Just like Scheherazade, undercover agents talk to save their lives. If they put in a poor performance, they don't see the curtain rise again. ART OF DARKNESS pries open the virtuoso identity techniques practiced by undercover operatives, fugitives, disguise artists, pranksters, con artists, and federally protected witnesses. It draws on original interviews with undercover operators in order to show how identity artists on both sides of the law obtain fake ID, develop a disguise, build a cover story, maintain believability in street performances, and deal with threats to their identities-all without formal acting training. ART OF DARKNESS inhabits the grey areas of morality as it exposes identity roleplays at the borders of lawfulness. In it you'll find stories of: law-enforcement workers who adopt the techniques of criminals in order to catch them but somehow get caught up in their own trick identities; self-defined artists whose work also has a criminal dimension; criminal informants who masterfully play sides and roles against each other; and hoaxsters and impersonators who may perform trick identities primarily for gain but do so with tremendous inventiveness and a directorial consciousness. This book may explode any remaining notion you harbor that you are not at some level a member of the intelligence community, discerning who is "for real" and who is presenting a self for personal gain.

Contested Spaces is an edited collection of critical ethnographies that examine the educational experiences of adults as cultural practice. These practices take place in diverse settings -- from the formal and subtly negotiated educational contexts of school classrooms, parent or adult education programs; to the institutionally interstitial realms of a worker training program, Bible study class, prison yoga class, or refugee resettlement program; to fluid and explicitly contested everyday spaces: an LGBTQ choir, a public parade, or Latinx cultural programming.The compilation includes twelve richly rendered case studies written from the perspective of “practitioner-ethnographers” -- individuals who straddle the roles of educator and ethnographic researcher. A central premise of the book is that, even as the terrain of adult education is increasingly infused with the aims and ideologies of neoliberal capital, participants in specific educational programs and activities are continuously forging educational alternatives to neoliberal education. Each chapter examines educative practices that either directly contest conventions of adult teaching and learning, and/or subtly challenge conventional ways of understanding the practices of adult teaching and learning. Drawing on distinct theoretical framings, each author illuminates the ways in which adults engaged in teaching and learning participate in cultural practices that necessarily intersect with other dimensions of social life, such as work, recreation, community engagement, personal development, or political action. By juxtaposing ethnographic inquiries of formal and informal learning spaces, as well as intentional and unintended challenges to mainstream adult teaching and learning, Contested Spaces provides new understandings and critical insights into the complexities of adults’ educative experiences.

Just like Scheherazade, undercover agents talk to save their lives. If they put in a poor performance, they don't see the curtain rise again. ART OF DARKNESS pries open the virtuoso identity techniques practiced by undercover operatives, fugitives, disguise artists, pranksters, con artists, and federally protected witnesses. It draws on original interviews with undercover operators in order to show how identity artists on both sides of the law obtain fake ID, develop a disguise, build a cover story, maintain believability in street performances, and deal with threats to their identities-all without formal acting training. ART OF DARKNESS inhabits the grey areas of morality as it exposes identity roleplays at the borders of lawfulness. In it you'll find stories of: law-enforcement workers who adopt the techniques of criminals in order to catch them but somehow get caught up in their own trick identities; self-defined artists whose work also has a criminal dimension; criminal informants who masterfully play sides and roles against each other; and hoaxsters and impersonators who may perform trick identities primarily for gain but do so with tremendous inventiveness and a directorial consciousness. This book may explode any remaining notion you harbor that you are not at some level a member of the intelligence community, discerning who is "for real" and who is presenting a self for personal gain.