Vulnus

Vulnus: On Vulnerability  examines vulnerability as a constitutive openness to being affected by the Other, situating it in dialogue with its cultural counter-image: the invulnerable  Ideal.  Grounded in ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Rome (Italy) and Ankara (Türkiye), the book argues that vulnerability is not merely an inner, individual condition but a negotiated position produced through an intertwined gaze–voice assemblage. Bringing psychoanalytic theory into sustained conversation with participants’ narratives, it maps the “fault lines” along which embodied differences and social statuses become charged with meaning, generating a surplus/deficit economy in which subjects are repeatedly positioned on a scale of “too much” or “not enough.” The book addresses contemporary regimes of visibility by connecting lived narratives, cultural images, and theoretical analysis, and invites readers to rethink vulnerability as a relational condition that can open an ethics of seeing and listening beyond phantasmatic  ideals.