In Search of Solidarity: Digital Transformation of Belarusian Feminist Activist Projects

Abstract

The article explores the interlink between the digital transformation process of Belarusian feminist activist projects and solidarity within the feminist community. The article aims to characterize the process of Belarusian feminist activist projects’ digital transformation, as well as to answer the question, how the digital transformation of Belarusian feminist activist projects influences the solidarity of the Belarusian feminist community as an ability to maintain horizontal networking and practices of care, as well as to form autonomous political subjectivities and unite for collective action. The article theorizes the concepts of feminist solidarity, the essence of digitalized activism and approaches to defining feminist civil society in Belarus. Building on existing scholarship and semi-structured interviews results, the article identifies how feminist projects underwent digitalization, presented by sixteen interlocutors, and contributes to understanding feminist solidarity, its challenges, and its further potential. The results provide an overview of the most significant features of feminist projects’ digital transformation in Belarus, including evidence of the uniqueness of the online space for the birth of a new generation of Belarusian feminists and related intergenerational transfer of knowledge both within and outside the community, overcoming the digital divide and boosting the dissemination of feminist values among Belarusians through the digitalization of feminist projects, rethinking the possible ways to strengthening solidarity within the community, and the need to constantly defend the feminist language within the political process of democratization in Belarus highlighted through digital activism.