Judith Butler formulates the ethics of protest and the politics of the streets in her book, Notes to a performative theory of assembly, published 2016. The ideas of inter and intracommunity which voice demands when taking their vulnerable bodies and lives to the streets is underlined by protest songs enabling the voices of precarity to be heard, and the street allowing the faces of austerity to appear. Combining both dimensions strengthens an ethical approach based on community with the voiceless othered person.

Enabling a discussion between Butler’s theory on assembly and protest music/movements offers an interesting insight into the possibilities of performative activism in the face of seemingly inescapable political and social regimes. Combining the relation between those two fields can challenge new ideas on both music and individual or collective political activism.