Overview

The Ghosts of the Avant-Garde(s) offers a strikingly new perspective on key controversies and debates within avant-garde studies, arguing for the importance of reopening pivotal controversies and debates in avant-garde studies and challenging pronouncements of the “death of the avant-garde” that tend to obscure the diversity and plurality of avant-garde gesture and expression. James M. Harding revisits iconic sites of early 20th-century performance to examine how European avant-gardists attempted—unsuccessfully—to employ that discourse as a strategy for enforcing uniformity among a politically and culturally diverse group of artists. He then takes aim at historical and aesthetic categories that have promoted a restrictive history and theory of the avant-garde and narrow readings of avant-garde performance. Harding reveals the Eurocentric undercurrents that underlie these categories and urges a consideration of the global political dimensions of avant-garde gestures. His book will interest scholars of theater and performance, art history, and literary studies, as well as those interested in the relation of art to politics in various historical periods and cultures.

Full Product Details

9780472036103

Table of Contents

Reviews

“Performance offers a way of thinking differently about the histories and contemporary relevance of art at the cutting edge . . . James M. Harding takes Peter Bürger'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

Author Information

James M. Harding is Associate Professor of Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Maryland.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available