1960s Counterculture Research Articles

From Patañjali to the “Gospel of Sweat”: Yoga’s Remarkable Transformation from a Sacred Movement into a Thriving Global Market

Movements seeking to infuse markets with moral values often end up utilizing the market mechanism and support from mainstream actors to scale up, even if it comes at the cost of diluting their founding ethos. But this process can be particularly challenging for movements that are explicitly opposed to using a market mechanism as a means of scaling up. Our analysis of yoga between 1975 and 2016 reveals how a countercultural movement fundamentally opposed to a capitalist market economy but seeking to grow can paradoxically become syncretic with or infiltrated by concepts and beliefs that are core to the market system but incompatible with the movement’s original ethos. We show how, before such a movement can be commodified, it must be de-essentialized, a process that requires stripping away key aspects of its history, context, and religious commitments and transforming collective goals into individual ones. This process involves not only external entrepreneurs looking to mine the movement but also movement leaders seeking wider enrollment of resource-rich actors to scale the movement up. We show how codes borrowed from parallel movements and templates borrowed from markets can be instrumental in driving such a movement’s transformation. Through this extreme case of the yoga movement, we advance understandings of how movements can become syncretic with values and practices they fundamentally oppose.

Review of ''Grocery Activism. The Radical History of Food Cooperatives in Minnesota''

Reviewer: Ion Bogdan Vasi, University of Iowa, USA Many people are familiar with the adage “tell me what you eat, and I will tell you who you are” and its abbreviated version “you are what you eat”. Many people are also familiar with the “Certified Organic” logo that is visibly displayed on many products in grocery stores nowadays. Yet, as Upright reminds us in “Grocery activism. The Radical History of Food Cooperatives in Minnesota”, the concept of “organic food” was practically unknown before the countercultural movements of the 1960s and 1970s. In fact, Upright argues that the “organic food movement” eventually became the organic food industry, an industry that has been growing during the last decades and reached over 50 billion $US in 2019. At the core of this industry are cooperative grocery stores, which created the infrastructure that allowed the organic food industry to develop nationwide. In this book,...

Psychedelic Psychiatry and the Consult-Liaison Psychiatrist: A Primer

Psychedelic compounds such as lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), psilocybin, and 3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) share a long and complex history with psychiatry. A half century ago, psychedelics were widely employed by psychiatrists in investigational and clinical settings, with studies demonstrating promising findings for their use in the treatment of mental illness and substance use disorders. However, concerns were also raised about their abuse potential and other adverse effects. Owing to these worries and psychedelics' association with the counterculture movement, psychedelics were largely outlawed in the United States in 1970, bringing research on their therapeutic potential to a halt. However, in recent years, a resurgence of psychedelic research has revealed compelling, though early, evidence for the use of psychedelic-assisted therapy in treating alcohol use disorder, nicotine use disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, and depression. Here we provide an overview of psychiatry's complicated relationship with psychedelics, while reviewing contemporary findings on psychedelic-assisted therapy, safety of psychedelic-assisted therapy, and risks of nonmedical use. We also make the case that psychiatry should consider preparing now for the possibility of Food and Drug Administration approval of psychedelic-assisted therapies in the near future. We conclude by discussing how growing societal interest in psychedelics could impact the work of consult-liaison psychiatrists, while also exploring how consult-liaison psychiatrists might contribute to future delivery of psychedelic treatments. We reviewed literature on psychedelic-assistedtherapies and adverse events resulting from nonmedical psychedelic use. We found a small, but rapidly growing literature indicating that psychedelic-assisted therapies may have treatment potential for mental illness and addiction. Our search also revealed a variety of rare adverse events stemming from nonmedical psychedelic use. Despite past concerns about psychedelics, current data indicate psychedelic-assisted therapy may potentially reduce suffering owing to mental illness and addiction if administered thoughtfully and cautiously by trained professionals in medical settings.

Reflexive Religion: The New Age in Brazil and Beyond by Anthony D'Andrea

Reviewed by: Reflexive Religion: The New Age in Brazil and Beyond by Anthony D'Andrea Rodrigo Toniol Keywords the New Age, esotericism, Brazil, Latin America, alternative spirituality, neo-shamanism, indigenous religions, Nova Era anthony d'andrea. Reflexive Religion: The New Age in Brazil and Beyond Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2018. Pp. 175. Since the early 1990s, "New Age" has established itself as a recurring term in the social sciences of religion. It has served to designate a movement which, in a very diffuse way, was structured from the counterculture of the 1960s, promoting an ideal of institutional rupture and cultivation of the subject's autonomy. In these terms, it is a heterogeneous, decentralized, post-traditional, and noninstitutionalized phenomenon whose outline would be more associated with the historical context of its emergence and with a particular type of mystical reflexivity than with a specific set of rituals and devotional practices. The New Age phenomenon produces a shift in the attention of researchers from religion to believers, from churches to seekers. Anthony D'Andrea's Reflexive Religion: The New Age in Brazil and Beyond is in dialogue with the tradition of New Age studies. Part of his effort can be described as an attempt to theoretically advance a model of analysis that has the practitioner as a reference point, and not the practice. One of the objectives of the book is to offer a theoretical framework for understanding alternative spiritualities of the self in general, taking as a starting point the recognition that the New Age is, rather than one more religion, a pragmatic language that retools traditions for individual purposes (138). And, in this language proposed by D'Andrea, one word stands out: reflexivity. As he suggests, "new forms of religiosity are enabled by late modern reflexivity as a contemporary process that transforms personal, collective and societal projects" (16). This does not mean that religious reflexivity is unique to the Brazilian New Age. "It is a double hermeneutic of action affecting the religious field in general, resulting in the retooling of religious traditions for the deliberate cultivation of self" (20). If there is anything particular about the New Age, suggests D'Andrea, it is that it provides possible instances of reflexive religiosity that closely resonate with late modern, globalized settings. The second objective of the book is to provide an empirical analysis of the New Age in Brazil (1). D'Andrea must face a fundamental question, one whose solution is a hallmark of his work: what would be the distinguishing symbol of a New Age in Brazil or even in Latin America? At this point, D'Andrea's book most clearly engages in a dialogue with (while also departing from) a significant part of the tradition of studies on the New Age conducted in Latin America. There is a relative accumulation of theoretical debate on the theme of the New Age in Latin America.1 Since the 1990s, social scientists have [End Page 450] pointed to a wide variety of phenomena associated with New Age themes: esoteric fairs in large cities, holistic therapy centers, and groups that seek to rescue local indigenous traditions. This set of phenomena has received attention from anthropologists such as Renée de la Torre and Cristina Gutiérrez, who identified three main branches of the New Age in Latin America: popular, shamanic, and esoteric. In D'Andrea's reading, while the majority of studies are dedicated to indigenous and shamanic cases, respectively placed within neo-Indian and neo-shamanic branches, a wide variety of religious, cultural, and secular systems were collapsed under the catchall neo-esoteric branch, oddly including Catholicism, Spiritism, Asian systems, parasciences, and alternative psychologies (143). D'Andrea turns away from this type of understanding, recognizing that such typologies are not only incomplete but also that it is a "mistake is to assume that the New Age reduces major religions to reformulations connected to traditional beliefs in magic" (143). In short, his critique of the dominant analytical perspectives on New Age in Latin America is that "when not summarily omitted from general mappings, secular, psychological, Asian and occultist systems have been reduced to their therapeutic function, neglecting the fundamental role of their ethical dimension...

The Counterculture of the 1960s and the Birth of Underground Press in the United States

The Underground Press Syndicate (UPS), later known as the Alternative Press Syndicate (APS), was a network of countercultural newspapers and magazines formed in mid-1966 by the publishers of five early underground newspapers: The East Village Other, The Los Angeles Free Press, The Berkeley Barb, The Paper, and Fifth Estate. The Syndicate was initiated by Allen Cohen, editor of the legendary 1960's edition of the San Francisco Oracle. By 1974, most underground newspapers in the United States had ceased to exist, but their influence was felt throughout the 1970s and the following years, leading to the emergence of small-town and suburban press offering a wide audience alternative views on local news, cultural news, Native American politics, ecology, youth, and anti-war movements.

Brechtian AlienAsian: Socialist ex Machina from Brecht's The Good Woman of Setzuan and David Hare's Fanshen

Brechtian AlienAsian:Socialist ex Machina from Brecht's The Good Woman of Setzuan and David Hare's Fanshen Sheng-mei Ma (bio) Anchored in working-class culture and socialist belief, the German playwright Bertolt Brecht theorizes Alienation-effect to advocate performers' and spectators' emotional dissociation from the stage in favor of thinking through, to borrow the title of Timothy J. Wiles's 1980 book, "the theater event."1 The A-effect intends to overhaul the modern stage for a non-Aristotelian, non-Stanislavsky alternative, partly inspired by a Peking Opera female impersonator Mei Lanfang, whose performances, for lack of a better word, "wowed" him in Moscow in 1935. Considering the political implications of the visit, John Fuegi asserts that Brecht was invited to Moscow with the express order "to be extremely explicit in opposing the Nazis in his own writings."2 But party affiliation aside, the theory of A-effect served to legitimize the dramatist's own sense of dis-orientation by "Oriental" theatrical stylization. That which is taken for granted within traditional Chinese dramaturgy so shocks Brecht that he finds the model for his vision of epic theater.3 The white love for the inexplicable, mystical Orient means to love it to death, to read into the riddle of a "Chinese box" the West's own wish fulfillment. The West's enlightenment comes at the expense of occluding the East. Not to mince words, Brecht births epic theater over the dead body of Chinese theater, a collage of fragmentary impressions rather than an evolving, organic heritage. And Brecht's self-centered, left-leaning Orientalism is inherited by the socialist David Hare in his early agitprop and populist plays. Critiquing Brecht's theory and practice of Alienation-effect, this exploration focuses on his seminal [End Page 443] essay "Alienation Effects in Chinese Acting" (1936), his play The Good Woman of Setzuan (1947, henceforth Setzuan), and Hare's copycat or "copychinese" Fanshen (1976). Alienation, by definition, involves a split, and for Brecht, alienation in drama entailed a departure from Aristotelian-Stanislavskian conventions. Such division is constitutive of Marxism, which posits dialectical forces vying for dominance throughout human history. Contestation of opposites within oneself and one's world recurs in Brecht's dramas. But even the word "alienation" casts its own shadow. Effecting Brecht's Alienation required an alien nation—a phantom one at that—to prop up the white state of being. The operative word may well be spelled with its uncanny sound-alikes: AlieNation, even AlienAsian. These two neologisms—an "alien nation" comprised of "alien Asians"—dwell holographically within "alienation." The long shadow cast all the way to the other side of the earth bespeaks Brecht and Hare's quixotic quest beyond the capitalist West, chancing upon a solution in socialist ex machina. The Oriental Other provides an "out" from their Western selfhood, an escape clause from the contractual bond(age) to the West by virtue of birth and cultural upbringing. The socialist China peoples their stage, as though crowding off the Western tradition. This replacement hearkens back, ironically, to Greek tragedies' deus ex machina, yet another Western legacy against which the playwrights presumably rebel. In Aeschylus' or Euripides' tragedies, deus ex machina or God from the machine, i.e., lowered with ropes or on a crane, or emerged on a riser through a trapdoor, rounds off the play with a divine, even cathartic, closure. In Brecht and Hare, the socialist China does not descend only when the curtain drops—it constitutes the whole play. Yet these early plays featuring socialist ex machina and Brechtian AlienAsian are but a mere "yellow" touch ("stain," some critics argue) on their largely white corpus. Whether a people's awakening to self-sufficiency in Brecht's Setzuan or Hare's communist apologia in the West's counterculture movement, this socialist ex machina is fully enacted in these early plays to intimate an Oriental utopia in the making vis-a-vis the capitalist West. Nevertheless, such dabbling in the East occupies but a miniscule portion of their corpuses, exposing the whim of young idealistic artists coming of age, a momentary flirt with the unknown beyond the West, before they [End Page 444] settle in for...

Ginsberg on the Road

Ginsberg on the Road Maria Damon (bio) World Citizen: Allen Ginsberg as Traveller David S. Wills Beatdom Books www.beatdom.com/product/world-citizen-allenginsberg-as-traveller/ 177 Pages; Print, $14.00 David S. Wills's World Citizen: Allen Ginsberg as Traveller offers a pleasant, thoroughly researched and convincing account of the poet's travels and their relevance to his writing. The book is informative and weaves insights into Ginsberg's personal drive to visit multiple countries, to experience both their high-cultural institutions and their demi-mondes, and to meet and network with international poets and writers—it also offers a possible window into, but does not pursue, questions such as how the phenomenon of Cold War US ideology shaped views of the meaning of travel for young "men of letters." While one might wonder why such a volume is necessary, however, while the author admits with refreshing candor (the latter word being a favorite of Ginsberg's) that the book was catalyzed by his own love of travel but also his recognition that a book of his own travels would have limited appeal to a wider readership—an admission that both charms and raises apprehensions in equal measures—and that "most readers familiar with Allen Ginsberg's life will find little in this book that is ground-breaking," a truthful assessment, the book itself provides an excellent, concise, and eminently readable guide to this aspect of the life of one of the twentieth century's most famous poets. Indeed, the casual and decidedly nonacademic nature of the book's paratextual elements combined with the clearly careful and responsible research turn out to contribute to an inviting and enjoyable if unchallenging re-contextualization of Ginsberg's life and work under the rubric of travel. In its eschewal of standard academic apparatus, the book corresponds well to the "beat" ethos that inflected Ginsberg's life—an ethos the poet certainly was instrumental in creating, publicizing, and popularizing. These attributes of informed, conversational engagement, and independence from typical structures of scholarly dissemination are further underscored by the nature of the publisher: Beatdom Books is Wills's own imprint. "Aha, vanity press!" one might think. Or, alternately and more appropriately, "Aha! DIY will never die!" The spirit of not only creating one's own work, but also taking responsibility for reproducing and distributing it, has a time-honored place in countercultural and subcultural movements. This book instantiates that legacy, and for the most part does well by it. Organized into four parts, World Citizen is, as one would expect, chronologically structured to start with Ginsberg's earliest travels (in the Merchant Marine) as well as his youthful fascination with East Asia, especially China, and extends through his maturity, his rise in international stature, his evolution from an eager young traveler mad for experience of the world to a revered and/or notorious public figure and poet traveling to reading and speaking engagements, distinguished teaching appointments and the like—yet still mad for experience of the world. What stayed constant throughout his life was his passion for art museums and the cultural masterpieces of every place he encountered, his desire to explore the hidden underworlds of his host countries and cities, his gregarious nature, and his ability to bond with strangers easily. The book is most successful and compelling when it shows the relationship between specific travels and certain poems, whether it be the influence, during his 1962-63 trip to India, of a "female lama" whose advises that his investment in hallucinations and visions is superficial and illusory—leading to his shedding a pursuit of "effects" and going for a closer, more concise attention to "words. Language: the prime material itself"—or the influence of his 1954 Mexican sojourn on the "COMPOUND Imagism" on his masterpiece "Howl" (i.e. "hydrogen jukebox") but first developed in Xbalba and evinced in the poem "Siesta in Xbalba." Moreover, Ginsberg kept extensive travel journals (the Indian Journals [1970] the most famous of these) and, as many poets do, culled them for poetry throughout his life. This practice makes the researcher's job of linking the poems with the journals, chronologically, imagistically...

Pluralism at the Twilight of Franco’s Spain: Antifascist and Intersectional Practice

Abstract Since the late 1980s, the term ‘intersectionality’ has been used as a way to describe ways in which socially constructed categories must be considered in conjunction to better understand everyday oppression. This article presents a broad understanding of pluralism as antifascist practice, whilst studying antifascist publications in Spain during the 1970s, considering intersectional analysis and methodology. Many of the producers of these publications saw themselves as explicitly antifascist or at the very least part of a countercultural movement which challenged social norms promoted under the late fascist regime. By looking at these antifascist movements, using intersectional approaches, we can better understand how fascism itself functions and how it can be disentangled – as scholarship on fascism has largely ignored how intersectional analytical approaches might give us new insights into fascism.

Tracing the History of DIY and Maker Culture in Germany’s Open Workshops

Abstract This article presents preliminary research findings on the history of Do-It-Yourself (DIY) and maker culture in Germany. It aims to identify historical, political, economic and societal shifts that have led to the existence of approximately 1000 makerspaces of various kinds in Germany today. The article summarises the beginnings of DIY in the 20th century in West Germany and East Germany. It focuses on how infrastructures supporting DIY were created out of necessity and economic considerations, how tools and spaces were offered as public service, the influence of counterculture movements and expression of political views through DIY and finally the use of DIY as a meaningful way to spend newfound leisure time and the phenomenon of state-funded vocational educational spaces. It aims to inspire further research elucidating the connections between broader societal contexts and DIY throughout the past century and its effects on maker culture today.

Intermedial Performativity: Mo Yan's Red Sorghum on Page, Screen, and In-Between

Abstract Intermedial performativity refers to what happens to the performative power of text when it travels from one medium to another, and what effects the mixing or interactions of different media bring about to the texts involved. Here, “text” is used broadly, not just literary texts, but also texts in other kinds of media forms, such as film and TV. In this paper, Red Sorghum, both a novel written by Mo Yan, a Chinese Nobel Laureate, and a namesake film directed by Zhang Yimou, one of the leading Chinese fifth-generation film directors, will be closely analyzed from the perspective of intermedial performativity. The following questions will be mainly addressed: How did the ritualistic acts or signs in the novel get transmitted and transformed in the film adaptation? What kind of visual elements did the film borrow from the novel and then appropriate to achieve great effects? In what ways did Red Sorghum on both page and screen reflect or even contribute to the counterculture movements in the mid- to late 1980s China, which is in many ways similar to the 1960s in the United States and Europe in terms of cultural radicalism?

THE J.R.R. TOLKIEN’S MYTH IN THE COUNTERCULTURE OUTLOOKS IN THE WEST SOCIETY OF 1960-1970S YEARS

The article is devoted to the researching of the J.R.R. Tolkien’s (British writer and linguist) influence on the outlook of counterculture movements in 1960-1970s years. The west countries’ history of that period describes a developing of the youth protest activity and the promoting of the trilogy «The Lords of the Rings», which became the most important embodiment of J.R.R. Tolkien’s mythology. As the result, the creativity of British writer became as the fantastic allusion to the modern and recent historical problems of society, such as the USA campaign in Vietnam, world wars, consumption cult, the harm to the environment, the fight for civil rights, etc. The purpose of that article is to identify the role of J.R.R. Tolkien’s myth in the ideological forming of youth movements of the mentioned time period in the USA and West Europe of 1960-1970s years. Through the prism of that interaction authors reconstruct a layer of counterculture mythology with the merging of Tolkinism’s (the writer’s creativity and outlook) and protest ideas inside the original awareness. The result of this process is in the appearance of the new youth movements’ ideological aspects, reflected in slogans, sings and street art of the pointed time period. The embodiment of the young generation’s protest activity with fictional heroes and events in Tolkien’s Middle-Earth has the main role in such aspects. However, today there is lack of the researching of that problem. Authors of the article suggest to look at the counterculture’s history in west countries through the prism of the pointed synthesis as the one of basically elements in the formation of modern mass culture and subculture layer.

Thomas Merton: Catholic modernist?

ABSTRACT This essay takes a new look at the mid to late century monk-poet, Thomas Merton. A progressive Trappist with both Zen and Catholic convictions and a man whose life as a contemplative was offset by fame as a diarist and letter writer, Merton cuts an unusual, contradictory figure in the 1960s counterculture. I examine his works of modernist criticism and his 1941 novel, My Argument with the Gestapo, for evidence of a consistent moral aesthetic scheme. Merton’s fiction and modernist criticism invoked an ironic ‘aesthetic of deadness’ yet at the same promoted the spiritual dignity of individuals against what Merton saw as the stultifying uniformity of post-war secular humanism. Writing on the cusp between late modernism and postmodernism, his final decade also saw him return to modernist literature, albeit largely ‘late modernists’ – from so-called absurdists like William Faulkner and above all, Albert Camus, in order to develop an approach to modernist art as revelatory and premonitory of modern man’s increasing spiritual impoverishment.

A South African view of Pentecostalism as another response to modernism

A popular way used by most sociologists, anthropologists and theologians to define the Pentecostal movement, its origins and growth is by way of the Deprivation Theory, implying that Pentecostalism can be explained in terms of its origins among the poor, marginalised and disenfranchised. However, it is argued that Pentecostal identity was rather formed by its Bible reading practices, its hermeneutics that resulted in its doctrinal understanding of the baptism in the Holy Spirit, the Full Gospel message and the lifestyle it generated that caused others to convert to Pentecostalism. It is submitted that this was the result of utilising a specific Bible reading method prevalent in holiness circles of the 19th century, which involved reading from a primitivist-restorationist and revivalistic perspective, and also served as the primary cause of the establishment of Pentecostalism and its growth. Individuals were attracted to Pentecostalism not because they were deprived – although many of them were – but with the way they read and interpreted the Bible, the resultant religious quest for Jesus and their enchanted worldview. Deprivation and disorganisation should rather be viewed as facilitating rather than causing its attraction, implying that the popularity of the movement is to be sought somewhere else – in the dynamics of the movement itself. It is concluded that Pentecostalism is a countercultural paramodern movement that defined its praxis-oriented identity and restorationist-primitivist spiritual ethos as a social and spiritual response to modernistic liberalism and Protestant fundamentalist cessationist orthodoxy.

Discussing the pillars of the Brazilian Tropicália Movement: The graphic design of Rogério Duarte

This article addresses the Tropicalist movement, the iconic Brazilian countercultural phenomenon from the late 1960s. The discussion focuses on its main visual manifestation: graphic design. We aim to demonstrate that the work of graphic designer Rogério Duarte is one of the structural pillars of this anti-establishment movement. Tropicália is often associated with music, while other contributions such as graphic design are less known or taken as a later visual response. We propose and present an analysis of the role of Duarte at the creation of the movement and its development during the late 1960s and early 1970s. His critical vision and knowledge of the Brazilian cultural mosaic led to the construction of one of widest countercultural movements of the 20th century, with a range of manifestations that included not only graphic design and music, but also theatre, cinema, and the visual arts. Tropicália was indeed more political than the American and British psychedelic manifestations, in which it was visually inspired. It was also more than a cultural movement or an anti-academic manifestation: it was a means to criticize and work around the Brazilian government and its oppression.

“It’s an Ongoing Bromance”: Counterculture and Cyberculture in Silicon Valley—An Interview with Fred Turner

Fred Turner is considered one of the most influential experts on, and critical observers of, cyberculture. He is Harry and Norman Chandler Professor of Communication at Stanford University in the Department of Communication. Through his work, he provided a thoughtful analysis of the politics and culture of Silicon Valley. In his books, he explored the connections between the collaborative and interdisciplinary research culture of the Second World War, the protest movements of the 1960s, and the managerial ethos permeating digital and new media industries. In this interview, we discuss about the consequences that the countercultural movements had on the organization of labor in modern tech giants, especially in relation to the substitution of hierarchies for flat and more entrepreneurial structures. We also talk about the consequences that a code of ethics might have in the democratization of technology and the responsibility that we have as citizens and academics.

The Empty Boat: Meteorango Kid and Brazilian Cinema Marginal

ABSTRACT This article considers André Luiz Oliveira’s Meteorango Kid – O herói intergalático (1969), an important yet often overlooked contribution to Brazilian Cinema Marginal of late 1960s and early 1970s. These low-budget, black and white cinematic productions rejected the revolutionary nationalism of Cinema Novo and embraced instead an “aesthetics of garbage” that conveyed a position of marginality and scarcity among the outcasts and misfits of society. Cinema Marginal captured the sense of disillusionment and impotence among middle-class youth during the most repressive phase of authoritarian rule in Brazil. It coincided with Tropicália, a countercultural movement with manifestations in all realms of artistic production, but principally identified with popular music. Playful and dreamlike in some of its sequences, Meteorango Kid also takes nightmarish turns in its exploration of revolt and alienation among a disaffected university student in Salvador, the capital city of Bahia, a mecca for the Brazilian hippies, who dropped out of conventional society to pursue a drug-fueled alternative lifestyle known as desbunde. This article situates Meteorango Kid in relation to Cinema Novo, Cinema Marginal, and Tropicália, while considering its acerbic critique of conservative Bahian society, the nationalist left, and the emergent youth counterculture.

“Radio Alice and Italy’s Movement of 1977: polyvocality, sonority and space”

ABSTRACT Radio Alice was a free radio station that broadcast from 1976–1977 in Bologna, Italy, and was an integral part of the left-wing, countercultural Movement of 1977. This article contextualises the emergence of Radio Alice in relation to the Movement of 1977; the avant-garde political magazine A/Traverso, which had been published since 1975 by the collective that founded Radio Alice; and the international history of community radio. I then show how Radio Alice’s approach to broadcasting drew from these three contexts in seeking to unseat the logic of capitalism and replace it with a celebration of desire. The station’s practice emphasised polyvocality through the extensive use of telephone phone-ins and challenged language itself through surreal speech and non-linguistic vocalisation. I explore how this vocal practice expressed the station's countercultural politics and, drawing on the work of Adriana Cavarero and Doreen Massey, I argue that it was a practice with spatial consequences. These spatial consequences became both explicit and tangible during the 1977 Bologna riots when the station was shut down live on air. Ultimately, and most broadly, I contend that as a central component of human interrelation the voice is always already implicated in the social construction of space.

Getting off the Wheel: A Conceptual History of the New Age Concept of Enlightenment

Abstract Although many new agers believe that enlightenment is the end goal of spiritual development, the importance of this concept has largely been overlooked by scholars until now. This article contextualizes the concept of enlightenment historically. After a detailed description of what the new age concept of enlightenment entails, it traces the origin of the concept to the late 19th-century “Oriental reaction” to Theosophy, when “missionaries from the East” like Vivekananda and Suzuki drew on transcendentalism, Theosophy, and recent innovations in psychology to articulate a paradigmatic expression of Asian soteriology. It highlights the importance of models of enlightenment in the transmission of Asian ideas and follows the trajectory that starts with Vivekananda and Suzuki to figures and currents like Aldous Huxley, 1960s counterculture, Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, and neo-advaita. Thereby, it provides an account of the formation of the new age concept of enlightenment.

Canadian Clown: A Generation’s Journey to Legitimacy, Innovation, and Excellence

During the fifties and sixties, clown in most parts of Canada amounted to an occasional visit by the Shrine Circus, a questionably skilled birthday party entertainer, or the television presence of American ‘kiddie’ clowns. Few realized that early comic film and television actors were actually clowns. This all changed with the counterculture, civil rights, and social advocacy movements of the sixties. The exposure to populist approaches to theatre, drawing from diverse cultures and influences in the pursuit of meaning and innovation, inspired a wave of creativity that took to the streets. New vaudeville was born, street performers gained both notoriety and visibility, and idealistic youth trekked to Europe and beyond in search of a deeper, more relevant theatre. As with many moments of extreme social unrest, clowns joined the parade, and by the 1980’s and 90s, a true renaissance in clown theory and practice was under way. Canada was well placed to lead this movement, both culturally and geographically. We lived in close proximity to the United States and shared its upsurge in activism and history of stage, screen and circus clowning, and also had firm roots in European clown and Indigenous traditions. These circumstances fostered the development of influential techniques that have become the bedrock of contemporary clown theory. This article looks at the rise to legitimacy that clown has made within Canada, and at the challenges of that journey. Ultimately, it showcases the uniqueness of Canadian clown and explores why we have become internationally respected leaders in this performance tradition.

"Guerriglia editoriale”: letteratura e editoria alternativa in Italia negli anni Sessanta e Settanta

The article analyzes the developments of the alternative editorial circuit promoted by the artistic-literary avant-gardes and counter-cultural movements in Italy during the 1960s and 1970s, with specific reference to the production of literary texts. The organization of the production system and the intent of the producers are taken into particular consideration, identifying the cultural objectives defined within a strategy of social and political opposition. The characteristics of the literature born in the countercultural field are also studied in depth.