Pussy Riot Vs. Trump: Becoming Woman To Resist Becoming Fascist

Dyer, Natalie; Mackenzie, Hollie; Teggi, Diana and de Vries, Patricia (2022). Pussy Riot Vs. Trump: Becoming Woman To Resist Becoming Fascist. In: Dolphijn, Rick and Braidotti, Rosi eds. Deleuze and Guattari and Fascism. Deleuze Connections. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, pp. 362–379.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781399505246-021

Abstract

This chapter explores how protest punk rock group Pussy Riot reclaim the vagina in their songs ‘Straight Outta Vagina’ and ‘Make America Great Again’ by activating a non-normative and fluid feminist desire against the phallic micropolitical fascism emanating from former US President Donald J. Trump. Our analysis of these two Pussy Riot songs aims to conceptualise a feminist micropolitics centered on the pussy, a labial language and the multiple molecular becomings that such pussy politics generate. We eschew the trap of constructing a counter-penis concept, as Simone de Beauvoir warned (Appignanesi 2005). Instead, we imagine and interpret pussy politics by way of engaging with Pussy Riot’s songs in order to offer a politics of feminist resistance to the microfascist psychic economies at work in the Trump presidency. By relating to the Trump presidency through Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of the Face Machine, this politics of feminist resistance activates the disruptive power of a fluid feminist subject. We argue that it reclaims the pussy’s multiplicity, fluids and flows both as a source of becoming and as an antidote to the microfascism witnessed today. We situate the music videos of ‘Straight Outta Vagina’ and ‘Make America Great Again’ as sources which stage a multiple and fluid feminist desire that intervenes in the toxicity of Trump’s Face Machine and allows for the possibility of ‘an “other meaning”’ inspired by Irigaray’s feminist ethics (Irigaray 1985b: 29).

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• Item ORO ID
• 86996
• Item Type
• Book Section
• ISBN
• 1-399-50522-X, 978-1-399-50522-2
• Keywords
• Deleuze; Guattari; Irigaray; Braidotti; Feminism; Feminist Theory; Micropolitics; Pussy Riot; Trump; Women; Body; Critical Theory; Cultural Studies; Activism; Feminist Activism; Music Activism
• Academic Unit or School
• Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies (WELS) > Health, Wellbeing and Social Care > Health and Social Care
  Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies (WELS) > Health, Wellbeing and Social Care
  Faculty of Wellbeing, Education and Language Studies (WELS)
• Research Group
• Centre for Literacy and Social Justice
  Contemporary Cultures of Writing
  Gender and Otherness in the Humanities (GOTH)
  Global Challenges and Social Justice
  Language & Literacies
  Literature and Music Research Group
  Reproduction, Sexualities and Sexual Health
• Copyright Holders
• © 2022 The Author
• Related URLs
• • https://doi.org/10.1515/9781399505246(Publication)
  • https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/boo...(Publication)
• Depositing User
• Diana Teggi