arises out of a desire to ground it in perception, sensation and the body, all of which,
while eagerly praised by practitioners, are frequently ignored in these same
practitioner’s neo-mystical articulations.
At the same time, I am fully cognizant that the problem inherent in adopting a
phenomenological approach to ecstasy is its dependence on first-person accounts,
which are ultimately linguistic artifices incapable of grasping what they are
attempting to describe—ecstasy being antithetical, after all, to language. As I
mentioned earlier, though, first-person accounts are all we have to work with. This
epistemological gap, accordingly, must be acknowledged as not only inevitable but
also central to the ecstatic ‘experience’.
Finally, my situating of ecstasy within the ontology of the flesh must be
recognized as only an introductory manoeuvre. In truth, much more can and should
be said about this approach, including a further investigation of ecstasy’s
relationship to the ‘sensory overload’ of the rave-assemblage, as well as an
exploration of emotion that might draw on, for example, the work of Susan Cataldi
(1993). Similarly, I only briefly employed dance within this chapter, itself a topic
that would benefit greatly from Merleau-Ponty’s conceptions of flesh since dance is
already understood by some as a means of non-dualistically restructuring
subjectivity. Further investigations into the ‘flesh of raving’ might also explore
gender, dis/ability and temporality, all of which could greatly benefit from being
‘fleshed out’.
Notes1 While many people have contributed to the development of this work and its ideas, I
would like to especially acknowledge the academic guidance of Mary Klages and Sam
Crill, as well as the intellectual and moral support of Devery Holt, Caryn Margolis,
Dave Dolezal and Hope Albrecht.
2 For the purposes of this chapter, I am using the term ‘rave’ to describe a wide array of
psychedelic and ecstatic dance events that more properly might be described as ‘post-
rave’ gatherings. I have chosen to retain this terminology, despite being slightly ‘out of
date’, in order to accommodate the term ‘raving’, which I feel still possesses a distinct
and communicable meaning. ‘The ecstasy of raving’, as a phrase, can therefore be
translated as ‘the ecstasy of clubbing’ etc. The reader may insert whatever terminology
they like, as long as it is recognized that I am referring to the ecstatic state engendered
by all-night dancing to the beat of predominately electronically engineered music.
3 See ‘Christianity and Raving’, available online at: http://www.hyperreal.org/ raves/ spirit/
culture /Xtianity—And—Raving.html (accessed 1 November 2002).
4 Gore notes that ‘it is not...the fact of taking Ecstasy which ensures the happy outcome
in raving. Rather it is the repetition of the same formula on each occasion, the
ritualisation (1997:53).
5 Which is not to deny wholesale the possibility of ecstatic raving being a mystical
event, an eruption of the divin e i n t o t h e m u n d a n e ; i t i s o nly to adopt a sceptical approach
that recognizes that such claims are difficult to corroborate or legitimize.120 JAMES LANDAU