Women's naked body protests and the performance of resistance: Femen and Meira Paibi protests against rape

• Main Author: Veneracion-Rallonza, Ma. Lourdes
• Format: text
• Published: Archīum Ateneo 2014
• Subjects: performativity; political participation as resistance; naked protests; body protests; gender performativity; Political Science
• Online Access: https://archium.ateneo.edu/polsci-faculty-pubs/21; https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01154451.2014.965876
• Institution: Ateneo De Manila University

This paper explores political participation in the post-modern sense where it is understood in terms of performativity. Such articulation brings to light a broader view of performance politics beyond the normal or traditional realms of governments and institutions and congruently advances into the fore the multiplicity and complexity of other actors and activities of political action. In this sense, the performance of political participation as resistance serves as the embodiment of active and creative disruption, the epitome of performing politics. To illustrate this dynamic, this article centers on women's political participation through naked protests and examines how performativity is implicated in Femen and Meira Paibi's body protests against rape. Discursively, it applies analytical discussions from Goffman (performativity as social interaction) and Butler (gender performativity) to illustrate that women's naked protests are innovative expressions of women's political participation that must be understood more substantively, particularly, within the analytical dynamic of feminist theorization.