Conclusion (chapter eight)

This chapter has questioned the value of an unqualified application of Turner's communitas. Via a critical assessment of this concept and an investigation of the ConFest community, I have identified two basic shortcomings in Turner's work: (1) he discounted the heterogeneity of liminal arenas and their potential for contestations of many kinds, and; (2) was inattentive to the bodily or corporeal aspect of spontaneous community. An acknowledgment of such shortcomings has energised an approach which takes ConFest to be: a heterotopic community harbouring diverse, variously complementary or competing, alternative cultural constituencies, and; a desirable intercorporeal-estate likened to the 'orgiastic' 'underground centrality' of 'neo-tribes' (Maffesoli) or the immediate 'radical conviviality' of temporary autonomous zones (Bey).

As a contemporary manifestation of the desire to reclaim 'sensual solidarity', 'the ConFest Spirit' is an affective and tireless, but ultimately enigmatic, phenomenon. And it is so since it is concurrently inclusive and exclusive, massive and tribal. While the festive counter-community may surge towards ever greater unity, the diversity of 'bands', lifestyle clusters, autonomous zones and authenticities convergent guarantee that its integrity will be jeopardised by proximate differences - indeed its identity necessitates the reproduction of difference. However, in the final analysis, the festival's organic logic nourishes networks and dialogue potentiating the resolution of internal conflict. Illustrating the enigmatic disposition of 'the ConFest Spirit, throughout the chapter I have attended to the constitution and fate of one theatre of corporeality, conflict and co-operation unique to ConFest. That is, I have circumscribed Trance Dance or techno-trance as: an autonomous 'tribal' node of 'underground centrality'; a contested form of musical (in)authenticity, and; a nucleus of rhizomatic hybridity. The 'Spirit' lives.



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Maps
Chronology
Appendices
Glossary of Acronyms and Abbreviations
References: A-L
References: M-Z
Chapter Eight Contents
Thesis Contents