Within the borders
Olga Davydik
14th August 2020
The long-overdue protests in Belarus, which broke out last week, did not leave the editors of TransitoryWhite indifferent. Supporting unconditionally the desire for democratic elections in Belarus, remembering the hopelessness that reigned in the air during the election process, from our own experience, we tried to understand what led to this heat. Why is this protest important? Is there a unifying political idea among the people who went out into the street? What is the modern opposition environment in Minsk? Years of Lukashenko's rule did not allow the opposition to develop into a strong political structure, crushing at the root of any ideological differentiation. This is why the main requirement of the protesters is re-election. We asked curator Antonina Stebur, philosopher Olga Davydik and artist Vladimir Khramovsky to describe the situation from their point of view - these are personal impressions of people in Minsk and outside of it, written on different days of the protest. Our second publication is by Olga Davydik.
Once swallowing the first shock of the present, on the one hand, you endure the horror, and on the other, the obsessive déjà vu, as if this flaring political cycle will never be completed or learned, once again stealing the hope for civic consciousness and dignity. The cyclical nature of the present - the obsession with repetition, rhetoric and characters, outbursts of revolutionary indignation, and a paralyzing fear of having to come out again and again - has become a common form for the Belarusian resistance. But at the same time, backstage has somewhat changed.
Judith Butler keeps reminding us of our vulnerability and fragility, which both are common and make us admit our loneliness. However, we also perceive both unity and disunity as something that comes from the space of our “bubble”. It is clearly shown to us at the frontline of Belarusian barricades that solely “civilians” are fragile in the world of “siloviki”.
Bodies exposed on the streets, placed in the space of a rebellious city is a stage with no imaginary protection, a life far too bare that is, however, recognized to consolidate the protocol of political practice and to embed solidarity. Violence against the body is an attempt to reject one's fragility, the very opportunity to be the same vulnerable and naked, but with its own goals, the ability to defend the right to exist, interact, and produce the political horizontally.
Spring 2020 has firmly confined us to borders: countries, bodies, diseases, apartments, violence against freedom and rights of various kinds, - while at the same time pointed out that key to expanding borders can lie in a very narrow place. We discovered new forms of solidarity, realized the power of interaction at the level of individuals and communities, and felt our interdependence in a new way. And we understood anew the simple truth that Everything is Political, our body is a battlefield and parchment for applying the signs of ideologies. By pushing our body into the streets, we make it clear that now we want to get both the weapon and the feather back in our hands.
Olga Davydik is a researcher at the Institute of Philosophy of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, co-coordinator of the intellectual club "Women in Philosophy".