No truth on the horizon...

Remind me to never write about culture again. As science toils away at mapping the human genome with scientific instruments, everyone that writes about culture is attempting to map the human interaction "genome" with the very instrument that it is attempting to map (the psyche). That is insanity. The more I write, the less I "know" about hipsters or culture in general. A few insights about hipsters and culture: hipster culture might be dead, or it might have never existed, or it may always exist as a "middleman" between dominant culture, subordinate culture, and corporate interests. The term may be a product of the mainstream trying to create a label for the things it needs to... label. Culture may be an entangled sphere of dominant and subordinate influences, or it may be a means of social control imposed by dominant power structures. The truth of culture is the ghost of it's lies; white is black; the world inside is outside, and I have a headache. That is all.

Paraphrases of important passages from sources

           Source Quote: "Hipsterdom is the first "counterculture" to be born under the advertising industry's microscope, leaving it open to constant manipulation but also forcing its participants to continually shift their interests and affiliation" (Haddow).

           Paraphrase: Because it operates under the influence of the advertising industry, hipster culture remains in a perpetual state of change (Haddow).

             Haddow, Douglas. "Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization." Adbusters 29 Jul 2008: Web. 6 Mar 2011. <http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/79/hipster.html>

             Source Quote: "The popular is not produced by imposing a dominant onto a subordinate culture, but by the dominant reaching into the cultural formations of subordinate groups, selectively appropriating elements, and stitching them into new discourses" (Traube 134).

           Paraphrase: Mainstream culture co-opts aspects of subculture and blends them with its constitution to create popular culture (Traube).

           Traube, Ellizabeth G. ""The Popular" in American Culture." Annual Review of Anthropology 25. (1996): 127-151. Web. 6 Mar 2011. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/2155821>

The Plot Thickens...

Well, I've been off doing spring break type things. Per a recommendation from Mr. Reynolds, that included reading a Terry Eagleton book entitled "The Idea of Culture." I'm not very far into it, but I think the book will prove useful. Also, I wrote my subject librarian. I had mostly resigned myself to using popular sources for hipster-specific material and academic sources for general information about culture, but I didn't want to limit my research to such without consulting an expert. The subject librarian provided me with several article and book recommendations and an invitation to meet with her. I highly recommend using the subject librarians for help with any research roadblocks. I will be considering the sources mine provided in the weeks to come. Cheers!

The Beginnings of an Essay

Popular culture is, despite any outward appearance of divergence, characterized by expressing itself within the horizon (acting as an unwitting agent) of existing power structures. The “true test” for lasting legitimacy among counter cultural groups is the avoidance of aesthetics as a means of identification or the ability to keep the cause separate from the effect of the aesthetic (mainstream adoption). The aesthetic of these groups may act as a catalyst for association amongst diverse actors (composition of counter culture amalgamations), but the superficiality of such is easily marketed by the mainstream. A trend, related through example (the Seattle scene), marks the nature of articulation for counter culture and mainstream corruption. These groups, as related by Oliver Marchart in “New Protest Formations and Radical Democracy,” become directly political and are often misbranded as subcultural because of an associating or representative aesthetic that is adopted by and marketed to the mainstream. This leads to continual reformation and rebranding of protest to “stay ahead of the game.” I argue that, as with hipsters, the aesthetic does not mark the emergence of protest , but unwitting submission to “the game” of existing power structures. True agents of subversion, after all, operate from within the horizon of the mainstream. To act “for the people,” they appear and bear the message “of the people” (think CIA or the assassination of Julius Caesar). The brands of alternative culture are often the agents of their subjugation to mainstream agencies (think smoking, drinking, clothing).

Academic Source 2: "The Popular" in American Culture by Elizabeth Traube and Featured in Annual Review of Anthropology

Insights: In-depth insight into the function and manifestation of culture in western society. This article potentially refutes a stagnant understanding of cultural movements. I will need to qualify my argument appropriately, e.g., discuss a specific manifestation (location and/or time) of hipster culure.

Bibliography: Traube, Elizabeth G. ""The Popular" in American Culture." Annual Review of Anthropology 25. (1996): 127-151. Web. 6 Mar 2011. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/2155821>. Through reflection on anthropological and cultural study of popular culture, Traube relates the spheres of influence for production and reception of popular culture in America. Traube finds that anthropologists tend to treat popular culture as distinct, alternate (to their own cultural consciousness) and autonomous. Within this context, she notes that right-wing studies often reduce popular culture to a primitive expression of lower classes, while the left sees the upper classes using popular culture as a means of social control. Traube compares the reductionist tendencies of anthropology to a redefinition of popular culture (through Marxist studies and Gramscian framework) as an ongoing hegemonic struggle between classes. She (Traube) takes examples from historical and contemporary American culture to posit popular culture as an entanglement of influence with ambiguous consequences.

Popular Source 1: Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization by Douglas Haddow and featured in Adbusters magazine

Insights: “While previous youth movements have challenged the dysfunction and decadence of their elders, today we have the "hipster" – a youth subculture that mirrors the doomed shallowness of mainstream society.” “We are a lost generation, desperately clinging to anything that feels real, but too afraid to become it ourselves. We are a defeated generation, resigned to the hypocrisy of those before us, who once sang songs of rebellion and now sell them back to us. We are the last generation, a culmination of all previous things, destroyed by the vapidity that surrounds us. The hipster represents the end of Western civilization – a culture so detached and disconnected that it has stopped giving birth to anything new.”

Bibliography: Haddow, Douglas. "Hipster: The Dead End of Western Civilization." Adbusters 29 Jul 2008: Web. 6 Mar 2011. <http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/79/hipster.html> In his article, Haddow posits contemporary hipsterdom as an appropriation of post World War II counter-cultural aesthetics without meaning. Haddow uses several anecdotes to highlight this suggested irony of hipster culture. According to Haddow, “Hipsterdom is the first ‘counterculture’ to be born under the advertising industry's microscope” (Haddow). Because the aim of the hipster is credibility, Haddow finds the aesthetic of this culture constantly changing to stay ahead of mainstream influence. Haddow notes that hipsters, in escaping mainstream and upper-class identity, rob the adopted aesthetics of revolution of meaning and are effectively destroying counter-culture.

Academic Source 1: New Protest Formations and Radical Democracy by Oliver Marchart and featured in Peace review

Insights: Marchart portrays "certain youth cultures and subcultures" uniting through a common aesthetic to become actively political. I intend to argue that the aesthetic of groups like hipsters is more readily approximated to "noise" in the process of politicization because it marks the occasion of submission to the "game" of the opposition. However, the function the hipsters may not be as stagnant as I intend to argue.

Bibliography: Marchart, Oliver. "New Protest Formations and Radical Democracy." Peace Review. 16.4 (2004): 415-420. Print. In his article, Marchart argues for the reclassification of “certain youth cultures and subcultures” by “taking into account the macro-political context in which they emerge” (Marchart 416). Marchart posits internal (forum for debate), external (an enemy,e.g., The World bank), and historical (dissolution of traditional horizons for protest groups, e.g., socialism) antagonization as the catalysts for more superficially inclined (protest through style) actors to join with with traditional emancipatory agencies (e.g. labor unions) and coalesce into directly political or “new protest formations” (415).  Marchart labels democracy as the current horizon for all political articulation. Because “’democracy’ is not something that is necessarily emancipatory,” Marchart establishes radical democracy as the horizon for new protest formations (419).