“Without action to bring into the play of the world the new beginning of which each man is capable by virtue of being born, ‘there is no new thing under the sun’; without speech to materialize and memorialize, however tentatively, the ‘new things’ that appear and shine forth, ‘there is no remembrance’; without the enduring permanence of a human artifact, there cannot ‘be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after.’ And without power, the space of appearance brought forth through action and speech in public will fade away as rapidly as the living deed and the living word” (Arendt 204).
Both Arendt and Butler in these quotes above and below are talking about performance in regards to the live–the living and the livable. The living is looking at those who are participating, existing. The living is a condition of a subject. The livable describes the environment or conditions of the environment of the subject. In addition, the livable is the likelihood of existence. Also, when thinking about the live, it brings the idea of participation and who has the right to live. Political performance is a tool and cry for those to live in order to become the living and have the livable. Arendt believes without this action, there is no possibility for the living. Butler argues that bodies are “still here and still there” but it is through performance that there is presence. If there is no recognition, then these bodies are seen as objects rather than subjects that have a right to exist, to speak, to move through space, to be recognized. What about those bodies who don’t have the resources to perform politically? Are there specific spaces and environments that were made for bodies to not exist in the live? Perhaps examples of this are where bodies are meant to be permanently objects–prisons, concentration camps, etc.
“So when people amass on the street, once implication seems clear: they are still here and still there; they persist; they assemble, and so manifest the understanding that their situation is shared, or the beginning of such an understanding. And even when they are not speaking or do not present as set of negotiable demands, the call for justice is being enacts: the bodies assembled ‘say’ ‘we are not disposable,’ whether or not they are using words at the moment; what they say, as it were, is ‘we are still here, persisting, demanding greater justice, a release from precarity, a possibility for livable life” (Butler 25).