The ghosts of the avant-garde(s) : exorcising experimental theater and performance /
Harding, James Martin,1958-
" Pronouncements such as "the avant-garde is dead," argues James M. Harding, have suggested a unified history or theory of the avant-garde. His book examines the diversity and plurality of avant-garde gestures and expressions to suggest "avant-garde pluralities" and how an appreciation of these pluralities enables a more dynamic and increasingly global understanding of vanguardism in the performing arts. In pursuing this goal, the book not only surveys a wide variety of canonical and noncanonical examples of avant-garde performance, but also develops a range of theoretical paradigms that defend the haunting cultural and political significance of avant-garde expressions beyond what critics have presumed to be the death of the avant-garde. The Ghosts of the Avant-Garde(s) offers a strikingly new perspective not only on key controversies and debates within avant-garde studies but also on contemporary forms of avant-garde expression within a global political economy"-- Provided by publisher.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Introduction: avant-garde pluralities, an introduction -- Avant-garde rhetoric : show trials and collapsing discourse at the birth of surrealism -- From anti-culture to counter-culture : the emergence of the American hybrid vanguardism -- Critique of the artist as (re)producer : Warhol, The Living Theatre, and Frankenstein -- Brechtian aesthetics and the death of the director in Peter Brook's The Mahabharata -- From cutting edge to rough edges : on the transnational foundations of avant-garde performance -- Performing the vanquished vanguards : nostalgia, globalization, and the possibility of avant-gardes -- Victims of history and the ghosts of the avant-gardes : a plausibly deniable conclusion.
" Pronouncements such as "the avant-garde is dead," argues James M. Harding, have suggested a unified history or theory of the avant-garde. His book examines the diversity and plurality of avant-garde gestures and expressions to suggest "avant-garde pluralities" and how an appreciation of these pluralities enables a more dynamic and increasingly global understanding of vanguardism in the performing arts. In pursuing this goal, the book not only surveys a wide variety of canonical and noncanonical examples of avant-garde performance, but also develops a range of theoretical paradigms that defend the haunting cultural and political significance of avant-garde expressions beyond what critics have presumed to be the death of the avant-garde. The Ghosts of the Avant-Garde(s) offers a strikingly new perspective not only on key controversies and debates within avant-garde studies but also on contemporary forms of avant-garde expression within a global political economy"-- Provided by publisher.
Experimental theater
Experimental drama