Experience-sharing as feminist praxis: Imagining a future of collective care

ABSTRACT

What kinds of political possibilities can be created in the face of postsocialist precarity at the intersection of socialist inheritance and violence accelerated under militarist and neoliberal governance in Armenia? This is the question I grapple with in this paper by drawing on in-depth interviews with politically active feminists. Taking a cue from my interlocutors, I question the dominant definition of the terms ‘activism’ and ‘activist’ – labels that in the Armenian context become ascribed to select groups of people as a means of discrediting and dismissing their political efforts. I focus on the slow and creative experience-sharing work that oriented toward collective care cultivates political consciousness to imagine a more livable life.