Paul Mann The Theory-Death of the Avant-Garde. Indiana University Press, 1991. First printing. 0253336724  154 pages. Volume, measuring approximately 6.75" x 9.75", is bound in black cloth, with stamped gilt lettering to spine. Book is in excellent condition. Dust jacket displays very light sheflwear. Jacket is now preserved in mylar cover. "Sometime around the 1960s, a century or more after the avant-garde was named into existence by utopian socialists and advanced artists, the media was full of reports of its "death." How could such a death havve occurred? Weren't  we still surrounded by what would once hve been called avant-garde artists, movements, rhetoric, and works? In this book, Paul Mann traces the causes of the avant-garde's allegedly terminal illness. His goal is not to produce yet another history of the avant-garde or another study of particular artists or movements -- although many movements and works are reconsidered -- but rather to investigate the discourse of the avant-garde, the ways we talk about the avant-gardes, the notion that "to produce a theory of the avant-garde is to articulate its death."