(1991)exemplifies the narrative and discursive bias that characterizes the
literature in the following passage fromModernity and Self Identity:
a person’s identity is not to be found in behavior, norimportant though this isin
the reactions of others, but in the capacityto keep a particular narrative going. The indi-
vidual’s biography, if she is to maintain regular interaction with others in the day-to-
day world, cannot be wholly fictive. It must continually integrate events which occur in
the external world, and sort them into the ongoing “story” about the self. (p. 54)Scholars within his purview have emphasized how social actors resist post-
modernization by constructing self-narratives that involve sincerity,
authenticity, and continuity over time (Adler & Adler, 1999; Frye, 2012;
Glaeser, 2000; Lewin & Williams, 2009; Muggleton, 2000; Widdicombe,
1998 ; Williams & Copes, 2005). The literatures on embodiment, performa-
tivity, and emotion, however, suggest that “behavior”especially at the
bodily levelis very important to self-identity, as are the emotional confir-
mations that individuals receive from their peers (Allan, 1998; Collins,
2004 ).
Rejecting the dominant Western conception of self originally posited by
Descartes’ famous dictum “I think, therefore I am,” which is reflected in
extant scholarship,Merleau-Ponty’s (1962)theoryof self gives centrality to
the body. Rather than certifying ourselves from within, he argued that indi-
viduals develop their self-concepts “within a body open to the world”
(Morris, 2008, p. 111). His work illuminates how
in the body as inborn complex, meaning does not arise at a psychological level; it is
born at an organic level that is pre-personal, which is thence modulated through one’s
bodily engagement with the intersubjective world, engendering a complex personal rela-
tion to the world. (Merleau-Ponty, 1962,p. 114)The body, in other words, is not merely an empty vessel in space. We access
the world through our bodies, and it is only through “the body and bodily
experiences that the surrounding world becomes meaningful for us”
(Dahlberg, Nystro ̈m,& Dahlberg, 2008, p. 41).
While a small literature has examined the role that the body plays in
identity formation, it emphasizes the ways in which the body is altered and
decorated in order to project identitythrough, for example, cosmetic sur-
gery (Davis, 1995)and body art (Kang & Jones, 2007). Such literature
misses the fact that “people are first and foremost embodied, carnal beings
of blood and flesh who relate to the world in a passionate way”
(Wacquant, 2003, p. B9). Wacquant (2004) stresses the necessity of a
“sociology not only of the body, in the sense of object, but also from the
body...deploying the body as a tool of inquiry and vector of knowledge”
Ecstatic Ritual as a New Mode of Youth Identity Work 167