Together Somehow

In <i>Together Somehow</i> Luis Manuel Garcia-Mispireta examines how people find ways to get along and share a dancefloor a vibe and a sound. Drawing on time spent in the minimal techno and house music subscenes in Chicago Paris and Berlin as the first decade of the new millennium came to a close Garcia-Mispireta explains this bonding in terms of what he calls stranger-intimacy: the kind of warmth sharing and vulnerability between people that happens surprisingly often at popular electronic dance music parties. He shows how affect lubricates the connections between music and the dancers. Intense shared senses of sound and touch help support a feeling of belonging to a larger social world. However as Garcia-Mispireta points out this sense of belonging can be vague fluid and may hide exclusions and injustices. By showing how sharing a dancefloor involves feeling touch sound sexuality and subculture Garcia-Mispireta rethinks intimacy and belonging through dancing crowds and the utopian vision of throbbing dancefloors.