Authors
Yuliya Charnyshova1; 1 Independent Scholar, Russian Federation Discussion
[The paper is a follow-up of my 2022 work “Belarusian Spatiality”. The panel with it was canceled due to the non-appearance of the chair, and I was invited to re-apply this year.] In my research, I examine the notion of “space” in the recent (post-2020) writings of contemporary Belarusian female authors—Valzhyna Mort, Julia Cimafiejeva and Tatsiana Zamirouskaya. The materials are in 3 languages—English, Belarusian and Russian.
In these works, memory is spatialised and presented as being full of gaps and voids that are physically sensed, often in the imagery of cleaned and at the same time ruined archives (in Mort), prison (Cimafiejeva) or dystopian parallel universe where physical senses are often delusional and materiality is on the verge of extinction (Zamirouskaya). In all three cases, the damaged state of the memory's landscapes invites the need to redesign it and recreate the previously damaged/erased identity in a decolonial way. Imagined spaces of terror and repression are brought to the reader's attention portraying the way terror organises writing.
The additional framing, adequate to the reality of the Russian invasion, has been added to the research in order to assess the specific role of the Belarusian (literary) spatiality as of the land (again) compliantly handed over to the Russian troops. This is a spatiality of a non-land, of exile, of a revolution buried down with the hidden undercurrents of memory and voices of the community. 
