Contribution short abstract:

When power targets the very resources of hope and strength needed to resist, how can resistance endure and reproduce itself? This study explores the micropolitics of reproducing resistance in the experiences feminist activists, through a co-creative feminist ethnography.

Contribution long abstract:

Systems of domination violate life; violence, injustice, disasters and crises make survival a matter of struggle. In response, people come together to defend life, to find ways to survive, resist and change. However, when these same powers target the very resources of hope and strength to resist and change (Lorde, 2007), how can the collective struggle endure and reproduce itself?

This study examines the practices and micropolitics of reproducing resistance in hard times, by focusing on self and collective narratives of feminists in Turkey. Using a co-creative ethnographic approach grounded in feminist and caring research ethics, the study employs creative and embodied methods —such as drawing, mapping, and narration— to foster dialogue and self-reflection in knowledge production. By integrating collaborative procedures from narration to interpretation, the research draws on the “knowledge-practices” (Casas-Cortés et al., 2008) of feminist activists to develop “movement-relevant theory” (Bevington and Dixon, 2005). 

With a feminist sensibility toward singularities, commons and complexities, this research critically examines the vulnerabilities, and contradictions within resistance. It reworks the (dis)connections of theories of affect, care and micropolitics, bringing them to life in empirical context beyond Western-hegemonic paradigms. Thinking with feminist knowledge-practices, the “reproduction of resistance” is articulated as processes of transformation, care and construction across individual, relational, ethical, and ideological levels. Resistance is produced (and reproduced) through a multiplicity of bodies, relationalities, everyday practices and interactions, affective and micropolitical processes. A micropolitical analysis of everyday feminist practices and politics reveals how these contribute to healing, strengthening, and transformation, to endure resistance.