The inward turn in post-dance music privatised what rave felt collectively

Evidence

In a discussion that Simon Reynolds and I had about North shortly after it was released, Reynolds argued that it was a mistake to talk as if rave was bereft of emotion. Rave was a music saturated with affect, but the affect involved wasn’t associated with romance or introspection The introspective turn in 21st century (post)dance music was therefore not a turn towards emotion, it was a shift from collectively experienced affect to privatised emotions. There was an intrinsic and inevitable sadness to this inward turn, regardless of whether the music was officially sad or not. The twinning of romance and introspection, love and its disappointments, runs through 20th century pop. By contrast, dance music since disco offered up another kind of emotional palette, based in a different model of escape from the miseries of individual selfhood. — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life, 450

Categorization

• DEFINE: Fisher sharply separates collective ‘affect’ from privatised ‘emotion’ as distinct registers that pop and dance music respectively inhabit.
• XREF: connects to: Communicative technology undermined the collective dancefloor that 80s tech built — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 462; Dance music’s affect was collective catharsis, not romantic introspection — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1304; Dance music’s inward turn traded collective affect for privatised emotion — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 450 (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• Dance music’s affect was collective catharsis, not romantic introspection #complicates (0.85) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1304