New Maps for a Known Territory: Early Exploration of Club Studies and Epistemology of the Night

The French Revolution is one of the most important events in human history and had a huge impact on the modern European life. One of the most overlooked social and cultural changes it brought about is the growth of public dancehalls as a place of public leisure. After that, the modern history witnessed a proliferation of these places for social gathering and dance, from the informal social regulation of dancehalls and ballrooms to the nightclubs and the rave parties’ transgression. Despite this long process of dances, music, pleasures and sociality, it is only in recent times that the academic world has approached club culture as a valid research topic. The first section of the article is about the three main perspectives through which the scientific community has approached club culture over the last twenty-five years. In the second section, I will advocate an alternative way to explore clubbing influenced by the embodied turn in humanities and social sciences. This approach seems promising as it designates a validated space to the fluid complexity of electronic dance music events and to the different and varied clubbers’ affective and sensory experiences