Mixing It up Bent and Twisted

The sociality of dance events and health implications Kate Ireland A thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Interdisciplinary studies in sexuality, health and culture University of New South Wales Sydney, NSW 2050, Australia August, 2002 Abstract This thesis is concerned with the sociality – shared rituals and rules - of dance events and implications for health. I consider how forms of belongings, selves and practices of music, dance and drug use are produced, regulated and understood in the space of local dance events with ‗mixed‘ crowds and the everyday lives of participants. Social networks approaches, while offering an understanding of drug use as a social practice, focus on belonging as a basis for risk-reduction, to the exclusion of the role played by pleasure in producing and maintaining belonging. Contemporary cultural studies literature features an understanding of dance through the power of the ecstatic moment to produce new forms of embodied selves and belongings, but does not offer a means to think through how dance is regulated via techniques of self-care – except in the work of Pini (1993, 1997a, b, c), where pleasure, belonging and self-care are brought together. Using Pini‘s (1993, 1997a, b, c) work as a point of departure, I provide an interdisciplinary account of local ‗mixed‘ dance events, via analysis of qualitative data from ethnographic fieldwork, review of media texts and interviews with partygoers. I situate the local spaces, everyday practices and stories of events in the context of broader social processes, through setting them in relation to Foucault‘s (1986/1990b) work on self-care as a social practice and Maffesoli‘s (1988/1996) work on collective rituals of neo-tribal sociality, in a wider context of restrictive regulation of self- formation. Events featured temporary crowd belongings and ecstatic, ‗balanced‘ embodied selves produced through techniques of self-care, enmeshed in and intensifying the belongings of small friendship networks, and regulating the pleasures of drug use, music and dancing. Self-formation was guided through the principle of ‗balance‘, tied into the discourse of New Age spirituality, held in tension with i legislative and commercial regulation of events as sites of dangerous drug use and participants as ‗at risk‘. Understanding the forms of pleasure, belonging, embodied selves, techniques of self-care and wider context of ‗mixed‘ events is crucial to informing appropriate strategies to promote health. ii Acknowledgements I gratefully acknowledge the contribution of local health service providers, Disc Jockeys (DJs) and partygoers who participated in this research. Without the substantial time and energy that participants put into talking and being with me during fieldwork and interviews this project would not have been possible. This project was also made possible through funding provided by a National Health and Medical Research Council HIV/AIDS Research Scholarship (987425). I thank Ann Daniel and Susan Kippax for supervising the project and providing valuable advice and support. For supervising the first year of the project at Macquarie University I thank Anna Yeatman and John Howard, and for generous support during the move to the University of New South Wales, I thank Erica Southgate. Finally, for reading drafts of the thesis, I thank Catherine Robinson, Cath Reynolds, Philip Shelper, Justine Curnow, Steve Ireland and Margaret Ireland. iii Table of contents Abstract ......................................................................................................... i Acknowledgements ..................................................................................... iii Table of contents ........................................................................................ iv Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 The aim of the study ...................................................................................................... 1 Thinking through pleasure, belonging and self-care ..................................................... 1 Social practices of self-care and collective rituals of neo-tribal sociality ..................... 3 Chapter One – Drug use, dance and social relations ............................... 9 Social networks, drug use and HIV transmission ....................................................... 13 Contemporary cultural studies and social dance events .............................................. 23 Conclusions ................................................................................................................. 43 Chapter two – Regulating the ecstatic self .............................................. 47 Governmentality, bio-power and modified pastoral power relations.......................... 51 Subjugated knowledges and genealogy ...................................................................... 55 Techniques for care of self .......................................................................................... 58 Contemporary neo-tribal sociality............................................................................... 68 Conclusions ................................................................................................................. 80 Chapter Three – Methodology ................................................................. 86 Ethnography ................................................................................................................ 89 Analysis of texts .......................................................................................................... 97 Interviews .................................................................................................................. 100 Summary ................................................................................................................... 109 Chapter Four – Atmospheric spaces and practices of dancing and lounging .................................................................................................... 113 iv Dance zones .............................................................................................................. 116 Dance practices ......................................................................................................... 120 Lounge zones ............................................................................................................ 124 Lounging practices .................................................................................................... 125 Conclusions ............................................................................................................... 126 Chapter Five – DJs guides to events ...................................................... 129 DJs guides to events in specialist columns ............................................................... 131 Discourses on outdoor, free, one-off and doof events – Going underground ........... 133 Discourses on queer underground events – Sexuality freed up and irrelevant ......... 141 Discourses on doof and queer underground convergence events - Mixing it up bent and twisted ................................................................................................................ 148 Conclusions ............................................................................................................... 159 Chapter Six - Networks and crowd belongings .................................... 163 Part One - Networks of crowd belongings ................................................................ 164 Part Two - Not belongings ........................................................................................ 187 Conclusions ............................................................................................................... 201 Chapter Seven – Ecstatic belongings ..................................................... 206 Part One - Negotiating belongings and not belongings ............................................ 207 Part Two - Ecstatic belongings ................................................................................. 215 Part Three - New sexualities ..................................................................................... 223 Conclusions ............................................................................................................... 234 Chapter Eight – Regulatory techniques for drug use .......................... 237 Pleasure and fear ....................................................................................................... 238 Shamanism and spirit ................................................................................................ 241 Enhancing release and responsiveness ...................................................................... 242 Balance ...................................................................................................................... 245 Rituals of sharing - Pleasure, self-care and social relations ...................................... 247 Coming down/Recovery............................................................................................ 251 Sex and drugs - Negotiating heightened sensations and dangers .............................. 257 Injecting and networks .............................................................................................. 263 Conclusions ..............................................................................................................

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