Raving

McKenzie Wark

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What is an art of life for what feels like the end of a world? In Raving McKenzie Wark takes readers into the undisclosed locations of New York's thriving underground queer and trans rave scene. Techno, first and always a Black music, invites fresh sonic and temporal possibilities for this era of diminishing futures. Raving to techno is an art and a technique at which queer and trans bodies might be particularly adept but which is for anyone who lets the beat seduce them. Extending the rave's sensations, situations, fog, lasers, drugs, and pounding sound systems onto the page, Wark invokes a trans practice of raving as a timely aesthetic for dancing in the ruins of this collapsing capital.

Book Details

Publisher: Duke University Press
Publish Date: Mar 14th, 2023
Pages: 136
Language: English
Edition: undefined - undefined
Dimensions: 7.01in - 4.96in - 0.47in - 0.25lb
EAN: 9781478019381
Categories: • LGBTQ+ Studies - Transgender Studies• Anthropology - Cultural & Social

About the Author

McKenzie Wark is the author of Capital Is Dead, Reverse Cowgirl, and The Beach beneath the Street, among other books.

Praise for this book

"Wark's new book, Raving, is both a chronicle and a critique of her experience--a queer, trans, cripped, middle-aged one--articulated over the course of six essays, which put her friends and intellectual influences in conversation on the dance floor. To read it as a raver is to feel understood. To read it as anyone else is to get a glimpse of a world, enclosed and artificial, that, after the course of a loud, damp night, can leave its marks on everything outside."--Zoë Beery and Geoffrey Mak "The Nation" (3/14/2023 12:00:00 AM)

"Wark's aptly-named Raving takes readers on a journey through New York's thriving, underground queer rave scene--exploring how techno is an artform particularly suited for apocalyptic-feeling times."--Claire Valentine "W Magazine" (5/25/2023 12:00:00 AM)

"From the way it's structured alone, you can tell Wark poured her soul into this work. Her writing is phantasmagoric, vivid, and sharp. . . . Something I appreciate about Wark is her effort to hold herself accountable and criticize the culture she's participating in. . . . Wark opened my eyes to a brand new world, and I'm sure she can open yours too."--Lily Alvarado "Autostraddle" (3/14/2023 12:00:00 AM)

"Wark paints a vivid series of vignettes attempting to build a shared language around raving as a technological and social practice--and trying to make sense of the role it plays in the late-capitalist hellscape we now find ourselves in."--Janus Rose "Vice" (2/28/2023 12:00:00 AM)

"Part autofiction, part ethnography, Raving mirrors the complex and collective aspects of rave experiences. Like a practiced deejay, Wark blends genres to take us on a larger journey. Some critics who shared their thoughts with Wark when she was dancing and researching appear momentarily and nudge us gently toward something new."--Craig Jennex "Gay and Lesbian Review" (9/1/2023 12:00:00 AM)

"Wark is the professor of the rave, reimagining the philosophical framework for understanding raving as a means of temporary freedom. With her quirky encyclopedia of made-up vocabulary and cheeky anecdotes from her experiences on the dance floor, Raving is at once theoretical and personal, sweet and nihilistic."--Alessandra Schade "Alternative Press" (7/17/2023 12:00:00 AM)

"A well-tooled topic on which only a writer as sharp as Wark could induce me to pick up another book. . . . Wark is a master of brevity and precision, and Raving is no exception; her easy prose avoids the self-indulgent nostalgia that often afflicts writing on this subject matter."--Sean Burns "Frieze" (11/25/2022 12:00:00 AM)

"Thank god for this book, I love it so. Wark, a professor at the New School in New York City, documents her return to the rave scene after a cool couple decades away, and shows how raving, as she practices it, is love, healing, rebellion, community care, queer and trans joy, and also just a gorgeous good time."--CJ Hauser "The Week" (7/24/2023 12:00:00 AM)

"McKenzie Wark is one of today's finest critics on the subject of bodies, sex, gender, and, as of now, the venue that brings them all together: the rave. . . . Few are better than Wark at capturing how it feels to be in a body with so much intelligence and humor. Here, she argues for raving as a vital trans aesthetic, a way to dance -- literally -- over the crumbling foundations of capitalism."--Isle McElroy "Vulture" (11/14/2022 12:00:00 AM)

"Wark's entry into Duke University Press's Practices series, which spotlights the activities that make us human, invites us into the underground queer and trans rave scene of New York City. A bombastic collision of sound and movement, raving is, to Wark, the ideal activity for 'this era of diminishing futures.' An avid raver herself, she blends academic analysis with her own first-hand accounts, all relayed with sensual, staccato prose."--Sophia M. Stewart "The Millions" (1/10/2023 12:00:00 AM)

"What emerges in Raving . . . is a mode of writing that is deliberate but impressionistic, systematic but dissociative, theoretical but personal. . . . Like a DJ reigning over a club, Wark maintains a sense of order throughout her book while also remaining open to chance and spontaneity, her "set" containing as many twists, turns, and patterns as that of a master selector. Though she is in many ways driven by a critical impulse, she utilizes a playful, autofictional style, one that allows her to foreground sensorial experience and act as a contemporary Virgil guiding readers through the nine beautiful circles of rave hell."--Will Harrison "Cleveland Review of Books" (5/10/2023 12:00:00 AM)

"The book's charm is in the autofiction, where the reader gets to inhabit Wark's sense of liberation. It's an unusually hopeful depiction of late midlife as a phase of discovery."--Emily Witt "The New Yorker" (4/4/2023 12:00:00 AM)

"In some ways, Raving is Wark's aesthetic boiled down to its essence: a short primer on nightlife and sex that's explained in concepts and theory, and told in a slightly fictionalized series of bursts. It moves from dancefloor to dancefloor, deftly avoiding the classroom and academy. Raving is very much a book that only Wark could have written. I'm glad she did."--Roz Milner "Live in Limbo" (4/24/2023 12:00:00 AM)