Lesson 5.4: Knowledge and continuity

1. Why knowledge-sharing is political

‘Anti-gender’ movements seek to restrict not only rights but also knowledge: academic fields, community centres, activist archives, and peer-learning networks. When states criminalise gender studies, censor NGOs, or smear activists, they also attempt to silence the knowledge that sustains resistance.

Sharing knowledge counters this in three ways:

1. It preserves collective memory (what happened, what worked, what failed).
2. It sustains communities through mentoring, care, and emotional solidarity.
3. It strengthens strategies by ensuring each generation doesn’t rebuild from zero.

2. Burnout and continuity

Queer and feminist organising often happens in cycles. Mobilisation rises during crises, but harsh backlash, burnout, and resource loss can interrupt long-term work.

Examples across Europe show how hostile contexts create barriers:

• In Belarus, mass repression after 2020 dismantled organisations, destroyed archives, and forced experienced activists into exile. Younger organisers often must ‘reinvent the wheel’ without access to mentors or institutional memory.
• In Germany, targeted attacks on gender studies and civic educators (e.g. parliamentary inquiries, media smear campaigns) disrupted outreach work. Scholars withdrew from public engagement, slowing knowledge transfer.
• In Poland, younger activists expressed frustration at generational divides, while older activists noted hope in emerging generations – reflecting the need for intentional intergenerational work.

These examples show that when burnout and repression meet generational fragmentation, knowledge can disappear unless deliberately passed on.

3. Sharing knowledge under pressure

How activists share knowledge despite shrinking civic space

Across the RESIST case studies, activists developed creative and resilient methods to preserve and circulate knowledge even under pressure. Peer learning through solidarity networks is a key way to sustain hope amid fatigue and repression. Intersectional peer learning helps navigate risks, internal conflicts, and organisational challenges.

In Spain, one collective described producing short, accessible documents responding to recurring questions and misinformation within feminist spaces. As one activist explained:

We made a very short document […] in which we answer questions that people have asked us, in a pedagogical way so that everyone can understand. Now every time we have a situation like this, we send this document. (ESPINT01,  RESIST Spain - Catalonia and the Basque Country Report, p. 13)

Rather than engaging in endless reactive debate, this form of shared knowledge became a reusable tool to counter trans-exclusionary arguments within the movement, showing how pedagogy itself functions as resistance.

• Archiving and storytelling: In contexts where repression erases memory, documenting becomes a form of defiance. Projects like Queer Archive Athens and Belarusian Feminist Memory record testimonies, zines, and artworks, ensuring that activist histories remain visible. As Sara Ahmed (2017) writes, to “make things visible” is itself a feminist act.

• Workshops and practical knowledge sharing: Many collectives organise peer-to-peer sessions on trauma care, digital security, or legal literacy, building practical skills and emotional resilience together.

• Cross-border learning: Exiled activists from Belarus or Turkey share their digital safety and advocacy experience with peers across Europe, demonstrating how knowledge travels even when people are displaced — often more freely across borders than within states.

Exiled activists from Turkey and Belarus share their knowledge of digital safety, trauma survival, and authoritarian conditions with groups in Western Europe. Knowledge travels even when people are displaced – sometimes more effectively across borders than within states.

4. Archiving as resistance

Creative resistance is not limited to art-making; it also includes storytelling, archiving, and documentation. Across RESIST case studies, activists use:

• oral histories
• zines
• digital archives
• community photography
• memory projects

Archiving is political. As Sara Ahmed (2017) notes, to ‘make things visible’ is a feminist act. Storytelling preserves what repression tries to erase, ensuring that communities carry their knowledge forward even when organisations fall or people enter exile.

In Belarus, Turkey, and Greece, activists described archiving as an emotional form of resistance – a practice of care for future generations.

5. Challenges

Knowledge-sharing is not always smooth. Tensions often arise due to differences in politics, privilege, lived experience, and strategy.

These patterns show why deliberate knowledge-sharing is essential: without it, distrust grows and political energy dissipates.

6. Knowledge-sharing as care

Sharing knowledge is not only about passing on skills; it is also a form of care.
Telling stories of past victories and setbacks helps build a sense of continuity, reminding activists that resistance is a long arc, not a single moment.

As Sara Ahmed (2017) notes, feminist archives are “living” because they are not merely repositories of the past, but practices that keep the present politically alive. Knowledge is emotional as well as informational. It binds communities through shared purpose and empathy.

7. Key takeaway

• Knowledge-sharing sustains movements across cycles of mobilisation, repression, and burnout.
• It is both political and emotional – an act of resistance and an act of care.
• Intergenerational solidarity strengthens movements, even when tensions arise.
• Archiving and storytelling preserve collective memory across generations and borders.
• When knowledge circulates, movements become harder to silence.