- Second, the dialectic between action and awareness fuses, producing a
state of “flow” in which the capacity to enact identity with certainty and
unflinching resolve arises. - Third, ritual processes generate affective-meanings that concentrate
within the self, validating the integrity of identity. - Fourth, others reconfirm identity by exchanging emotional contagion
within an intersubjective community of time. - And fifth, tactile sensation ossifies into a form of embodied knowledge,
which encodes the sanctity of identity into both memory and flesh,
becoming a new sensual coordinate within the habitus (Bourdieu, 1977).
The cumulative process of identity stabilization that concerts set in motion
mollified both of the challenges to identity formation elaborated earlier in
the paper: Giddens ‘“radical reflexivity” and Gergen’s “social saturation.”
Giddens’ theory of radical reflexivity posits that values of the Enlighten-
ment have descended into a juggernaut, and that postmodern individuals
direct a debilitating doubt toward everything existing as a result. He argues
that this prevents them from taking anything for granted, including their
own self-concepts. His predictions about the effects of runaway Enlighten-
ment values rely, however, on the assumptions of an empiricist phenomen-
ology. Rooted in Cartesian philosophy, Giddens’ reflexivity concept defines
the ego as the individual’s locus of sense-making, elevating it to a position
that is both independent from and superior to the body.^18
Participants in the Southeastern City punk scene sought out emotional
rather than cognitive meanings during the process of self-formation, how-
ever, privilegingembodiedforms of knowledge over cognitive ones. They
experienced their identities as something felt, not something consciously
thought. Rather than developing self-certainty by coherently processing
sensory inputs within the mind, subjectsaccomplishedidentity by success-
fully navigating the requirements for bodily performance within the subcul-
ture’s foremost ritual (Butler, 1990). These performances overcame
reflexive doubt by moving cultural meaning to the level of thebodyand to
form ofpractice.Within the context of ecstatic ritual, coherent ego aware-
ness descended to a position of only secondary importance.
Contrary to Giddens’ assumptions, my data thus speak against the
Cartesian notion that social actors are composed of active minds and pas-
sive bodies, wherein contradictory sensory inputs from the latter disrupt
the internal harmony of the former. To the contrary, the minds and bodies
of my subjects existed in a recursive and dialectical relationship. While ego
awareness was by no means irrelevant, the practices and performances of
Ecstatic Ritual as a New Mode of Youth Identity Work 183