by Claire Tancons
[…]
4. Return of the Balagan
Pussy Riot have already garnered a wide following around the
world, albeit more so in Europe than anywhere else, and they are under
discussion to copyright their name. On the day of or in the days immediately
following their trial, balaclava-clad copycats, sometimes armed with guitars,
attacked cathedrals and churches and other Christian religious symbols, which
seem to have been their main target. A small group managed to climb up the
Grossmuenster Cathedral in Zurich to tie up a monumental Pussy Riot Banner on
the façade. On Sunday 19, two male Germans and a female Austrian were reported
to have interrupted a church service at Cologne’s cathedral. The most
carnivalesque aspect of these acts, in the absence of a coherent target, was
their spontaneous solidarity. As for the members of the topless feminist
activist group FEMEN, who assailed Patriarch Kirill on a visit to Kiev and used
a chainsaw to cut down a cross, they missed the mark altogether with
spectacular but uncarnivalesque actions devoid of the identificatory and
counter-identificatory tensions that can provoke reversals of roles or
functions like the symbolic decrowning of Putin and defrocking of Kirill.
“Russia takes to the streets to say goodbye to the regime,”
says one free member of Pussy Riot in the latest released song, “Putin sets the
Fires to Revolution.” Russia has been a country of revolutions before, and
Pussy Riot has lit and extinguished their own fires in prior performances. Of
the good intentions paving the road to democracy, Hardt and Negri joke about
“[…] the Soviets who battling capitalist domination thought they were headed
for a new democracy but ended up in a bureaucratic state machine.”21 There
is little hope that an old-style communism or a nominal democracy will
inaugurate a new era of cultural revolution. At the very least, Pussy Riot is
well on its way to consolidating Russia’s democratic culture. “Russia takes to
the streets to say goodbye to the regime./ Russia takes to the streets to say
goodbye to the regime.” The refrain might well take Pussy Riot and their
growing mass of supporters to the top charts, and the balagan then
will make a full comeback to save the world.
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The author welcomes any comments on this essay at carnivalagainstcapital@gmail.com
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