On the Edge of Utopia: Performance and Ritual at Burning Man (review)

There are surprisingly few academic books written about Burning Man, considering the cultural significance and scope of the event — a fact that Rachel Bowditch acknowledges in her preface. Bowditch adds considerably to this conversation by offering a detailed study that draws equally from field notes, interviews, history, political theory, aesthetics, and performance theory, arguably affording the most holistic and detailed portrait of Burning Man in print. While other books have particular disciplinary bents or are penned by devotees, this book offers a comprehensive analysis of Burning Man's social, historical, and political roles in our culture and society.

On the Edge of Utopia is divided into three main sections: an introductory overview of the event and its historical development followed by sections on the roles of performance and ritual within the event and its surrounding cultural diaspora. Illustrations include photographs of specific performances that are analyzed within the text as well as diagrams and layouts constructed by the author, which help to clarify specific points.

In the years since its first incarnation in San Francisco in 1986, Burning Man has emerged as the hub of a dynamic countercultural community. For a single week at the end of every summer, tens of thousands of people descend on an isolated and inhospitable desert in Nevada to form Black Rock City, a temporary community based on interactive art and self-expression. The paradoxical and controversial event is framed in the context of a culture war, since Burning Man's value system is juxtaposed with the commodified, capitalistic nature of the "default reality" outside of the event. However, its actual impact within that frame remains a contentious topic for those who see a contradiction inherent in the Burning Man Organization's for-profit status.

Bowditch evaluates the tensions and ambiguities that saturate Burning Man without attempting reconciliation. She traces the history of the event from its humble origins with just a few dozen participants through 2008, when nearly 50,000 attended. The formation of the for-profit Black Rock City Limited Liability Company (LLC) in 1997 was arguably a necessary transformation for an increasingly complex event, but it also highlights the contradictions inherent in a movement that is simultaneously anti-commodification and relentlessly capitalistic.

At the level of the event itself, Black Rock City is designed to accommodate creative chaos and unbridled freedom, but it is also governed by strict laws imposed by the Burning Man Organization and local authorities. While rings of orgiastic creative expression radiate across the playa, Burning Man's beehive structure "allows for the regulation and choreography of bodies and practices into precise, geographical locations that can be monitored through networks of surveillance" (94).

Despite Burning Man's complicity with capitalist society — it requires entry fees, supplies and equipment, costumes and props, staffing and police — Bowditch argues for its efficacy as a platform for experimenting with values that run counter to those of "default reality," providing a deconstructive venue within the capitalist system for developing alternatives. As such, Bowditch argues, Burning Man and similar countercultural events performs an important symbolic function in relation to the rest of Western civilization.

Situating Burning Man in the history of both attempted and theoretical utopias, Bowditch resists the notion that the inability of a utopian community to sustain itself signals its failure. In opposition to narrow definitions of communication and consciousness, Burning Man "raises the possibility of creating a different kind of culture within a society, a culture with a completely different vision of the world" (324). Rather than promoting a nihilistic destruction of Western culture, Burning Man deconstructs that culture in order to demonstrate the fundamentally performative nature of reality. Initiated into the process of system formation itself — by experiencing the effects of their actions within a participation-based culture — "Burners" are able to experiment with the symbolic constructs of our collective reality beyond the scope of any particular manifestation or coherent doctrine. In other words, Burning...