Fake Healing and Popular Biopolitics: Pro-Russian Narratives in Occupied Mariupol

Abstract

This article seeks to conceptualise the nexus of vernacular narratives and biopolitics and unpack it using the empirical material of pro-Russian video bloggers operating in the occupied territories of Ukraine, namely in the city of Mariupol. Our theoretical focus is a combination of biopolitics and critical media studies. Our main research question is: how – through what semantic tools – does the occupier propagate narratives and imageries supportive of the new regime as a biopolitical construct? Our methodology is grounded in visual analysis of several dozen videos, mainly produced by vloggers who position themselves as local (citizens of Mariupol), but whose content can be qualified as explicitly pro-Moscow, Russia-friendly and Ukraine-sceptic.