Hey everybody! Like I said, I plan on continuing my work on Generation X and the history of the 1979-2008 period. If you’d like, you can listen my 2022 and 2023 lectures dealing with the subject. Right now, I intend to write… a book! What is the deal with writing a work of history to academic standards outside of the academy and without independent wealth? Well, I’m gonna do it when I can. What’s the deal with publishing such a work? Murky, at best! I’m just gonna do the work and see where it takes me. And here’s…
A Plan of Work
I plan on pursuing this project about Gen X using paired dyads of concepts. I use a spatial metaphor for how many ideas with the Gen X “structure of feeling” (to use Raymond Williams’ concept) interact- as poles that, notionally opposed to each other, define a communicative space. There’s an inside and an outside of each, and relevance to the matter notionally at hand – the conflict between irony and sincerity, say – does not define whether a given idea, artifact, or actor exists within the space. There are other factors at work. I also stick with dyads because I see the era in which Gen X came to definition and still lives (i.e. the time from the mid-1970s until now) as a time defined in part by a lack of resolution. There’s a lot of moving, posturing, shouting, whispering, frantic waving of arms, but little fundamental change. The thesis and the antithesis generally fail to form a synthesis, both in Gen X culture and in late capitalist existence.
There’s going to be seven dyads and a triad, here. Each gets a chapter, and I plan on interweaving them as I go. I also plan on bringing in neat bits that are relevant or illustrative. I want people to enjoy this book, to take on board the culture or, anyway, my curated selection of its artifacts with my commentary, not just absorb a message. I will now describe the chapters.
The introductory dyad is History and Generation. This does the stuff introductions are supposed to do. It’s pretty important to nail down what this project is. It feels even more urgent to me to define what it isn’t- though I get that might not make for a great introduction if I don’t keep it in check. You can see the introductory portions of my two Gen X birthday lectures for more on that. For this, I’m reading a lot of generational analysis type books, which are somewhere between astrology and pop evolutionary psychology in terms of intellectual merit. Luckily, this is balanced by important methodological figures I’m taking on board- Reinhard Koselleck, Jose Antonio Maravall, Raymond Williams, Lauren Berlant, etc.
The next four dyads are what I see as Gen X dyads- the ones that often baffle those who live alongside the Gen X age cohort but are not of it (and, to be fair, many within the cohort, doubtless). What did these things once mean? What do they mean now?
First, we have Alternative and Mainstream. For this, I will be looking at the great hue and cry over “alternative culture” and its precipitous collapse. I’ll be reading extensively from the small cottage industry that has arisen dedicated to ruefully picking over the ruins, and the large, not-cottage industry that once existed to promote alternative culture. I’m reading journalism and biographies of grunge and the earlier indie and punk scenes, listening to some of the music, and will get to some of the movies. It’s worth noting there were a great many critics of this whole alternative bubble from Gen X at the time (often enough disdainful of the Gen X label- understandably)- Tom Frank, Steve Albini, etc. But- most of them still bought into the idea that there really was an alternative, somewhere, and a mainstream it was opposed to. Ok- let’s take them at their word. When did this start, what did it look like, where did it go? I’m going to try to do a more rigorous take on this than we usually get from cultural critics. Other bits and bobs I want to include here: youth culture; subculture; “the creative class”; “tribes”
Second, I will look at the dyad of Edgy and Wholesome. I covered this in this year’s birthday lecture but still have a lot to do. Among other things, I want to tie it in with these other set-pieces, as they hardly existed in isolation (they also didn’t exist in a neat battle array with clear sides, as we’ll see). I’m reading transgressive writers, stuff from the zine culture (which, in many ways, is defined in reference to the above dyad of alternative-mainstream), I imagine I’ll watch some more movies and TV. I do want to get more into wholesomeness, “family values” cultural revanchism, and what we could call the false synthesis of media with (supposedly) wholesome “messages” but (supposedly) edgy features (cuss words, poop jokes). Other stuff I want to incorporate here: the transgressive/alternative view of American history; conspiracy culture; the valences of hate
Third, I’ve got Irony and Sincerity. I’ve thought about putting this first- I still might. To me, it’s not as obvious as it seems that these would be put in the kind of opposition to each other that we commonly see in “the discourse.” But it happened! This is one place where I want to talk about that least likely, but omnipresent, culture war battle site, the university, and how “postmodernism,” “deconstruction,” and “theory” took on the meanings they did and how they came to be seen as “assaults on truth.” Alongside that there’s various artifacts of “irony culture” and a… second? Third? iteration of “The New Sincerity,” associated in literary fiction with David Foster Wallace. He’s been dead for fifteen years but still arguably defines Gen X literature! Other bits: “Snark”; memoirs; autofiction
Fourth and last for the dyads that lived, died, and sometimes experienced a kind of undeath with the Gen X experience, Activists and Slackers. Here there might be a bit more meat for the poor Millennial looking for some dunks on Xers. It’s wild how smug losers came to be seen as better than people who give a shit, but, there we are. Readings include accounts of the long-ignored, and much more active than stereotype would have you believe, history of militant organizing in the eighties and early nineties, assorted literary, cinematic, and televised depictions of the archetypes here and their interactions, and various other gleanings. Also bringing in The End Of History; radical centrism; South Park Republicanism.
The next two are dyads we are stuck with, it seems, that cultural structures that, in many respects, sought to actively undo the products of the Gen X… thing… have accepted or failed to replace or destroy (yet). Our inheritance, if you will.
Clowns and Preachers - how in the hell did comedians come to play the role they do, as a substitute for many of the functions once associated with religion, to the point of producing figures like Hannah Gadsby? To figure this out, I’m reading accounts of the history of standup comedy, stuff about popular religion in the late twentieth century, I’ll probably have to get some broader history (and historiography) of religion stuff under my belt, and likely a bunch of memoirs of comedians- low percentage play there, but hey. At this point, a lot of the “extraneous” material will begin to be stuff that weaves back in with earlier dyads, but I definitely want to get into Satanic Panic, and as a throw-forward, we need to talk about media technology, parasocial relationships, etc.
Science and Magic - Arguably, a dyad that isn’t, but a structure that relies on the idea that someone, somewhere, even if those participating in the conversation have no idea who, sees the two as polar opposites, attitudes towards which define a person’s – and a culture’s – relationship to reality writ large. A lot of what we see in the dyads above leave power out of the conversation. Arguably, science and magic is where power comes back in. I’m reading stuff about the internet, technology, New Age thought, various meme-philosophies in the rationalism space. Bits and bobs: role-playing games, cyberpunk, the many modalities of self-improvement.
Lastly, we get a triad- a dialectic, for a treat. Past, Present, and Future will look at what all this means. Some of you know my trick- that millennial culture cannot say it is so different from Gen X, that we cannot resolve any dialectics either, that we shuffle the deck but are still playing the same games with the cards. But I don’t think it’s always going to be like that.
That’s what I’ve got, friends. I’ve got a lot to read, watch, listen to, and write. I’ll keep you posted. Check out some of my stash of stuff to read for this project!
I love the material collection part of a project. I think Mithra thinks it’s pretty ok, too.
Sounds fantastic!