Acting Out

Performative Politics in the Age of the New Left and Counterculture 

This project is concerned with the liminal space where acting out becomes acting up becomes enacting the revolution. Using case studies of groups such as the Living Theatre, the San Francisco Diggers, and the Yippies to trace the development of a repertoire of political action that draws upon the ideas of everyday life as performance – of performative politics. These groups of cultural workers (writers, actors, musicians, and performance artists) were remarkably successful at accomplishing a fundamental goal of political movements for social change: getting people’s attention and getting them to act out.  It was through the medium of culture that they transmitted, across both geographic and temporal boundaries, powerful ideas about the existence of, and potential for resistance to, hegemonic modes of thinking and action.  Through demonstrating the significant influence of these ideas and ways of acting this work challenges existing narratives within the history of the time period.  These narratives have dismissed the Counterculture as silly and superfluous, asserted the failure of the radical movements of the Sixties more broadly, and in doing so drawn upon overly simplistic distinctions between cultural and political actors and modes of action.  It is only through the blurring of such boundaries, enabled by interdisciplinary modes of analysis including history, media studies, cultural theory, performance studies and studies of social movements, that we can see clearly the accomplishments of the time period.

Acting Out begins by tracing ideas and techniques that would be central to the New Left and the Counterculture back into the 1950s.  From key sociological and psychological experiments and works within the academy to the theatrical world of performance art, and most especially the work of the Living Theatre, we see the spreading recognition and articulation of the performance of every life.  This idea was taken up and utilized by the San Francisco Diggers.  Drawing on theatrical modes of performance, through actions that combined politics and performance art in setting such as Free Stores, the Diggers attempted to transform daily life through the power of everyday acts, and in doing so provided a model of political action that further problematizes the distinction between the New Left and the Counterculture.  These new forms of political action were simultaneously embraced and resisted by a New Left frustrated by the effectiveness of traditional modes of political organizing and engagement.  The Diggers had a particular influence on Abbie Hoffman, a founding member of the New York-based Yippies, who expanded the theatre of engagement from the neighborhood to the national level.  In actions such as the “Happening at the Stock Exchange,” the Yippies used the tools of media representation to their own ends.  The role of the media is further explored in the transnational influence of countercultural ideas, where the soon-to-be writers of OZ Magazine in Australia and members of the London Diggers took the moral panic reporting on the emerging counterculture as an inspiration for the creation of anarchic, hippie spaces and modes of engagement.  Acting Out ends by considering the legacies of performative politics beyond what is traditionally seen as the countercultural moment.  From the science fiction works of former hippie William Gibson to the Situationist creations of music industry icon Tony Wilson, and finally the drawing upon of anarchist traditions in the recent Occupy Movement, we see the enduring influence of these ideas and modes of action.