Political Performance in American Activism

Started Mar. 19, 2021

Abstract or project description

This conference paper examines recent American political activism through the lens of the performativity of politics. All politics entails performance: Political ideals become realities by being enacted in the world in embodied form. On January 6, 2021, the US Capitol was the scene of countless individual political performances. After identifying the principles of performance at the heart of phenomena like QAnon, this paper concludes by using the concept of performance, truth, and ambiguity to draw links with political activism at the other end of the political spectrum.