orgiastic as ascetic, as private as collective, as inner as outer—a dismantling organism,
a Body-without-Organs.
This explains why a rave (or trance party) never really climaxes but remains
looping, spiraling in a crescendo, into higher plateaus of intensity (Deleuze
and Guattari 1980). Good digital music and gatherings keep creativity at the edge
of experimentation: the Body-without-Organs of Techno, which unfolds like a
nomadic desiring-machine, an assemblage of lines of flight moving into and through
the realms of the “extraordinary.”
This phenomenology of ecstasy corresponds to “limit-experiences,” as, both in
Techno and New Age rituals, subjects repeatedly report sublime and traumatic
experiences. Pleasure, pain, catharsis, awareness, despair, and happiness underlie
such accounts of non-ordinary sensations and states. Telepathy mystical visions,
paranoia, ego dissolution, excruciating pleasures, deep insight, serenity, and cosmic
love are not uncommon. It is not that the experience awakens a particular feeling,
but rather that amplified feelings are the source of a limit-experience. As an exercise
of intensity and impossibility, these transpersonal practices engender experiences of
personal derailment—deterritorializing asignification—sacred madness with rewards
and dangers.
Nonetheless, the tribal features of Techno and New Age rituals should not be
seen as revivals of primitive, premodern forms of life, as is often claimed by insiders
and some scholars. Countercultural neo-tribalism is structured by meanings and
functions centered on the question of subjectivity sensed sacredly by the subject as a
matter of “utmost individuality” (Heelas 1996; cf. Dumont 1983; Maffesoli 1996).
Such ritual spaces emulate dilemmas of postmodern subjectivity: the constitution of
flexible and reflexive identities within digital, mobile, and neo-capitalist environs.
The Durkheimian notion of “collective effervescence” must be reassessed within
these parameters: through the group—as a necessary condition—but because of the
individual.
In global countercultures, horizontal (spatial) displacements are accompanied by
vertical displacements (self-identity). Global nomads (bohemians, New Agers,
freaks, ravers) enjoy their condition as long-distance travelers, spiritual pilgrims,
regarding the whole planet as a space for moving, if not a “home” in itself.
Significantly, these peoples are familiar with “limit-experiences,” seen as “trips” into
and out of the self (as vertical displacements). Poles of mystic contemplation and
ascetic action are reconfigured at this point as “tripping” indexes hedonic/ist and
erotic forms of innerworldly redemption (“innerweltliche Erlösung”) (Weber 1913;
Corsten 1998). New Agers and techno-freaks refer to their explorations with music,
dance, and drugs as spiritual experiences, a “deep trip.” DJs describe their central
task as “taking the crowd on a journey.” When taking acid or ecstasy, the consumer
is wished a “nice trip.” “Space-ships” and “intergalactic voyages” are common
representations of the psychedelic “journey” into non-ordinary dimensions.
Significantly, the word “hallucinogen” comes from the ancient Greek alyein, which
means “to wander,” and relates to the distracted gaze of trancing shamans. A drive
246 GLOBAL NOMADS IN IBIZA AND GOA