The thesis, moreover, has sought to render ConFest's status as a centre on the margins intelligible via the elaboration of an appropriate heuristic model. That Turnerian processualism remains germane to an anthropology of alternative public events is indubitable. However, the thesis adopted a theoretical strategy distinguishable from past Turnerian approaches, a strategy possessing two related deconstructions.

First, I endeavoured to map the junctures of liminality and authenticity within an alternative cultural matrix via a conceptual excavation of the Turnerian perspective. The thesis documented the three modalities underscoring Turner's later ritual exegesis (the limina of play, drama and community), and, using a wealth of emic data, explored the means by which this triad contextualise and realise participants' desires for authentica. Furthermore, I explored the parameters of ferality, an archetypal transitional/edge condition accessed and performed at ConFest. The liminal modalities, as they are given unique expression at ConFest, potentiate principal components of ferality - embodied alterity, eco-spirituality and 'tribal' sociality - therein contextualising the (re)production of eco-radicalism. I have demonstrated that the latter manifests as a postcolonialist, spectacular-activist milieu which possesses multi-subcultural roots and is attractive to youth desiring (re)enchantment and reconcilement with native ecology and peoples. The thesis thereby furnishes the fields of public event, performance, postcolonial and youth cultural studies with a unique set of conceptual tools.

Second, via a critical deconstruction, I responded to the Turnerian tendency toward the essentially exclusive, non-carnal and homogeneous field of liminal ritual. My research experience and investigation of complementary writing stimulated the exploration of new theoretical terrain. Indeed, as a unique ACH, ConFest itself demanded the renovation of Turnerian theory - in fact, the construction of an appropriately post-structuralist heuristic model, a model attending to the key and interrelated themes of heterogeneity and corporeality.

I therefore adopted the core concept of hyper-liminality, and investigated three circumstances of ConFest's hyper-performativity. (1) As a subjunctive 'forbidden zone' where multiple instances of carnality and alterity are permitted, participants access a vertiginous tableau of otherness/othering and, thereby, manifold possibilities for self-(re)creation. (2) 'Collective reflexology' carried out on the 'ultimate concerns' of self, Earth and indigeneity within a context of ramified performance genres appearing in a labyrinth of zones evidences a multi-cultural drama - a vast meta-performative school of consciousness. (3) A multitude of neo-tribes and identity clusters in possession of diverse expectations and meanings (including definitions of 'foreign' elements) populating a conurbation of TAZs, ConFest - not a repository of homogeneous consensuality - is a demonstrably heterotopic, and therefore, contested, counter-community.

In conjunction with these investigative forays, I found that the exploration of embodiment in threshold work, along with transcendence and reflexivity, provided a balanced approach. Attention to the liminal body, transgressive and hyper-sexual embodiment, advanced a performative sensuality and carnality mostly neglected by Turner. The circumscription of 'sensual solidarities', that is, the intercorporeality characteristic of Bakhtin's carnivalesque, the 'passional logic' of Maffesoli's 'Dionysiac sociality' and Bey's 'radical conviviality', were indispensable to the reconfiguration of an otherwise chaste communitas.

Furthermore, internal to this investigation, I explored three key themes associated with the quest for authentica, which ConFest - as a 'privileged point of penetration' into the alternative sector - has made available for analysis. First, I argued that cultural appropriation is a complex process the investigation of which should avoid selective and reductive discursive analysis. I have supported this position via reference to: (a) the reconciliatory and alliance forming consequences of cultural borrowing, and; (b) the indelibly human process of mimesis wherein identities may be (re)fashioned via identification with multiple nodes of difference. ConFest is a theatre of reconciliatory gestures and concentrated performative appropriation. Second, I argued that diverse discourse and practice representing alternates' 'ultimate concerns' of self-growth and global-consciousness are demonstrably contiguous. That which I have called the self-globe nexus is characterised by a sense of profound interdependence activating an ethical self-commitment. At ConFest, the dramatisation of the self-globe nexus is staged via eco-spiritual manifestations of Neo-Paganism. Third, the dissension between subscribers to, and habitués of, different authenticity vectors effectively engenders a clash of communities. In my investigation of representative music centralities (techno-Trance Dance vs non-electronic 'indigenous' or 'tribal' performance), I argued that, while this arena may amplify existing differences, it, nevertheless, provides a unique opportunity for competing authenticity claimants to forge alliances, to 'band together'.

Approximating both the process inside rites of passage where the self is deconstructed as a precondition for reconstruction, and pilgrimage to a centre outside the parameters of the everyday where inspired travellers seek affirmation and wholeness, ConFest orchestrates the indeterminate (re)conditioning, the becoming, of self, identity, lifestyle, community. In a 'time out of time' and place, where the dissolution of persona - a stripping away of roles and status - is often experienced, the childlike, the native, queer, earthy, pagan and tribal are appropriated for their (re)creative qualities. At this marginal centre, hyper-liminaries receive fashionable words of wisdom, become familiarised with transgressive embodiment, join sensual solidarities, augment inner resources and learn authentic codes of conduct all subject to shifting tides of consensus and dispute. Such a promiscuous, reflexive and contested community permits the imaginative inquisition of perceived fallibilities in dominant discourse and practice, and the exploration of new paths, thereby catalysing personal and socio-cultural change.

ConFest is, therefore, a journey, a (re)turn to a site where an abundance of alternative options are offered and chosen. As a remote social and physical space, and as an organic hyper-liminal matrix, it has evolved into a process which is both communitarian experiment and a highly individualised process of becoming. At this extra-ordinary juncture, extra-ordinary resolutions are achieved: 'magic' not only 'happens' - it flourishes. And, in this unique counterworld located beyond the confines of what is, for many, routinised claustrophobia and vicarious lifestyle, participants, despite their differences, are engaged in the ConFest journey: such that they nod and smile knowingly in their sharing of the 'ConFest Spirit'.

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