ABSTRACT
The ecstasy of raving is problematic. 2 Often characterized in the same manner as its more ‘traditional’ cousins – as ineffable, numinous and overwhelming – it is said to have changed lives, and it is for many the draw, and perhaps even the raison d’etre, of raving itself. Yet no real consensus exists about its shape, manner or form – its constitution, its ‘essence’, remains remarkably disputed. Caught within a web of contentious and proliferating discourses – medical, political, academic and subcultural – the ecstasy of raving is multiply situated and inordinately multi-layered, a veritable palimpsest of meaning. Making matters worse, ecstasy’s hermeneutic ambiguity further complicates the picture: for, governed by immediacy and engagement, ecstasy obviates the analytic authority of detached observers even as its ineffability opens up an epistemological gap between the actual ‘experience’ and its subsequent embodiment in discourse.
