Geopoliticisation of Belonging: The Russo-Ukrainian War and Spatial Narratives of Finnish Researchers Studying Russian Literature
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Russia invading Ukraine on 24 February 2022 was a major geopolitical shift with several impacts on economics, various levels of society as well as on cultural life, particularly in the neighbouring countries of Russia. Within the theoretical framework of everyday geopolitics and belonging, this article discusses how the Russo-Ukrainian War has geopoliticised the values, attitudes, opinions, and identities of Finnish researchers who study Russian literature and have an educational background in the Finnish school system. The main questions concern how literary researchers, as geopolitical actors, reflect and make sense of their spatial belonging regarding their research topics in a situation of changing sociopolitical circumstances and geopolitical narratives. The research material consists of 10 in-depth interviews conducted in the autumn of 2022. During the interviews it was found that researchers tended to geopoliticise their relationship to the study of Russian literature in three ways: by questioning their belonging; by depoliticising their research themes; and by pondering their own academic agency. The article shows how at a moment of crisis, a sense of belonging among transnational academics becomes geopolitical and how in-betweenness becomes a matter of having mixed feelings about one’s belonging to various communities.
Source: Geopolitics
Author: Juha Ridanpää
Institution: University of Oulu
Language: English
Subfield: Literature and Literary Theory
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W4407287997