Speech and action and their relationship to power in appearance is discussed in both Arendt and Butler’s writings. Action is clearly a core concept to Arendt as she states straight forward, “A life without speech and without action, on the other hand—and this is the only way of life that in earnest has renounced all appearance and all vanity in the biblical sense of the word—is literally dead to the world; it has ceased to be a human life because it is no longer lived among men”. She also firmly believes that action is not efficient unless it is accompanied by speech, as language confirms that equality and distinction constitute human plurality.
Arendt goes on to elaborate on the relationship web of human society, and pointed to power and space of appearance, where she thinks power is power and it can only be generated through the public space and relationship established among people, as in this way the potentialities of action are consistent to retain power . Therefore social movements or resistance that express popular will are the very practice of power.
On the other hand, Notes Toward a Performative Theory of Assembly introduced its theory through popular will and mass social campaigns but leads to a different direction. It feels strange to me at the beginning that the performativity of bodies has to be proven under the premise that language can be performative, as the sequence shall be reversed in nature.
Butler pays great concern to the “precarity” experienced by minority (a relatively minority, not only defined by gender and sexuality but also anyone excluded and made “dispensable” by certain democratic system). She resists Arendt’s idea to some extent as the power in performativity is not unidirectional by stating “… performativity does not just characterize what we do, but how discourse and institutional power affect us, constraining and moving us in relation to what we come to call our “own” action.”