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This paper examines A Constellation of Vital Phenomena (2013), a novel situated in Chechnya between 1994 and 2004, focusing on the poetic status of details and their role in the representation of violence and the circulation of affect. The descriptions, inventories and portraits reveal the filter of a subject’s gaze and frequently rely on lists and enumerations, the better to convey a sense of loss and absence. Incongruous or poignant details function as weapons of resistance, drawing our attention to effects of contextualization and inviting us to perceive the complexity of experience through a dynamics of de/re/figuration.