Radical Theatrics

From burning draft cards to staging nude protests, much left-wing political activism in 1960s America was distinguished by deliberate outrageousness. This theatrical activism, aimed at the mass media and practiced by Abbie Hoffman and the Yippies, the Black Panthers, and the Gay Activists Alliance, among others, is often dismissed as naive and out of touch, or criticized for tactics condemned as silly and off-putting to the general public. In Radical Theatrics, however, Craig Peariso argues that these over-the-top antics were far more than just the spontaneous actions of a self-indulgent radical impulse. Instead, he shows, they were well-considered aesthetic and political responses to a jaded cultural climate in which an unreflective “tolerance” masked an unwillingness to engage with challenging ideas. Through innovative analysis that links political protest to the art of contemporaries such as Andy Warhol, Peariso reveals how the “put-on” — the signature activist performance of the radical left — ended up becoming a valuable American political practice, one that continues to influence contemporary radical movements such as Occupy Wall Street.

Craig J. Peariso’s work challenges traditional narratives regarding some of North America’s most significant political iconoclasts of the 1960s., Radical Theatrics is a thought-provoking book that should educate and trouble anyone desperate to change the world and confused about what to do when those efforts stall., This intriguing book presents a revisionist revaluation of the more problematic radical edges of political performance art in the United States of the mid-to-late 1960s. . . . Peariso has successfully shown that awkward decade was up for it in many compelling ways. . . . [Radical Theatrics] launches a sophisticatedly argued call for newly creating politico-aesthetic styles of ‘anti-representational’ performance., Peariso’s study of ‘failed’ sixties radicalism is an important contribution to our growing understanding of the complexities of radicalism in the postmodern, where performance is everywhere and manifold.

Craig J. Peariso is assistant professor of art history at Boise State University.