Get Your Freak On
Based on many years of participant observation in the London UK club scene, this paper seeks to show how the seemingly chaotic and frenzied environment of the club offers important insights into the role played by the body in both underpinning and subverting cultural worlds. Studying this environment allows us to chart the effects that radically altered socio-sensual practices have on the lives of participants as they move back out into the everyday world. We can see how the experiences uncovered via clubbing creates alternative co-ordinates within the sensual landscape of participants’ lives, throwing the usually ‘taken for granted’ status of the habitus into relief. The resulting schism in the sensual fabric of culture allows people to disembody themselves from the habitus and gain a visceral autonomy from its unconscious mechanisms of control. This slippage manifests itself in various ways, ranging from the creation of alternative social practices, to the invention of new language and the development of new perspectives upon and relationships to the wider culture.