There is also a centuries-long, and frankly not very enlightening, debate over whether the most apparently subversive popular festivals were really as subversive as they seem; or if they are really conservative, allowing common folk a chance to blow off a little steam and give vent to their baser instincts before returning to everyday habits of obedience.55 It strikes us that all this rather misses the point. What’s really important about such festivals is that they kept the old spark of political self-consciousness alive. They allowed people to imagine that other arrangements are feasible,
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