In the autumn of 2021, historians gathered in Copenhagen (and virtually) to discuss the relationships and connections – dependencies and references between pop cultures and ecstatic states of the body. The conference program departed from the concepts of “doing ecstasy”, “controlling ecstasy”, and “representing ecstasy”, while embedding those in the temporal context of the late 20th century. The conference attempted to draw out different characteristics of ecstasies as well as their meanings and purposes. In addition, it explored the spatial and temporal dimensions of experiencing ecstasies and tackled the questions of participation and representation. Essentially, the papers and plenary discussions centered on the questions of what ecstasies actually were and meant for those who pursued them, who those people were and why they pursued ecstasy, where ecstasies happened and which roles the spaces played, and how popular culture was represented and connected with ecstasies in the second half of the 20th century.

In his opening paper, KRISTOFF KERL (Copenhagen) pointed out how the conference could tackle ecstatic as states of the body. He presented some thoughts and considerations about researching practices and experiences of getting/being ecstatic, intoxicated and euphoric from a historical perspective: for example, the relevance of spaces and artifacts as well as the significance of categories such as gender, class, age, (dis)ability, race/ethnicity. Additionally, he pointed to the potentials of relating the history of ecstatic pop bodies to the reshaping of hegemonic subject cultures, as described prominently for Western societies by the cultural theorist Andreas Reckwitz. This perspective allows for illumination of previously unexamined aspects of contemporary history as well as for better understanding societal change and the reshaping of subject cultures that occurred in the period between the 1950s and 1980s.

According to Kerl, ecstatic bodily states could be experienced through music and substances; when dancing vigorously to certain kinds of music and getting high on drugs. However, ecstatic bodily states could also be obtained through sexual experiences, experiences of violence and doing sport. Furthermore, Kerl made the point that linguistically, the German term “Rausch” perhaps extends the focus of researchers, leading to a broader tracing of ecstasies more than its English translation. Adding in the discussion to the conceptual understanding of what ecstasies actually are, JULIANE FÜRST (Potsdam) pointed to the distinction between euphoria and ecstasy, and argued that ecstasies hinge on lack of control and liberation from traditional values.

Several conference participants described and framed ecstasies as experiences that felt instinctive, sometimes irrational and related to going beyond the established rules and norms. However different the ecstatic experiences may have been aesthetically, several papers highlighted how ecstasies served as a hiatus, disconnecting the pursuer(s) of ecstasy from their every-day life.

In her paper about hippies travelling to India, for example, ISABEL RICHTER (Berkeley) highlighted how ecstasies connected with notions of spontaneity and drifting when travelling beyond “the end of the Western world.” According to Richter, the trip to India became a (pop)cultural reference to the search for authenticity, despite the fact that the hippie trail was a well-established passage, playing on Western oriental fantasies.

A different kind of ecstasy derived from football hooligan frenzies, as discussed by ONDŘEJ DANIEL (Prague). Hooligan ecstasies were violent but also described as instinctive and mainly motivated by anger, boredom, frustration and alienation, as shown in one of Daniel’s cases, when supporters of a Prague football team broke into a fight on a train, causing societal moral panic in socialist Czechoslovakia. Daniel linked such violent ecstasies to anonymity and away matches, group dynamics and alcohol.

Yet ecstasy as escape from the norms could also follow from dancing and listening to music. Attending heavy metal concerts in the GDR, for example, provided a break from the tightly regulated and politicized East-German music and cultural scene, as argued by NIKOLAI OKUNEW (Potsdam). Okunew also discussed how the East-German socialist identity was at odds with the practices and content of the heavy metal genre and milieu, reaching its audience in the GDR through Western media.

The papers exploring ecstasy and the punk scene made similar points. RALPH HÖGER and SEBASTIAN KNOLL-JUNG (Heidelberg) argued that punk music and pogo dancing constituted a performative contrast to the lifestyles of comfort and leisure in the late 20th century, as well as a liberation from the traditional norms. JAKE P. SMITH (Colorado Springs, CO) also argued that punk aimed to use the language of power against power itself, that sounds and aesthetics could disrupt the post war regime and chaos lead to the world being created anew. Punk ecstasies helped overcoming the temporalities of every-day life by merging times together and everything happening all at once.

Finally, ecstasies could also follow directly from drug use, linked directly to late 20th century pop-cultural phenomena. JOSHUA HILL (St. Andrews) discussed marihuana use by hippies in Spain and argued that the hippies transformed perceptions of marihuana: from previously being associated with Morocco and moral degeneracy to later bringing it to a new and middle class audience. BOB BEACH (New York) discussed marihuana use in the jazz-era Tea Pads, where ecstasy became the success criterion of cannabis intoxication, in combination with the experience of appreciating jazz music with the whole body. Beach showed how ecstasies filled a gap in life and allowed the participants to be a different person in a different time.

Several papers discussed how the dimension of space was not only important but also actually instrumental in providing the opportunity for, and the experience of, ecstasy. JULIA SNEERINGER (New York) argued that spaces provided codes and norms, setting the scenes for the activities leading to ecstasy; that spaces were not just blank containers but helped define the activities. They created a theatre in which everyone was an actor and where status and belonging was negotiated. This point was illustrated both by her own studies of the 1960s club scene in Skt. Pauli, a Hamburg neighborhood, as well as by other presenters. According to Sneeringer, being packed together in a club, listening and dancing to one’s favorite music with like-minded people contributed to the feelings of bodily ecstasy. The club constituted a transnational microcosm modelled by aesthetics and technology, shaping identities and sensations of belonging.

The connections to pop-culture and consumer capitalism were clear: club owners needed to be able to read and follow trends in order to attract a paying audience. In turn, the Economic Miracle and the mass media of the 1960s made it possible for the audiences to afford and discover the venues. Sneeringer argued that the clubs of St. Pauli helped democratizing the participation in entertainment bringing together diverse crowds of students and intellectuals in originally working class spaces. This, however, raised the question of middle-class appropriation of working-class culture.

The topic of cultural transfers came to the fore in other presentations, in particular in the paper on Nigerian perspectives by LUCKY IGOHOSA UGBUDIAN (Ndufu, Alike Ikwo). Ubgudian argued that in late 20th-century Nigeria, popular culture was regarded essentially as foreign but that, in turn, African-style clothes became fashionable again and incorporated in pop-culture milieus. In particular, in the Afro-beat music scene the use of Western electrical instruments mixed freely with local sounds and aesthetics. According to Ugbudian, marihuana use became a part of popular culture in Nigeria through the transfers of Reggae music, itself drawing heavily on connections to Africa and mixing the global with the local.

“Who has the right to ecstasy?” was a central question throughout the conference, and the answers quickly centered on young, white males. Höger and Knoll-Jung, Okunew and Daniel all discussed how the pursuit of ecstasies in their cases – the punk, heavy metal and hooligan scenes – took place in young male-dominated settings. In addition, the ecstasies explored by presenters tended to be rooted in counter-cultural milieus on the fringes of popular culture. When the avant-garde filtered into mainstream pop culture, for example Hollywood, as discussed by OLAF STIEGLITZ (Leipzig), avant-garde ecstasies were shown through the images of American collective memory, addressing not everyone but a mainly white audience. In her keynote, however, Fürst warned against seeing different counter-cultural groups as mutually exclusive and mistaking representations for lived experiences.

Two speakers and discussed female ecstasies explicitly. Presenting his research on the British rave scene, PEDER CLARK (Glasgow) noted how the media framed female intoxication at raves with a distinct moral element while, at the same time, new discourses on female enjoyment took shape, too. Clark showed how the rave scene provided access to sensations of ecstasy for women: to some extend perhaps even a safe space of hedonistic equality. Yet according to Life Line, an addiction prevention charity, women should not attempt to compete with men in their drug consumption. VOJIN SAŠA VUKADINOVIĆ (Berlin) talked about the female punk band, The Slits, and showed how women were part of punk, too. He discussed punk as negative ecstasy; as the “no to everything” and the deterioration of the goals of 1968. The Slits used the messiness of the female body to show that transnational codes and norms of punk transcended gender lines too.

Despite the fact that the pursuits of ecstasies often took place on the unruly edges of avant-garde milieus, popular culture also seized on such communities and represented ecstasies in its own ways. KARL SIEBENGARTNER (Munich) showed how glossy West-German pop magazines discussed punk crowds as “acting like a Beatles gig”, reducing individuals to one pogo-ing unit. Bravo, a magazine, also described punk as a space to perform female sexuality outside the social norm.

ROBERT STEPHENS (Blacksburg) argued that Hollywood constructed its own mental map in order to understand drug ecstasies. Its representations of drug-related ecstasies tended to show agony as the consequence of ecstasy. Hollywood representations focused on the moment of ecstasy, often when the drug user drifts beyond their normal state into ecstasy, only to focus later on the sensations of withdrawal ending in the body collapsing. According to Stephens, this Hollywood representation of ecstasy offered a clear lesson, whose repetition made it expected by the audience.

By end of it, the conference had covered ecstasies of music and drugs extensively, less so sexual and sport ecstasies. In addition, ecstasies of young, white, male and straight bodies received more attention, and questions of and problems with representation were posed in most sessions. Still the conference was a first of its kind, tacking histories of pop through the lens of bodily ecstasy and participants were positive about further explorations. In the final discussion, Bodo Mrozek (Berlin) asked how such histories of ecstasy and popular culture could link better to general histories; how their relevance could receive broader attention. Detlef Siegfried (Copenhagen) asked whether ecstasies might be a topic on which history and cultural studies can connect with the natural and medical sciences: when bodily functions connect with agencies that use aesthetics to shape identities while navigating between global influences and local cultures.

Conference overview:

Panel 1: Framing Ecstasy

Kristoff Kerl (University of Copenhagen): Pop Ecstasies. Reflections on Ecstatic States of the Body in the History of Pop Cultures

Panel 2: Doing Ecstasy 1: Gender

Vojin Saša Vukadinović (Freie Universität Berlin): No Future Whatsoever. Punk as Negative
Ecstasy at the End of the 1970s

Peder Clark (University of Strathclyde, Glasgow): Big Fun. Ecstasy, Rave and Gendered Pleasure in Britain, 1988 to 1996

Keynote

Julia Sneeringer (City University New York): From Bare Bulbs to Liquid Light Shows. Music Club Environments in Hamburg-St. Pauli across the 1960s

Panel 3: Doing Ecstasy 2: Travel

Joshua Hill (University of St. Andrews): Spanish “Jippies”, Marijuana, and the Creation of a Moral Panic under Franco’s National Catholicism

Isabel Richter (University of Berkeley): “Drifting into Uncertainty”. World Music, 1960-1980

Commentary by Michael Alexander Langkjaer (University of Copenhagen) and discussion

Panel 4: Doing Ecstasy 3: Spaces

Ralph Höger / Sebastian Knoll-Jung (University of Heidelberg): Ecstatic Violence. Pogo Culture and the Body Turn in Gig Practices from Protopunk to Hardcore

Nikolai Okunew (Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History – ZZF Potsdam): Ecstatic
Escapism. Heavy Metal Concerts in East Germany

Bob Beach (University at Albany, SUNY, New York): „My whole body’s sent, I feel like a millionaire.“ Ecstasies (and Agonies) of Cannabis Intoxication in Jazz-era Tea Pads, 1930–1950

Panel 5: Controlling Ecstasy

Lucky Igohosa Ugbudian (Alex Ekwueme Federal University, Ndufu Alike Ikwo): Pop Cultures and Ecstatic States of the Body. The Nigerian Experience

Jake P. Smith (Colorado College, Colorado Springs, CO): Archeological Ecstasies. Music, Memory, and the Built Environment in the Punk and New Wave Movements

Ondřej Daniel (Charles University, Prague): Hooligan Frenzy. Ecstatic Violence and Late State Socialist East European Football

Keynote

Juliane Fürst (Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History – ZZF Potsdam): Ecstasy as Prayer
and Salvation. Soviet Hippies and their Kaif

Panel 6: Representing Ecstasy

Karl Siebengartner (Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich): Unruly Bodies. Punks, Ecstasy
and Pop Culture in Western Germany

Robert P. Stephens (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg): The Ecstasy and the Agony. Hollywood and the Construction of Mental Maps of Addiction

Olaf Stieglitz (University of Leipzig): A Tunnel at the End of the Light. The New Hollywood,
White Masculinity, and the Limits of Ecstasy