ABSTRACT
Carnival is the ritualised mediation between order and disorder par excellence, furthermore it is a domain in which the pleasure of playing at the boundaries (social and personal) is most clearly provided for. In a sense acts of carnival contain no shame, it is an alien emotion which has no place either in carnival or the carnival of crime. Without shame the excitement and carnival of crime run seamlessly through everyday life with reintegration no longer a possibility. In the acts of body modification, S&M, raving, recreational drug-taking, hotting and rodeo, gang rituals, the Internet, festivals and extreme sports, lurks the marginal performance of carnival fragments in the late twentieth century. The emergent mono-deism and religious tolerance of Christianity sought to incorporate the festivals into its own ritual structure, attempting to contain what was seen as a threatening and pagan set of values while still providing contexts for celebration.
