Book review - read this!
So a few weeks ago, after hearing about it on R4, I bought Barbara Ehrenreich's 'Bright-sided: how the relentless promotion of positive thinking has undermined America'. This is not about that book. I still haven't read it.
When buying it on amazon, it 'recommended', as it does, another of her's called 'Dancing in the Streets: a history of collective joy', a title which intrigued me so much I bought that as well.
I just finished it, and it's one of the most interesting (and well-written) things I've read in ages. Her basic premise is that ecstatic dancing - that is, communal dancing, to at least a beat and usually to music, and in which people while not "out of control" (quite the contrary in many cases) lose their sense of self - appears to be one of the earliest activities that humanity created; further, that it has been marginalised to a greater and greater extent over the centuries, to humanity's considerable loss.
The book starts by looking at prehistoric instances (and yes, of course this is all conjecture, but it's intelligent and well-researched conjecture, which is all you can do with prehistoric stuff really) and then really gets going as we head into classical times. There is an extraordiarily interesting chapter on the similarities between Dionysus and Jesus, which is worth reading even if you never bother with the rest of the book (although this would be to your detriment ;).
She then looks at the medieval period, during which 'carnival' (a catch-all term for the dancing, costuming, masking and elements of socio-political reversal) is increasingly driven out of the churches (a process that started with the Romans). There are so many fascinating insights and things I didn't know - for example that Lutheranism was initially nowhere near as anti-dancing as you might think, but that it was Calvin who really cracked down on the idea of 'uncomplicated pleasures'. This all takes place alongside the growth of capitalism, and she draws some very interesting parallels between the two.
Also running in tandem with these is the growth, from c. the 17th century onwards, of the idea of 'self' and the not-at-all-unrelated increase in depression - more, the increase in suicide statistics.
Oh oh and there's a completely fascinating look at how the change from wars involving swords to wars involving guns requires a whole mindshift for both leaders and followers, and how this also keys into the necessity for soldiers (the working class) to adopt a mechanised work ethic. (There's also a hugely useful brief look at Wahhabism and how it essentially recapitulated Calvinism in the Islamic world.)
Approaching the modern era she looks at how the French Revolution and later of course the Nazis utilised elements of mass mobilisation, and how this *isn't* at all the same as spontaneous communal festivities, but parasitically uses elements of them to create something quite different (the 'spectacle').
She brings it up to date with a look at the perceived threat of rock & roll from the 60s onwards (amusingly, a lot of journalistic commentary uses the self-same language as shocked Imperial ethnographers talking about the dreaded power of 'jungle drums' etc.) and the carnivalisation of sport during the 80s and 90s.
Bear in mind that I have only been able to touch on so much that she talks about in-depth with authority, humour and insight, so if you're thinking "Hang on a minute, that doesn't make sense" I urge you to buy this and read it!
Completely fabulous book, well recommended!