ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the theatrical protest gesture, taking as its starting point Giorgio Agamben's characterization of gesture as pure means refusing the separation of action into means and ends. It explores a range of gestural techniques, and proposes three gestural grammars of protest: gestures of exception, gestures of domesticity and the ecological gesture by drawing on the ideas of Brian Rotman and Paolo Virno. The chapter argues that grammars figure modes of political subjectivity and relation in a world that renders life precarious and in which there is no place to stand outside. It focuses on moments of protest that contest the framing of bodies as outside of the normative political order and its modes of citizenship. In the exploration of gesture, theatricality and protest that follows here, we are interested in the double notion of composure as process of remaining steady on a precipice, as well as composition of authoring and crafting, with others bodily responses to threat.
