Contributions from European Symbolic Interactionists Reflections on Methods

Henry’s story describes how shows resulted in injuries, pain, and exhaus-
tion. However, like those in the modern primitive, S&M, and leathermen
subcultures, who also engage in masochistic bodily practices, the ritual
intensity of the show collapsed the distinction between pain and pleasure,
leaving only pure sensation (Rosenblatt, 1997).Henry experienced this sen-
sory purity as exaltation. Not only did it make him feel “amped up,” it
physically embodied his identity, making it feel real, objective, and
permanent.
Cooper’s journal captures an identical sentiment. In this entry, he
reflects on the feelings of personal transcendence that he experienced after
participating in an all-day punk festival in Southeastern City, during which
a slew of PA speakers and mosh pits
not to mention the sun’s blistering
heat
battered his body and senses for more than eight hours:

In twenty years I could remember no other time in my life when I had felt so alive, so

real...It wasn’t the anesthetic that seemed to satiate the already deadened nervous sys-

tem of our society. It was the ultimate embodiment of actuality. It was, in short,

life...and it was ours...I could think of very few times in my life when I was ever as

sore, when I was ever as exhausted, as when I left that mosh pit. But as we walked

away, there was no doubt who we were.

Cooper’s reminiscence describes how the exhausting ritualistic experience
of the festival prompted feelings of self-actualization. Though exhausting,
by persevering through the day he experienced his body as a vessel of plea-
sure intimately entwined to selfhood
as the “ultimate embodiment of
actuality”
rather than experiencing it as a vessel of the spirit in the
Judeo-Christian sense. By the show’s finale, Cooper reached a state in
which he had begun to experience all sensation as pleasure. The physical
and emotional intensity of that state consecrated his sense of self as real by
imbuing it with the awe-inspiring, effervescent qualities.
As with Henry, the ultimate power of the concert for Cooper rested in
its capacity to enable him tofeelhis own identity. By the end of the festival,
what it meant to be punk
and what it meant to himself
was scraped
and burned into his skin, respiring from his fatigued lungs, and dripping
off of his sweat-drenched body. Such commentary figured heavily into my
own ethnographic fieldnotes. Mirroring Henry and Cooper’s sentiments,
after attending one concert I wrote about how “I felt tired, hot, and beat
up...but somehow alive and amazing.” And 24-year-old Eve, similarly,
told me that

One of the greatest things to me about it is like...the last punk show I went to, the

next day I could feel it. I don’t know...I was pretty banged up, and my muscles were

Ecstatic Ritual as a New Mode of Youth Identity Work 181