Russian Actionism as Biopolitical Performance: Shifting Grounds and Forms of Resistance

Russian Actionism as Biopolitical Performance: Shifting Grounds and Forms of Resistance

Emerging in the early 1990s as a public enactment of the social anomie pervading the country following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russian “actionism” (aktsionizm) underwent several important shifts over the next three decades in response to changing political conditions. While the “first wave” of Russian actionists employed forms of corporeal naturalism to terrorise and provoke their unsuspecting audiences, and actionists of the “second wave” entered into heroic battle with the authorities, those working on the eve of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine cultivated horizontal channels of communication with the public while also engaging in important activist and social work. Surveying actionism’s shifting strategies of resistance, my talk will explore the biopolitical aspects of this art form: its employment as an instrument to represent, diagnose, and heal the body politic, as well as to reflect (on) and challenge the performative biopolitics of an increasingly authoritarian state.

Maksim Hanukai is Assistant Professor of Russian at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is the author of Tragic Encounters: Pushkin and European Romanticism (University of Wisconsin Press, 2023) and the co-editor of New Russian Drama: An Anthology (Columbia University Press, 2019). His articles have appeared in The Slavic Review, Russian Literature, TDR/The Drama Review, and Ulbandus (among other places). His research interests include Russian Romanticism, Russian theater and performance, and contemporary Russian culture.