Vernacular place name as a cultural arena of urban place-making and symbolic resistance in Minsk, Belarus

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the existing body of critical urban place naming scholarship, the spatial politics of toponymic resistance is among the major theoretical lines. Using the critical toponymic approach based on the “cultural arena” metaphor, this study analyzes the place-making function of a new vernacular urban microtoponym Ploshchad’ Peremen (“The Square of Changes”) in Minsk, Belarus, coined by the urban dwellers following the unprecedented national protests that erupted in 2020 after the presidential election accompanied by extreme police brutality. The study unveils the informal place name’s role as the crucial spatial attribute of place-making for the protesting community and as a powerful spatial identity memorial for both sides of the political spectrum during times of sociopolitical unrest in the contested urban space of Minsk.