Pavlenski cuts off his earlobe atop the roof of a psychiatric institution

Controversial Russian artist and political activist Pyotr Pavlensky cuts off his earlobe with kitchen knife in protest at use of forced psychiatry on dissidents.

The knife separates the body from the earlobe. The concrete wall of psychiatry separates the sane society of the insane patients. By returning the use of psychiatry for political purposes, the police apparatus regains the power to determine the border between sanity and madness. Being armed with psychiatric diagnoses, a bureaucrat in a white robe cuts off from the society those pieces that prevent to establish a monolithic dictate of the norm, which is the same for all and necessary for everyone.