The essays in this collection offer a radical reappraisal of the avant-garde by placing it within a much broader global context. The book questions the very assumptions that underlie the generally accepted chronology and theory of the avant-garde, and offer a bold new performance-based theory that moves beyond Eurocentric presup-positions. In ten essays especially commissioned for this volume, leading scholars and critics including Marvin Carlson, Supito Chatterjee, John Conteh-Morgan, Harry J. Elam, Jr., Joachim Fiebach, David G. Goodman, Jean Graham-Jones, Hanna Higgins, and Adam Versenyi discuss avant-garde performances in Africa, the Middle East, Mexico, Argentina, India, and Japan.