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Abstract
August 17, 2012 was a “Global Day of Action” in support of Pussy Riot, a radical feminist performance group from Russia who had been incarcerated for their “Punk Prayer” at the altar of the Christ the Savior Cathedral in Moscow in February 2012. This paper reads the “Punk Prayer” as an image event with an extensive afterlife, mobilized through the transnational icon of the balaclava. By reading its production (socially and spatially) along with its circulation, evident in solidarity protest images, it argues that transnational iconicity enables transnational solidarity, an affective sense of connection and responsibility.
The author would like to thank the editor and anonymous reviewers, Elliot Heilman, Emma Chubb, Sarah Mann O'Donnell, Danielle Wiese Leek, and her co-panelists and respondent at the 2013 ASA meeting for comments on earlier versions of the paper.
The author would like to thank the editor and anonymous reviewers, Elliot Heilman, Emma Chubb, Sarah Mann O'Donnell, Danielle Wiese Leek, and her co-panelists and respondent at the 2013 ASA meeting for comments on earlier versions of the paper.
Notes
[1] Anya Bernstein, “An Inadvertent Sacrifice: Body Politics and Sovereign Power in the Pussy Riot Affair,” Critical Inquiry 40, issue 1 (2013): 220–33. The translated text of Pussy Riot's “Punk Prayer” follows:
[2] Bernstein, “An Inadvertent Sacrifice,” 220–33.
[3] Bernstein, “An Inadvertent Sacrifice,” 220–33.
[4] Bernstein, “An Inadvertent Sacrifice,” 220–33.
[5] “Free Pussy Riot,” New York Solidarity Protest Facebook Page, 2012, https://www.facebook.com/events/477671338911771/.
[6] “Russian Punk Band Supporters Fight New York State Law Banning Masks in Public,” CBS, October 10, 2012, http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2012/10/22/russian-punk-band-supporters-fight-new-york-state-law-banning-masks-in-public/.
[7] “Russian Punk Band Supporters Fight New York State Law Banning Masks in Public,” CBS, October 10, 2012, http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2012/10/22/russian-punk-band-supporters-fight-new-york-state-law-banning-masks-in-public/.
[8] Leonid Ragozin, “Freed Pussy Riot Members Say They Still Want to Remove Putin,” The Guardian, December, 27, 2013, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/27/freed-pussy-riot-remove-putin-tolokonnikova-alyokhina.
[9] Laurie Penny, “Pussy Riot: ‘People fear us because we're feminists’,” The New Statesman, June 22, 2013, http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2013/06/pussy-riot-people-fear-us-because-were-feminists; Yyngvar B. Steinholt, “Kitten Heresy: Lost Contexts of Pussy Riot's Punk Prayer,” Popular Music and Society 36, issue 1 (2013): 120–24.
[10] Sophie Pinkham, “Show Trials and Sympathy,” N+1 Magazine, June 19, 2013, https://nplusonemag.com/online-only/online-only/show-trials-and-sympathy/.
[11] Catherine Schuler, “Reinventing the Show Trial: Putin and Pussy Riot,” TDR/The Drama Review 57, issue 1 (2013): 7–17. Schuler notes that the women are frequently referred to as girls, “dvotchki,” in media.
[12] John W. Delicath and Kevin Michael Deluca, “Image Events, the Public Sphere, and Argumentative Practice: The Case of Radical Environmental Groups,” Argumentation 17, issue 3 (2003): 315–33.
[13] Valerie Sperling, Mary Marx Ferree, and Barbara Risman, “Constructing Global Feminism: Transnational Advocacy Networks and Russian Women's Activism,” Signs 26, issue 4 (2001): 1155–186; Leela Fernandes, Transnational Feminism in the United States: Knowledge, Ethics, and Power (New York: New York University Press, 2013), 26.
[14] On the visual grammar of performances in the service of social transformation see: Jan Cohen-Cruz, ed., Radical Street Performance: An International Anthology (London: Routledge, 1998). Thanks to the anonymous reviewer for this reference.
[15] Joshua Hirsch, Afterimage: Film, Trauma and the Holocaust (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2004).
[16] Steinholt, “Kitten Heresy.”
[17] Marjorie Perloff, The Futurist Moment: Avant-Garde, Avant Guerre, and the Language of Rupture, with a New Preface (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986).
[18] Ana Gérin, “Pussy Riot. Hate.” esse: arts + opinions 77 (Winter 2013): 18.
[19] Katya Samutsevich, “Closing Statement,” chtodelat news, August 8, 2012, http://chtodelat.wordpress.com/2012/08/08/yekaterina-samutsevich-closing-statement/.
[20] Delicath and Deluca, “Image Events,” 315–33.
[21] Delicath and Deluca, “Image Events,” 322–23.
[22] Jacques Ranciére, Disagreement (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minneapolis Press, 2004).
[23] Steinholt, “Kitten Heresy,” 121.
[24] Cara A. Finnegan, “Doing Rhetorical History of the Visual: The Photograph and the Archive,” in Defining Visual Rhetorics, ed. Charles A. Hill and Marguerite Helmers (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 2008), 211.
[25] Peggy Phelan, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance (New York: Routledge, 1993), 146.
[26] Joshua Gunn and Jenny Edbauer Rice, “About Face/stuttering Discipline,” Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies 6, issue 2 (2009): 215–19.
[27] Jenny Edbauer Rice, “The New “New”: Making a Case for Critical Affect Studies,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 94, issue 2 (2008): 200–12.
[28] Christian Lundberg, “Enjoying God's Death: The Passion of the Christ and the Practices of an Evangelical Public,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 95, issue 4 (2009): 387–411.
[29] Cara A. Finnegan and Jiyeon Kang, “‘Sighting’ the Public: Iconoclasm and Public Sphere Theory,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 90, issue 4 (2004): 377–402.
[30] Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites, “Dissent and Emotional Management in a Liberal-Democratic Society: The Kent State Iconic Photograph,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 31, issue 3 (2001): 6.
[31] Catherine H. Palczewski, “The Male Madonna and the Feminine Uncle Sam: Visual Argument, Icons, and iIdeographs in 1909 Anti-Woman Suffrage Postcards,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 91, issue 4 (2005): 365–94; Dana L. Cloud, “‘To Veil the Threat of Terror’: Afghan Women and the (Clash of Civilizations) in the Imagery of the US War on Terrorism,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 90, issue 3 (2004): 285–306.
[32] Janis L. Edwards and Carol K. Winkler, “Representative Form and the Visual Ideograph: The Iwo Jima Image in Editorial Cartoons,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 83, issue 3 (1997): 289–310.
[33] Eric Jenkins, “My iPod, My iCon: How and Why Do Images Become Icons?” Critical Studies in Media Communication 25, issue 5 (2008): 466–89.
[34] Lester G. Olson, “Portraits in Praise of a People: A Rhetorical Analysis of Norman Rockwell's Icons in Franklin D. Roosevelt's ‘Four Freedoms’ Campaign,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 69, issue 1 (1983): 15–24.
[35] Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites, No Caption Needed: Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007).
[36] Kevin Michael DeLuca and Jennifer Peeples, “From Public Sphere to Public Screen: Democracy, Activism, and the “Violence” of Seattle.” Critical Studies in Media Communication 19, issue 2 (2002): 125–51.
[37] D. C. Elliott, “Anonymous Rising,” LiNQ 36 (2008): 96–111; Oliver Kohns, “Guy Fawkes in the 21st Century. A Contribution to the Political Iconography of Revolt,” Image & Narrative 14, issue 1 (2013): 89–104.
[38] Hariman and Lucaites, “Dissent and Emotional Management,” 6.
[39] Kathleen Stewart, Ordinary Affects (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007).
[40] Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, “Femininity and Feminism: To Be or Not To Be a Woman,” Communication Quarterly 31, issue 2 (1983): 101–8; Nancy Fraser, “What's Critical about Critical Theory? The Case of Habermas and Gender,” New German Critique (1985): 97–131; Charles E. Morris, ed., Queering Public Address: Sexualities in American Historical Discourse (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2007).
[41] Penny, “Pussy Riot.”
[42] Penny, “Pussy Riot.”
[43] Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Screen 16, issue 3 (1975): 6–18.
[44] Mikhail Mikhaı˘lovich Bakhtin, Rabelais and his World, Vol. 341 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984).
[45] Gérin, “Pussy Riot: Hate.”
[46] Penny, “Pussy Riot.” More can be said here of the language of “open source” and “originality” regarding their popularity in the United States where such language has a normative role in liberal democratic capitalist culture.
[47] Gérin, “Pussy Riot. Hate,” 18.
[48] As quoted by Fernandes, Transnational Feminism, 63.
[49] Ekaterina V. Haskins, “Russia's Postcommunist Past: The Cathedral of Christ the Savior and the Reimagining of National Identity,” History & Memory 21, issue 1 (2009): 26.
[50] Roxanne Mountford, “On Gender and Rhetorical Space,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 31, issue 1 (2001): 41–71.
[51] Haskins, “Russia's Postcommunist Past,” 35.
[52] Haskins, “Russia's Postcommunist Past,” 36.
[53] Haskins, “Russia's Postcommunist Past,” 43.
[54] Haskins, “Russia's Postcommunist Past,” 43.
[55] Haskins, “Russia's Postcommunist Past,” 43.
[56] Bela Shayevich, Kevin M.F. Platt and Nadeazhda Tolokonnikova, “Pussy Riot Denied Parole: Tolokonnikova on Russia's ‘Absurdist’ Justice System,” N+1 Magazine. [online] August 1, 2013.
[57] Robert Hariman, Political Style: The Artistry of Power (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).
[58] Haskins, “Russia's Postcommunist Past,” 45, quoting Alla Bossart, “Teatr vremen luzhkova i Sinoda,” Stolitsa, issue 2 (January 1995): 11. Title translated by author as “Theater of the times of luzkov and the Synod.”
[59] Some parallels can be drawn here to debates about the Niqab in rhetoric surrounding the American invasion of Afghanistan. Thanks to Emma Imbrie Chubb for reminding me of these connections. See: Mary E. Husain and Kevin J. Ayotte, “Securing Afghan Women: Neocolonialism, Epistemic Violence, and the Rhetoric of the Veil,” NWSA Journal 17, issue 3 (2005): 112–33.
[60] Steinholt, “Kitty Heresy,” 123.
[61] Richard Butsche, The Citizen Audience: Crowds, Publics, and Individuals (New York: Routledge, 2007), 10.
[62] L.M. Bogad, “Social Movements, Demonstrations, and Dialogical Performance,” in A Boal Companion: Dialogues on Theatre and Cultural Politics, ed. Jan Cohen-Cruz and Mady Schutzman (New York: Routledge, 2006), 57.
[63] L.M. Bogad, “Social Movements, Demonstrations, and Dialogical Performance,” in A Boal Companion: Dialogues on Theatre and Cultural Politics, ed. Jan Cohen-Cruz and Mady Schutzman (New York: Routledge, 2006), 56.
[64] Moish Soloway, “Free Pussy Riot Protest in New York Denounces Hooliganism Charges,” Demotix, August 17, 2012, http://www.demotix.com/photo/1393829/free-pussy-riot-protest-new-york-denounces-hooliganism-charges.
[65] Andrew Miller, “Perfect Opposition: On Putin and Pussy Riot,” Public Policy Research 19, issue 2 (2012): 205–7.
[66] Karie A. Gubbins, “Review: Pussy Riot,” NewPolitics XIV-4, issue 56 (Winter 2014), http://newpol.org/content/pussy-riot. This is particularly gendered, as their claims of feminism were understood to be an ideological attack on the church, not politics proper. Gubbins notes, “After exhausting the political motivations for Pussy Riot's protest the judge suggested the band's feminist beliefs were to blame because they were antithetical to the Church, and were asserting the superiority of one ideology. Morgan writes that the judge's actions would have us believe that feminism is an ‘immoral ideology based on hate.’…In effect, criminalizing feminist activity…the trial separates feminism from politics, relegating feminism to just another ideology rather than a political movement focused on equal rights and representation.”
[67] Bernstein, “Pussy Riot,” 234.
[68] Nina Gurianova, The Aesthetics of Anarchy: Art and Ideology in the Early Russian Avant-Garde (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 276.
[69] Nadia Tolokonnikova, “Nadia Tolokonnikova's Closing Statement,” Free Pussy Riot, August, 13, 2013, http://freepussyriot.org/content/nadia-tolokonnikovas-closing-statement.
[70] Schuler, “Reinventing the Show Trial.”
[71] Eugene Ostashevsky, “Introduction: Alexander Vvedensky, An Invitation for Us to Think,” in Alexander Vvedensky, an Invitation for Me to Think, trans. Eugene Ostashevsky (New York: The New York Review of Books, 2013), x. The charge of “hooliganism” is a historically charged concept for Russian art, having links to the 1917 revolution, as well as Soviet-era repression.
[72] Nina Gurianova, “A Game in Hell, Hard Work in Heaven: Deconstructing the Canon in Russian Futurist Books,” Moma Interactives, http://www.moma.org/interactives/exhibitions/2002/russian/5_pdfs/gurianova.pdf.
[73] Alexei Yurchak, Everything was Forever, Until it was No More (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2006), 12.
[74] Kyle Chayka and Ashton Cooper, “The History of Pussy Riot, From Activist Art Origins to the Dramatic Trial and Final Sentence,” Art Info, October 1, 2013, http://www.blouinartinfo.com/news/story/820033/the-history-of-pussy-riot-from-activist-art-origins-to-the.
[75] Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer, HBO publicity poster. Screenshot from http://www.impawards.com/tv/pussy_riot__a_punk_prayer_ver2.html.
[76] On use of masks in feminist critique see: Anne Teresa Demo, “The Guerrilla Girls' Comic Politics of Subversion,” Women's Studies in Communication 23, issue 2 (2000): 133–56.
[77] Michael Warner, Publics and Counterpublics (New York: Zone Books, 2002).