'Better stories' of feminist+ witnessing and co-creativity in dark times: epilogue

The RESISTIRÉ journey can be summarised as a collective inquiry into the ‘better stories’ of responding to ‘dark times’, a search for the ‘cracks’ where the light gets in and an invitation to expand those cracks through collective wisdom and creativity. Grounding itself in feminist scholar Dina Georgis’ concept of ‘the better story’ both as a theoretical lens and a methodological tool, RESISTIRÉ has used its wide web of national researchers to ‘listen queerly’ (Georgis, 2013) and make visible the wisdom and creativity expressing itself in individual narratives, collective civic action and policies responding to the multi-layered challenges of the pandemic. The different chapters in this book have already discussed our learnings based on more than two years of RESISTIRÉ research, as well as the new questions and curiosities that arise from them. We would like to use the space of this Epilogue to elaborate on our journey with ‘the better story’ as a theoretical lens and methodology that values, encourages and makes visible creativity and collec- tive wisdom emerging from different contexts and to explore the transformative potentials of such a methodology for enabling co-creation and democratising knowledge production towards greater inclusion, engagement and innovation – especially when it incorporates a feminist+ lens. In what follows, we first discuss our choice of ‘the better story’ as a theoretical lens and methodological tool and then reflect on the ways in which it has helped us explore three sets of research questions: 1. What can we learn from the existing better stories of individual, civil society and policy responses to the pandemic? 2. How can we collectively and co-creatively imagine even better stories of responding to this crisis that we have all shared, but have not been equally affected by? 3. How can a feminist+ lens help us explore, make visible and co-create better stories of inclusive policies, initiatives, and practices? And finally, we reflect on the experience of RESISTIRÉ itself as a better story of (consortium) research.