A single thesis organizes this book: the performance turn has been taken in the human disciplines and it must be taken seriously. Multiple informative performance models are discussed: GoffmanтАЩs dramaturgy; TurnerтАЩs performance anthropology; performance ethnographies by A. D. Smith, Conquergood, and Madison; SaldanaтАЩs ethnodramas; SchechterтАЩs social theatre; NorrisтАЩs playacting; BoalтАЩs theatre of the oppressed; and FreireтАЩs pedagogies of the oppressed. They represent different ways of staging and hence performing ethnography, resistance and critical pedagogy. They represent different ways of "imagining, and inventing and hence performing alternative imaginaries, alternative counter-performances to war, violence, and the globalized corporate empire" (Schechner 2015).
This book provides a systematic treatment of the origins, goals, concepts, genres, methods, aesthetics, ethics and truth conditions of critical performance autoethnography. Denzin uses the performance text as a vehicle for taking up the hard questions about reading, writing, performing and doing critical work that makes a difference.
Norman K. Denzin is Distinguished Emeritus Research Professor of Communications at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA. He is the author, co-author or co-editor of over 50 books and 200 professional articles and chapters. He is the past President of The Midwest Sociological Society, and the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction. He is founding President of the International Association of Qualitative Inquiry (2005тАУ) and Director of the International Center of Qualitative Inquiry (2005тАУ). He is past editor of The Sociological Quarterly, founding co-editor of Qualitative Inquiry and founding editor of Cultural Studies тАУ Critical Methodologies, International Review of Qualitative Research and Studies in Symbolic Interaction: A Research Annual.