Resolute Presence, Fugitive Moments, and the Body in Women’s Protest Performance

Poland as Gilead. Pop culture fiction and performative protests in the era of the pandemic

“…It is possible to use musical, theatrical or literary motifs, or to combine various forms of artistic expression within the protest. In women’s performance protests, the body often becomes an important tool for the performances (Gale, 2015; Jacobs, 2016), successfully used by groups such as Pussy Riot (Marchevska, 2016).…”

Chilean and Transnational Performances of Disobedience: LasTesis and the Phenomenon of Un violador en tu camino

“…Costume is also central here: participants were invited to come in ‘party’ clothes, which are ‘traditionally perceived as signifying a heightened sexual availability’ (Gale, 2015: 319). Through costume, the performance protests victim‐blaming that often centres around styles of dress ( y la culpa no era mía […] ni cómo vestía (and it's not my fault […] nor what I wore), and asserts women's right to presence in the street, however they are dressed, as well as foregrounding the historical construction and positioning of the female body.…”

“…Through costume, the performance protests victim‐blaming that often centres around styles of dress ( y la culpa no era mía […] ni cómo vestía (and it's not my fault […] nor what I wore), and asserts women's right to presence in the street, however they are dressed, as well as foregrounding the historical construction and positioning of the female body. In this sense Un violador can be understood as part of a history of feminist performance/protest in which the performers ‘use their bodies beside themselves, as if for a second time, as a means of making explicit the historical staging of that body’ (Schneider, cited in Gale, 2015: 316), including previous transnational feminist performance activism such as the ‘Slutwalks’, which also protested rape culture and victim blaming. Un violador can be understood as a ‘political act’ in the sense in which Rancière defines it: performances interfere in and reconfigure what is visible and audible, making public that which is socially deemed to be private, combatting erasure and silencing.…”