ABSTRACT
O’Malley and Mugford (1994) propose that a new phenomenology of pleasure is needed if we are to recognise ‘crime’ as simply a transgression from the impermissible and as transcendence of the everyday mundane. Presdee (2000) captures this sense of the inter-relationships between pleasure and pain through his notion of ‘crime as carnival’ where the latter is a site where the pleasure of playing at the boundaries is clearly catered for. Thus, festive excess, transgression, the mocking of the powerful, irrational behaviour and so on are all temporarily legitimated in the moment of carnival. Breaking rules is a source of joy, of humour, of celebration and many acts that might otherwise be considered criminal are momentarily tolerated. In such acts as sado masachism, raving, joyriding, computer hacking, recreational drug use, reclaim the streets parties, gang rituals and extreme sports, Presdee finds enduring fragments from the culture of the carnival. Moreover, as Thornton’s (1995) study of 1990s youth club cultures found, there is a continual and shifting exchange between the boundaries of acceptability and illegality and between subcultural authenticity and media manufacture. Moral panics about deviancy no longer simply signify condemnation, but are something to be celebrated by the subcultural participants themselves.
