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This paper examines how young people develop meaningful self-concepts in the postmodern social world. Drawing from an ethnographic investigation of punk subculture, I explore how identity work is performed when young people are saturated with competing self-definitions and encouraged to engage in reflexive self-doubt. Focusing on the ecstatic qualities of concerts, I describe a complex process of identity formation wherein youth emotionally experience their identities through ritual performance rather than constructing them through institutional affiliation or narrative. My analysis draws heavily from Bourdieu’s practice theory and the existential phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty, emphasizing the centrality of embodiment and performativity to postmodern identity. I conclude with a discussion of how postmodern theories of the nonself exaggerate the insecurity of contemporary identity, and I outline a new theoretical framework regarding identity formation that bridges the literatures on subjectivity and embodiment with classical work in symbolic interactionism.

Purpose – Research on punk culture often falls prey to three main dilemmas. First, an ageist bias exists in most popular music research, resulting in the continued equating of music and youth. Second, punk culture research often uses a Marxist economic lens that implies fieldwork reveals already known conceptions of class and culture. Third, research on punk culture lacks ethnographic and narrative examinations. This ethnographic project explores my reentry into punk culture as an adult, exploring it from a new researcher perspective. It provides an insider's view of emerging cultural themes at the site that disrupts these traditional research approaches.

Methodology/approach – This ethnography examines punk culture at an inner city nonprofit arts establishment. Through grounded theory and using a fictional literary account, this research probes how rituals and cultural narratives pervade and maintain the scene.

Findings – Concepts such as carnival, jamming as an organizing process – and as an aesthetic moment – emerged through the research process. This ethnography found narratives constituted personal and communal identity.

Research limitations/implications – As a personal ethnography, this research contains experiences in one local arts center, and therefore is not necessarily generalizable to other sites or experiences.

Originality/value of paper – Using ethnography, I explored punk as one of my primary identities in tandem with younger members of the scene. It critiques Marxist and youth approaches that have stunted music scene research for decades.

This chapter compares and contrasts the British invasion and punk rock as mystified, post-performance products. Expanding on Goffman's notion of mystification to discuss texts that emerged from performances and drawing on Mannheim's distinction between ideological and utopian perspectives, we discuss the British invasion as bound to elite interpretations of mystified products and punk rock as bound to more provincial and anti-elitist interpretations. We note that despite differences, both genres involve, to varying degrees, mystifying differences, mystifying legendary status, and mystifying popularity itself. The discussion of both musical genres compliments and affirms previous analyses, especially the analysis of punk rock as a dramaturgical and utopian version of play.