This study sheds light on the political nature of postmodern performance, the understandings of postmodern culture that underpin it, and the particular strategies it employs. The first three chapters are devoted to a discussion of postmodern culture, which Philip Auslander sees as mediatized culture (borrowing Baudrillard's term), and to the general positioning of political art and performance within it. The five subsequent chapters are devoted to comparative discussions of issues raised by this positioning and by the critical strategies within specific performance practices drawn from both the avant-garde and popular performance, and to resistant representations of race and gender and performance's engagement with an information-saturated culture.

Presence and Resistance will interest readers in theater, drama, and performance studies as well as those concerned with issues in postmodern theory, cultural theory, feminism, popular culture, and media theory.