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Paper short abstract:

By focusing on the story of a displaced family in the face of a stinkbug invasion in a disputed borderland, I explore how the stinkbug crisis transformed the affective dimensions of time and space, and argue that such crises in a zone of uncertainty render the future convulsive and spasmodic.

Paper long abstract:

Displaced Georgians in the de facto Georgia-Abkhazia borderland have lived in a zone of protracted uncertainty and conflict for more than two decades. During the Georgian-Abkhaz war, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Georgian residents of Abkhazia were forced to flee into Georgia proper. However, members of the displaced community in the borderland maintain their long-existing socio-economic ties with both sides of the border despite shifting legal and military attempts to constrain their rights and mobility. The question of the contingent is a matter of everyday concern that people have to actively navigate in contexts where lives are economically precarious, governance is tactical, and legality is shifting. In this ambivalent terrain, seemingly a harmless group of stinkbugs or a swine flu virus unexpectedly becomes eventful and politically transformative by closing borders, creating new crises, and impacting livelihoods across a disputed border. By focusing on the story of a displaced family in the face of recent stinkbug invasion in the disputed Georgia-Abkhazia borderland, this paper explores the ways in which the stinkbug crisis as a totally unanticipated contingent event transformed the affective dimensions of time and space, and argue that such crises and periods of emergency in a zone of continuous uncertainty render the future convulsive and spasmodic as the spaces and present problems appear to be more intrusive, and future anxieties become closer and imminent.