![]() Responding to Pussy Riot, Russian Orthodox activists asserted themselves as defenders of tradition against the forces of Western cultural imperialism, including feminism and LGBT rights. ![]() Yet what observers identify as the provocation - what norms are perceived to be violated - shapes what values they reinforce. This process simultaneously invigorates norms and helps people shore up their own senses of self amid uncertainty. A provocation violates norms in ways that compel observers to name and defend those norms. This article analyzes the social, political, and cultural dynamics of provocation (provokatsiya) by examining everyday conversations, speeches, articles and other linguistic acts through which Russian Orthodox, feminist, and left-leaning and liberal participants in the anti-Putin opposition made sense of Pussy Riot. The Russian feminist punk-art group Pussy Riot sparked a remarkable series of responses with their provocative " punk prayer " in a Moscow cathedral in 2012. The focus of the analysis concentrateson the ‘Punk Prayerr’, its mimicry of religious language and references to theleadership of the Russian Orthodox Church as well as the local public criticaldiscourses. We attempt to complicate the view on Pussy Riot’s performances and reread them within the Russian context, highlighting several political statements that got lost in North/Western translations. Within this framework the group’s negotiation of Orthodox religion within their song lyrics, performances as well as statements is ignored, supporting the binary construction of The North/West as progressive – tolerantand secular – and Russia as backward – dogmatic and fundamentalist religious. ![]() This onedimensional interpretation of the performance art group as Riot Grrrl-identities further leads to labelling their performance at the Christ the Saviour Cathedralas anti-religious. This article critically discusses solidarity actions in support of Pussy Riot within theglobal North/West, arguing that most solidarity projects within popular cultureas well as within the queer-feminist counterculture are based on a lopsided interpretation of Pussy Riot as Russian version of Riot Grrrl feminists.
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