Raving: A Book Review

Writing about the early rave scene in the Bay Area, Douglas Rushkoff described kids reclaiming discarded public spaces, munching the same pills, and dancing to repetitive music in near darkness.

Ecstasy Club was the first book I read that featured ‘raving as a practice.’ It came out in 1997, and I haven’t encountered anything quite like it until now.

While wandering the colorful streets of Lisbon, I had a loose plan to hit a new bookshop called Well Read. This diversion turned out to be a treasure hunt. One final slog up a hill, sweating profusely, and I finally spotted the initials WR. I had arrived.

I strolled into the shop, conscious of the beads of sweat on my forehead and wet patches under my arms. Fuck it - I’m here to buy some literature. I’m greeted by a friendly face who I learn later is Kaitlyn. I spot a Jenny O’Dell booklet from one of her talks a few years back, London Rave Flyers which I had recently discovered, and in the back - a slew of other interesting titles I had no clue existed.

Her accent throws me - she’s from Canada too—Toronto. We chat, I tell her the books I know and like, and she walks straight over to McKenzie Wark’s latest work.

She hands me Raving and I tap the terminal. Twenty-two euros seems steep given the number of words, but it turns out to be worth every cent.

Suddenly a crew of colorful folk pops in for what I can only assume is a small party to wrap up the workday. With Raving in hand, I descend the hill in the glimmer of still-blazing sun, eager to dive into its pages.

***

Wark’s galloping prose reminds me of the ease with which I read F. Scott Fitzgerald. Worlds apart, but somehow the readability of the two strikes a similar chord in me. Granted much of Wark’s world and lens I can’t relate to, and yet it makes it a fascinating read to understand better how she sees things—whether that be rave as a practice, the felt experience of time, transgenderism, dancing as dissociation, and so much more.

Early on in the book, Wark quotes producer and media theorist DeForrest Brown Jr which hits like a mic drop:

Detroit techno—a concept of sonic world-building and coded information exchange born out of centuries-long lineage of African American struggle and insurrection—would eventually be exported, repackaged, and financialized within foreign markets to be assimilated into the British and European post-colonial drug and rave revolution—replicating the profit-orientated process of extraction.”

I also really appreciate the Glossary of terms which offers a fascinating insight into rave culture:

Punisher: A social type labeled by ravers to denote a kind of nonraver. Often, but not always, straight, white, cis men. Treats the space as a spectacle for their entertainment, contributing nothing, gets in the way.

Coworker: A social type labeled by ravers to denote a kind of nonraver. For coworkers, a rave is a leisure activity outside of work time. Likely to be overly enthusiastic. Will be telling coworkers stories about it Monday morning.

Rave continuum: Every good rave that has ever happened or will ever happen makes contact with the continuum, which is a time.that exists outside of every other time. The continuum folds moments of k-time together so that their track mix. Ravers feel it is as continuous time, and who’s to say it isn’t?

Wark is interested in people for whom raving is a collaborative experience. She explains how this, “Makes it possible to endure this life…rave as addiction, ritual, performance, catharsis, sublimity, grace, resistance.”

She declares :

On a good night, everything at a good rave comes together with just the right tension of invention and intention.

Rushkoff too had pointed to this deliberateness—citing how it might take three hours to get to a rave and then you end up spending a night in an open field. The outing requires a commitment, and the entire experience demands inventiveness. I flashback to a rave in San Bernardino that was just this, only afterward we spent the night in the car park, our bodies in motion to stay warm as my brother had lost the keys to the car.

Wark eloquently captures the rave scene’s essence. It was a social scene with the potential to transform the greater world around it. But in the wake of commodification and exploitation—lost its claim to the sacred.

Raving is enlightening, vulgar at points, and wholly entertaining. It is more than a book; it’s a journey through the vibrant, transformative rave continuum.