Call for Papers of Religion and Gender: The Pussy Riot Case

The paper discusses problems in the translation of Pussy Riot across ideological paradigms, as exemplified with the phenomenon of celebratory reenactments and protests in support of Pussy Riot in two case studies in Chicago. The paper brings to the table questions about context-specific nature of political art and activism and offers a comparative application of religious and protest aesthetics, through the discussion of anarchism within Russian Orthodoxy and the transfiguration of “sacrilege” into “revelation” in the performance of Pussy Riot. This paper is situated in conversation with issues in cultural, visual and contextual translation, as well as post-colonial discourse and the politics of representation.

The arrest of the members of Pussy Riot, their imprisonment and their trial has attracted great interest worldwide, and some commentators pointed out that the young women in this feminist punk band could be considered as the heirs to the Russian dissidents. The article explores this link further and shows that the action which made this feminist punk band famous can indeed be seen as a continuation of the combat of dissidents who, as of the mid-1960s, fought for the genuine independence of the Russian Orthodox Church from the State, and who denounced the infiltration of the Church by the KGB, an infiltration that the Church itself has never publicly condemned. Therefore the various predecessors of Pussy Riot include an archbishop, priests, lay people such as Solzhenitsyn, young hippyish intellectuals and -already -feminist believers.

Religion and Gender, Vol 4, No 22 (2014). Edited by Anne-Marie Korte, Katya Tolstaya, and Heleen Zorgdrager

This article examines the explosive reaction to 'Punk Prayer' as a religious act. It argues that the power of the performance as iconoclash resulted from the fact that it tapped, resonated with and disturbed Russia's Orthodox culture through its appropriation of Orthodox sound, space and symbolsnamely, the image of Mary, the Mother of God. The perceived position of its performers as insiders or outsiders to Orthodoxy, the evaluation of the sincerity of Punk Prayer as prayer and the paradoxical role that gender played in shaping these perceptions contributed to the tumultuous response.

The recent case of the Russian punk group Pussy Riot, their performance in Moscow Cathedral and the subsequent legal actions against them, have highlighted many important issues that Russian society faces today. However, this case can also be the basis for a more general analysis of the relations of religion and politics and the political dimension of Orthodox Christianity.

Religion and Gender, 2014

(Several ideas to split into more traditional research but for now...) This essay is a reflective study on the postmodern performance of the group known as Pussy Riot who, in February of 2012, stormed a Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow to stage their Punk Prayer song. English-language social media sites quickly spread information about the short performance and legal court proceedings after the event increased its notoriety. The essay argues that Performance Studies and Spiritual Culture are necessary for youth in a highly diverse world so that their multimodal designs do not land them in prison. The study employs Gale’s “Madness of Methodology” (2018) to trouble and fracture “traditionally accepted academic practice.” It operationalizes Fredric Jameson’s idea of pastiche from the cultural critic’s essay Postmodernism and Consumer Society (1983) to comment on the happening—a designed theatrical event intended to appear unplanned. Three elements of multimodal communication run throughout analysis: costume/fashion, music, and language particularly naming. Two examples of Slavic language speakers’ performances are discussed to consider the feminist and (anti-) religious themes in the Punk Prayer happening within the context of the Russian Federation’s Spiritual Culture curriculum that was implemented also in 2012 after three pilot years and conversations with the international teaching community including the author.

Stories of Art, 2020

When the Pussy Riot prayed their "Punk Prayer" in the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in 2012, they themselves claimed that they were standing in a Christian Orthodox tradition as well as in a Russian artistic tradition. By way of Foucault, this chapter suggests a way to understand the common denominator between these two sources of inspiration. It endeavours to show how a certain account of the apophatic appears in Foucault, Kandinsky, Malevich, the OBERIU (Объединение реального искусства; the Association for Real Art) and Magritte alike; an account that relates closely to the Pussy Riot's notion of the tradition of critique through faith of the Christian Orthodox tradition. It is an account of the apophatic that does not aim to protect the eminent oneness of the transcendent God, but rather to throw light upon the cracks in human knowledge and thus lead to an embrace of the multiplicity of life. Hence, it is an approach that involves playful and nonsensical artistic as well as spiritual techniques, aiming beyond the illusory singularity of reason and even beyond the notions of meaning and meaningfulness as such. Moreover, the chapter shows, it is an account of the apophatic that finds a counterpart in Vladimir Lossky's notion of the orthodox way of life as "a tendency towards an ever-greater plentitude, in which knowledge is transformed into ignorance."

Philosophy Study, 2014

Moscow-based Feminist Punk performers Pussy Riot challenged the millennial patriarchal Russian State-Church Religio-Political control on freedom in arts and suppression of women. Woman is still the other of this Church-State totalism, outside. The event is extremely small but the symbolism enormous of an intrinsic lack and its insane compensations. Philosopher Žižek sees the significance of what Pussy Riot represent for contemporary global capitalism, represented by the American dollar and Wall Street. Performer Madonna sees the difference between America, where she has been able to express herself and says that anyone can, and other parts of the world, namely Russia, where this is not possible. Although Edward Snowdon found sanctuary in Russia from America, so perhaps Žižek is right.

Journal of Contemporary Religion

This article analyses the configurations of belief, critique, and religious freedom in Russia since the performance of the Russian group Pussy Riot in 2012. The 'punk prayer' and its legal and political aftermath are interpreted as an incidence of the contestation of the boundary between the secular and the religious in the Russian legal and social sphere. The authors show that the outcome of this contestation has had a decisive impact on the way in which religion, critique, and the human right of religious freedom have been defined in the present Russian context. In response to Pussy Riot, the Russian legislator turned offending religious feelings into a crime. The article investigates two more recent cases where offended feelings of believers were involved, the opera "Tannhäuser" in Ekaterinburg in 2015 and the movie Matilda in 2017, and analyses how the initial power-conforming configuration that emerged as a reply to the 'punk prayer' has revealed a 'power-disturbing' potential as conservative Orthodox groups have started to challenge the authority of the State and the Church leadership. The article is based on primary sources from Russian debates surrounding Pussy Riot, Matilda, and "Tannhäuser" and on theoretical literature on the religious-secular boundary and human rights.