Full Power: Subculture, Tourism, and the Performance of Affinity in Postcolonial Goa.

摘要

Full Power: Subculture, Tourism, and the Performance of Affinity in Postcolonial Goa investigates the subculture of goa trance, a genre of electronic dance music, as it is created and sustained in the coastal state of Goa, India. Long desired as a holiday destination by foreign tourists in India, Goa has a history of countercultural performance that derives from American and European countercultural traditions. Over the years, as the region has become more popular with backpackers, hippie tourists and spiritual adventurers, a unique subculture has emerged in Goa, the subculture of goa trance. While some scholarship exists on subcultural tourism in Goa, this dissertation seeks to address the changes in performance styles and forms that have taken place over the last four decades. What was once considered an idyllic and utopic resting place for foreign travelers in India has become a hotly contested space with the arrival of domestic Indian tourists and the awakening of local resident's agency in the subcultural tourism industry. Race, class and fantasy clash on Goa's beaches, at times dismantling racial privilege and at others, transforming the modes of performance that make up the goa trance lifestyle.;By reflecting on the music, dance, spiritual and socio-economic conditions of goa trance subculture, I argue that temporary communities are formed not along the lines of identity, rather groups emerge around shared affinities. Drawing from performance studies, postcolonial studies and religion studies, I discuss how tourists create these affinities through various staged and everyday performances. Based on ten months of ethnographic fieldwork, this dissertation presents a picture of a transnational subculture that is created, appropriated and transformed through the flow of bodies, capital and affect in and out of a tourist space of possibilities.