ABSTRACT
The study of clubbing cultures can be taken into new analytical directions that are not driven by the hopes, dreams or fears frequently projected onto these spheres. This particular book situated clubbing cultures in the debates on aestheticization and prosthetic embodiment, suggesting that these perspectives help conceptualize the kinds of practices and body experiences as well as the play-forms of sociality typical for clubbing spaces. Putting it more acutely, we might say that aestheticization provides a key structure for the framing of experience in these contexts. It fosters specifi c experiential, cognitive styles or perhaps even a certain Menschentyp who is versatile in performative practices, subjunctive modes of acting ‘as-if’ and a ‘fuzzy-minded’ ordering of reality as both real and virtual. Welsch (1997: 15) called this ideal-typical fi gure the homo aestheticus. Of course, such experiential styles are not confi ned to clubbing or similar ludic environments of night life, but particularly pronounced in such contexts. While playful and aesthetic practices always have a potential for critique and for carving out alternative ways of being, the homo aestheticus is not per se an oppositional, transgressive or critical actor, but can be understood as a form of subjectifi cation. As such it involves a mode of relating to one’s ‘self’ as a malleable and fl exible entity, by way of focusing on the capacity of transformation and self-invention. From this perspective, attention is directed to aesthetic and prosthetic transformation as normative elements or ethical repertoires (in contrast to Foucault’s aesthetics of existence as a buffer against normalizing pressure). To some extent, this weakens the ethic of authenticity even though deep involvement and ‘real’ connections with others remain a central part of what is required and aimed for in clubbing contexts. Aesthetic and prosthetic forms of embodiment can be vehicles for achieving such ‘authentic’, deep involvement, but they also disrupt the logic of authenticity, i.e. the surface-depth model of self.
