CALL FOR PAPERS
War and Time: Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine and the Eclipse of Peace
Coedited by Michael Marder and Denys Sultanhaliiev
In what appears to be a peculiar paradox of our time, the Russo-Ukrainian war—initially a profound rupture in the European political imagination—has gradually receded into the background noise of global media circulation. Saturated coverage has not yielded conceptual clarity. On the contrary, despite the overwhelming volume of commentary, there remains a striking absence of sustained theoretical engagement with the war’s implications for political thought. Rather than catalyzing new frameworks, the conflict has too often been instrumentalized as confirmatory evidence for already established positions.
This special issue of Telos seeks to address this philosophical void.
The war resists easy classification. On the one hand, it follows recognizable patterns of territorial conquest associated with land-based empires. On the other, it marks a historical threshold: the largest ground war in Europe since World War II and since the early 1990s proclamation of the “end of history.” It is accompanied by competing and often contradictory narratives regarding its global significance, including claims that it will reshape the foundations of international law, potentially replacing juridical norms with the prerogatives of power. At the same time, it exemplifies a hybrid form of warfare, combining trench combat with drone technologies, cyber operations, and informational strategies.
Ukraine, already marked by the ecological and existential trauma of the 1986 nuclear disaster, again finds itself at the forefront of global crises—this time not only geopolitical but also conceptual. The war compels us to rethink the limits of habitability, the intersections of the Anthropocene with militarization, and the ontological status of territory, sovereignty, and life itself.
This special issue aims not merely to interpret the present conflict but to challenge the conceptual inertia surrounding it. At stake is not only how we understand this war, but how we think politically in its wake. Thus, we invite contributions that move beyond immediate commentary and engage in rigorous theoretical reflection. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
- The war and the crisis (or renewal) of political theory
- Neo-imperialism and the reconfiguration of sovereignty
- The future of international law and the “right of the strongest”
- Hybrid warfare and the ontology of technology
- Freedom, resistance, and political subjectivity under conditions of invasion
- Nationhood, identity, and alterity in wartime
- Historical agency and the temporality of war
- The role of media and the normalization of conflict
- War, ecology, and the Anthropocene
- Philosophical responses to violence, destruction, and displacement
We particularly encourage submissions that develop new conceptual vocabularies or critically interrogate the limits of existing ones.
Submission Guidelines
Length: Full papers should be 6,000 to 8,000 words
Deadline for paper submissions: December 1, 2026
Submissions should be made via Scholastica at the following link and should conform to Telos style and editorial guidelines.
