This book is a provocative new study of global feminist activism that opposes neoliberal regimes across several sites including Asia, Australia, Canada, Europe, Latin America and the United States. The feminist performative acts featured in the book contest the aggressive unravelling of collectively won gains in gender, sexual and racial equality, the appearance of new planes of discrimination, and the social consequences of political economies based on free market ideology. The investigations of affect theory follow the circulation of intensities - of political impingements on bodies, subjective and symbolic violence, and the shock of dispossession - within and beyond individuals to the social and political sphere. Affect is a helpful matrix for discussing the volatile interactivity between performer and spectator, whether live or technologically mediated. Contending that there is no activism without affect, the collection brings back to the table the activist and hopeful potential of feminism.

In Unmaking Mimesis Elin Diamond interrogates the concept of mimesis in relation to feminism, theatre and performance. She combines psychoanalytic, semiotic and materialist strategies with readings of selected plays by writers as diverse as Ibsen, Brecht, Aphra Behn, Caryl Churchill and Peggy Shaw.
Through a series of provocative readings of theatre, theory and feminist performance she demonstrates the continuing force of feminism and mimesis in critical thinking today.
Unmaking Mimesis will interest theatre scholars and performance and cultural theorists, for all of whom issues of text, representation and embodiment are of compelling concern.

In Unmaking Mimesis Elin Diamond interrogates the concept of mimesis in relation to feminism, theatre and performance. She combines psychoanalytic, semiotic and materialist strategies with readings of selected plays by writers as diverse as Ibsen, Brecht, Aphra Behn, Caryl Churchill and Peggy Shaw.
Through a series of provocative readings of theatre, theory and feminist performance she demonstrates the continuing force of feminism and mimesis in critical thinking today.
Unmaking Mimesis will interest theatre scholars and performance and cultural theorists, for all of whom issues of text, representation and embodiment are of compelling concern.

Performance and Cultural Politics is a groundbreaking collection of essays which explore the historical and cultural territories of performance, written by the foremost scholars in the field. The essays, exploring performance art, theatre, music and dance, range from Oscar Wilde to Eric Clapton; from the Rose Theatre to U.S. Holocaust museums. The topic includes:
* Sex Play: Stereotype, Pose and Dildo
* Grave Performances: The Cultural Politics of Memory
* Genealogies: Critical Performances
* Identity Politics: Passing, Carnival and the Law
In the concluding section, `Performer's Performance', performance artist Robbie McCauley offers the practitioner's perspective on performance studies.
Interdisciplinary, thought-provoking and rich in new ideas, Performance and Cultural Politics is a landmark in the emerging field of performance studies.

"Performance and Cultural Politics" gathers together some of the foremost scholars of performance studies to examine the historical and cultural territories of performance.
"Culture" in the twentieth century, says ethnographer James Clifford, "is no longer an object to be described, neither is it a unified corpus of symbols and meanings that can be definitively interpreted. Culture is contested, temporal, emergent." The essays in this volume explore performance--encompassing theater, performance art, dance, and music--as a vital component of this hybrid, contested culture.
The contributors to this landmark volume foucs on topics varying from Oscar Wilde to Eric Clapton; the Rose Theatre to the U.S. holocaust museums. They provide new interpretations of performance and its relation to issues of history, memory, mourning, racism, homophobia, and performativity. Performance artist Robbie McCauley concludes with a practitioner's perspective on art-making and politics which offers fresh insights into questions raised by other essays.
" Performance and Cultural Politics" is interdisciplinary, thought-provoking, and rich in new ideas. It is essential reading for students and scholars of performance.
Contributors: Emily Apter, Herbert Blau, Ed Cohen, Lynda Hart, Peggy Phelan, Vivian Patraka, Philip Auslander, Susan Foster, Rebecca Schneider, Glenda Dicker/sun, Joseph Roach, Amy Robinson, Robbie McCauley.

Caryl Churchill's plays are internationally performed, studied and acclaimed by practitioners, theatre scholars, critics and audiences alike. With fierce imagination the plays dramatise the anxieties and terrors of contemporary life. This Companion presents new scholarship on Churchill's extraordinary and ground-breaking work. Chapters explore a cluster of major plays in relation to pressing social topics - ecological crisis, sexual politics, revolution, terror and selfhood - providing close readings of texts in their theatrical, theoretical and historical contexts. These topic-based essays are intercalated with other essays that delve into Churchill's major collaborations, her performance innovations and her influences on a new generation of playwrights. Contributors explore Churchill's career-long experimentation - her risk-taking that has reinvigorated the stage, both formally and politically. Providing a new critical platform for the study of a theatrical career that spans almost fifty years, the Companion pays fresh attention to Churchill's poetic precision, dark wit and inexhaustible creativity.

Caryl Churchill's plays are internationally performed, studied and acclaimed by practitioners, theatre scholars, critics and audiences alike. With fierce imagination the plays dramatise the anxieties and terrors of contemporary life. This Companion presents new scholarship on Churchill's extraordinary and ground-breaking work. Chapters explore a cluster of major plays in relation to pressing social topics - ecological crisis, sexual politics, revolution, terror and selfhood - providing close readings of texts in their theatrical, theoretical and historical contexts. These topic-based essays are intercalated with other essays that delve into Churchill's major collaborations, her performance innovations and her influences on a new generation of playwrights. Contributors explore Churchill's career-long experimentation - her risk-taking that has reinvigorated the stage, both formally and politically. Providing a new critical platform for the study of a theatrical career that spans almost fifty years, the Companion pays fresh attention to Churchill's poetic precision, dark wit and inexhaustible creativity.

This book is a provocative new study of global feminist activism that opposes neoliberal regimes across several sites including Asia, Australia, Canada, Europe, Latin America and the United States. The feminist performative acts featured in the book contest the aggressive unravelling of collectively won gains in gender, sexual and racial equality, the appearance of new planes of discrimination, and the social consequences of political economies based on free market ideology. The investigations of affect theory follow the circulation of intensities - of political impingements on bodies, subjective and symbolic violence, and the shock of dispossession - within and beyond individuals to the social and political sphere. Affect is a helpful matrix for discussing the volatile interactivity between performer and spectator, whether live or technologically mediated. Contending that there is no activism without affect, the collection brings back to the table the activist and hopeful potential of feminism.