Pussy Riot and FEMEN’s global trajectories in law, society, and culture

Abstract

This chapter examines the protest-performance groups FEMEN and Pussy Riot at the intersection of political performance, artistic practice, and media strategies grounded in different geopolitical contexts. Tracing their sociopolitical trajectories from their beginnings as local art-collectives into international media icons surrounded by controversy, similarities and differences between the two groups reveal how local feminist dissent can conflict with understandings of protest in western liberal democracies. These conflicts are productive for tracing the concept of gender and its impacts in East-West relations and the public sphere.