Performance, protest politics, and the power of reclamation as resistance

Abstract

Performance in contemporary protest movements illustrates the intertwined relationship between aesthetics and politics. The characterisation of protest movements as performance, rooted in the society of the spectacle, enables the examination of contemporary political discourse through a number of communicative embodied behaviours that produce political statements and shape effective discourse, opposition, recognition and representation. The focus in this thesis will be on the performance of female protest politics within a communicated and mediatized setting and rooted in theoretical exploration. Although, it can be argued that one could be continuously active and engaged in protest politics, but not continuously active in political protesting, this research will concentrate on movements that are active and engaged in both.

This thesis will explore performance and gender politics through the study of the practice of performance in female political discourse and representation throughout the Handmaid’s Tale and The Handmaid’s tale of Reclamation in the Pro Choice Movement, the ‘Me Too’ Campaign (which emerged in 2017) and the Kavanaugh Hearing 2018 (which preceded Brett Kavanaugh’s raising to the US Supreme Court). Through the analysis of these case studies, it is intended the often emotive and intricate practice of performance in political discourse and female representation within the public sphere by citizens will be illustrated. This thesis specifically looks at the ways in which female US political protest movements have utilised performance. I will also argue that these cases are both constitutive of Fourth Wave Feminism and a continuance of its aims. I will argue that challenged socially constructed knowledge regarding gender normatives, power dynamics and the institutional structures that supported them and was a defining social and cultural revolutionary moment of sociopolitical history. The digital activism associated and propagated with the chosen case studies facilitated a larger feminist movement that helped to shape a national conversation on sexual behaviours, conduct and right.

This thesis uses the concepts of the power of discourse and power of the gaze as a lens to analyse how performative protest can become a cathartic reclamation of power and voice. Moreover, this thesis proffers that in all cases, each protest appropriates tools of place, space and voice as tools for their resistance. By reclaiming the discourse and the gaze, each woman illustrated within these protest/and or movements, take the ability to reconstruct and reclaim their narrative on their own terns, which in turn helps to reshape their identity as an individual and as a part of a collective community. This thesis furthermore asserts that the strength of resistance and the uplifting of reclamation lies not merely on one, but on the collective. The contribution of this thesis is that it captures a snapshot interpretation in a crucial moment in time whereby female protest performance can become an intersecting medium in the public sphere as a site of resistance, where stories are told, solidarities are strengthened and the emotional healing work of listening, recognition and reclaiming one’s own voice begins to take place.

Thesis embargoed until 31st January 2026.

Date of Award	Oct 2024
Original language	English
Sponsors	Department for the Economy
Supervisor	Stephen Baker (Supervisor) & Phil Ramsey (Supervisor)