Rave Culture

This seminar will examine perhaps the last subculture to have emerged in post-war Britain in the 1980s and 1990s and its transformation into both a local mass culture and a global youth subculture, exploring its aesthetic, ideological, and social significance. We will examine the political and social contexts of the 1980s and 1990s, including the political upheavals and reforms of the Thatcher era, the emergence of rave out of other musical cultures and social and political movements. We will read about the specifics of early rave culture, including its interaction with and impact upon existing racial formations and gender norms. We will interrogate rave's connections to countercultural movements, the long-standing debate about its political potential, its commodification, and the ways in which it resists and/or reproduces social hierarchies. Finally, we will seek to understand some of the complex intersections of race, gender, class, sexuality, and technology within the various rave cultures.