Repeating beats: The return of rave, memories of joy and nostalgia between the afterglow and the hangover

The British rave scene of the late 1980s and early 1990s is widely remembered as a moment of elation and bliss. Contemporary cultural representations position the Second Summer of Love of 1989 - when thousands of young people attended illegal parties, experienced the hypnotic beats of house music and had their first brush with the drug ecstasy - as an object of nostalgia. I argue that rave nostalgia is suspended between two dispositions: the afterglow and the hangover. Whereas the former involves happiness, reversibility and continuity, the latter is defined by melancholia, irreversibility and discontinuity. On this basis, I consider two texts that creatively combine these dispositions in their evocation of rave: the music video for The Streets's 'Weak Become Heroes' and Jeremy Deller's documentary Everybody in the Place. Finally, I assess how the euphoria associated with rave nostalgia helps to augment and advance the recent turn to joy in memory studies.