From: fjackson-AT-diana.cair.du.edu (FLANNON P. JACKSON ) Subject: Re: "Rave" Not an Effective (or Meaningful) Counter-Culture Mov Date: Fri, 29 Apr 1994 10:12:13 -0600 (MDT) Steven Roussos wrote: > I'm not sure who said it (Emma Goldstein?) or even of the exact words, but > this debate has made me think of the saying: > > "If I can't dance, I don't want your revolution." > > While I agree with the rather obvious point that Raves (or Parties, or Dance > Clubs) by their very nature are not serving a direct function of political > transformation/education/networking ("Lighten up man, we're here to celebrate > and enjoy Life, not to dismantle the state or commit civil disobedience"), > such gatherings can play a supporting role in transforming culture: > (Stuff deleted) > I couldn't find the exact quote either, but its Emma Goldman who said "If I can't dance, I don't want your revolution." In answer to Micheal Currents question as to why some people get so uptight in regards to rave culture, maybe its precisely because dancing invokes the image of Kropotkin against our puritan sensibilities. This, anyway, if we follow the link from dance, to Emma Goldman, to the following suggestion made by her biographer Richard Drinnon: "The liberal's confidence that this threat [the increasing concentration of economic and political power] could be met by a few managerial adjustments and his faith that the good life could be acheived through the increased application of technology struck her as dangerous nonsense. In its stead she offered the anarchism of Kropotkin, which undertook to replace authoritarian hierarchies, the coercive political state, and supernaturalistic religion by a warm humanism, a society of equals, and a polity of small organic organizations in free cooperation with each other." (from the introdutction to _Anarchism and Other Essays_) I agree with Steven that raves serve no direct or intentional political/ educational/networking purpose, but rather than seeing this as a failure of rave culture, as some others in this discussion would have it, wouldn't it be more useful to suppose that it's the "failing" of the political/ educational system to include dance and not the other way around? It seems to me that Goldman's concern with dance can be attributed to a reading of Nietzsche. In her essay _The Modern Drama_ Goldman goes so far as to say that when social unrest becomes almost universal that the tranvaluation of existing values becomes a necessity. In the section _What the German's Lack_ in _Twilight of the Idols_ Nietzsche announces that thinking must be danced. "...there is no longer the remotest recollection that thinking requires a technique, a teaching curriculum, a will to mastery -- that thinking wants to be learned like dancing, _as_ a kind of dancing."(#7) A bit latter Nietzsche goes on to say: "...one cannot subtract dancing in every form from a noble education -- to be able to dance with one's feet, with concepts, with words: need I still add that one must be able to do it with the pen too...?" Shall we dance ? Flannon ------------------
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