Ecstasy (MDMA): A rebellion coherent with the system

Aim: This study attempts to demonstrate the relevance of the socio-cultural model of drugs in explaining the impressive development of ecstasy in the last 45 years. Method: First the study describes the use of ecstasy by groups which have left their imprint on the substance: university students, gays, yuppies and the “New Age” movement. Then the link between ecstasy and techno music led to the socially integrated “club” phenomenon, and the “rave”, which began as a rupturing, nonconformist phenomenon. Findings: According to this argument, in spite of its clearly counterculture beginnings, the “rave” movement and its most characteristic drug, ecstasy, have gradually become integrated into mainstream culture, somehow reinforcing the functioning of capitalist postmodernity. Our study explains ecstasy’s history in reference to the cultural contradictions of capitalism and the functions that it currently fulfils for young people. Based on this analysis, the implications of the cultural perspective are discussed as a paradigm of research in drug use, stressing notions of subculture, myths and rituals. It also proposes a harmonious articulation of academic and common knowledge as the most appropriate method for their study. Conclusion: A cultural approach to drug use could assist in unblocking a field so in need of conceptual and empirical revision.

Urban, Historical, and Musical Loops: László Moholy-Nagy, Alexander Kluge, and the City Symphony Film

Focusing on Alexander Kluge’s short film Chicago im Zeitraffer (Chicago in Time Lapse), this article inserts his work with moving images into a larger genealogy of the city symphony film. Elucidating his relationship with the historical cinematic avant-garde, as Kluge borrows and departs from both László Moholy-Nagy’s urban vision and Bertolt Brecht’s conception of urban capitalist modernity, the article shows that Kluge’s film reorients time-lapse cinematography and opens up a new form of perception. By incorporating transnational techno music, the film suggests a concept of body and subjectivity that appears as a consequence of an increasingly voracious capitalist modernity while embedding a sense of obstinacy and self-propulsion. Nonetheless, the film’s reliance on transatlantic techno risks excluding the Black musical and social contexts that inspired it. Throughout the article the “loop,” or the traffic circle (Kreisverkehr), is understood as a governing metaphor that helps explain Kluge’s vision of contemporary urbanity, historical connectivity, and musical influence.

Manufacturing America's Dreams

Auto companies shield their low-tech exploitation of workers behind high-tech displays of mechanical prowess. The less a consumer knows about the blood and guts of manufacturing, the easier it is to buy the dream. So how does America think all this crap gets built?&hellp; Last summer, in a desperate attempt to entice young viewers to buy grandpa's dream car, General Motors (GM) ran a TV ad that featured a chorus line of robot arms dancing to techno music around a series of Cadillacs strutting like runway models on chrome-plated wheels.&hellp; Don't let yourself be seduced and deluded. The auto industry's master talent isn't robotics, it's the ability to automatize humans&mdash;including drivers.<p class="mrlink"><p class="mrpurchaselink"><a href="http://monthlyreview.org/index/volume-67-number-1" title="Vol. 67, No. 1: May 2015" target="_self">Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the <em>Monthly Review</em> website.</a></p>

Submerge in Detroit: Techno's Creative Response to Urban Crisis

The Detroit electronic music (DEM) community is a group of urban residents who, since the 1980s, have used new technologies in music production as well as changing communications technologies to create a transnational arts community. This article is a result of ethnographic research of the DEM community conducted from 1999 to 2007 and is focussed on the city's biggest independent distribution company, Submerge. The phrase “electronic music” refers to both house and techno music. Techno music and house music are African American music genres created in Detroit and Chicago respectively during the early 1980s. Recent concerns in the field of American studies – transnationalism, community collaboration, issues of technology and global communication – can be seen in a group of urban residents who have been exploring similar issues, in some cases by necessity, for the past three decades. It is important for the study of American urban places to include a clear picture of heterogeneous urban populations in places of crisis. With a richer idea of what life is really like in cities in crisis, we can better plan, develop, and encourage urban revitalization.

The Relevance of Network Models within the Juridic Discourse. Empirical, Sociological, and Epistemological Perspectives

A spectre is haunting contemporary theoretical debates: the spectre of Network. Whether it is about techno-music or football, whether the focus is on the architecture of poststructuralist thinking, international terrorism or individual career-planning, there is one common feature of all debates: the network model. There seems to be hardly a cultural theory – in a wide sense – still able to go on operating without using (at the very least) its heuristic effects. Meanwhile, even the entertainment and the advertising industries have discovered the concept. We need not wonder, then, that it isbull marketfor the model on the specific juridic field too.