Separating from Hardcore Ritual: Situating Post-Traditional Religious Experience in the Life Course with Ex-Straightedgers

Abstract

This article explores aspects of separation from “post-traditional” religiosity characteristic of certain late/post-modern affiliations. To do so, I analyze in-depth interviews with 44 individuals who formerly identified with straightedge – a clean-living youth-oriented scene tightly bound with hardcore music that is centered on abstinence from intoxicants – about their experiences transitioning through associated music assembly rituals. While features of hardcore music assemblies – e.g. moshing, slamdancing, sing-a-longs – have long been treated as symbolic connections that potentially conjure the religious as conceptualized in Émile Durkheim's “effervescence” and the liminality of Victor Turner's “communitas,” data on transitions from these features of ritual remain scant. Ex-straightedgers generally believed the sorts of deep connections they professed to experience in hardcore rituals as youths were not necessarily currently accessible to them, nor were they replicable elsewhere. Findings then ultimately suggest some post-traditional religious experiences might now be profitably considered in terms of the life course, which has itself transformed alongside the proliferation of newer late/post-modern affiliations and communities.

Citation

Torkelson, J. (2022), "Separating from Hardcore Ritual: Situating Post-Traditional Religious Experience in the Life Course with Ex-Straightedgers", Conner, C.T. (Ed.) Subcultures (Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Vol. 54), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 31-52. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0163-239620220000054003