UCLA Center for European and Eurasian Studies

I propose to look back at the sources of ecstatic action, or trance. To understand Rausch we need to accept the inherent link between ecstatic action and transgression, the flouting of norms and boundaries. However, the link itself is a historical one; this paper would narrate a course conducted from three historical moments of Rausch and transgression: In early Romanticism, late Romanticism, and finally the 1920s conceptualization and politicization of both earlier moments.