“It's a dash‐dot.” Tonalities of war‐influenced time perception (displaced Ukrainians in Berlin 2022)

Abstract

This essay presents a cultural anthropological approach to temporality and, through an emotional lens, explores perceptions of time and mortality. If “lamentation” (Ricoeur) dominates in one's everyday attitude toward the brevity of life in peacetime, this essay explores how war‐displaced Ukrainians' perceptions of time were changed by the full‐scale invasion. This essay argues that the war‐displaced Ukrainians may perceive time in several ways: as a quantitative, qualitative, static, dynamic, transformative, interactive, or deceptive phenomenon. In addition to representations of time as a cycle , line , or spiral , respondents also explained it as a limit , shortage , fluid reagent , phantom arrhythmia , or power . The analysis highlights that disquieting tonalities were enriched by polyphonic framings, ranging from implicit didactics and creepy jokes of historical cycles in their perceptions of the past to disoriented or desired expectations of something like an inescapable justice in the future.