ABSTRACT
Academic accounts of the early British rave scene tend to be limited either to historical analyses of rave's evolution as the latest youth culture – with little sustained attention given over to the actual location of women within this – or to semiotic readings of the scene in terms of its cultivation of a particular 'style'. The chapter draws upon material collected in a series of indepth interviews with women involved in the early London rave scene. It suggests that women's lack of involvement at the levels of rave production should not blind researchers to the fact that for many women, rave represents an undoing of the traditional cultural asssociations between dancing, drugged, 'dressed-up' woman and sexual invitation, and as such opens up a new space for the exploration of new forms of identity and pleasure. The chapter explores the discursive construction of these seemingly different gender relations, and to suggest what seem to be new forms of gendered subjectivity.
