From the Mystification of Practice to the Negation of the Real?

Through posters and publicity, the nightclubs of Montpellier appear to offer a bacchanal universe, promising a complete inversion of one’s everyday routine. The woman’s body appears hyper-sexualized in the publicity leading up to parties, as well as in the pictures published online after the party. The male participants use discourses that confirm the reality conveyed by these images. The party’s intensity is expressed through the duration of being present in the space whereas frenzy and chaos are depicted as being self-evident. The body is thus the central element of all the actions that become possible in the space of the nightclub. However, the ethnography of body practices clearly reveals a specific performance in these nightclubs. The polarity of the body and of the verbal underlines a denial of the real experience in nightclubs, which is translated by a mystification of practices in the discourses of the actors.