Protagorians among us: Rhetorical performances at Occupy

Abstract

Protagoras, Plato recounted, taught how to harness word and action and use them to make an effective contribution to the affairs of the City. Far beyond public speaking, this was an indictment to use performance and philosophy in tandem to insinuate public demands. On the 9th of October 2011, Slavoj Zizek joined fellow Protagorians at Occupy Wall Street in solidarity. He delivered a speech encouraging those assembled to keep going and was followed, on the 23rd of October, by Judith Butler who did the same. Both of these visiting philosophers were rather crudely hoisted onto a raised platform in front of protesters who repeated their words in unison as a means of amplification and in order to pass their messages to all present. A little over a month later an online journal –Theory & Event –published a supplement focusing on just this combination of contributions. In this paper I would like to consider The Occupy Movement’s rebellious representations of Protagoras’ indictment. Specifically, I would like to consider the geographies of occupied place and space and what power and knowledge is delivered and viewed in such formations. Spectatorship and the sharing-as-witness of politicized performance “happenings”seems to indicate a new performance form and yet, as early as the late Modern period (1910 –1915) there are examples of art “happenings”offering similar anti-authoritarian contribution. So, is this theatricality new, or did this transnational performance collective occupy, not just land, but performance forms as well?

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ORCID for Holly Millette: orcid.org/0000-0003-4731-3138

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