Can women’s bare breasts disarticulate meanings? A look into FEMEN’s street protests in Paris

Abstract

This article examines how a radical women’s group, known as FEMEN, translate themselves in the public sphere, and what rhetorical elements they use to draw the media’s attention. In other words, this study questions to what extent a radical women’s group can disarticulate mainstream discourses by exposing naked chests and holding scandalous street protest performances in major European capitals. This contribution draws mainly on a view of translation theory developed by feminist scholars that see women’s writings as a form of translation and transgression of meanings constructed within patriarchal traditions. Furthermore, it situates street protests as part of the anthropology of communication, in which participants interact face-to-face and exchange verbal and non-verbal cues that may or may not facilitate meaning construction.