How did you come to choose your research topic?

It actually all started in 2015, when I did an internship at the Italian Embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan. Back then I dreamt of becoming a diplomat. While working in the country, I was very surprised to see the level of hatred of Azerbaijanis against Armenians. It was everywhere: the president, the media, and the people continuously depicted Armenians as a threatening, sly, and malicious people. Having of course read about the Karabakh conflict before starting the internship, I was expecting some level of hatred and resentment against Armenians. But I was not prepared to see that level of essentialist and nationalist hatred. A few years later, I realised that diplomacy was not my path, and that I was more interested in understanding and researching Emotions in Conflict. Thus, I started my master’s and later my PhD at the Geneva Graduate Institute, focusing on dynamics of trauma, ideology, stigma, and hatred in Azerbaijan over the Karabakh conflict.

Can you describe your thesis questions and the methodology you use to approach those questions?

The dissertation answers three research questions: (1) How did the personal trauma of Azerbaijanis displaced during the 1988–1994 Karabakh war become a collective and national trauma? (2) How is hatred against Armenians institutionalised and perpetuated? (3) How are alternative, more reconciliatory narratives marginalised?

To answer these questions, I combine scholarship on ideology, emotions, trauma and stigma. Essentially, I argue that a (nationalist) ideology provides subjects with an identity, emotional norms, ideas and values. These emotional norms are tied to the ideological identity, so that one’s identity is confirmed and recognised insofar as the emotional norms (of hatred against Armenians) are followed. Through various ideological apparatuses – the school, media and heritage institutions – these identities and norms are reproduced and institutionalised. This way, the personal trauma of displaced Azerbaijanis is collectivised into a cultural trauma for the whole nation. Transgressors of these emotional norms of hatred are stigmatised as “traitors” by both the media and ordinary people, the latter de facto becoming a pro-active ideological apparatus.

Moreover, the nationalist ideology also provides “enjoyment”, by which I mean the “surplus pleasure” provided by ideological identities. Therefore, I also analyse enjoyable moments, such as state-organised “Victory Day” concerts organised by the state, which are meant to stimulate pleasure in collectively hating the enemy. Through enjoyment, hatred becomes a powerful way of “gripping” subjects to their ideological identities.

Methodologically, I interviewed 64 displaced Azerbaijanis to understand their personal trauma and the nature of their suffering. I then analysed history school books, cultural sites, and presidential speeches to see how personal trauma is collectivised and turned into a national-cultural trauma. In addition, I analysed “enjoyable” moments to understand how remembrance of trauma, through hatred, can become paradoxically pleasurable. Furthermore, I conducted eight focus groups with ordinary Azerbaijanis to see how top-down narratives resonate with people. Finally, I interviewed 43 members of civil society who were stigmatised as “traitors” for their antiwar positions and articulations of more reconciliatory narratives with Armenians.

What are your major findings?

There are many small and big findings throughout the dissertation, partly owing to its vast theoretical basis and objects of analysis. So, I will mention the ones that I personally found the most interesting. First, Azerbaijan’s military victory in 2020 allowed displaced Azerbaijanis to go “from lack to loss”. By this I mean that the war and displacement of the 1990s created a sense of lack and longing in them, of “unlived years” since their displacement. The victorious war of 2020 allowed them to finally start “counting the years” again. However, the war also brought the full realisation that what they had longed for – their old home and land – was now mostly destroyed. So this “lack” ultimately turned into the full realisation of the “loss”. The years of life could be “counted” again, but the longed-for home was both symbolically and physically destroyed. Second, hatred has great ideological gripping power. Hatred has a sadistic component, so it strongly ties subjects to their ideological (nationalist) identities. The Azerbaijani governments were particularly good at institutionalising hatred against Armenians through the school, the media, and commemorations. To be a “proper” Azerbaijani, one had to hate Armenians. Third, societal stigma can marginalise alternative discourses by stimulating not only emotions of shame, but also feelings of hopelessness, sadness, and anxiety. The antiwar Azerbaijani activists were ultimately (mostly) reduced into silence not because they felt shame, but because they lost hope for positive change in the country.

What could be the social and political implications of your thesis? 

Regarding emotions and ideology, I would invite people to consider more deeply the gripping power of hatred, and to reflect more on their own hatred. We tend to point out the hatred of others (like I did in my dissertation), but to overlook the various shades of hatred in us. I believe that starting to reflect upon this may bring some benefits to people and society.

Regarding the Caucasus region, I hope my findings help to shed some light on a region which receives surprisingly little scholarly attention. Ideally, these findings should inform policymakers at the European level, and make them reconsider their warm relations with the nationalistic and authoritarian regime of Ilham Aliyev. But I remain pessimistic about this, as the recent years have shown that European policymakers favour energetic-economic concerns over their self-proclaimed liberal-democratic values.

I would like to use this opportunity to also mention how the regime, since August 2023, has been undergoing a “crackdown” against all remaining independent and critical voices in Azerbaijan, including those involved in peace-building activities with Armenians. This has led to the arrest, among many, of fellow scholar Bahruz Samadov, who is officially accused of “treason” for articulating more reconciliatory narratives about the conflict.

What are you doing now?

I started a two-year postdoc at Leiden University, at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs (ISGA). I am working on the EUMOTIONS project, which seeks to understand the role of emotions in the European Union’s foreign policy.

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On 9 September 2024, Cesare Figari Barberis defended with magna cum laude his PhD thesis in International Relations/Political Science, titled “Ideology, Hatred and Trauma: Azerbaijan between the Three Karabakh Wars”. Professor Anna Leander presided over the committee, which included Professor Keith Krause, Thesis Director, and, as External reader, Professor Ayşe Zarakol, Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge, UK.

Citation of the PhD thesis: 
Figari Barberis, Cesare. “Ideology, Hatred and Trauma: Azerbaijan between the Three Karabakh Wars”. PhD thesis, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva, 2024.
Members of the Geneva Graduate Institute can access the thesis via this page of the repository. Others can contact Dr Figari Barberis.

Banner image: Guba Memorial Complex, Guba, Azerbaijan, by Adam Jones, Ph.D./Global Photo Archive/Flickr, licensed under CC BY 4.0. In his PhD thesis (p. 132), Dr Figari Barberis writes: “So Aliyev institutionalised, through a memorial complex and an official commemoration day, an arguably fake genocide. And the narratives […] are diffused and instilled into young generations through school trips. All of this to characterise Armenians as a malevolent people that committed multiple genocides throughout history against Azerbaijanis.” 

Interview by Nathalie Tanner, Research Office.