Introduction

This chapter is the first to discuss in depth the festival material under study, by presenting the Palio race in Siena. It is by necessity a summary aimed at establishing the first case for this comparative study. Of the festivals under study, the Palio has the longest traceable continuity, the highest level of integration and of embeddedness in its community.

The chapter begins with a first person, phenomenological account of two days of events surrounding the Palio of August 2000 seeking to convey some of the event's intensity, after which a brief outline of the modern race proceedings is given. The chapter then moves to an outline of the territorial division of Siena into the 17 contrade, their internal structures and functions and how these relate to the Palio and to the political governance of the town. Next is an account of the contrade's involvement in the celebrations preceding the race forming an integral part of the Palio as a ritual event. This is followed by a brief history of Siena and the Palio, before an historical analysis of the main dynamics emerging from the history of town and race. At this point, it is possible to begin the theoretical analysis of these themes using Deleuze and Guattari's concepts of ‘State and war machines’ as particular processes or dynamics of power. This exploration continues, probing into more depth the fluid dynamics of becoming, again in the light of Deleuze and Guattari's concepts, particularly what they term becoming-animal.