'The Vertigo of Eros': Examining the Aesthetic-Ecstatic Space of Electronic Music for the Postmodern Subject
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Authors
Matus, Emily
Issue Date
2011
Type
Thesis
Language
en_US
Keywords
Alternative Title
Abstract
This study applies modem and postmodern theoretical concepts toward the analysis of
interviews and observations collected at two American music festivals, as well as in
examining the subcultural productions of the electronic music genre. Much of the
terminology regarding modem-postmodem cultural productions and subjectivity that
have informed this paper come from Marianne De Koven's critical literary text, Utopia
Limited. DeKoven's work locates the 1960's as the critical transitional period between the
modem (through the 60's) and the postmodern (post-60"s), as dominant cultural forms in
the United States. Within this framework, the modem is roughly organized by the ideals
of the 19th century Enlightenment and its promises of total social transformation through
'moral' and 'scientific' progress; the postmodem represents the disintegration of many of
these ideals and the shift toward 'subject politics' or local, particular, and diffuse forms of
identity and resistance toward oppressive social structures. De Koven's conception of
"utopia limited" documents the resilience of modernism's utopic aims as they have been
preserved and transformed in the postmodem context; I seek to further the implications of
this concept in order to recover the value of modem and postmodcrn insights. and in
understanding the "structure of feeling" (DeKoven, 2004) ern bedded within electronic
·music's performative subculture. In examining the performance as a dynamic system of
interchange, and the locus of the resilient utopian 'impulse' through aesthetic and
subversive ecstatic experience, the progressive implications of this "utopia limited" are
explored, be they distinctly fragmented, local-particular, and always-already unrealized
aims.
Description
iv, 77 p.
Citation
Publisher
Kalamazoo, Mich. : Kalamazoo College.
License
U.S. copyright laws protect this material. Commercial use or distribution of this material is not permitted without prior written permission of the copyright holder. All rights reserved.