Why Youth Culture

PERSPECTIVES ON URBAN EDUCATION FALL 2010 | PAGE 19 Why Youth Culture By Ralph Cintron, University of Illinois at Chicago A few weeks ago I read an article by queathed something to Dwight, which and the Lyric performers believe what a philosopher (whose name I cannot he passed on to me without knowing they believe? Why has this become recall) in the New York Times and the it, and I, just maybe, passed it on to their commonsense? And why isn’t it subsequent blog responses. The subject Joe, also without knowing it, and so everyone’s commonsense, for instance, was Lady Gaga. Many of the respond- on down the line, a thematic moving those people on the other side of the ers could not fathom why a philoso- through the hands of those who may culture wars? There is a need for the pher would want to waste her time on be real strangers, but in the actions making of a sympathetic, historical a cheap cultural icon who “clearly” was of reading and writing turn out to be inquiry that maps the evolution of the meaningless—or rather had only one not so strange to each other. Again liberal/progressive social imaginary, meaning, namely, the commodification my best to Joe’s wife and his family. what its foundational claims are and of meaninglessness under hyper-capi- So, some of us have this thing about its particular dependence on a certain talism. They asked: Is this the irrele- youth culture. There is so much of it interpretation of social change. Such a vance to which contemporary philoso- in the anthropological literature and map, I suspect, would have a number of phy had sunk?? Several of the bloggers in cultural studies, wassup? (To ask scattered nodes linking up a very deep thought that “old” philosophers seemed “what” of anything seems a bit por- network of ideas at historical junctures. to enjoy, perhaps even salaciously, tentous, but a “wassup” seems to lead My current work offers nothing like commenting on the sexual practices to less ontology, and that seems about that, but it has begun poking around. of youth and making moral state- right here.) Why does Paul Lee, the Mind you, I am not just talking about ments. Were they thinking of Plato? teacher and organizer of the American- youth culture now but something much As someone who has also written Asian Studies curriculum in Joe’s re- bigger than that: all the tinkering that about youth culture—along with Joe, search, want the performances at Brim- has gone into the making of the liberal/ Dwight Conquergood, and many oth- ley High to “breakup stereotypes” and progressive social imaginary but also ers—I would like to meditate on that “articulate complex identities”? Why its right wing counterpart. Perhaps theme just a bit. But before doing so, are stories that “enlarge the self” neces- that last phrase sounds strange, but some epideictic. I met Joe only once, sary and how do they counter margin- increasingly I am beginning to believe at the Palmer House in Chicago, if I alization? Is there some “natural” op- that the tea partiers imaginary, what- recall. Rob Fairbanks on several occa- position between the two? Why should ever that means, (and I use them as sions has told me that my writing had students be “empowered to change just one example of the right) is histori- been influential on Joe. As I was read- things”? Why do the leaders of Lyric cally joined, sort of, at the hip of liber- ing Joe’s chapter on “Youth Spaces. and Asian-American Studies value re- alism/progressivism—and this is what .Power. .and Performance,” it was ob- sistance, agency, and the poetics of makes modernity look a bit monstrous, vious that Dwight’s work too was very identity? Why do Fine and Weis at the unwieldy, but at the same time rather important for Joe. Dwight had extend- end of Joe’s essay talk about the impor- wily. In a sense modernity is trying to ed a hand to me early on in my career. tance of voices being heard, the articu- survive, and the struggle between the I was shocked when he died. He was lation of differences, and leaving deficit right and left is an apt sign of the fragil- much too young. And I was shocked models at the door? And then most ity of this most thorough-going artifice. when I heard of Joe’s death. Obvi- intriguingly, and also at the end, why So, a few riffs unsustained. That ously, he was much too young. So two are Lyric and Asian-American Stud- phrase “democratic institutions” men- deaths embracing each other, even as ies linked to “democratic institutions”? tioned earlier works well into my in- I remain standing, was one reason for These are very familiar topoi or the- terpretive scheme. Some of the early writing this. I hope, I genuinely hope, matics that seem to drive most work modern and enlightenment writers on that Joe’s wife and child can feel this on youth culture. For many readers democracy fetishized democracy in its short essay as tribute, this thing done the answers to the above questions opposition to monarchy. Someone like in memory of another for the memo- are obvious: justice and fairness are Thomas Paine, for instance, is rather ries and well being of those closest to moral imperatives and acknowledging notorious, but even the Federalist pa- Joe, the chance that the child at some the worthiness of difference is one way pers written with much more sobriety point may read this and know some- to realize a more just world. I want to framed the American democratic ex- thing about their father. Scholarship, raise questions about their “obvious- perience as a unique, unfolding ex- research—whatever you want to call ness” and frame things a little different- periment in the progress of civilization. it—is a strange action: someone be- ly: why do Paul Lee and his performers There is a politics of enthusiasm here PERSPECTIVES ON URBAN EDUCATION FALL 2010 | PAGE 20 that I summarize with the concept of that who we are are the not-oppressed. and others rather subtle. On the primal potentia—that the democratic rheto- Indeed, the idea of oppression has end is the simple fact that we stand to rics (equality, freedom, rights, liberty, moved from the early days of demo- lose too much in a siege: all of our eco- transparency, and so on) release hu- cratic imagining, where the physical nomic well being, even our poverty, is man potentia, meaning that hierarchy oppressions of state power were the tied up in the existing order. We are all must give way to the “will of the peo- targets of revolt, to the later days of financialized now—even welfare recipi- ple,” the “common man,” and so on. It democratic imagining where the op- ents. On the subtler end is that we have is this potentia that becomes the moral pressions are of cultural bias and ste- found ways to dampen the punch of the standard that replaces such older mor- reotype. And yet the same necessity, egalitarian side of democracy through a al foundations as the “divine right of even urgency, to address what seem to set of tricky terms such as “meritocra- kings,” and even divine right itself for be fundamental “wrongs.” The mes- cy.” In sum, we buy into the democrat- a figure like Nietzsche. Today, human sianism cannot just disappear but must ic rhetorics even as we buy out of them. rights talk speaks more convincingly to keep finding “spaces” to do its work. Well, I have not said anything here our metaphysically-abandoned world, The curious thing about democracy that Foucault did not say much more but not even human rights can aban- is that everyone buys into it even as succinctly on page 65, for those who don vestiges of transcendence, perhaps they buy out of it. Edmund Burke and have the 2008 Palgrave edition of his because human law has its conceptual Jeremy Bentham never fully bought The Birth of Biopolitics: “Freedom is. origins in natural law. So transcen- into it, but neither did Xenophon, . .constantly produced. [Liberalism] dence sneaks back in. At any rate, the Plato, and the other oligarchs of clas- proposes to manufacture it constantly, democratic rhetorics released a very sical Greece. It’s just too careless and to arouse it and produce it, [along with special energia that continues to con- unpredictable—which in effect is what the] constraints and the problems of sume us with the belief that the world the liberals and progressives also felt cost raised by this production.” That is, we ought to live in should be a world as they saw Sarah Palin rise out of the democracy through its rhetorics, and in of opportunity for everyone. Mind you, populist nowhere. Ultimately no one some cases its empirical successes, has this is a strange belief. Even a cursory quite believes in equality because we produced a certain subjectivity that is glance through history and ethnogra- cannot truly live in it. So equality cir- far from running its course. It is thor- phies of others, including exotic oth- culates less in our actions and more in ough-going in the sense that both the ers, indicates that such notions are not our talk, particularly in those contexts right wing and left wing subscribe, for necessarily common. Social order and where we can afford the talk of equal- instance, to the maximization of choice.

Load more