Vulnus: On Vulnerability

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.