for something not ordinary underlies all of these examples, a drive for movement as
an extraordinary experience.
Ibiza and Goa are as intoxicating as music and drugs. On the one hand, it is
obvious that limit-experiences and countercultures may occur anywhere in the world
and without recourse to “intoxicating elements.” On the other, there is a general
belief that emphasizes the importance of “being there” (in India, in Ibiza—in the
“Otherland”) in order to experience life and Being. Travel-talk endows as much
meaning as prestige upon those who have “been there,” to extraordinary places and
dimensions. Yet, as the world shrinks, Ibiza and Goa become global icons for the
expression as well as for the commodification of alternative lifestyles: Goa parties,
New Age Orientalisms, and Ibiza fashion have become signifiers with a global
circulation. Paradoxically, the more countercultures capture the desire for alternative
charisma, the more they serve consumptive capital (Povinelli 2000; Best 1997).
Nevertheless, Ibiza and Goa still hold as global references for an alternative way of
life animated by a cultivation of nomadism and spirituality How countercultures
prompt social transformation through the very capitalist forms they criticize remains
a critical question.
Counter-conclusions: flexible economies and subjectivitiesIn the capitalist stage of flexible accumulation (Harvey 1990), alternative subjects
live within interstitial spaces of leisure, alternative or informal economies and
welfare systems. Nomadic strategies include autonomous, seasonal, or part-time
jobs, artistic, tourist, and “health” careers, or illegal activities. They frequently count
on parental allowances, inheritance, or state-based unemployment support. Quite
often these strategies involve a combination of all of these possibilities. In Ibiza and
Goa, typical locations for income-generation and socialization are nightclubs,
ashrams, tourist markets, sunset bars, alternative centers, eco-cooperatives, among
others. In India, Global Nomads purchase exotic luxuries from local producers
(handicrafts, clothing, jewelry, psychoactive substances) in mutually beneficial,
albeit unequal, exchanges. In the West, these commodities will be sold in boutiques,
markets, and streets at highly inflated prices, exemplifying how alternative strategies
are materially reproduced.
The geo-economic territorialization of global countercultures in “freak” sites
impacts on the lives of local communities, as perceived by natives and analysts. The
presence of big hotel chains in Goa and Ibiza has led to environmental degradation,
capital alienation, and social conflict (Dantas 1999; Rozenberg 1990). On the other
hand, the presence of freak communities represents decon-centrated income for local
villagers in addition to the queer charisma that they convey to visited places,
inadvertently paving the way for tourism. However, local populations disagree with
alternative lifestyles (dressing, parties, sociability, nudity, drugs, music, noise). In
Ibiza, despite their role in promoting the island’s utopian imaginary since the
1930s, alternative subjects had to adapt to the conditions and opportunities of a
rapidly modernizing society or leave the island for “more primitive” sites in Mexico,
ANTHONY D’ANDREA 247