The metaphor “beyond the pale” refers to something that’s unacceptable and, as James M. Harding argues in this book, “almost always refers to something—an activity, an action, or an act—that is performed.” In this book, Harding recalls that historically the pale marked contested political boundaries and that what lay beyond the pale was considered to be a dangerous frontier. Siding with seemingly excessive and unreasonable acts and with the artists and activists who produce them, Harding brings together a series of ideas and performances that operate beyond the pale and asks readers to examine them on their own terms.
Drawing on political science, critical theory, and philosophy, Harding investigates instances of self-immolation, life-threatening journeys across deserts and seas, radical political hoaxes, extreme speech acts, and anti-police activism. The book’s five chapters consist of a series of meditations, each with an easily identifiable scholarly logic and clear argument, though the connections between the meditations are left up to the reader. Together these meditations urge readers to understand that “beyond the pale” acts are frequently the product of a sense of urgency that preempts the dictates of accepted reason, conventional logic, and safety.
Table of Contents:
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction:
“Of Structure, Form and Content”
Prologue:
“The ‘Pale’ and Beyond, or Leaving the Fence Behind”
Chapter 1:
“Echoes at Event Horizons: Gravity and the Pull of Incendiary Acts”
Chapter 2:
“The Invisible Vanguard: Reflections on Political Movements and Contemporary Avant-Garde Formations.”
Chapter 3:
“Performing Asylum, or Politics Teetering on the Edge”
Chapter 4:
“Staging Sedition, or Guerrilla Equivocation: An Unruly History in Four Acts, and Two Intermissions”
Chapter 5:
“Improvisations at The Thin Blue Line: Reflections on the Unscripted Performances of the Police State”
Notes
Index
About the Author :
James M. Harding is Professor Emeritus of Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the author of Performance, Transparency, and the Cultures of Surveillance (Michigan, 2018); The Ghosts of the Avant-Garde(s): Exorcising Experimental Theater and Performance (Michigan, 2013); and Cutting Performances: Collage Events, Feminist Artists, and the American Avant-Garde (Michigan, 2011); and, Adorno and “A Writing of the Ruins” (SUNY, 1997). He has coedited three anthologies with Cindy Rosenthal: The Sixties, Center Stage: Mainstream and Popular Performances in a Turbulent Decade (Michigan, 2017); The Rise of Performance Studies: Rethinking Richard Schechner’s Broad Spectrum (Palgrave, 2011); and Restaging the Sixties: Radical Theaters and Their Legacies (Michigan, 2006). With John Rouse, he co-edited Not the Other Avant-Garde (Michigan, 2006), and he was the sole editor of Contours of the Theatrical Avant-Garde (Michigan, 2000).
Review :
“James Harding elevates performative writing from the level of the sentence to the level of book composition. He transforms the old form of meditation into a genuine innovation in the scholarship of political performance. In these meditations, he mounts a vigorous defense of the act of reading, which is now under massive assault by machines, by inviting readers to approach it as a creative act. Rather than presenting an Aristotelian argument, this intricate structure of reflections confronts readers with a Brechtian sense of astonishment.”
“In this astonishing volume, Harding uses the theoretically contested site of ‘performance’ to interrogate some of the most extraordinary acts of political activism. Performance Beyond the Pale is a culmination of his career-long construction of a rigorous but imaginative intellectual approach to the analysis of performance as a political act.”
“James Harding’s remarkable book takes us to the dark heart of performance studies. Writing beyond the pale, this book considers exclusory actions and performances that move between arts, activism, and sacrifice. Bold and uncompromising, this is a tour de force that radically rethinks the limits of performance studies and the politics of praxis.”
“In the analysis of activist performances, the greatest challenge today lies in understanding what a political act actually is—or can still be. Much of what is staged or presented for public viewing in art institutions by no means meets these criteria. James Harding’s Performance Beyond the Pale shows us acts of captivating radicalism—and a text that counters this radicalism with a meditative power of reflection: an enormous enrichment for readers.”
