well, noting how musicespecially within the punk genresuccessfully
generates “mystified” relations among those who listen together.
Punk shows thus formed temporary communities of time grounded in
sharedsensory experience. They were not communities in which those pre-
sent necessarily possessed cognitive or discursive understanding of what
dwelled within the minds of other constituents. But this did not matter.
Knorr Cetina and Bruegger (2002)arguethat “a more primordial form of
sociality arises from the reciprocal orientation of participants toward one
another” relative to discursive communication (p. 921). The powerful inter-
subjective mode of sociality that arose during showscoupled with the
gestural forms of communication that took place within themactivated
and confirmed punk identity in a far more effective way than cultural prac-
tices that relied on discoursea finding that the literature on dance has
well confirmed (Anderson, 2009; Ehrenreich, 2006; Jackson, 2004; McNeil,
1995 ).
EMBODYING IDENTITY AS CORPOREAL
KNOWLEDGE
Powerful as they were, however, the awe-inspiring emotional states that
concerts generated could not persist forever, nor could they ward off reflex-
ivity forevermore. Many of their effects endured, however, by tying the
self-concepts of participants to physical, tactile sensation. The intensity of
the concert experience manifested in injuries, scars, and ringing ears. These
physical markers of identitylike tattoos, scarifications, and other physi-
cal rites of passageremained after shows ended, becoming deified in
both the memory and flesh of participants. They transported the sacred
emotions produced by the ritual qualities of the concert into everyday life.
During an interview, 21-year-old Henry told me how the unique mem-
ories and experiences that he gleaned from punk shows indelibly imprinted
themselves into his memory:
Whenever I’ve gone to any punk rock shows and stood in the back...there’s not a lot
that I can really recall later on in time^17 ...but if you get into the pit, you’ll always
remember...’aww man! Remember that one guy came up, and he like elbowed me in
the face!’ ‘Yeah! Itreally hurt, but it was cool, because afterwards he picked me up and
was spinning me around and it was awesome!’...you get out a lot of energy out, and
afterwards...it’s kind of amazing because you’ve been doing all this crazy stuff
you’re dripping with sweat and dehydrated, but you’re not tired at all, you’re actually
amped up, and you want to go see another show immediately. It feels really good.180 PHILIP LEWIN