A Rave at The End of World: The Politics of Queer Hauntology and Psychedelic Chronomancy

This project is a historical and theoretical exploration of the global phenomenon of underground dance music culture known as the rave. In particular, the project asks what is the history, technologies, and practices that lead to historical examples of rave culture and contemporary rave practices. The rise of fascism and neofascism in Western democracies in recent years is compared to the politics and tactics of rave culture. Drawing on the work of Mark Fisher and Jose Muñoz this thesis explores issues of queer resistant practice, identified as queer hauntology, and anti-capitalist temporal thinking and organizing against neoliberal control society, identified as psychedelic chronomancy. The project lays out a theoretical or methodological toolkit, then a history of dance music and queer nightlife cultures, and then turns to an experimental personal narrative ethnography. In doing so the project wishes to ask how hauntological mechanisms allow for thinking beyond heterosexual straight neoliberal time and domination, and how the rave is a vessel and mechanism of assemblage thinking and decentralized political efforts to imagine and rescue lost futures.