Overview

This book is a manifesto. It is about rethinking performance autoethnography, about the formation of a critical performative cultural politics, about what happens when everything is already performative, when the dividing line between performativity and performance disappears. This is a book about the writing called autoethnography. It is also about what this form of writing means for writers who want to perform work that leads to social justice. Denzin’s goal is to take the reader through the history, major terms, forms, criticisms and issues confronting performance autoethnography and critical interpretive. To that end many of the chapters are written as performance texts, as ethnodramas. A single thesis organizes this book: the performance turn has been taken in the human disciplines and it must be taken seriously. Multiple informative performance models are discussed: Goffman’s dramaturgy; Turner’s performance anthropology; performance ethnographies by A. D. Smith, Conquergood, and Madison; Saldana’s ethnodramas; Schechter’s social theatre; Norris’s playacting; Boal’s theatre of the oppressed; and Freire’s pedagogies of the oppressed. They represent different ways of staging and hence performing ethnography, resistance and critical pedagogy. They represent different ways of ""imagining, and inventing and hence performing alternative imaginaries, alternative counter-performances to war, violence, and the globalized corporate empire"" (Schechner 2015). This book provides a systematic treatment of the origins, goals, concepts, genres, methods, aesthetics, ethics and truth conditions of critical performance autoethnography. Denzin uses the performance text as a vehicle for taking up the hard questions about reading, writing, performing and doing critical work that makes a difference.

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9781138066281

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Reviews

This book is Norman K. Denzin's most political and personal work, to date. Not only does he weave his encyclopedic knowledge of multiple disciplines into a compelling tour de force manifesto about performance, he intimately reveals his autoethnographic self through poignant family memories and a morally-driven agenda. Performance Autoethnography is a vibrant tribute to the field of performance studies scholarship, and to Denzin's advocacy of it as a vital forum for individual and social change. Johnny Saldana, Professor Emeritus, Arizona State University, School of Film, Dance, and Theatre When I downsize, I will need only one academic book: Norman Denzin's Performance Autoethnography: Critical Pedagogy and the Politics of Culture.2/e. At Last! A book that brings together diverse performance theories and practices into one genre-bending, ethically grounded, spirited text. It inspires social activist writing, reading, pedagogies and performances that can change the world into a radically just one. No one could have written this book but Norman Denzin. I know of no one who has his breadth of theoretical and methodological understanding of the issues facing research and teaching at this moment in history. His passion for justice, moreover, resounds on every page. Norman Denzin has deployed his incredible powers of analysis, writing, and ethical compassion. In a brilliant book, Performance Autoethnography: Critical Pedagogy and the Politics of Culture.2/e., Denzin transforms the autoethnographic into the performative, the performative into the political, and the political into the possibility of a radical utopia with justice and freedom for all. The book's accomplishments are breath-taking. This would be my Number 1 choice for any course in qualitative research, performance studies, sociology of culture, political sociology, visual arts, theater or the foundations of education. Rather than dividing disciplines into tidy boxes, Denzin has shown how these boxes are porous. Acting from a shared critical performance perspective, they can engage the world's problems and work towards a radically just utopia. Everyone is invited to help change the world! Sometimes you just have to wait for what you need and want. I have needed and wanted an accessible way to connect-the-dots---theory, methods, social activism--that could resonate with students, traditional colleagues, and dubious friends. I have waited for this book. The wait is over. Thanks, Norman. Laurel Richardson, Laurel Richardson, Professor Emeritus, The Ohio State University

This book is Norman K. Denzin's most political and personal work, to date. Not only does he weave his encyclopedic knowledge of multiple disciplines into a compelling tour de force manifesto about performance, he intimately reveals his autoethnographic self through poignant family memories and a morally-driven agenda. Performance Autoethnography is a vibrant tribute to the field of performance studies scholarship, and to Denzin's advocacy of it as a vital forum for individual and social change. Johnny Saldana, Professor Emeritus, Arizona State University, School of Film, Dance, and Theatre

Author Information

Norman K. Denzin is Distinguished Emeritus Research Professor of Communications at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA. He is the author, co-author or co-editor of over 50 books and 200 professional articles and chapters. He is the past President of The Midwest Sociological Society, and the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction. He is founding President of the International Association of Qualitative Inquiry (2005–) and Director of the International Center of Qualitative Inquiry (2005–). He is past editor of The Sociological Quarterly, founding co-editor of Qualitative Inquiry and founding editor of Cultural Studies – Critical Methodologies, International Review of Qualitative Research and Studies in Symbolic Interaction: A Research Annual.

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