Performance and Activism

Afary's contribution of performance-conscious activism and activist-conscious performance gets to the core utility of performance for social change and activism as embodied praxis. This important project deepens and extends our collective understanding of performance in and as activism and the ways in which such intention is dynamized on the grassroots level. Performance and Activism should quickly become standard reading for those in performance studies, cultural studies, and cultural geography, amongst other disciplinary formations, interested in the confluence and conflicts of cultural identity in place and space, and the ways in which performance can be used as a critical lens of seeing and transforming the world. -- Bryant Keith Alexander, California State University Los Angeles
Performance and Activism demonstrates the importance of performance to analyses of public discourse and to cultural geographies of Los Angeles. Kamran Afary's book makes important contributions to communication and cultural studies, performance and theatre studies, and interdisciplinary studies of urban life.
Kamran Afary's analysis of the aftermath of the Los Angeles uprising is a new and exciting contribution to the study of gangs, social movements and urban sociology among others. Rarely has the performance of social change been theoretically conceived and methodologically executed in such an insightful and thought-provoking way. Afary has found the perfect lens for understanding the multiple and often occluded meanings of this important historical event, showing how the most marginalized and demonized of social actors continued to push for a political solution within the webs of hope and oppression that constitute that animal Los Angeles. -- David Brotherton, The City University of New York