemporary spatial configurations of power and forms of life and politics that emerge in response to them.

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Triangulation: An imperial power device

Authors: Dace Dzenovska

Drawing on Katherine Verdery’s Transylvanian villagers and fieldwork in Latvia, this article discusses triangulation as an imperial power device whereby one actor makes an alliance with another to influence a third. The social and political field within which triangulation is deployed is not a flat world of nation-states or networks, but a three-dimensional social and political field. The actors involved are not of the same kind (e.g., ethnic groups or nation-states), nor are they arranged in binary pairs (e.g., colonizer and the colonized). Most importantly, triangulation is not a power device deployed solely by the empire’s agents. It is also used by subjects of empire to pursue their own ends.

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Noturēt Latgali vietā. Latgolys vaicuojums

Authors: Dace Dzenovska

Ņemot vērā pašreizējo ģeopolitisko situāciju, pastāv iespēja, ka Latgale kā teritorija militarizēsies. Šādā antiutopiskā scenārijā militarizētā Latgales teritorija kalpos kā mācību poligons. Sevišķi derīgi būs – jau ir – tukšojošies pilsētciemi, jo tie labi kalpo urbānās karadarbības simulācijai. Militarizētā teritorijā neviens nedzīvos, tajā uzturēsies īslaicīgi.

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‘Atpalicība’ un Latvijas valsts. Latgolys vaicuojums

Authors: Dace Dzenovska

Latgali Latvijā raksturo fundamentāla un līdz šim neatrisināta – un, iespējams, pašreizējā valsts pārvaldes modelī nemaz neatrisināma – spriedze. Problēma, manuprāt, meklējama tieši Latgales – un līdz ar to arī Latvijas – atpalicības skaidrojumos.

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Focaal special issue on “The politics of emptiness”

Authors: Dace Dzenovska, Volodymyr Artiukh, Dominic Martin, Anna Varfolomeeva, Anna Balazs, Anastasiya Ryabchuk, Dragan Đunda, Ivan Rajković, Nejra Nuna Čengić, Natalia Ryzhova, Alessandro Rippa, Madeleine Reeves, Franck Billé, Caroline Humphrey

Location: Bosnia, China, Russia, Serbia, Ukraine

Themes: Borders, Deindustrialization, Depopulation, Extractivism, Infrastructure, Nothingness, Politics, Postsocialism, Tourism, War

This special issue of Focaal (vol. 2023, issue 96) – guest edited by the EMPTINESS team – focuses on the politics of emptiness. The people who think of emptying as a loss and those who think of emptying as an opportunity are not the same political subjects. The shift from thinking about emptiness as a loss to thinking about emptiness as an opportunity is a political shift, a moment of decision about the place of the present in a framework of meaning that gives form and direction to life. There is no neutral platform, no shared frame, in which all – those who see emptiness as a loss and those who see it as an opportunity – can be equally represented or can equally take part.

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The clash of sovereignties: The Latvian subject and its Russian imperialism

Authors: Dace Dzenovska

Location: Latvia, Russia

Themes: Geopolitics, Imperialism, Sovereignty

Dace Dzenovska argues that the encounter between the Latvian subject and its very own Russian imperialism represents a clash of sovereignties. If the Latvian subject strives for an international relations version of sovereignty that allows it to join existing alliances, the Russian state as a multinational federation – or an empire – strives for a geopolitical version of sovereignty that allows it to constitute – or reshape – orders.

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Good enough sovereignty, or on land as property and territory in Latvia

Authors: Dace Dzenovska

Location: Latvia

Themes: Capitalism, Geopolitics, Postsocialism, Sovereignty, The Countryside, The Rural

Drawing on ethnographic analysis of the tensions surrounding the Danish presence in the Latvian countryside and on historical analysis of the shifting regimes of ownership and rule since the beginning of the twentieth century, this article traces the emergence of ‘good enough sovereignty’ as a form of political practice aimed at ensuring continued existence of the Latvian state and Latvian farmers.

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Making sense of the war in Ukraine

Authors: Volodymyr Artiukh, Emma Rimpiläinen, Dace Dzenovska, Madeleine Reeves, Anna Balazs, Roosa Rytkönen, Jonathon Turnbull, Maria Gunko, Claudia Eggart, Ina Zharkevich

Location: Eastern Europe, Germany, Latvia, Russia, Ukraine

Themes: War

This forum is one attempt to make sense of the war and related events in a constantly shifting landscape. Each of us finds ourselves trying to track an avalanche-in-motion, figuring out what the war means for our interlocutors and their families, for their livelihoods and futures, for their practices of social navigation when homes and/or hopes have been upturned.

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Embattled futures on the margins of the liberal empire

Authors: Dace Dzenovska, Taras Fedirko

Location: Latvia, Ukraine

Themes: Geopolitics, The Future

A sense of embattlement has emerged as an increasingly common mode of experiencing the European present and thinking about its future. Is this a reinvigoration of politics or a dangerous amplification of political differences?

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Emptiness forum in Cultural Anthropology

Authors: Dace Dzenovska, Daniel M. Knight

Location: Bosnia, China, Croatia, France, Greece, Hungary, India, Latvia, United Kingdom

Themes: Capitalism, Infrastructure, Materiality, The City, The Future

This series argues that emptiness is emerging as a concrete spatial-temporal coordinate in the global landscape of capitalism and state power, and a heuristic device of political struggles.

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Emptiness and order

Authors: Dace Dzenovska

Location: Latvia

Themes: Connectivity, Museums, Order

...The mess was sorted, but only insofar as it tidied up the in-between space between the old world that had ended, and the new world that could not yet be seen.

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Muzeji un tukšums (in Latvian)

Authors: Dace Dzenovska

Location: Latvia

Themes: Connectivity, Museums, Order

Muzeji ir instrumenti, ar kuru palīdzību sakārtot haosu, kas radies tukšošanās rezultātā. Tie ir arī tilti, ar kuru palīdzību mēģināt pievienoties globālajai apritei un tādējādi – nākotnei. Ja muzeja nav, tad, iespējams, nav arī kārtības, pasaule var paiet garām, un rītdiena labākajā gadījumā būs tāda pati kā šodiena.

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