Raves as Aesthetic Experience

This chapter introduces the notion of the rave moment as an aesthetic experience that foregrounds affect. Its theorisation takes place in the context of an affect-deficit society through the case study of a series of dance parties that took place in Blackburn, UK, between 1989 and 1990. Seemingly resisting a categorisation within hegemonic discourses of raves, the Blackburn parties are used to show that the rave moment is a cultural product that can be exported and adapted. Its flexibility is evident in the changing character of the parties with regard to their location, organisational structure, popularity and promoted values. On the one hand, it is difficult to portray them as a coherent series of events. On the other hand, the parties were retrospectively labelled as ‘raves‘ in an attempt to fit their development into common narratives of rave culture. This tension is used as a starting point to argue for a reframing of electronic dance music events as contextualised aesthetic experiences.