ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates a reoccurring paradox: namely that Femen attacks religions and religious institutions, while embedding references to religion in their activist imaginary. Femen's political secularism is paradoxical because its atheist disbelief relies on religious imaginaries. The chapter suggests that in order to understand Femen's atheist disbelief it is necessary to expand the theoretical approach to atheism, by moving beyond traditional organizational structures and investigating atheism that emerges in networked forms of activism. It presents the concept of affective mediatized activism to understand how Femen produces spectacles in which icon bodies become trigger-texts for affective attunement and events. The chapter also investigates the relationship between Femen and the so-called 'New Atheism' and the way in which different types of atheist movements conjoin in a peculiar fight on behalf of Muslim women. It argues that Femen's atheist disbelief manifests as a specific form of political secularism that is simultaneously governing religion and embedded in a religious imaginary.
