Phantasmagoria of the Uncanny

A mobile and multi-sited ethnography follows Greek EDM and party enthusiasts across psychedelic-trance gatherings in Hungary, Morocco, and Greece to investigate the revelatory experience of chemical psychedelic raving. The work situates the rave experience within the phantasmagoria of the festival—a dreamworld of the alien and uncanny—reformulating questions of liminality, spirituality, community, and identity. It initiates a discussion about the limits of cosmopolitanism and aesthetics as reorganized in 21st-century techno-political conditions, reframing taste, consumption, altered experience, and lifestyle through technoaesthetics. The author speculates on an impending techno-social world of augmented senses and artificial impressions, questioning the mediation of social events and the reification of utopian paradises as contemporary dreamworlds.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Phantasmagoria of the Uncanny: Nomadism, Technique and Aesthetics in the Psychedelic Raveexamines the psychedelic rave music and culture with a focus on the multiday phantasmagoric events organized in mountains, deserts, beaches, and other exotic destinations. Using mobile and multi-sited ethnography, the author follows the routes of a diverse group of Greek EDM and party enthusiasts across the festival map of psychedelic-trance gatherings, including Hungary, Morocco, and Greece, with the aim of investigating the revelatory experience of the chemical psychedelic raving. By situating the rave experience within the phantasmagoria of the festival – a dreamworld par excellence of the alien and the uncanny – the work reformulates questions of ‘liminality’, ‘spirituality’, ‘community’ and ‘identity’ while initiating a discussion about the limits of cosmopolitanism and aesthetics as they are reorganized in the techno-political conditions of the 21st century. In an intense and at times demanding theoretical ‘journey’, the author reframes questions of taste, consumption, altered experience, and lifestyle through the lens of technology or technoaesthetics, speculating on an impending techno-social world of augmented senses and artificial impressions, thus posing questions to the reader about the mediation of social and public events, and the reification of ‘utopian’ paradises in the form of contemporary dreamworlds.