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Paper short abstract

Russia’s war and internal repression render ethnographic business as usual (fieldwork as well as writing) impossible. This presentation considers the potential of memory work and creative writing as an ethical response.

Paper long abstract

Russia’s war and internal repression render ethnographic business as usual (fieldwork as well as writing) impossible. In this presentation, I will speak from the creative writing project I am experimenting with, in solidarity with Russian colleagues I am no longer able to meet or freely communicate with. Returning to my fieldnotes and past publications, I have harnessed memory as a tool to combat authoritarianism. Inspired by creative non-fiction writing techniques, my writing traces and expands on past conversations and incidents, incorporating vignettes wherein I imaginatively reinhabit scenarios formerly shared with me. This not only includes blurred genre accounts of conversations and interactions I remember, but also fully fictional vignettes that summon some of the writers and co-thinkers I know are meaningful to them. I will reflect upon the potentialities and limitations of this method of “fictionalization” as a framework for ethical ethnographic writing in these times.