SOURCE: “Avant-Gardes and American Poetry,” in Contemporary Literature, Vol. XXXV, No. 1, Spring, 1994, pp. 156–70.

In the following excerpt, Golding offers a positive critique of Perloff's thesis and central arguments in Radical Artifice.

Paul Mann, Peter Bürger, Andreas Huyssen, Russell Berman, Fredric Jameson—these are only a few of the most familiar names in that substantial chorus caroling the death of the avant-garde in recent years. Too many theorists of the avant-garde's demise, however, overlook or have no way to explain (beyond the usual arguments about co-option) the continued presence of what looks for all the world like avant-garde practice. Admittedly the paradoxes of “co-option” or “complicity” are almost infinitely regressive. What do we make of Robert Longo selling the image of himself sporting a mock (what else?) turtleneck in the service of Gap sportswear while he is also responsible for the cover of Bruce Andrew's I Don't Have...