Coping, Resilience, Resistance: How Individuals and Collectives negotiate their Needs vis-à-vis the State

Abstract

Our panel examines how collectives and individuals cope with reality – both realties they live within and are able to manage, and realities that they cannot accept or can no longer accept. We explore strategies for seeking resilience within the State or defining resistance to the State or/and constructing alternative frameworks through with both individuals and collectives can negotiate and fulfil their needs. Lidia Małgorzata Rodak will present her work on women’s’ practices of transformative justice through an analysis of circles of women in Poland. Rodak explores how women’s voices can be heard even when the State cannot or will not recognize the harm done to them. The presentation demonstrates how the mechanism of circles of women can enable women both to cope with their current reality in order to enable a healing process and resist the reality where their voices are not recognized. Katarzyna Liszka examines the concept of resilience and asks: when do individuals and collectives reject resilience and resist? Using social protests in Poland as case study, the paper will explore resilience as a concept as well as its boundaries. In this context it will also demonstrate the relationship between protesters who have decided to reject resilience, and the State, that wishes to continue coping and resilience. Antal Szerletics will explore the premise that theorising and theoretical philosophy can serve as a way of coping (both externally and internally) with a distorted reality but at the same time can result in growing resistance to such reality. It is argued, somewhat paradoxically, that hiding what is personal or political might result in increased resistance to the external; however, this needs to be complemented with a realistic assessment of the limits of academic theorising for constructing alternative frameworks in this context. Elisheva Rosman will present a typology of strategies used by religious women when interacting with religious authorities and the role the State plays in these strategies. This presentation will explore how religious women show resilience in the face of realities that are difficult, yet acceptable to them, and what happens when they feel they can no longer cope with the current reality and wish to resist. Additionally, it will demonstrate the role the State plays in this dynamic.

Title	Details
Women’s’ Practices of Transformative Justice: The analysis of circles of women in Poland	View Paper Details
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