Authors

Discussion

Most narratives around the identity of Belarusians are conditioned by the images of imperialism, violence, and political repression. Those are, sadly, real. Yet, there are other narratives, women’s stories which tell about violence but also about empathy, care and solidarity as resistance and a different way of being a society. In 2020 Belarusian women offered new forms and strategies of identity, solidarity and peaceful protest for Belarusian society as a whole – infrastructure of care. However, due to the destruction of almost all networks of support and ongoing political repressions, today every second Belarusian woman is concerned about facing physical or sexualized violence and 83% of women are afraid of violence from the law enforcement agencies. These women are often left on their own and silent, the collective trauma is expanding.

British academia is the environment dominated by a colonial, imperialist legacy and a eurocentric worldview. European culture is considered rational, and the other cultures are not rational, inferior. Coloniality places intellect as the locus of knowing, but feminist approaches challenge this tradition, valuing personal, embodied, and vulnerable writing.

In my academic work, I identified a methodology to share the stories of Belarusian women, who are oppressed by the patriarchal state, without oppressing them even more, and a way of writing that disrupts the masculine approach to writing, cultivating love and justice in academia. This method is poetic feminist familial autoethnography. 

In my presentation, I will share some findings on how Belarusian women’s stories of resistance and survival can challenge the male-dominated narratives and ‘existing codes of silence’ about gender-based violence by placing women in the centre of their self-narratives. Using examples of my autoethnographic writing and poetry, I will show how we can write differently in academia, and how to employ feminist ethics of care and love ethics to create spaces for empathy, helping both the writer and the reader develop alternative visions of the future free from violence and empower us for action.