Ethics of documenting cultural losses as a manifestation of memory dispositif in the context of armed conflict

Abstract

The article is devoted to the analysis of the ethics of documenting cultural losses as a local manifestation of a memory dispositif in the context of the Russian-Ukrainian war. Based on contemporary approaches in the philosophy of memory and the theory of dispositif, the study offers a conceptual framing of the notion "memory dispositif" and argues for the need to highlight the ethics of documentation as an important component of this configuration. The article argues that documentation in the context of war goes beyond technical or procedural action and functions as a complex networked practice within which meanings, regimes of truth, and the documentarian’s agency are formed. This perspective allows us to interpret the documentation of cultural losses as an element of the cultural heritage protection system, which in modern conditions acquires a new security dimension and is integrated into state policy to counter genocide, memory erasure, and information manipulation.
The inquiry is grounded in viewing memory as a dynamic dispositif, where documentation functions not as passive recording, but as a process of forming meanings, responsibility, and agency. In this logic, the ethics of documentation is defined as a concept that encompasses the normative, epistemic, and ontological dimensions of the documentarian's activity. The ethics of documentation is set apart from the ethics of archiving and the ethics of testimony, highlighting that it addresses the prearchival phase of document creation and the documentarian’s mediation between trauma, fact, and social interpretations. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of contemporary Ukrainian practices of documenting cultural losses (in particular, the activities of HeMo and the Crimean Institute for Strategic Studies), which form an interconnected network of knowledge production, legal legitimation, and ethical interaction with communities. The Crimean material (the demolition of the Kosh-Kuyu I settlement and the Kirk-Azizler necropolis) is considered as a test case that most clearly demonstrates how a memory dispositif works: here, the documentarian finds himself at the intersection of colonial practices of displacement, legal invisibility, and ethical responsibility for giving voice back to cultural objects.
The article also analyzes the "Roadmap" for interagency cooperation as the materialization of a memory dispositive – a network infrastructure within which power structures, knowledge regimes, and ethical practices circulate The findings reveal that documentation, in this configuration, is not a merely technical act but an ethical and discursive practice within which regimes of truth, norms of loss legitimization, and the documentarian’s subjectification take shape.
The authors conclude that the ethics of documentation operates as a localized manifestation of a memory dispositive – one in which cultural loss is transformed into a socially significant fact, and the documentarian assumes the role of an ethical subject responsible for shaping collective regimes of memory under wartime conditions.