Performing democracy: Nonverbal protest through a democratic lens

Performing democracy Nonverbal protest through a democratic lens Selen A. Ercan, Hans Asenbaum and Ricardo F. Mendonça Final accepted, pre-copy edited version. Please, cite as: Ercan, S. A., Asenbaum, H., & Mendonça, R. F. (2023). Performing Democracy: Non-verbal Protest through a Democratic Lens. Performance Research, 27(3–4), 26–37. https://doi.org/http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13528165.2022.2155393 Abstract Contemporary protests draw on a rich variety of performances to communicate their messages, attract attention to societal problems and display potential solutions. In addition to verbal and textual expressions, protesters employ various forms of nonver- bal expression, such as images, sounds, silence as part of their public performances. This article offers a way of making sense of nonverbal protest performances, relying on insights from contemporary democratic theory. It proposes a ‘democratic lens’, which supplements the ‘performative lens’ often used to comprehend performative protests and their effects on diverse audiences. The democratic lens enables us to distinguish between deliberative, agonistic, and antagonistic modes of democratic en- gagement and examine the ways they are enacted in performative protests. The arti- cle illustrates the utility of the democratic lens by focusing on the nonverbal perfor- mances of Black Lives Matter in the USA, pot and pan protest in Brazil, and the Knitting Nanas in Australia. Keywords: democracy, nonverbal, performativity, protest, sound, visual 1 Introduction Contemporary protests are full of colour, craft, artefacts, and creative expression. They are staged as performances to be photographed, recorded, and shared on social me- dia platforms to reach out and to mobilise diverse publics, and evoke emotions. Pro- testers express their ideas and demands not just through spoken or written words, for instance by asserting ‘We are the 99%’, but also through their nonverbal actions, for example by occupying squares or public parks. In fact, nonverbal action and expres- sion enabled through images, sounds, silence and presence are central to most pro- test movements today. Protesters often engage in ‘multi-modal communication’ (Reavey 2011), which recognizes that ideas are made, performed, and transferred in a wide range of ways well-beyond written or spoken modes of communication. The performative dimension of protests is well acknowledged in the extant lit- erature (McGarry et al. 2019). If we take the definition of performance as ‘any action that is framed, presented, highlighted or displayed’ to real or imagined audiences (Schechner 2002:2), protests clearly qualify as performances. They are staged to reach out and mobilize diverse audience composed of potential allies as well as op- ponents and detractors (Cadena-Roa and Puga 2020). Given the performative dimen- sion of protests, it is common to use a ‘performative lens’ and its terminology (such as casting, front stage, backstage, script, and audiences) to make sense of protests and their effects on society. In their seminal article on dramaturgy and social movements, for example, Benford and Hunt (1992) discuss how protesters script their perfor- mances with core narratives, central characters, protagonists, antagonists, and audi- ences. They also highlight the props and symbols protesters use to attract attention and make their demands heard. This kind of ‘performative’ lens enables us to see how well the performers (protesters) are connecting with their intended audiences (publics), what kind of mood they evoke through their performances, what dramaturgical devices they use, and to what end. However, the performative lens does not tell us much about the democratic implications of the protests. In this article, we suggest supplementing the performative lens used to charac- terize protests with a democratic lens. We argue that the way democratic theorists distinguish between different modes of democratic engagement offers a compelling way of making sense of protest performances, and their contribution to democracy. Democratic theory offers a multitude of perspectives on what democracy is or ought 2 to be. Looking through these diverse perspectives – or the ‘kaleidoscope of democratic theory’ – affords a nuanced understanding of what various practices and performances might mean for democracy (Asenbaum 2021). These diverse perspectives are cap- tured by what we call here the ‘democratic lens’. This lens allows us to differentiate between three modes of engagement: deliberative, agonistic, and antagonistic. Each mode is underpinned by a different normative impetus, and a different kind of relation- ship between protesters and their intended audiences. Deliberative engagement portrays audiences as interlocutors who are poten- tially receptive to good reasons to change their minds. Protesters seek to convince their audiences of the significance of their demands through reason-giving, which can take different shapes. Agonistic engagement defines audiences as adversaries and confronts them by provoking ruptures in the existing constellation of forces. Finally, antagonistic engagement constructs audiences as enemies and seeks to destroy the conditions that sustain them (such as patriarchy or capitalism) so that radical transfor- mation can be achieved. These different modes of engagement are not determined by the intentions of the actors or by the interpretation of audiences only, but are the result of concrete interactions in specific situations. They are, therefore, co-constructed in situated interactions. Deliberative, agonistic and antagonistic modes of engagement often exist side by side as part of the same protest. Sometimes, they coexist in the very same perfor- mance. This is especially true for deliberative and agonistic modes of engagement, which are often portrayed as mutually exclusive alternatives, but which are difficult to detangle from each other in practice (Mendonça and Ercan 2015). A good example of this can be seen in the Occupy movements, where the occupation of public spaces reaches out supporters in argumentative ways while also addressing adversaries in a contentious way by reconfiguring the way streets and parks are perceived and expe- rienced. To substantiate our argument and illustrate the utility of the democratic lens advanced here, we bring examples from three contemporary protests. We use each example to highlight one specific form of nonverbal performance – visual, sonic, and material – and show how these performances can be used to establish different rela- tionships between protesters and their intended audiences. Our examples come from different parts of the world and from our research on social movements and democ- racy. They include the visual performances of the Black Lives Matters (BLM) protests 3 in the US, the sonic performances of banging pots and pans in Brazil, and the material performances of the Australian social protest group, Knitting Nannas Against Gas (KNAG). We focus specifically on nonverbal performances of these protests because we think despite being widely used by protesters, nonverbal performances remain un- dertheorized. Democratic theory tends to associate voice with verbal expression only (Mendonça, Ercan and Asenbaum 2020). The democratic lens we advance here chal- lenges this tendency by drawing attention to the communicative and performative power of nonverbal expressions. This does not mean, however, that we equate the nonverbal with the performative: nonverbal is only one, yet central mode of expression protest movements draw on. Democracy is constituted through a complex interplay of verbal and nonverbal performances, through ‘images, acoustics and all the various technologies engaged in those productions’ (Butler 2015:20). In what follows, we first introduce the democratic lens we propose in this article and distinguish between three modes of engagement. This is followed by three illus- trations of nonverbal contentious performances. We have limited our examples to per- formative protests with democratic ends only. These are the protests seeking to ad- vance the democratic values of freedom and equality. We understand democracy less as an institutional arrangement, and more as a practice that can take place various spaces (in public square, at the work place or at home) and that enables actors to express their plural views and diverse identities. Without doubt, the types of nonverbal performances we focus on can also be adopted by anti-democratic movements, as in the case of xenophobic rallies. Nonetheless, this article focuses on performances that seek to further rather than undermine democracy – in other words, performances that aim to advance the realization of freedom and equality. Our aim is to offer insights from contemporary democratic theory to performa- tive studies and contribute to the cross pollination of ideas between these two fields. The democratic lens we advance in this article may be used for empirical analysis or theoretical engagement in future scholarly work. Beside the scholars of performance studies and democracy, activists and advocacy groups might also find this lens useful, as they look for context-sensitive repertoires of democratic action. 4 Advancing a democratic lens: Three modes of democratic engagement Over recent decades, democratic theories have developed various notions of democ- racy that are situated in different ontological and normative grounds. The field of dem- ocratic theory enacts the very diversity that is at the heart of democracy itself (Dean, Gagnon and Asenbaum 2019). Besides the deliberative, agonistic and antagonistic theories we draw on here, participatory, liberal, feminist, queer, pragmatist, cosmopol- itan and environmentalist theories make democracy studies a polyvocal conversation (Held 2008). While in the past these theories have been conceptualized as mutually exclusive models, recent advancements suggest to combine the insights from various theories of democracy (Asenbaum 2021, Warren 2017). Along these lines, we argue that taken together, theories of democracy provide a democratic lens – a multiper- spectival view that is united by its democratic ambitions of advancing freedom and equality. As Mouffe (2005) argues, freedom and equality are norms that are interpreted differently depending on which perspective is taken, but despite this heterogeneity, they offer a common horizon which enables democratic exchange. This democratic lens, we argue, is a valuable supplement to the performative lens. Together they have the potential to shed new light on performative protests and their democratic implica- tions. Across various approaches, here we focus on three perspectives on democratic engagement that are particularly relevant to understanding the role of nonverbal per- formances in protests. Without doubt, our aim is not to reduce democratic theory to these three positions. However, these three perspectives offer fruitful ways to organize key arguments in contemporary debates and provide a useful framework for the anal- ysis of performances and their democratic contribution. We distinguish between differ- ent modes of democratic engagement based on their purpose (why), portrayal of target audience(s)(who), and means they use to achieve their purposes (how). Deliberative Agonistic Antagonistic Purpose of engagement communication confrontation rejection Portrayal of audiences interlocutors adversaries enemies Means of engagement reason-giving contestation symbolic destruction Table 1. Three modes of democratic engagement applied to performative protests 5  While the purpose and means of engagement might be self-explanatory, the question on audience(s) merits particular attention. Democratic theorists do not use the term ‘audiences. They usually draw instead on the terms of publics and counter- publics to depict the communicative interaction in public sphere. We build on the lan- guage of performative studies here, and employ the term audiences, defined as the ‘spectators or recipients’ of publicly displayed performances (Gluhovic et al 2021: 5). The performances enacted in protests seek to establish different kinds of relationship with a diverse range of audiences. This relationship, however, is not unidirectional. In other words, audiences are not passive recipients of communication enabled through verbal and nonverbal performances. While protesters address their audiences in cer- tain ways, audiences always need to interpret or de-code the messages they receive (Hall 1973; Iser 1974). They navigate different interpretive frames. In doing so, they fulfil their agency in the democratic exchange. Some audiences are addressed as allies, while others are framed as political adversaries and some others as enemies, seen as responsible for injustices (e.g. cor- porate organisations or white supremacists). Audiences also include those actors and organisations who are responsible for recognizing and addressing injustices (e.g. su- preme court, government). Protesters often use the same tactics or performances to reach out to multiple audiences simultaneously (Barreto and Mendonça 2019). Given this, it would be misleading to equate a particular performance, say silent marches, with a particular mode of democratic engagement. Protesters might adopt silent marches for deliberative and/or agonistic purposes. The reality of performative pro- tests is more complex than the neat analytical categories we establish here. Yet dis- tinguishing between different modes of engagement helps us to shed light on various democratic functions nonverbal performances can assume in a protest. The first mode of engagement that is relevant to performative protests is delib- erative engagement. Rooted in theories of deliberative democracy, deliberation refers to a particular kind of communication. It involves an inclusive process of mutual justi- fication where participants offer reasons for their positions, listen to each other’s views and reconsider their positions in light of these views. Normatively speaking, delibera- tive engagement is oriented towards finding a common ground and bridging the di- vides between conflicting parties. Although early discussions in the field tended to op- 6 pose deliberation and activism (Young 2003), this view is currently seen as problem- atic and outdated (Curato 2019; Karagianis and Wagner 2008; Knops 2007). The acknowledgement of different modes of communication relevant to deliberation and the overcoming of the alleged dichotomy between reasons and emotions has pointed to the deliberative dimension of many forms of protest (Mendonça and Ercan 2015). Performative protests underpinned by deliberative engagement seek to open up the public sphere, and enable engagement with wider audiences/publics. The pur- pose of deliberative engagement is to enter into a dialogue with audiences as equal interlocutors. The AIDS activist group ACT UP!, for example, employed dialogue rather than confrontation to work with pharmaceutical companies to advance safe and effec- tive treatments (Taylor, Vasquez and Doorley 2003). Protesters can also draw on de- liberative engagement to build new alliances. This happens not only through verbal and textual interactions, but also through nonverbal performances enacted through images, sounds, or even silences (Mendonça, Ercan, Asenbaum 2020). In a deliber- ative engagement, non-verbal performances are used as part of reason-giving pro- cesses, to enable the inclusion of marginalised actors, and encourage new ways of thinking about the public controversies at hand. Take for example, the performative act of wearing pink ‘pussy hats’ for the 2017 Women’s March, to protest Donald Trump’s presidency and to advocate for gender equality. The hats expressed a collec- tive arguments in a protest. They were used to convince others, build new alliances, and generate a common ground in society. Without doubt, just like words, nonverbal forms of expression are open to interpretation and their meaning is dependent on the contexts of their usage (Hall 1973). Yet, just like words, these forms of expression can be mobilized to convey arguments publicly. The second mode that is relevant for performative protests and the nonverbal performances they draw on is agonistic engagement. It aims to facilitate the articula- tion of dissensus and the confrontation of inequalities, while at the same time acknowl- edging ‘the other’ as a legitimate contender in a democratic relationship (Paxton 2020). Agonistic engagement draws sharp distinctions between political adversaries and dis- places settled meanings to open up space for dissent (Rancière 1999). On this ac- count, conflict ‘cannot and should not be eradicated since the specificity of modern democracy is precisely the recognition and the legitimation of conflict’ (Mouffe 2014: 2-3). Attempts to overcome conflict entail exclusions and threaten to silence those who already suffer from marginalization. Agonists stress the role of emotions and passions 7 in democratic engagement, which they think are key for articulating suppressed con- flicts. It is through conflict that social actors attempt to change the way that reality is articulated and therefore conceived of (Laclau and Mouffe 2013). To break up estab- lished power structures and ways of conceiving reality, it needs “agonistic conflict as ‘democratic provocations’” (Süß 2021: 12). Performative protests underpinned by the agonistic logic seek to display the ways protesters perceive, feel and understand the world, while privileging conflict as a crucial element of social change. They enact confrontational performances aiming to break up established patterns and open spaces for novelty, so that those who have no part emerge as a part of the polity (Rancière, 1999).1 Agonistic engagement points to the inadequacy of the way the society is organized politically, seeking to transform the context in which the struggles take place. Agonists often criticize deliberative modes of engagement for leaving ‘remainders’ in the democratic arena, actors who are deemed to be unsuitable to take part in democratic conversation (Goi 2005; Ercan 2017). Agonistic engagement confronts the limits of what can be said, displayed and heard in the public sphere (Murphy 2019). An interesting example would be the Fri- days for the Future (FFF) strikes, which mobilizes school kids around the world to call for actions against climate change. Led by Greta Thunberg, the movement seeks to challenge leaders everywhere by confronting them with the following two paradoxes: (1) ‘Why do you want me to go to school if scientists are clear that we won’t have a future due to 1 It is important to understand that the no part, in Rancière (1999), is not equivalent to a given oppressed group or minority. It is not a synonym of being marginalized alt- hough it can be used to describe marginalization. The no part refers to the appearance of a political subjectivity that demands the reorganization of the society (and the recal- culation of its parts). The classic example used by Rancière is the emergence of the demos as a political subject, reconfiguring the possibilities of governance in Athens. The demos had no part, because it did not exist as such. Its emergence is marked by a reconceptualization of the polity. 8  climate change disasters that will lead to the collapse of our so- cieties?’; (2) Why do you want me to study sciences if you do not listen to what scientists have to say?’ (De Wever van der Heyden et al, 2020: 197). The movement has clear deliberative dimensions since it presents arguments publicly, seeking to convince citizens of certain courses of action. But at the same time, it also addresses political leaders as adversaries that need to be confronted due to their negligence and incapacity to act. The simultaneous performances of students in dozens of countries stage political confrontation, making dissensus visible and per- ceptible. Finally, performative protests may be oriented towards antagonistic engage- ment. While agonism refers to the struggle between adversaries, antagonism ad- dresses the struggle between destructive enemies (Mouffe 2014). Given its focus on destruction, antagonism is generally deemed as undemocratic and thus undesirable by many democratic theorists. Some scholars argue, however, that antagonism can also be seen in a positive light as a radical rupture and intervention required to rebuild society afresh. They view this kind of destruction as the only pathway towards eman- cipation (Žižek 2015). It is not the radicalness of the transformation, however, that serves as a demarcation mark between agonism and antagonism. The distinction is rather grounded on the way specific audiences are conceived of. While adversaries can be tolerated, transformed or reconceived, enemies need to cease to exist. A contemporary example of antagonistic engagement can be found in the use of Black Bloc tactics. Some Black Bloc actions, including smashing shop windows, setting cars on fire, or throwing Molotov cocktails, can be understood as performative violence, which seeks “to produce social transformation by staging symbolic rituals of confrontation” (Juris 2005: 413). The symbolic dimension of these performative acts is key. Rather than aiming at the destruction of a certain object, antagonistic engagement with democratic intentions stands for the destruction of a system identified with struc- tural inequality, discrimination, and unfreedom. Specific actors within this system are defined as enemies, whose simple existence would make transformation impossible. 9 It is important to note that it is not the method of violence that defines a certain perfor- mance as antagonistic, but, rather, how certain social actors are defined and ad- dressed. Violence is a frequent consequence of antagonistic engagement, because it is a performance addressed to enemies. Having set the broader parameters of each type of democratic engagement, in the next section we turn to three examples of nonverbal protest performances. Performing democracy through visuals Visuality is one of the key features of performative protests. Expressions of contention only become politically relevant to the extent that they emerge publicly and can be experienced by social actors. Aesthetics, therefore, cannot be dissociated from poli- tics, because the latter involves a confrontation of worlds that structure how we per- ceive and live reality (Rancière 1999). In order to change a given reality it is important to make its problems visible and to provide alternative forms of visuality. For this rea- son, images have always played a key role in politics and in expressions of contention (Bleiker 2018; Doerr, Mattoni and Teune 2015). The contemporary context of commu- nicative abundance (Keane 2013) has drawn more attention to the centrality of the visuality of contention. Protesters equipped with mobile devices constantly upload im- ages and livestream events (Kavada and Treré 2020). They initiate and document events online. The potential virality of images plays a central role in a movement’s reach and impact (Mitchell 2012). Such visuals can express deliberative arguments, but they can also serve agonistic contestation or antagonistic destruction. The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement presents an illustrative example of the different modes of engagement that visuals can perform in a protest. Starting with protests against police killings of Black people in 2013, BLM has become the biggest social movement in the US, particularly after the 2020 murder of George Floyd. At the core of the movement is the Black Lives Matter Global Network consisting of several chapters based in different US states and across the globe. But the movement reaches further and encompassing various Black advocacy organizations and individual activ- ists (Ransby, 2018). Since 2012, the movement has been staging spectacular mass protests, such as the Million Hoodie march. Protesters wore hoodies to enact the presence of 17- 10 year old Trayvon Martin, who had been shot dead because of his allegedly suspicious hoodie (Nguyen 2015). Black Lives Matter activists also employ sounds, particularly African music and ritualistic chants, to enact a cultural and ethnic identity (Cullors 2018). Nonverbal performances of the movement are particularly relevant for its enor- mous social media presence. After all, the movement started as the hashtag #Black- LivesMatter (Carney 2016; Mundt, Ross and Burnett 2018; Tillery 2019). Visuals have been an important part of BLM protests enacted on social media. Since the early days of the protests, protesters shared various images. Here, visuals are often used as part of a deliberative engagement to draw attention to racial injus- tices, to display the reasons for protests, and to highlight the inclusive and solidaristic nature of the movement (see Figure 1). These images stand in sharp contrast to the mass media image of BLM protests, which often portrays the protesters as violent and destructive (Hoffman et al. 2016; Atkins 2019). When oriented towards deliberative engagement, nonverbal performances seek to reach out to potential allies, convert them to causes, and build a broad, inclusive social movement. Here, audiences are understood as open to being swayed by reasoned arguments. One visual shared un- der the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter on Instagram, for example, contrasts two images of kneeling men. On the left, the US football player Colin Kaepernick is taking a knee for racial justice as he is being yelled at by then-President Donald Trump. On the right side of the visual, police officer Derek Chauvin is kneeling on the neck of George Floyd with another police officer standing by idly. The juxtaposition of kneeling for racial jus- tice and kneeling to kill powerfully expresses an argument without using any words. The peaceful and humble gesture of taking a knee as protest performance addresses audiences as receptive to good reasons and aims at convincing them of the validity of the argument for racial equality. At the same time, however, this image also provokes, challenges and confronts conservative audiences and Trump supporters. The image calls upon them as oppo- nents whose opinions are contested and poses a powerful challenge to established modes of domination. Kaepernick’s act of taking a knee represents a passionate cri- tique of racial politics, an act of dissensus. Images of BLM activists taking a knee emulating Kaepernick’s gesture have become a central visual motif of the movement 11 (see Figure 1). The humility of kneeling is counteracted by the raised fist, demonstrat- ing that this kneeling is part of a fight. This creates a visual scene of dissent that chal- lenges entrenched power structures (Rancière, 1999). Figure 1: A fist raised in solidarity for George Floyd, Source: Clay Banks, Source: Unsplash. BLM protesters also use images for antagonistic engagement. During the pro- test wave in 2020, social media were flooded with images of statues across the globe, representing white colonial history and slavery, being damaged and toppled by BLM activists. The acts of angry crowds tearing statues from their pedestals and throwing them in rivers entail force and coercion. Those who support slavery and racism are more than political adversaries: they are framed as enemies operating beyond demo- cratic boundaries. This kind of action denounces racism and the centuries-long system of subjugation, asserting that not all positions can be considered in a democratic so- ciety. Praising slavery is unacceptable. Breaking the materialized symbols of slavery performs a break with the past that aims at opening the path to a different future. In this way, even rioting can serve democratic repair (Hooker 2016). Performing democracy through sounds 12 When we think of the nonverbal performances enacted in protests, sounds and si- lences are key. Kunreuther (2017) speaks of democratic soundscapes, investigating the complex interactions of sounds and noise in the enaction of democratic practices, referring mainly to performances of protest. According to her, democratic sound- scapes: ask us to think about how the material sounds of democracy are produced through specific media, ranging from voices to per- formed silence or noise to mass media. Furthermore, democratic soundscapes may unsettle normative relationships between passionate utterance and articulate speech, human discourse and inanimate noise. Hearing them in new ways may encourage us to rethink how they enhance, alter, or undermine the meaning of being participating citizens and subjects in a democracy. (Kunreuther 2017: 26). Marches, for instance, are marked by shouts, claps, horns and the sound of footsteps. Music is often part of contentious performances and may denounce current injustices or express the desire for other possible worlds. Paretskaya (2015) investi- gates, for instance, the strength and potential of the Solidarity Sing Along (SSA) in Wisconsin: a group of activists who sang around the Wisconsin Capitol Building for consecutive weekdays since 2011.2 Initially protesting against an Act which restricted collective bargaining rights of public employees, these activists played a role in a broader movement for democratic citizenship rights by singing. Songs can do so not only through their lyrics, but also, as rap music and rock and roll illustrate, through pitch, rhythm and the social practices through which they are produced and consumed (Shusterman 1998; Grossberg 1984; Attali 1985). Silence can also be a powerful ex- pression, drawing attention to the impossibility or futility of speaking (Gray 2021). Drawing on the democratic lens we developed here, we can distinguish between sonic performances with deliberative, agonistic and antagonistic orientations. Pots and pans protests are a telling example of how sonic performances can display these three modes of democratic engagement. The noisy and collective bang- ing of pans has become a recurrent performance in many parts of the globe, as shown 2 In 2019, they have fulfilled their promise to sing at that symbolic place one day longer than the two-term governor. Some have continued singing through zoom meetings during the pandemic. 13 by the Iceland demonstrations in 2008 (Oddsdóttir 2014) and by the resistance against the coup d’état in Myanmar in 2021 (Beech 2021). In Brazil, the banging of pots and pans has become one of the key practices in the repertoire of contention over the past decade, as the country experienced significant political turbulence. Since 2015 (and through an impeachment process that ended in 2016), President Dilma Rousseff faced constant protests. Every time she attempted to address the nation on television, the banging of pots and pans could be heard from the balconies of upper middle-class apartments in several cities across the country, as citizens protested against the Work- ers’ Party in general, and Rousseff’s presidency more specifically. For these protest- ers, the noise was a simple way to express that Rousseff should not be heard. Soon, WhatsApp audios and YouTube videos with the sounds of pot banging went viral; peo- ple plaid these recordings close to their windows, without spoiling their kitchenware. After Rousseff’s removal from office, pots and pans protests acquired renewed prom- inence during the Covid-19 pandemic, when far-right President Jair Bolsonaro and his entourage were accused of negligence, denialism, malfeasance and corruption in the acquisition of medical supplies. In this short illustration, we will focus on this latest wave of pot banging around the Covid-19 pandemic. (see Figure 2) Figure 2: Pots and pans protests in Brazil, Source: Túlio Santos/EM/D.A Press (Image originally published by Jornal Estado de Minas, March 31, 2020) 14  Adopting the democratic lens, pots and pans display deliberative engagement when they play a part in inclusive processes of collective reflection, helping to establish common ground in the face of disagreement. Pot banging has been used during the pandemic to express an argument for more effective health and public safety measures, and for science to be taken more seriously. Because these sounds came from private homes, they carried the message that staying at home is important and that this does not prevent one from participating in democracy. In addition, the reso- nance of sounds heard throughout entire neighborhoods links citizens that may have different beliefs, ideas and perspectives, but that share indignation in the face of a given situation. Pot banging, however, is not always deliberative. It becomes agonistic when it sets clear boundaries between “us” and “them”. In the case of the Covid-19 pandemic protests, it can also draw sharp lines between those who support social distance measures and those who deny the seriousness of the pandemic. These sonic perfor- mances embody conflict, addressing those who deny the pandemic in ways that can- not be ignored. These sounds passionately draw attention to contentious positions. The agonistic engagement of pot banging therefore stages public disagreement. In doing so, the loud sounds from balconies and windows represent a clear rupture in the texture of ordinary life, calling for attention and forcing the entrance of a public issue into private homes through sonic waves. Finally, pot banging can also facilitate antagonistic engagement. It represents an attempt to silence others in the political debate and functions as a refusal to interact. When citizens bang pots in their windows every time the President tries to address the nation, they perform the refusal of listening. By producing noise and by showing that noise is preferable to the opinion of the President, protesters frame the President as an enemy beyond the boundaries of democratic politics. Performing democracy through embodied presence Lastly, we can think about embodied presence enacted in performative protests as a form of democratic engagement. Democratic theory increasingly recognizes the im- portance of material bodies (Machin 2021) and things (Honig 2017) as part of demo- cratic engagement. Material performances include a rich variety of embodied prac- tices, staged performances, crafts or artefacts, and can take place both offline and 15 online (Asenbaum 2019). They stress the importance of haptic, sensual engagement with physical materials and the simple presence of protesters bodies, to draw attention to societal problems, display alternative solutions, and engage with diverse publics. What is noteworthy here is that body performances do not always need to be accom- panied by verbal or textual messages to assume these functions. Embodied practices themselves can be considered as ‘sites of political reasoning and contestation’ (Rollo 2017:591). A compelling example of embodied presence as a nonverbal expression can be found in the practices of the Australian social protest group, Knitting Nannas against Gas (KNAG). The group was formed in 2012 in the Northern Rivers area of New South Wales to protest against the proposed coal seam gas development in the region and has spread to other regions and cities. There are currently 40 KNAG ‘loops’, most in Australia, some in USA and UK (KNAG 2021). Its members are unassuming older women, who regularly gather and knit in public spaces including in front of poli- ticians’ offices, mining sites or rallies. The group adopts a rich variety of performative strategies (both verbal and nonverbal) including humour, irony and provocation, to claim space in a highly technical and male dominated debate. They use the colours of yellow and black for their knitting and costumes to create and maintain a consistent protest setting. Their nonverbal, embodied performances take a deliberative, agonistic or antagonistic form depending on the audiences they address and the means of en- gagement they adopt. A major staging task of KNAG is determining the target audience and then find- ing a relevant protest location to reach that audience (e.g. near pedestrian streets or in front of political institutions). For the most part, the act of sitting and knitting on the street and in public places such as parks is directed at the general public and demon- strates the key features of a deliberative engagement elaborated above. When di- rected towards the general public, the embodied presence of KNAG appear to be wel- coming and non-confrontational. Their physical presence and silent practice of knitting aims to raise awareness about the mining developments in the region and invite the public to reflect on the potential risks of these developments, especially for future gen- erations. The ‘nanna’ identity of the protesters is associated with the care for future generations or ‘kiddies’ as they call them. Similar to other protests drawing on maternal bodies as a medium of communication (Barlett 2011), Nannas’ bodies act as the 16 guardians of future generations. The group’s presence in public spaces work to gen- erate alliances among like-minded people. Yet at the same time, they are seen as invitation to non-confrontational conversations with those who might not have a formed opinion or have an opposite opinion on the issue at stake (Hendriks, Ercan and Bos- well 2020). Embodied presence can also assume a confrontational tone and display the key characteristics of agonistic engagement. The agonistic characteristics of the em- bodied presence exist side by side with the dialogical characteristics of a deliberative engagement, but they become more salient depending on the audiences towards which the group directs its performative protests. One particularly powerful example of this can be seen in the self-description of the group as the ‘iron fist in the soft fluffy yellow glove’ (KNAG 2021). The very same performative act of sitting and knitting gains an agonistic meaning when it is used to confront the elected officials supporting coal seam gas projects in the region (See Figure 3). In this context, their presence and playful artefacts – for example knitting a yellow bikini for a male member of Parliament and supporter of the mining industry – aim to challenge elected officials, delegitimise their authority, and ridicule their support for the mining activities in the region. The sitting and knitting in front of politicians’ offices or parliaments are aimed at creating rupture and a ‘willful’ disruption; they challenge the expectations and disturb order (Clarke 2016). 17  Figure 3: Knitting Nannas Against Gas, Ballina, Source: KNAG 2021. Finally, the material performances of KNAG can also take the form of antago- nistic engagement, especially when they are directed towards those audiences por- trayed as enemies, with whom achieving a compromise is neither possible nor desir- able. In the case of KNAG, these audiences are ‘mining companies and any other organisations or persons that want to pillage Country for their short term financial gains’ (KNAG 2021). Nonverbal performances of the group portray enemies as trying to ‘rape’ land and ‘divide’ communities. The antagonistic engagement enacted through material performances shares important similarities with the agonistic engagement of the group with elected officials. Sitting and knitting at mining sites aims to have a dis- ruptive effect, ‘creating trouble and discomfort’ (Clarke 2016: 299). However, in the case of antagonistic engagement, disruption is not oriented towards any kind of ex- change, it is used to symbolise the outright rejection of those audiences portrayed as enemies. Conclusion In this article, we argued that democratic theory can be fruitfully employed to make sense of nonverbal performances enacted in contemporary protests. We introduced a democratic lens combining multiple perspectives in democratic theory. Through this lens, we can distinguish between different forms of democratic engagement based on the type of relationship between protesters and their diverse audiences, who together co-construct the meaning of protest performances. We distinguished between delib- erative, agonist and antagonist engagements in performative protest. It should be clear that the typology advanced here does not aim at freezing certain performances as inherently deliberative, agonistic or antagonistic. Rather, the context of the protests, the intention of protesters and the receptions and interpretations of audiences matter in co-constructing the meaning of particular performances (Armony 2004). As we showed, the very same performance can be used to seek common ground with inter- locutors, challenge political opponents or silence a political enemy. This article emerged from our curiosity to explore what the scholarship on de- mocracy can offer back to performance research. We say ‘back’, as the contribution of performance studies to the scholarship of democracy has been relatively clear. As scholars of democracy, we benefit from the insights gained from performance studies 18 in our work on social movements and public deliberation. We use a performative lens to unpack the theatrical quality of political speeches, parliamentary debates or public protests (Ercan and Hendriks, forthcoming). 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