Wa ̈ngqvist (2011), for example, argue that adolescents anchor their identities in
romantic relationships and occupational contexts. Scholars who take account of the
inability to anchor identity within postmodern institutions (Turner, 1976), on
the other hand, generally stress the discursive processes of identity formation
(Glaeser, 2000; Lewin & Williams, 2009; Mason-Schrock, 1996; Muggleton, 2000;
Widdicombe, 1998; Williams & Copes, 2005).
- Just as the Balinese put their selves into symbolic play in animal form
throughcockfights (Geertz, 1972),punks put their senses of self into play via slam
dancing. Most participants strived to establish a prominent place within the pit.
Above, Ian for example described how he vied to get to the front of the stage.
Cooper, similarly, discussed how he “destroyed most of the people in the pit” in
one of his journal entries. This is how punks balance the distinctiveness of their
identity with group connection. - They also signaled to participants that they were in a space in which they
couldfreely enact their punk selves without worrying about being criticized or
assaulted. - Just as the Balinese deem only some cockfights “real” (those that success-
fully dramatize and symbolically play out local status concerns), participants
within the Southeastern scene deemed only certain types of shows and certain
types of participation within them as real. Participants described energetic shows
with lively mosh pits as meaningful but exhibited a dismissive attitude
toward tame shows. Energetic shows not only generated the requisite conditions
for activating identity through ritual (Collins, 2004)but carried an interpretive
functionconstituting a punk reading of punk experience (Geertz, 1972). Many
subjects described feelings of frustration with regard to their inability to establish
identity and status within normative institutions. Mosh pits did not so much
represent as enact these feelings. Like much punk style, moshing represented a
highly ordered display of the disorder that participants felt in their personal lives
(Hebdige, 1979). As a social form, it was homologous with the individual experi-
ences of participants. - See alsoRose’s (1962)and Katovichand Reese’s (1993)critiques of Mead’s
“Enlightened,” discourse-oriented self.
19.Hancock and Lorr (2013)notedthis finding as well in their study of hardcore
punk concerts, asserting that the music at shows generated “a sense of social
euphoria in which the individual self dissolves into the collective effervescence of
the mosh pit” (p. 331). - They have, however, attempted to link the quest for authentic selfhood with
otherfactors, such as the intangible economy of postindustrial capitalism (Bell,
1976),the residues of Romantic esthetics (Taylor, 1992), and the decline of the
family (Lasch, 1976). - I deal with these issues in a different paper, though they are also documented
byBaron (1989), Gaines(1991), Muggleton (2000), andLewin and Williams (2009). - Many symbolic interactionists, it should be noted, would likely dispute this
claim.AsKatovich and Reese (1993)assert,the mid-century work of scholars like
Goffman (1959, 1961)andBecker (1963)arguably preempted lamentations about
the superficial and anchorless postmodern nonself that later emerged from continen-
tal philosophy.
EcstaticRitual as a New Mode of Youth Identity Work 191