This weeks readings focused around action and the role of the performative in the political sphere. Arendt focuses on the polis as a site of action, which is an independent change in the political sphere. For Arendt’s conception of politics, I took it to be understood that real possibilities of change were possible only within the realm of politics that already exist. I see Butler as disagreeing, saying that the edges of the political realm inform and thus redefine through their performative actions the definitions of the political and the non political, the human and the nonhuman, and the parameters of the right to have rights. Thus, Butler rightfully notes that Arendt’s conceptualizations fall into the categorizing traps such as the masculine public versus feminine private spheres while also defining political action within those confines. Butler, then, in expanding the definition to include those on the margins and those who perform often outside of those categorizations or ascribe to those categorizations at great cost, is able to see action in a broader view in the assembly. Assembly in Butler’s view redefines these categories, making new political realities for subjects possible towards a similar goal of Arendt of equality among “humans”.