Biopolitical art and the struggle for Sovereignty in Putin’s Russia

ABSTRACT

This article addresses the public appeal of political actionism in today’s Russia through analysis of the political art of Pyotr Pavlensky. The research uses the methodological paradigm of biopower and biopolitics, as outlined by Michel Foucault and further critically developed by Giorgio Agamben, since it helps to better understand both the oppressive nature of the Russian state, and the protest art of Pavlensky. The article seeks to unpack the struggle for the human body that has started in Russia in recent years, with the state imposing its normalizing and regulatory mechanisms upon private lives and corporeal practices of individuals, and people’s responses by re-claiming their bodies, from an open public discussion of sexuality, domestic violence and gender equality, to the radical exposure of the body by artists like Pavlensky. As the argument goes, the centerpiece of political controversy is not just the battle for the human body, but a battle for sovereignty, defining the limits of state intervention, the borders of the political community and the rights of the individual. The article asks a number of questions: how Pavlensky’s performances can be explained within the framework of the biopolitical regime of Putin’s rule? Whether Pavlensky’s use of his own body for political purposes (a “biopolitical art’ of sorts) is a response to the increased biopolitical intervention of the Russian state that has marked Putin’s third term in office? Why did political protest become corporeal? How does the individual body turn into a tool for political contestation and how does it embody collective meanings? How the politicization of the body transpires, and how an individual body can incarnate a collective body of nation?

KEYWORDS:

• Russia
• biopolitics
• biopower
• actionism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Kaluzhskiy gobernator prizval otkazatsa ot varki varenia iz-za defitsita sakhara, Gazeta.ru, 3 August 2015, available at http://www.gazeta.ru/business/news/2015/08/03/n_7431349.shtml.

2. Milonov predlozhil zapretit’ rabotat’ vo vlasti klientam prostitutok, Russkaya Sluzhba Novostei, 16 March 2015, available at https://life.ru/t/%D0%B7%D0%B2%D1%83%D0%BA/862424?from=rusnovosti.ru.

3. Moskovskim molodozhenam naznachat kuratorov semeinoi zhizni, Republic, 28 December 2015, available at https://slon.ru/posts/61897.

4. V gosdume predlozhili proveriat’ u zhenikha i nevesty sposobnost’ imet’ detei, Novaya Gazeta, 16 May 2016, available at http://www.novayagazeta.ru/news/1703450.html.

5. Chuzhdiy nam jamon. Alexandr Timofeevskiy ob’yasniaet, zachem unichtozhat’ sanktsionnuyu edu, Meduza, 3 August 2015, availble at https://meduza.io/feature/2015/08/03/chuzhdyy-nam-hamon.

6. Putin ne protiv vina v sanatoriakh, Gazeta.ru, 17 August 2015, available at http://www.gazeta.ru/social/news/2015/08/17/n_7476526.shtml.

7. Pavlensky insists that his works are actions, direct and unannounced appearances in public spaces, and in this sense differ from performances which are usually announced in advance and staged in designated spaces of art like galleries and museums, attended by art critics and specialist audiences.

8. E.g. the famous Russian-American writer Sergei Dovlatov, who served as a prison guard, mentions this practice in his novel “The Zone” set in the prison camp http://www.lib.ru/DOWLATOW/zona.txt .

9. “Khudozhnik-chlenovreditel’ Pavlensky pribil moshonku k Krasnoy ploschady, Newsru, 10 November 2013, http://www.newsru.com/russia/10nov2013/pavlensky.html.

10. Художник Павленский отрезал себе мочку уха. Slon, 19 October 2014. http://slon.ru/fast/russia/khudozhnik-pavlenskiy-otrezal-sebe-mochku-ukha-1173405.xhtml .

11. Skandalnyi khudozhnik Pavlenskii ustroil Maidan a tsentre Peterburga, Moi raion 7, 23 February 2014, http://mr7.ru/articles/99023/ .

12. Roskomnadzor is a governmental agency tasked with supervision of Internet-based technologies of mass communication.

13. “Territoriya Vzglyada. Petr Pavlenskiii. Iskusstvo i politika: aktsionizm protiv dispozitiva”, OTB Kharkiv Tv Channel, 7 October 2014, 16.45 (min), available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmyM0XhuHpk.

14. Ibid.

15. Nadia Savchenko ta Piotr Pavlensky: Dialogi. Gromadske TV, 23 June 2016, available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0v5UzAZLMA.

16. Rossiiskogo khudozhnika Pavlenskogo lishili premii Vaclava Havela, 9 July 2016, available at http://rian.com.ua/culture/20160709/1012901055.html.

17. “Khudozhnik Petr Pavlenskiy podzheg dveri Banka Frantsii kak ran’she uzhe postupil s Lubyankoy”, Meduza, 16 October 2017, https://meduza.io/feature/2017/10/16/hudozhnik-petr-pavlenskiy-podzheg-dveri-banka-frantsii-kak-ranshe-uzhe-postupil-s-lubyankoy.

Additional information

Funding

This study [research grant No 14-01-0175] was supported by the National Research University–Higher School of Economics’ Academic Fund Program in 2014/2015.