With the purpose of devising an apposite rendering of ConFest, a five year multi-modal research commitment has demanded re-evaluation of the most influential paradigm in the study of alternative lifestyle events - that of Victor Turner. The thesis undertakes a twofold deconstruction of the Turnerian paradigm.
First, I identify Turner’s archetypal liminal modalities (play, drama, and community) demonstrating how each, through their unique on-site expression, contextualise the performance and realisation of various qualities of authenticity. I provide special attention to ferality, a local eco-radical career accessed and performed at ConFest. Second, I respond critically to Turner’s essentialist legacy (the homogeneity and non-carnality of actors) through an exploration of ConFest’s identifiable heterogeneity and corporeality. Specifically, I regard ConFest as: (a) an alternative cultural heterotopia, a hyper matrix of performance zones occupied by variously complementary and competing de-centrist neo-tribes, and; (b) a pleasurescape of performative carnality, a realm of the liminal body. Therefore, via a detailed investigation of a contested and sensuous counter-community, I reconfigure Turner to provide an appropriately post-structuralist heuristic of public events.
Drawing upon extensive research data and the hitherto unexplored connections between various strands of contemporary writing, this is an ethnography on authenticity performed and realised at an organic hyper-liminal centre on the edge of Australian culture.