Defiant Bodies: Interpreting Violence, Agency, and Resistance in Belarus

This edited volume examines political contestation in contemporary Belarus through the lens of everyday, bottom-up vernacular practices and creative interventions. Spanning art, education, research, humor, music, diaspora culture, and public creativity, it addresses core questions: How do grassroots creative acts serve as subtle or overt forms of resistance in a highly repressive context? How do physical spaces--cultural venues, universities, schools--shape these practices? And how do such vernacular efforts become arenas for exercising agency and reclaiming autonomy?

While most scholarship on Belarus centers on formal institutions like elections and organized opposition, this book breaks new ground by foregrounding lived, bottom-up experiences as powerful modes of contestation and resistance. Its interdisciplinary approach--drawing on political science, communication, linguistics, ethnography, and feminist autoethnography--integrates diverse epistemologies and methods to challenge state-centric narratives and illuminate the dynamics of Belarusian society from below.

Contributors include: Hanna Komar (University of Brighton), Vasil Navumau (Ruhr University Bochum), Katsiaryna Lozka (KU Leuven), Peter Vermeersch (KU Leuven), Kate Antanovich (State College Pennsylvania), Tatsiana Kulakevich (University of South Florida), Anton Dinerstein (independent researcher), Todd Sandel (University of Macau), Tania Arcimovich (Erfurt University), and Anastasiya Fiadotava (Estonian Literary Museum). This collection offers fresh, grounded insights into how ordinary Belarusians navigate and contest authoritarian power through creativity, culture, and everyday agency.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 3838221516
• ISBN13: 9783838221519
• Release Date: December 2026
• Publisher: Ibidem Press
• Length: 250 Pages