Performativity and gesture in social movements

Abstract

The cultural study of social movements cannot be limited to the analysis of their symbolic products – ideology, images and other cultural texts. The performative turn implies an appeal to the processual side of cultural phenomena, in the case of social movements having a pronounced physical character. The “visibility” of social movements is determined by the presence of participants ‘ bodies in urban space. The experience of the physical (co)presence of many people, the emotional basis of bodily behavior become the most important subject of socio-cultural research. The repertoire of bodily manifestations in street actions ranges from simple physical presence to carnival-type actions using many iconic means. Spontaneous activity is directed by emotions that is expressed in bodily behavior of participants, in particular – in gestures. “Natural” emotionally conditioned gestures, however, can acquire the function of signs, going from the iconic designation of emotions to symbols of varying degrees of abstraction. This process can be traced to the image of the raised fist – one of the most common visual symbols in social movements. Thus, the study of gesture in the context of social movements needs a combination of performative and semiotic approaches, which are not opposed, but productively used as additional ones.