Authors

Discussion

Drawing on feminist theory, cultural geography and critical border studies, the paper focuses on lived experiences and emotions reflected by some female and non-binary persons fled Russia following the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It is based on in-depth interviews in Yerevan and Tbilisi. As Sylvester (2013) notes the emotions of war help to reveal cultural and political activities that conflicts produce, with Ahmed (2004) arguing that they have a transformational potential (Ahmed 2004). War-induced mourning can be a motivating factor in supporting politics against war and violence (Butler 2004). Feminist geopolitics helps to revise the role of civilians by seeing them as “embodied political subjects” (Hyndman 2019). This perspective traverses a scale of analysis from the disembodied space of geopolitics to the area of people’s lived experiences and emotions (see Kuznetsova 2021) including transnational practices and activism. We will also show how emotions related to the geopolitics are translated by artistic practices and what is a transformative role of art in coping with geopolitical anxieties, emotions of shame, guilt and hope.