Cloth: 978-0-472-07833-2

Paper: 978-0-472-05833-4

eISBN: 978-0-472-90613-0 (OA)

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.

James M. Harding is Professor 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).