Post-War Spectres: The Ghosts that Haunt Armenia in the Aftermath of the 2020 Nagorno-Karabagh War

Abstract

As the 2020 war came to a ceasefire agreement on November 10, 2020, through which Armenia made massive territorial concessions, feelings of grief and anger emerged to haunt Armenia through two spectres: soldiers who are missing or who have died in action and the old political economic elite who now threaten to regain power. The Nagorno-Karabagh conflict has had a major impact on the workings of political power in Armenia since the early 1990s, one that now threatens the democratic possibilities that were already fragile prior to the war. In this article, I discuss the affective connections between these two spectres and the political implications of national trauma on Armenia's post-war futures.