Overview

Placing the disciplines of performance studies and surveillance studies in a timely critical dialogue, Performance, Transparency, and the Cultures of Surveillance not only theorizes how surveillance performs, but also how the technologies and corresponding cultures of surveillance alter the performance of everyday life. This exploration draws upon a rich array of examples from theater, performance, and the arts, vividly illustrating the book’s central argument: that the rise of the surveillance society coincides with a profound collapse of democratic oversight and transparency—a collapse that demands a radical rethinking of how performance practitioners conceptualize art and its political efficacy. James M. Harding marshals an impressive range of performance and social theory in a thought-provoking excavation of what he identifies as the surveillance society’s most problematic fault lines and contradictions and concludes with an impassioned call for a new confrontational style of creative activism that Harding characterizes as “performance post-democracy.”

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9780472037094

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Reviews

Harding moves fluidly between the sociological, political, statistical, economic, and aesthetic considerations of the impacts of surveillance on contemporary life. His book contributes a cautionary analysis of contemporary surveillance society that is grounded in performance and activist histories from the 20th-century avant-garde and pitched toward the need for radical activist performance in the 21st century. The final chapter in particular is an unequivocal call to arms, a stirring appeal for radical action in the face of alarming imbalances of power at local, national, and international levels. --Elise Morrison, Yale University

Harding moves fluidly between the sociological, political, statistical, economic, and aesthetic considerations of the impacts of surveillance on contemporary life. His book contributes a cautionary analysis of contemporary surveillance society that is grounded in performance and activist histories from the 20th-century avant-garde and pitched toward the need for radical activist performance in the 21st century. The final chapter in particular is an unequivocal call to arms, a stirring appeal for radical action in the face of alarming imbalances of power at local, national, and international levels. --Elise Morrison, Yale University

Author Information

James M. Harding is Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park.

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