We have been transported to the edge of language, where its multipotentiality is
fully exploited. Words here are only forms offered to symbolic enchantment.
Umberto Eco’s ‘open work’ is wide open here, overstretched, fully aesthetic.
Interestingly, the universes depicted by rave and techno iconography are entirely
insignificant without their ritual enactment. As Schütze writes, ‘the flyer bears a
sense/non-sense that is only fully revealed if one participates in the event of which
they are the advent’ (ibid.: 16 ). Here it is not the ritual that finds meaning through
mythical re-enactment (as in the classical definition of ritual), but rather it is the
mythological symbolism which acquires depth and significance through the ritual
event. In other words, it is not the mythical framework that interprets the ritual
gesture, but rather the experience that gives meaning to an imaginary mythological
landscape.
What is common to this eclectic iconography is its portrayal and dream of an
elsewhere: a nowhere that rave strives to realize in the margin of society. Simon
Reynolds (1999:248) appropriately noted that this ‘no-where no-when elsewhere’
corresponds to the epistemology of ‘utopia’, an ideal world outside reality, virtually
unattainable and definitely unsustainable. This desire for a significant and
meaningful elsewhere finds resonance in the explicit or symbolic references to
Eastern, shamanic and primitive mysticisms which proliferate in various rave
scenes.^17 These and other references work on the imaginary, on the idea—the myth
—of rave as travel and ecstatic initiation. Raves do everything in their power to
organize, stage, set up, provoke and condition a rupture. In this case, the popular
expression ‘going out’ takes on a strong and full meaning: to extract oneself
voluntarily and freely (in the double sense of liberty and gratuitousness) from
regulated social life in order to experience ‘something else’ (Fontaine and Fontana
1996:14).
If we were to concentrate mainly on the ritual aspect of rave, we could show how
the threefold classical division of ritual is satisfied through segregation,
marginalization and aggregation, which in the case of rave would translate as
adventure, peak and plateau and, finally, comedown. The first stage of this sequence
basically corresponds to the preparation for the event, which preludes rupture.
Especially true of the implantation and emergence periods of rave (but still to a
certain extent in today’s post-rave culture, namely in the more underground
currents), knowledge of a rave party requires energy and determination. It is
essential to be ‘in the know’—to know: where to access information and how to
interpret it; where to buy tickets (if any); where to call for the event location
(revealed hours before the actual party starts); how to get to the party; and where to
get good drugs. In essence, then, and resembling other youth counter- or
subcultures, rave thrives by feeding on a feeling of esotericism. For those who are
already ‘in the know’, this builds identification and promotes commitment.^18 For
the non-initiates, accessing this underground world provides both a thrill and an
anxiety that can easily be measured through stories and accounts.
This esotericism sharpens the contrast with normal life. Consistent with what
Maurice Boutin (1976) argued to be constitutive of the festive, a certain dose of
THE ‘INSTITUANT’ RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE OF RAVE 69