The Ghosts of the Avant-Garde(s): Exorcising Experimental Theater and Performance - Tapa dura

"As Harding persuasively argues, history is where scholars should consign rigid theoretical models of 'the historical avant-garde' - not vanguardism itself." -Comparative Drama-- (02/01/2014) "The Ghosts of the Avant-Garde(s) is a timely and significant contribution to the field of avant-garde studies. It both assesses and advances the field; by engaging in heated critical debates and offering original perspectives, Harding challenges the reader to consider uncharted territories in understanding and interrogating the avant-gardes. While, at times, performance analyses lack descriptive details that could potentially focus more on exploring performances and artists rather than theoretical debates around them, the book nevertheless presents a compelling case for the continued revisioning of avant-garde theories and practices." --Theatre Journal-- (03/13/2015) "James M. Harding's latest book is a manifesto calling for an overhaul in contemporary scholarship on experimental performance of the last century... Looking back and ahead at the same time, Harding demands a shake up of the way we study and practice theatre history. In Ghosts of the Avant-Garde, he proposes an exorcism of an entire field." --TDR-- (03/13/2015) "Harding paves the way for the next chapter in the critical discourse on avant-garde(s)." --CHOICE--M.S. LoMonaco, Fairfield University"CHOICE" (12/01/2013) "Performance offers a way of thinking differently about the histories and contemporary relevance of art at the cutting edge . . . James M. Harding takes Peter B rger's influential Theory of the Avant Garde to task for establishing a critical orthodoxy that fails to consider the multiplicity of avant-gardes . . . Harding's examination of the critical discourses of and about the various avant-gardes . . . offers an open and dynamic alternative to a coherent or 'monolithic' avant-garde project." --Times Literary Supplement "Part of the function of an avant-garde ... is to revive and reanimate spirits long since crushed by outside forces, such as, most recently, globalization and the 'war on terror.' Harding's political passions emerge most forcefully here, as he aligns his thinking with Walter Benjamin's lament over a history written only by its victors." ---Times Literary Supplement-- (02/05/2014)

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 non-canonical 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.