Alone, I kneel; Together, we stand up: gesture and performance in uprisings

Abstract

In this essay we address racism, police violence and the recent political protests in the United States methodologically supported by the field of performance studies, that is, thinking of them as performatic events. Under this key, we analyze the murder of George Floyd and the protests that emerged in response to his death, thought here through the concept of uprising, and the gesture that with remarkable frequency was repeated by several demonstrators: the kneeling. The gesture, in this case, is the intensely performatic moment where a body exposes and creates itself and another possible sensible space, even if ephemeral, and which links each protester to a whole lineage of activists who fought and are still fighting for the end of the replay of the macabre script of racial violence.

Keywords
racism; performance; gesture; racial violence; communication and politics; uprisings