| This thesis investigates the discursive, disciplinary, and institutional conditions and regulations of "underground" social dance culture in North American contexts. The introduction elaborates this study's main keywords ("beats", "party scenes", "regulation", and "diversity"), contexts (postcolonial economics, sexual politics, and popular culture), and methods (historical materialism, poststructuralism, and performance theory). Chapter 1 theorizes the globalizing construction of dance music culture through romantic and postcolonial discourses, and critically surveys the literature on contemporary dance music culture. Chapter 2 historicizes the formation of Toronto's "rave" scene in articulation with education and business, arguing that the scene thus represents a displaced intervention in the academic "culture wars". Chapter 3 examines the post-millennial contraction of the Toronto scene through the repressive, ideological, and economic pressures catalyzed by a "moral panic" over raves in 2000. Chapter 4 contextualizes the diasporic development of Detroit techno, a canonical dance music genre, under postindustrial capitalism, and against the corporate control of popular cultural production. The conclusion surveys broader historical contexts for dance music culture and outlines further research on postcolonial romanticism in diasporic cultural production. |
