ABSTRACT

In recent years, the field of emotional geographies has emerged generating provocative claims about the necessity of admitting emotion into geographic and other scholarship. Performances of cathartic, loud, high-energy music like punk rock magnify the emotional and physical activities of concertgoers at the shows, offering insights into the range of human emotional response. Punk shows foster a heightened, exhilarating sense of community that encourages participation through singing along to anthemic lyrics, coupled with high-contact dancing, crowd-surfing, and even stage-diving. Notably, canonical DC punk group Fugazi, aimed to tone down violence at shows; they played unconventional venues like art galleries and movie theaters, discouraging their fans from slam-dancing and any other potentially harmful behavior. Although transforming spatial environments that have existed around punk shows for decades is always more difficult than simply expressing words of tolerance, those sentiments hang above the participants' heads, in the cloud of steam, sweat, and raised fists.