I was extremely disappointed to read Margaret O’Brien Steinfels’ dismissal of the Pussy Riot “brouhaha” over at dotCommonweal, but perhaps not very surprised. (Tom wrote about PR’s “punk prayer” protest here back in April. This past Friday, PR was sentenced to two years in prison.)

I have very little to add to the critique offered by Bridget, a Ph.D. candidate at Notre Dame, in “Virgin Mary, Mother of God, Become a Feminist” at Women in Theology. While acknowledging the legitimacy of critiquing Pussy Riot’s protest on tactical grounds, Bridget rightly flags O’Brien Steinfels’ language as “not merely critical [...] but dismissive and gendered”:

By chiding Masha, Nadya, and Katya as “sweet things” and “ineffective” “girls,” O’Brien Steinfels perpetuates an argument that Pussy Riot have demolished through the international attention their action has drawn: that young women must be sweet and gradualist, that young women with a “proactive approach to life” and “propensity for protest reactions” who “stubbornly defend their opinions” are not to be taken seriously, and that the abuse of young women’s rights constitutes nothing more than a “particular brouhaha” not worth noticing.

Whatever one makes of Pussy Riot’s actions, they amount to more than that. And I believe that the woman who praised the One who casts down the mighty from their thrones and raises up the lowly is among those who pray for Pussy Riot.

I will note that, in addition to the problems Bridget flags, O’Brien Steinfels’ brief statement — as well as the comments the post generated — signals the ongoing lack of literacy with regard to popular culture among Roman Catholic theologians, commentators, journalists, and indeed, readers in the Catholic “blogosphere.” Many Catholic observers have absolutely no framework from which to understand actions like these; no guideposts for sorting through and making sense of the intersecting dimensions of ((feminist) punk) rock, anarchistic political protest, feminist thought, and subversive Christianities; and apparently no desire to even try to understand where PR and their supporters might be coming from. One commenter, for example, says he doesn’t understand Russian and therefore has no idea what these young women were all fired up about.

The Commonweal crowd could start, first, by Googling the English translation of the song Pussy Riot performed. They could then go on to read some of the many articulate statements written by members of the band. I would then recommend looking up some of the many commentaries by sympathetic observers in order to try to understand what the Pussy Riot phenomenon means to them. Such expressions are not hard to find, but one could start with this piece by Lindsay Zoladz. For some context on Pussy Riot’s place in the traditions of punk rock, Riot Grrrl, and contemporary feminisms, I strongly recommend Pitchfork.com’s interview with Kathleen Hannah (Bikini Kill, Le Tigre, etc.). They might be surprised to find Pussy Riot, and the movement that is beginning to form around them, “intentionally or accidentally helping the church meet its own potential theological goals of distinguishing Christianity from state power,” as Tom Beaudoin hypothesized early on. And they might find that in an election cycle in which religion, specifically Roman Catholicism, is at the center of popular discussion, the issues PR has raised have wide global resonance, taking us beyond the tired cyclic political debates within Catholic intellectual circles, if only they had ears to hear.

I encourage R&T folks to read Bridget’s piece in its entirety for a fine feminist theological analysis of the Pussy Riot story. It is a fine example of theological engagement that takes seriously the potential of musical-political movements to be both explosive and articulate. If only the tired discussions taking place in U.S. liberal Catholic circles had such global significance.

Michael J. Iafrate
Wheeling, West Virginia
USA

4 Comments »

1. 

   Great post, Michael. I hadn’t read Bridget’s excellent piece on PR. Thanks.

   Comment by Mary McDonough — August 19, 2012 @ 10:37 am

2. 

   Hey, now here’s someone who speaks with authority! Really though, the illiteracy with respect to these issues is alarming. I have learned much from Commonweal and hope that it will still be a prominent voice years from now, but posts like this one are not helping.

   Comment by Sonja — August 19, 2012 @ 11:41 am

3. 

   Bravo – great post and thanks for highlighting Bridget’s great piece from WIT. I was on vacation and not really commenting and not linking, but you have made it easy to put this all in one place. The Commonweal piece really shook me when I read it, in fact I had to re-read it, thinking that I misunderstood.

   As Sonja (another WIT!) says, Commonweal has and continued to add to the conversation, but not this time around.

   I can’t tell you how edifying it is to see the Billy Bragg note here as well.

   Thank you!

   Comment by Fran Rossi Szpylczyn — August 27, 2012 @ 7:26 am

4. 

   Thanks for this. Also see James T. Fisher “Doin’ the Pussy Riot Fatima Rock” at http://irishwaterfront.wordpress.com/. It’s amazing.

   Comment by john seitz — August 29, 2012 @ 7:38 pm

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