Dancing in the streets : a history of collective joy
Barbara Ehrenreich (Author)
"Cultural historian Ehrenreich explores a human impulse that has been so effectively suppressed that we lack even a term for it: the desire for collective joy, historically expressed in ecstatic revels of feasting, costuming, and dancing. She uncovers the origins of communal celebration in human biology and culture. Although 16th-century Europeans viewed mass festivities as foreign and "savage," Ehrenreich shows that they were indigenous to the West, from the ancient Greeks to medieval Christianity. Ultimately, church officials drove the festivities into the streets, Protestants criminalized carnival, Wahhabist Muslims battled ecstatic Sufism, European colonizers wiped out native dance rites. The elites' fear that such gatherings would undermine social hierarchies was justified: the festive tradition inspired uprisings and revolutions from France to the Caribbean to the American plains. Yet outbreaks of group revelry persist, as Ehrenreich shows, pointing to the 1960s rock-and-roll rebellion and the more recent "carnivalization" of sports.--From publisher description."--Source other than the Library of Congress
Print Book, English, 2007
First edition View all formats and editions
Metropolitan Books, Henry Hold and Company, LLC, New York, New York, 2007
History
320 pages ; 25 cm
9780805057232, 0805057234
70718693
The archaic roots of ecstasy
Civilization and backlash
Jesus and Dionysus
From the churches to the streets: the creation of carnival
Killing carnival: reformation and repression
A note on puritanism and military reform
An epidemic of melancholy
Guns against drums: imperialism encounters ecstasy
Fascist spectacles
The rock rebellion
Carnivalizing sports
The possibility of revival
proxy.library.carleton.ca Contributor biographical information
proxy.library.carleton.ca Publisher description