Butler cited and criticized Arendt`s opinion about Action, she revised Arendt`s suggestion about the function of bodies in the politics. Butler demonstrates the meaning and method of assembly. She thinks togetherness is a form of performativity, and precarity is a motivation of gathering.
Arendt said that the plurality of human is the basic situation of action and speech, and it is characterized by equality and difference. Actions and words reveal who someone is and reveal their belongingness—” Speech and action reveal this unique distinctness. Through them, men distinguish themselves instead of being merely distinct; they are the modes in which human beings appear to each other, not indeed as physical objects, but qua men.”
Arendt concerned, the result of action is irreversible and uncontrollable. So, why do we still need action? Many people regard the essence of politics as ruling. Among the threats brought by totalitarianism, Arendt discovered the value of action. Participating in action is a new beginning, and the disappearance of the action space means the beginning of a totalitarian society. Arendt’s criticism of Marx is based on the distinction between the three concepts of labor, work and action, and points out that replacing the other two concepts in active life with labor is the reason why Marxism has become the cause of totalitarianism.
In addition to Arendt`s theory, Butler thinks beyond the bodies gathering, speech also performed an important role in the action—”Embodied actions of various kinds signify in ways that are, strictly speaking, neither discursive nor prediscursive. In other words, forms of assembly already signify prior to, and apart from, any particular demands they make. Silent gatherings, including vigils or funerals, often signify in excess of any particular written or vocalized account of what they are about”. She suggests speech and action are both “performance”.How performativity embodied with the notion with people? –“Not everyone can appear in a bodily form, and many of those who cannot appear, who are constrained from appearing or who operate through virtual or digital networks, are also part of “the people,” defined precisely by being constrained from making a specific bodily appearance in public space, which compels us to reconsider the restrictive ways “the public sphere” has been uncritically posited by those who assume full access and rights of appearance on a designated platform“.