never fixed but always open to transmutations’ (Schütze 2001:160). A cyborgian
context for Bakhtin’s grotesque realism, never distant from Afrodelic influences, the
techno-orgiasm appropriates a range of instruments to modulate ‘normative modes
of subjectivation and permit the experimentation of novel forms of subjectivity’
(ibid.: 162 ).
The post-rave carnival contextualizes a millennialist implosion of the past/
present/future—a collapse which opens up ‘the fissure from which dancing bodies
issue forth’. This is, according to Hemment, ‘the moment of the
present’s differentiation from itself, the fracture between past and future that is the
condition of creativity and change’ (1996:28). Thus, whether ‘dancing like there’s
no tomorrow’ or practising the art of ‘making now last longer’, there is a popular
self-perception of the important role enacted, that the party is ‘an epicenter from
which to spread the positive and powerful vibrations generated...out into society at
large’ (Fritz 1999:206). As a ‘laboratory of the present’, post-rave thus ‘bears witness’
(Gaillot 1999:18–20) to that which, Fritz enthuses, is ‘the largest popular cultural
movement of the 20th century’ (1999:262).
Hyper-millennialismWe have found that while narratives of ascension, enchantment and various
intertextualized permutations hold currency within the rave imaginary, the
significance of the party is such that it constitutes a non-linear celebration of
presence in which future/past, self/other, mind/body, male/female and human/
technology distinctions undergo dissolution. Yet, while the immediate proclivities
of rave potentiate spontaneous communitas, with raving we are remote from the
kind of ‘primordial communion’ or ‘primitive communism’ often intended by the
term ‘tribal’, which is commonly grifted on to denote the idyllic social relations
associated with pre-modernity. Along with that which we might identify as the
‘normative’ domestic frameworks required by state authorities and corporate
interests corralling youth into ‘pleasure prisons’ (Reynolds 1998:424)
mainstreaming, commodifying and segmenting the culture (Collin 1997; St John
2001a; Hollands 2002), a host of factors have been recognized as having jeopardized
the ecstatic and empathetic techno-communitas, as having complicated and
undermined the Millennium: an inveterate pharmacological dystopia (Reynolds
1997, 1998); a familiar sexual division of labour (Bradby 1993; McRobbie 1994:
170); participant anxieties and conflicts (Pini 2001: ch. 5); the phallocentric
‘reglamorization of the dancefloor’ (Gilbert and Pearson 1999: 176–8); elitism,
exclusivity and ‘coolness’ (Thornton 1995); racism, cultural appropriation and a
new imperialism (Hutnyk 2000: ch. 5; Chan 1998; Saldanha 1999, 2002; and
Chapter 14 in this volume).
Rave’s performative context complicates matters further. While seen to manifest
principles of the traditional rite of passage experience which Turner saw refracted
through ‘the hall of mirrors’ of contemporary culture (see Fatone 2001; and
Chapter 8 in this volume), post-rave, as I have already indicated, is a journey
LIBERATION AND THE RAVE IMAGINARY 31