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Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy

Book by Barbara Ehrenreich · 2 quotes · Dance, Ritual, Society

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Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy Quotes

“The aspect of "civilization" that is most hostile to festivity is not capitalism or industrialism - both of which are fairly recent innovations - but social hierarchy, which is far more ancient. When one class, or ethnic group or gender, rules over a population of subordinates, it comes to fear the empowering rituals of the subordinates as a threat to civil order.”

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“But ecstatic rituals are also good, and expressive of our artistic temperament and spiritual yearnings as well as our solidarity. So how can civilization be regarded as a form of progress if it precludes something as distinctively human, and deeply satisfying, as the collective joy of festivities and ecstatic rituals? In a remarkable essay titled "The Decline of the Choral Dance," Paul Halmos wrote in 1952 that the ancient and universal tradition of the choral dance - meaning the group dance, as opposed to the relative recent, European - derived practice of dancing in couples - was an expression of our "group-ward drives" and "biological sociality." Hence its disappearance within complex societies, and especially within industrial civilization, can only represent a "decline of our biosocial life" - a painfully disturbing conclusion.”

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