Rave as carnival
Author(s)
Advisor
Groch, John RobertDate
2003Publisher
Bilkent University
Language
English
Type
ThesisItem Usage Stats
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Abstract
In this work I consider contemporary techno-rave parties with regard to their
philosophical and cultural origins. Proceeding from Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of
carnival, I analyze contemporary rave scene through its precious scope as a carnivallike
demonstration, where bodily suggestions in an unrestricted, non-official space
taken into account from the point of communal grotesque body. Within rave, the
dividing line between performer and audience is blurred, everyone participates. Rave
constructs a utopian sphere, second life for change and renewal through ‘laughter’
created by music and Ecstasy. Rave serves as a temporary liberation from the official
seriousness to ‘bring down to earth’ anything ineffable or authoritarian to the bodily
material level that is ecstatic trance dancing in this context. I intend to claim that rave
scene demonstrates a temporary space like carnival in Bakhtin’s sense, where social borders and individual differences such as class and gender are destroyed and
reconstructed in the ‘world upside down’ logic ideally and symbolically. By using
rave’s popular images and language, one can step outside the patterns of thought and
codes of behavior that dominant culture imposes.