This relationship seems particularly significant in terms of a vulnerable sense of
masculinity which is worked out at homo-social rave-styled events; by destroying a
sense of self, the merging with technology becomes a cyborgian rite of passage which
needs to be repeated for as long as the identity crisis prevails. More men than
women seem to be actively engaged with techno, either on the dance floor or in the
production process. Meanwhile, women at rave-related events seem to embrace
androgyny as a perceived liberation from femininity, an experience that may be
found in the abstract spirituality of techno’s machine aesthetic. In this sense the
experience of the spirit, which instead of Bataille’s ‘subject—object’ would be more
usefully regarded as the ‘self—other’, varies, according to subject position affecting
the choice of spiritual interface. For example, those who are more occupied by
defining their embodied self also embrace a more metaphorically embodied form of
dance music. This shows an affirming spirituality which connects subjects with
subjects instead of a sacrificial annihilation of the self to merge with the machine-as-
object. Rather than losing the self in a (metaphorical) cyborgian merging with
technology, we could, perhaps, find ourselves in an embrace towards a sense of
communal soul.
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58 SACRIFICIAL CYBORG AND COMMUNAL SOUL