Thursday, October 22, 2009

More on Hipsters: His Bowtie Is Really A Camera

Generation Bubble posted a translation of a recent article by heavyweight philosopher Slavoj Zizek. In his article, Zizek bent his considerable intellect to the task of considering "hipsters", a topic that I am finding more and more interesting thanks to Kaya Oakes' discussion in Slanted and Enchanted.

I can't say that I understand everything Zizek is saying (since some might argue the extent to which he says anything at all), but it seems to me that really all he is saying is that we throw around "hipster" as a derogatory term because we feel insecure about our own identities. To a certain extent, I think this would only be true if all our relationships with other people were premised on exchanges of power and status. It's a pretty cynical point of view, but certainly we can all think of some people in "the scene" that we would accuse of harbouring these views. Further, given government policies of infiltrating suspected subversive groups, it's not wholly unwarranted to be suspicious.

On the other hand, as I argued earlier, any person who's participation in the counterculture is limited to passive activities such as consumption, can be defined as a hipster. If we accept that the counterculture is one where all members are encouraged to become more active participants (though we often debate how to define "more active"). However the point to be made here is that the transition from mainstream culture to counterculture is not clear cut, the boundaries are fuzzy, and "hipster" represents a transition state that more senior members of the counterculture ought to help these sympathizers negotiate.