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Pussy Riot and the Western Gaze: Punk Music, Solidarity and the Production of Similarity and Difference

2015; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 39; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/03007766.2015.1088281

1740-1712

Katharina Wiedlack,

Gender, Feminism, and Media

AbstractThe article investigates the relationship between the Russian performance and media art group Pussy Riot and the US-based Riot Grrrl movement. It analyzes the references made between the contemporary Russian group and the US past made in newspaper as well as through solidarity activities by activists, musicians, journalists, politicians, and academic analysts. It argues that the characterization of Pussy Riot as feminist punks or Riot Grrrls within public discourses is an oversimplification of their very complex performances and references to other protest movements and forms. Moreover, it produced incomplete assumptions about the group's politics. The text analyzes examples of US-based solidarity statements and actions in popular culture, discussing problems of cultural incorporation. It argues that through processes of incorporation and misinterpretation, public discourses produced a notion of Russia as outright "backward" and "authoritarian," and most importantly oppositional to the western world and its values. Following scholars such as Hanna Hacker, Joanna Mizielińska, Robert Kulpa, and Agata Stasinska, the article tries to decentralize the Western perspective on Pussy Riot. It offers an alternative and nuanced reading of their references to the historic Riot Grrrl movement, including accounts by some of their members published in Russian media. AcknowledgmentsI thank Masha Neufeld for giving me the opportunity to develop my arguments within our discussions, for helping me with translations and her extremely useful criticism of and comments on my work.Notes on ContributorDr.in Katharina Wiedlack is a Hertha Firnberg fellow at the Department for English and American Studies, University of Vienna. She has a diploma in German Literature and Gender Studies and a doctoral degree in English and American Studies from the University of Vienna. She was visiting a researcher at UC Berkeley 2011/12 and is currently a writer in residence at the Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia at New York University. She has published extensively on queer, disability and feminist theory, and US as well as post-soviet Russian popular culture. Her monograph "Queer-feminist Punk: An Anti-Social History" was published in 2015 by Zaglossus.Notes1. FEMEN is a radical feminist protest group founded in Ukraine in 2008, now based in Paris. They organize topless street protests against various phenomena, for example sex tourism, sex work, religious institutions, etc. They write their political messages on their naked upper bodies, addressing the male gaze and the sexualization of female bodies.