Vanguard performance beyond left and right/ edited by Kimberly Jannarone.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Jannarone, Kimberly, editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Avant-garde (Aesthetics).

Arts--Political aspects.

Arts.

Right and left (Political science).

Physical Description:

xiv, 320 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Ann Arbor : Univ Of Michigan Press, 2015.

Summary:

Vanguard Performance beyond Left and Right challenges assumptions regarding "radical" and "experimental" performance that have long dominated thinking about the avant-garde. The book brings to light vanguard performances rarely discussed: those that support totalitarian regimes, promote conservative values, or have been effectively snapped up by right-wing regimes the performances intended to oppose. In so doing, the volume explores a central paradox: how innovative performances that challenge oppressive power structures can also be deployed in deliberate, passionate support of oppressive power. Essays by leading international scholars pose engaging questions about the historical avant-garde, vanguard acts, and the complex role of artistic innovation and live performance in global politics. Focusing on performances that work against progressive and democratic ideas (including scripted drama, staged suicide, choral dance, terrorism, rallies, and espionage), the book demonstrates how many compelling performance ideals-unification, exaltation, immersion-are, in themselves, neither moral nor immoral; they are only emotional and aesthetic urges that can be powerfully channeled into a variety of social and political outlets. Book jacket.

Contents:

Introduction : The political fallacy of vanguard performance / Kimberly Jannarone

Part I. Heroic vanguards and radical reactionaries

Part introduction : Performance at the edge of the abyss / Alan Filewod

9/11 as avant-garde art? / Richard Schechner

Il Duce's directors : art theaters as instruments of the fascist revolution / Patricia Gaborik

Patricide and the fascist sublime / Monica Achen

"So that the sun should shine on free men" : Henry Williamson, Lawrence of Arabia, and the performance of vanguard visions / Graham White

Mishima's balcony performance : hypermasculinity, masochism, and reactionary vanguardism / Kara Reilly

Part II. Exalted and en masse

Part introduction : Immersion, togetherness, and the sublime / Kimberly Jannarone

Collisions in the coliseum : Mussolini, modernism, and the agon for antiquity / Odai Johnson

Beijing, 2008 / Katherine Profeta

"Signaling through the flames" : hell house performance and structures of religious feeling / Ann Pellegrini

"One vision" : music, performance, combat / Erik Butler

Part III. Research wings for the right

Part introduction : Something's happening here : encountering vanguard performance in context / Graham White

Encrypted vanguards and bleeding-edge technologies : signals intelligence, radio drama, and the false transmissions of the special operations executive / James Harding

Beatrice Joanna and the rhetoric of rape / Kim Solga

The academy and the marketplace : avant-garde performance in neoliberal times / Liz Tomlin

Avant-garde theory and right-wing ideology / Mike Sell.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0472119672

9780472119677

OCLC:

910412972

Publisher Number:

40025726661