For the past few weeks, the visibility of the Black Lives Matter movement has increased exponentially, especially as part of the quickly circulating posts on Instagram and Facebook. Chains of names, the familiar squares captioned #BlackOutTuesday (so as not to lose the important information behind a sea of black), the images and videos of names and now inspirational faces. The shocking brutality and the pain of hundreds of years of systemic and institutionalized oppression has been at the forefront of our public consciousness, memorialised by heart-breaking images and videos of the murals, artwork, poetry and inscriptions. Beneath it all, there is a simmering of a greater form of protest and revolution, one that must not lose traction as the days pass and our outrage quietens.

Performance activism is something I have been considering for a while since I first heard about the death of George Floyd. My first instinct was not to reach for my phone and post a story. Instead, I felt overwhelmed by the emotions that accompany a sense of not knowing what to do, how to help in a meaningful, lasting way. There comes a time when prayers and condolences, whether for a person, family or even nation are no longer enough. Our thoughts and prayers cannot bring back George Floyd, or Breonna Taylor, or any of the hundreds of lives that were extinguished at the hands of a broken system. Instead, we encouraged each other to read, to watch, to learn.

There are a few focus questions from our lecture with Dr Zizek that seem particularly relevant to the movement, especially regarding the necessity of violence, and the extent that the nature of a revolution is significant in what it embodies, such as “Should citizens operate outside the limits of law to enact political or legal change?” and “To what extent does the analysis of purposes of behaviour act as our own way of moralizing violent action? Why does the history of revolutionary violence matter?”. What astounds me, having watched so many videos of the protests across America is in the way that people have used so many non-violent means to speak, and to lobby for lasting change, only to be met with the same violence that they are dissenting. My resolve not to cry absolutely crumbled when I saw the video of the 75-year old man in Buffalo being pushed to the ground. It is a senseless brutality, but certainly one reinforced by years and years of institutional sanction.

It is this, I think, which helps to answer even in part these broader questions. It is not always the protestors who are instigators of violence, as a means of uprising and attempting to create lasting societal change. It just as often the possessors of social power who use violence as a tool of oppression and subjugation. Police brutality is indeed a form of violent action that is moralized on the grounds of being ‘necessary’ and commonplace, so much so that we are desensitized to the sheer number of casualties, brutality, and death. But such violence should never be commonplace. As Russell Brand discusses in his video ‘Statues, Slavery and Revolution?’ featured below: “I’ve long suggested that revolution is necessary, important, inevitable – and if this current line is pursued, that’s where it leads. All of our institutions, all of our architecture, are built upon violence.” It is due to this that I think that there are certain acts, such as uprooting the statues of historically racist possessors of power that are justified within this movement – even at the cost of breaking the law. For when the law reinforces a system that not only ignores but violates the lives of its people with a blatant disregard for human and moral decency, then the citizens have a right to be angry, and the right to fight back. Something as simple as the removal of a symbol serves to deconstruct and undo the meanings behind the oppression and mistreatment that has marginalized and targeted communities for generations.