thus referring, more or less explicitly, to a symbolic mechanism making use of
transgression (Bataille 1986, 1988, 1989). To understand how rave fits into this
scheme and leads to abandon and rapture in the techno trance, the festive can be
decomposed into three sacrificial stages: rupture (with the profane), consumption
and communion in abandonment.^14
Ruptures and transgressions: hastening othernessIf a fundamental characteristic of the festive is to set up contrast with the profane,
the efficiency with which a rave can lead to an instituant religious experience
depends to a great extent on how much it can depart from normal consciousness. As
I will try to demonstrate, rave seeks this rupture by all means: temporal, spatial,
corporeal and symbolic. These efficient ruptures can be first divided into two levels:
cultural (collective, social) and intimate (individual-with-others).
Cultural rupturesAn analysis of the cultural (or sociohistorical)—which may affect individual
consciousnesses indirectly—provides us with an initial interpretative key to
understanding rave’s radical and original stance while setting it in the perspective of
recent cultural history
The first significant elements of rupture appear in techno music, rave’s sonic
stage and canvas. As musicologist Philip Tagg (1994) put it, techno could well
represent the most significant shift in contemporary music since the advent of rock.
He writes: ‘perhaps techno-rave puts an end to nearly four-hundred years of the
great European bourgeois individual in music’ (ibid.: 219 ). As far as the individual in
rave and techno music is concerned, it could be interpreted as supporting the thesis
of a certain ‘decline of individualism in Western societies’.^15 In regard to ‘artistry’,
the stereotypical techno music producer and DJ eludes the instituted star-system of
popular music by resorting to identity-blurring tactics, anonymity, white labels,
parallel distribution systems and technotribe ‘DJ-ing in the dark’—all strategies
emphasizing that the dancing crowd of ravers (and not the DJs) are the stars.^16
Could the simple fact of gathering be interpreted as transgression? In such an
individualist and citizen-cum-consumer era, this could be so. Only the fact of
gathering is obviously not the sole privilege of raves. What is particular here is that
rave’s gathering is set outside social institutions, namely stadiums, arenas, theatres
and clubs, challenging established venues. Furthermore, as was noted in the case of
Parisian raves (Epstein 2001b), while creative urban activities have always made
good use of downtown centrality, raves use ‘deterritorialization’ (Deleuze and
Guattari 1980) strategies by staging their ‘Temporary Autonomous Zones’ (Bey
1991) on the city’s periphery: derelict post-industrial landscapes, abandoned army
bases, fields, forests, etc.
As techno music makes use of sonic larceny and propriety rights baffling as sine
qua non creation techniques (Reynolds 1999; Petiau 2001), raves blatantly (or else
THE ‘INSTITUANT’ RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE OF RAVE 67