Hanna Horn

Versions of home. Narrative analysis of platformised life writing of Belarusian exile

Emigration from Belarus, which has intensified since 2020-21, has its history dating back to the 19th and 20th centuries. Interested in multimediality of today’s writing, and reading it against the backdrop of the re-sovietization of official Minsk and the state’s use of internet technologies to suppress civil society, I’m taking a closer look at Belarusian authors living and working in exile and the ways they narrate their experiences of home and (non-)belonging online.

The gradual intensification of repressions, as well as the long precarious state of Belarusian (independent) publishing houses, only contributed to the formation of the internet in Belarus as a platform for publishing and discussing literature. The internet also allows authors in emigration to stay in touch with their readers in Belarus and other countries.

Such transformative process as migration often evokes authorial reflection on and redefinition of self, various versions of (non-)belonging and home. Moreover, exile is also often conditioned by (un)availability of certain objects, nostalgic longing for things that are no longer there, objects taking on new meaning or evoking memories. Though feelings of home and (non-)belonging are abstract, material reality of emigration / exile nevertheless belongs to particular places and manifests itself through certain things or their absence. Hence, I’m interested in the analysis of digital life writing in exile, and object-oriented authorial narration in these texts. In particular, I analyse Tatsiana Zamirovskaya’s and Valzhyna Mort’s writing across platforms (LiveJournal, Facebook, Instagram and Telegram) in the timeframe of 2010-2024 and examine how thingness and corporeality in online life writing entries are connected to the existential questions of home and (non-)belonging. Research question: What narratives of home and (non-) belonging does exilic digital life writing from Belarus follow and challenge?

Through narrative and discursive analysis of individual digital life writing texts of Tatsiana Zamirovskaya and Valzhyna Mort (Facebook, Instagram, LiveJournal, Telegram), I plan to show and analyse the variety of versions of home and (non-) belonging narrativized in the texts.

Articles and book chapters

• “Mediale Zwischenwelt. LiveJournal als Refugium für belarussische Stimmen,” Osteuropa 1-3 (2025): 459-462, https://zeitschrift-osteuropa.de/hefte/2025/1-3/mediale-zwischenwelt/.

Other

• “Passive security system at work. Visit to the Lubmin Nuclear Power Plant,” [blog] Baltic Peripeties Blog, October 14, 2024, https://peripeties.uni-greifswald.de/visit-lubmin-npp/.

• “I’m from Her/e: Reading Home through Evocative Objects in Tatsiana Zamirovskaya’s Digital Life Writing”, Interdisciplinary Conference Versions of Home. Adapting — Rewriting — Referencing in the Arts, University of Graz, March 26-28, 2025.
• “Object-Oriented Life Writing Across Social Media Platforms”, guest lecture for BA-students at the University of Oslo, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies, May 6, 2025.
• “Distributed agency in digital life writing from Belarus. On example of Tatsiana Zamirovskaya”, 2. Grazer Winterkolleg für Sprache, Kultur und Gesellschaft Belarus digital, University of Graz, March 3-7, 2025.
• “Narrating the Migrant Self in Digital Life Writing: On the Example of Tatsiana Zamirovskaya’s Digital Life Writing,” interdisciplinary autumn seminar for PhD researchers Narrare, Tampere University [online], November 8, 2024.
• “Close Reading of Evocative Objects in the Inter-imperial Space of Digital Life Writing. On the Example of Tatsiana Zamirovskaya’s Digital Life Writing,” fünfte interdisziplinäre Jahrestagung des Forschungsschwerpunktes digitale Kultur Tausend Plattformen: Plattformforschung nach dem Digital Services Act, FernUniversität in Hagen, Berlin Campus, November 7-8, 2024.
• “Emigration as Death-like Experience: On the Example of Tatsiana Zamirovskaya’s Digital Life Writing,” the 7th international death online research symposium Digital Death – Transforming History, Rituals, and Afterlife, University of Helsinki [online], October 3-5, 2024.
• “Life Writing ByNet: (Auto-)biographical Motives in Digital Dictatorship,” colloquium of FSP digitale_kultur digitales_kolloquium 1, FernUniversität in Hagen, Leipzig Campus, September 30 – October 1, 2024.
• Participation in the CBEES Summer School The Return of History: Memory, War and the End of the “Post”, organised by the Centre for Baltic and East European Studies (CBEES) at Södertörn University, Sigtuna, August 12-17, 2024.
• “Post-revolutionary Hope. On the Example of Facebook Prose by Tatsiana Zamirovskaya,” workshop Autobiography, Digitality & Platformisation, FernUniversität in Hagen, Berlin Campus, May 30-31, 2024.
• “Life Writing ByNet: (Auto-)biographical Motives in Digital Dictatorship,” international workshop Resonant Conflicts. Turning Points in the Baltic Sea Region, organised by the IRTG Baltic Peripeties. Narratives of Reformations, Revolutions and Catastrophes, Department for Language and Literature, NTNU Trondheim, May 22-24, 2024.
• “The Motifs of Emigration and Nostalgia in Facebook Prose by Tatsiana Zamirouskaya,” Graduate Student Conference in Russian Language and
  Literatures (Helsinki — Tallinn — Tartu), University of Tartu, May 10-12, 2024.
• “The Motifs of Emigration and Nostalgia in Facebook Prose by Tatsiana Zamirouskaya,” 9th Annual ‘Belarusian Studies in the 21st Century’ Conference, UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, Ostrogorski Centre, Francis Skaryna Belarusian Library and Museum, University College London [online], April 26-27, 2024.
• Pecha-Kucha Night with young researchers, ZOiS Annual Conference Paradigms in Times of War: Unpacking Research and Policy Challenges, Zentrum für Osteuropa- und internationale Studien (ZOiS), Berlin, November 16-17, 2023.
• Workshop A Short History of Digital Publics at War, FernUniversität in Hagen, Berlin Campus, May 2-3, 2023.