exclusion is necessary for a rave to be a fully effective vehicle for sociality,
effervescence and community. The over-mediated event, on the other hand,
consequently less marginal, is already a few steps further towards institutionalization
and reduces the festive to spectacle or leisure. The degradation of a certain sense of
esotericism ‘commonalizes’ the experience and makes for a cheaper thrill—and thus
jeopardizes the rupture from commonality.
Festive manifestations such as carnivals are well known for promoting disguises
and occasioning particular attention to vestments and corporeal ornaments. Ravers
massively confide in looking to make their attire special, more so than when
clubbing (Ben Saâdoune et al. 1997). Substantial effort and/or money is often
invested in an event-specific vestment, to which may be added corporeal markings
(tattoos) and piercings. This constitutes a first strategy at deconstructing and
reconstructing subjectivity, which involves here, as a first gesture, the outer self: the
frontier that makes communication with others possible. It is a first visible sign of a
desire for otherness, for reconfiguration, for abandonment of part of ordinary
subjectivity. It is a first outward licence, an expression of the usually contained and
forbidden, and the paradoxical show of both affront and vulnerability.^19
Clandestine and emergent rave scenes have often been interpreted as ‘initiatic
journeys’, partly because of the energy and craftiness required to make it to the party
in the first place. Collin (1998), among others, has vividly portrayed such in the
burgeoning London scene of the late 1980s. The story is well known: pirate radios
and telephone info-lines with recorded messages giving out coded information,
meeting places and car parks, caravans of cars and back alleys. Interestingly,
knowingly or not, rave scenes emerged elsewhere using the same strategies.
Furthermore, the info-line system and secrecy surrounding events are still the norm,
although unnecessary from a strictly practical point of view. ‘This is not like going
to a club’, rave seems to say. ‘This isn’t just going out, this is going way out.’
Essentially, then, the greater the effort in preparing for and getting to an event, the
greater commitment there is in being there with others and the more intensely the
festive rupture will be felt—heightening its potentiality
Creating a sense of rupture is to act simultaneously on the corporeal, the
imaginary, the symbolic, the spatial and the temporal. There is a strong will in rave
to camp outside the instituted club and leisure circuit, with their fixed venues and
regulated timeframes. While other subcultures had already explored the excessive
possibilities of the night (Silcott 1999), no other phenomenon had invested so
massively in the all-night time slot. For this wasn’t just an evening out clubbing, but
a full-on all-night until noon (and sometimes beyond) extravaganza.
All of these considerations prepare ravers for the rave experience, instilling a sense
of the extraordinary and gearing them towards an openness of both mind and body.
The way from the door to the actual festive space enclosed by stacks of speakers
often involves making it through various symbolic airlocks (such as the security, the
ticket booth or the cloakroom) and tunnels, giving the impression of entering a
secret world in which the heartbeat-like thumping of the bass drum shakes both air
ducts and spines. Inside the rave, the experience can make for a brutal rupture.
70 FRANÇOIS GAUTHIER