Disruptive protests

Abstract

This chapter builds on themes established in Chapter Two and considers the naked or nearly naked protest as a carnivalesque disruption in public space. Part One posits that these protests rely on spectacularisation (in the Debordian sense (1994 [1967]) of the naked body to function. We explore this in the context of so-called feminist anti-rape protests, such as SlutWalk or Femen. Part Two analyses these gendered dynamics in the context of non-human animal rights protests including those of PETA and Lush, One of these campaigns is analysed and I draw on the auto-ethnographic experience of participating in naked protest to explore the potentialities of this as a mode of forging a war machine. This chapter demonstrates how the eroticisation of sexual violence is mobilised as part of these politics.This chapter examines the interplay between smooth and striated space, rape culture and the capacity that protest harbours for revolution.