Abstract
This essay aims to reconcile a gap in scholarship on the AIDS crisis as prior scholars have looked at ACT UP’s image, only recently focusing on their sound. First, this essay argues that we can gain a better understanding of the relationship between ACT UP’s image and sound, specifically its political posters and subsequent chants, by using Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s theory of periperformativity to examine the periperformative dimension of these chants and thus the power they lend ACT UP members during civil disobedience demonstrations. Second, it argues that the periperformative has the capacity to register historical change because it is an instance of we-work. This provides new insights into how a movement’s image and sound are connected and function to sustain a movement by allowing it to represent itself to itself. Ultimately, keeping them together as a collective and continuing the fight through direct action to end the AIDS crisis.
Recommended Citation
Navarro, Adeline
(2026)
"Political Posters, Periperformativity, and Power: An Analysis of the Connections Between an Activist Movement’s Image and Sound,"
Acta Cogitata: An Undergraduate Journal in Philosophy: Vol. 13, Article 4.
Available at:
https://commons.emich.edu/ac/vol13/iss1/4