Pilgrimages of the Plagued: AIDS, Body and Society

This article describes the mystico-religious character of the `gay-mega-party' phenomenon which has developed in and across urban gay `communities' of the Western world and suggests how the HIV/AIDS health crisis, pivotal in the enactment of this postmodern form of religious expression, sets it apart from mainstream expressions of `rave' culture. The concept of a gay `community' is problematic, and notions of `lifestyle' and `neo-tribalism' are employed in order to conceptualize individual and communal processes of identification of homosexual behaviour. The application of Turner's anthropological perspective on traditional forms of pilgrimage reveals the proximity of the `megagay-party' phenomenon to popular pilgrimage culture.