emotional responses alone were a necessary but insufficient condition for
stabilizing identity. In describing how he came to identify as punk, Blake
made an important caveat: he stated that he attended shows in order to
“see if [he] could experience the same intensity of feelingthat [he] felt
others could feel.” His emotional experiences became meaningful only at
the point when he developed the capacity to situate them within a commu-
nity of interpretationwhen relevant others infused his affective experi-
ences with meaning. The ritual qualities of shows, in other words, did not
elicit a predetermined emotional response. Like Becker’s ( 1953 )marijuana
users, research participants had to learn how to find personal affirmation
in slam dancing through a
sequence of experiences during which [they acquired] a conception of the meaning of
the behavior, and perceptions and judgments of objects and situations, all of which
ma[d]e the activity possible and desirable. (p. 235)Without the input of a community, the catharsis that Blake experienced
would have become merely another unintelligible sensory input within the
postmodern milieu.
The intersubjective construction and confirmation of meaning took place
through subtle emotional cues of approval and disapproval that subjects
exchanged while slam dancing in mosh pits and mingling between songs.
Most cues manifested as minute physical gestures, such as a pat on the
back, head nod, or laudatory facial expression. These interactions circu-
lated emotional energy and subcultural capital among participants, which
confirmed the social importance of the affective-meanings that arose during
shows.^16 My field notes illustrate the way which these intersubjective
processes played out:
After another song...a couple of people patted me on the backrandom people who
I’d interacted with in the pit. Subtle measures of approbation and praise like this carry
a long way, conferring respect and approval upon me...Throughout the show, I,
through both intention and inadvertence, harshly collided with others. However...my
collider and I would nod at each other after hitting one another. This, I think, acknowl-
edged respect as well as the nature of the interactionfriendly and collectively driven.While the cues that my notes describe seem minor, they worked to validate
the integrity of subjects’ perceived self-concepts.Summers-Effler (2002)and
Hatfield, Cacioppo, and Rapson (1994)have found that emotional contagion
appear to be noncognitive, nondiscursive, physically based, and below the
surface of conscious awareness. Information about our emotions manifests
precisely in the minute facial expressions and subtle body language that con-
certgoers enact. Far from insignificant, the brief, oft unspoken affective cues
178 PHILIP LEWIN