Banish Thought, loose Yourself!
Yiannis Papadakis, Associate Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Cyprus
One body, legs fixed to the floor, compulsively shaking to the neo-primitive beat. Inward, uncommunicative, alone. All body, all movement, one random repetitive pattern after the other, no thought.
Despite its simplicity, or more likely because of it, as I watched Lia Haraki’s Tune In, I found myself transported to all kinds of unexpected places. This was to be my very own, idiosyncratic, anthropological trip: from “primitive” rituals to contemporary clubbing; from reflections of loneliness to efforts at transcendence; all laced, however, with a bitter taste of despair as the body of the performer was gradually failing under the strain with repetition becoming more and more jerkily erratic.
Primitive ritual was about creating collective solidarity. This Durkheimian view argued that through the ecstasy – literally meaning standing outside of oneself – created by music, drugs, dance and repetition, the individual monads came to a communion, thus creating society. Society, social bonds, as well as social proscriptions, were created through ritual, which had to repetitively take place at fixed periods if society was to continue being.
In capitalist modernity, rituals have changed form and function. Many social scientists would look at weekend mega-events (the soccer game, the club outing, the cinema viewing) as frantic efforts to escape. Individuals, feeling so isolated and lonely, more so in the multi-million mega-cities, yearn for a possibility of communion, whether by losing themselves in the soccer crowd or the club floor: joining in, following the rhythm, all emotion, in these small weekend rebellions against the cold grip of everyday calculative rationality. Losing themselves becomes the point of such futile attempts. Bored with work, tired of an alienating bureau-technocratic existence, they go all out in order to escape their troubles in search of some excitement. Thought is being unwittingly reminded of one’s troubled existence, so the ultimate aim to is escape from oneself. Clubbing turns into an ecstatic transcendence of the self, losing oneself in the crowd, all in communion with each other through the beat yet all so alone, becoming just a body, entering into a trance, banishing thought.
The dreaded Monday morning soon arrives and by Friday the urge is there once more.