Performative activism is a pejorative term referring to activism done to increase one's social capital rather than because of one's devotion to a cause. It is often associated with surface-level activism, referred to as slacktivism. The term gained an increased usage on social media in the wake of the George Floyd protests, although the phrase predates the killing of George Floyd. "Performative wokeness" and "performative allyship" are related terms.
History and usage
Early uses of the term
In 1998, St. Martin's Press published Spectacular Confessions: Autobiography, Performative Activism, and the Sites of Suffrage, a work by Barbara Green about Federation erawomen's suffrage in Australia. The term appeared online in 2015 articles by Hyperallergic and Atlas Obscura, but referred to the activism that involved an element of performance art. The Hyperallergic article referenced the Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp, and how some women protested nuclear weapons by decorating a fence "with pictures, banners, and other objects," and added that "they blocked the road to the site with dance performances. They even climbed over the fence to dance in the forbidden zone." In February 2017, The Outline writer Jeff Ihaza wrote that "one of the most crippling tendencies of modern liberals is their obsession with being seen, whether it be at a protest wearing a fuzzy pink hat alongside Madonna or in viral tweets totally owning the president. This preoccupation with optics is more often than not frighteningly self-centered," and later adding that "From 'performative' activism to a fixation on clever protest signs, modern liberals know better than anyone else how to cash in on a political movement, but they know very little about how to harness the power of one." Also in 2017, following the Charlottesville car attack, Philadelphia writer Ernest Owens included the term performative activism without interrupting punctuation, criticizing it as an activism "about making cheap symbolic gestures and catchy remarks to center yourself instead of the issue." In September 2018, Lou Constant-Desportes, the editor-in-chief of AFROPUNK.com resigned, citing "performative 'activism' dipped in consumerism and 'woke' keywords used for marketing purpose." In October 2018, Jenna M. Gray of The Harvard Crimson published an article using the term "performative wokeness", defining it as "drowning your lecture comments with a host of social justice buzzwords — try favorites like intersectionality, marginalized, discourse, subjectivity, or any -ism — without regard to whether other people understand you." In 2019, the Columbia Daily Spectator and the Washington Square News, the student newspapers of Columbia University and New York University, respectively, published articles addressing on-campus discourse surrounding performative activism and students participating in social media activism.
The term rose in popularity following the Killing of George Floyd, with many high school and college student activists using the term pejoratively. The Los Angeles Times wrote that students have warned against engaging in performative activism online. On May 28, 2020, Rice University student Summar McGee founded Rice For Black Life to help promote fundraising for Texas-based non-profits and to not go through bureaucratic processes of other organizations on-campus. McGee and Kendall Vining, another member of the organization, expressed that this type of "nonhierarchical activism helps avoid performative allyship and activism." On June 1, while expressing support for the Black Lives Matter movement in the wake of the George Floyd protests, singer Lorde stated, "One of the things I find most frustrating about social media is performative activism, predominantly by white celebrities. It's hard to strike a balance between self-serving social media displays and true action." On June 2, many Instagram users participated in the "Blackout Tuesday" movement, which involved users posting a completely blacked-out square image in order to show support of the George Floyd protests. Celebrities and general users alike received criticism by other social media users for engaging in "performative activism" via these Blackout Tuesday posts. Performative allyship is a related term that has appeared in media publications following the George Floyd protests. An example of a government official being criticized for "performative" activism sprung up later in June, when Washington, D.C. mayor Muriel Bowser had the phrase Black Lives Matter painted on 16th Street in front of the White House. Bowser was criticized for this, as some brought up her presiding over law enforcement practices that have been called harmful to the black community in D.C.
