ABSTRACT
This contribution seeks to not only explore the repressive political environment enforced on the Belarusian public sphere but also assess the societal perspectives towards participation that emerge from this political context. The chapter argues that alongside the coercive institutional environment, participation is importantly restricted by dominant narratives that delineate permissible conduct in the public sphere, conditioning people’s agency to adherence to the knowledge distributed through the regime-sanctioned discourses justified in reference to culture and national belonging. Societal perceptions that emerge from this ideational context, nevertheless, enable individual agency, some of which is located in apparent conformity with the regime; some emerges from a strategic choice to avoid confrontation with the rule; while others are informed by making minute disruptions in the dominant narratives that sustain the political status quo. This chapter demonstrates that even with the repressive apparatus policing social conformity, the regime does not dominate all facets of power discourses, neither among those generally supportive of the rule nor others, who are pushed towards the semi-legal but tolerated spaces within the public sphere to find genuine, strategic, and creative ways to alter the political realm. While such practices may not indicate political dissent, neither can they be understood as regime support for they may, over time, present a counter-discourse to the practice itself.
