Turner's focus upon the exclusive, non-sensual and homogeneous field of liminal ritual - a product of the privileging of anti-structure - has given rise to an approach which does not apprehend the din of voices and morass of bodies in cultural performances. Not necessarily one-dimensional or euphonic, contemporary 'liminoidal' events may be convoluted, crowded, cacophonous. Not necessarily chaste, they may be carnal and libidinous. This is the case for ConFest. Where can we then turn for inspiration to formulate an approach which overcomes theoretical weaknesses in Turner? On the surface, it appears that ConFest most approximates Handelman's 'representational' event - one which possesses its own 'internal logic of design' (1990:7).15 While it will be useful to think about ConFest's internal design - how it functions - as a single event, however, it does not fit comfortably into Handelman's typological framework.16

I seek to fashion an approach which, despite its indebtedness to Turner, moves beyond weaknesses in his paradigm, and which, at the same time, eschews typological straightjacketing. Two integral factors demand such a progression: that ConFest is a contemporary festival, and an alternative cultural event-space.

ConFest is a contemporary festive event to which thousands make 'pilgrimage'. Throughout the 1980s and '90s, improving especially upon the Durkheimian 'cult of man' approach, research on public events and related phenomena has shed much light on festive celebrations, providing particularly insightful groundwork for the interpretation of an event-space like ConFest. The work of Manning (1983), on celebrations, and MacAloon (1984), on the Olympics, illuminates the multi-performative dimensions of major cultural events. Others, like Cohen (1982; 1993), writing on an urban carnival movement, and Baumann (1992), writing on a range of events including polyethnic ceremonies, have stressed that public events are arenas of contestation and resistance, significant moments over which there are competing interpretative claims. Pursuing parallel paths, yet more concerned with spatial practices, other commentators - like Hetherington (1993), on Stonehenge free-festivals, and Henry (1994), on the Kuranda Market - have elicited event-spaces as heterotopic 'hot-spots' for competing discourses, as spaces of ambivalence and uncertainty. Others still, following the likes of Bakhtin (1968), are interested in articulating the implications of fulfilled desires for carnal sociality and convivial intercorporeality in festal culture (Maffesoli 1993; Bey 1991a).

As I indicated in Chapter 1, ConFest is polydimensional, a local aggregation of a spectrum of ACEs, rendering it an inimitable ALE. Facilitated by a unique co-operative society, and rooted in the Australian ACM, this event-space owns a distinct history and structure. Operating via grassroots anarchist principles, it is a unique context for the pursuit, exchange and realisation of alternate styles of living.

ConFest is an organic hyperliminal zone. In the remainder of part three, two key conceptual themes are articulated to advance this model: temporary social organicism and hyper-liminality. I will demonstrate that while ConFest's unique context and framework necessitate strong allusions to Turnerian liminality, they also demand a reconfiguration of this concept.

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