Gražina Bielousova

Gražina Bielousova’s research project aims to examine Ukrainian leftist feminists’ contribution to articulating Ukraine’s right to resistance and self-determination in the context of Russia’s full-scale invasion. Since 2022, when the invasion began, leftist feminists from the West and the Global South have tended to see the war as a result of NATO’s expansionist politics, either placing the blame on the West, or viewing it as a war of mutual fault and shared responsibility, thereby avoiding naming Russia as an aggressor or even absolving it entirely. In these conversations, the voices and contributions of Ukrainian feminists, and especially leftist feminists, have been routinely marginalized and excluded, turning it into another inter-imperial conversation between global power players. Simultaneously, however, a number of critical interventions by and with Ukrainian and Eastern European scholars have been published, pushing back against these hegemonic narratives about Ukraine; yet, to date, no analysis has been done analyzing the strategies and motivations of Ukrainian leftist feminists who seek to engage with the West and the Global South and articulate Ukraine’s plight to the world. This project, grounded in standpoint feminist theory, seeks to amplify the voices of Ukrainian feminists; however, its broader theoretical contribution would extend to digital social activism and feminist organizing, as well as subaltern and decolonial theories.