Gergen’s and Giddens’ theories of self-implosion had predicted. Those
feelings were not immutable, however. Participants in the Southeastern
City scene innovated micro-level cultural strategies in order to neutralize
the macro-cultural effects of saturation and reflexivity.
This finding, asGubrium and Holstein (2000)have posited, suggests that
although post-modernization complicates the quest for secure selfhood, it
neither precludes nor discourages it. To the contrary, post-modernization
seems to expand and intensify the process of self-formationan observa-
tion that numerous scholars have made over the past 30 years (Boyle, 2004;
Taylor, 1992). While those scholars have observed a growing devotion to
self-discovery, they have not connected that observation to its root cause.^20
Although postmodern individualsappearto exhibit a fervent moral commit-
ment to self-discovery, my findings suggest that their heightened devotion is
merely an appearance that results from the fact that social actors in the
postmodern social world must work harderculturally, physically, and
intersubjectivelyin order to achieve a stable and meaningful self-concept
relative to the more institutionalized men and women of modernity
(Strauss, 1959). This suggests that the contemporary obsession with self-
discovery does not indicate a change in cultural values (cf. Bell, 1976;
Lasch, 1979; Taylor, 1992), but rather a change in the cultural strategies
through which individuals pursue self-formation.
Relative to previous eras, self-formation and self-confirmation require
different modes of cultural work and more of it. While modernist indivi-
duals relied on integration into normative institutions in order toattaina
sense of self, postmodern individuals must engage in novel forms of cultural
work, which operate on the body and register at the level of emotion, in
order todiscoverand thenconfirma self-concept (Turner, 1976).Those in
my study could not and did not find personal meaning within normative
social roles.^21 They also failed to form stable identities through narration
and discourse alone. They relied on participation in punk showsand the
cathartic emotional states that ensuedin order to secure identity. Punk,
in short, was not so much something that they were as something that they
didsomething that they accomplished in ritual performance.
While the lion’s share of research has focused on the discursive tactics
thatsocial actors utilize in order mitigate postmodern centrifuge, more
work is needed on the ritual processesand at a more micro-level, bodily
processesthat young people utilize in order to cement postmodern iden-
tifications. Such an approach to the study of self-formation would cohere
closely with advances in the related literature on “subjectivity,” which sug-
gest that iterative and embodied behaviors ultimately summon selves into
Ecstatic Ritual as a New Mode of Youth Identity Work 187