Occasionally, I might refer to “the project” or “the Gen X/fin de millennium project” or “The End project.” Frequent readers might know what it is. But if you’re new, here’s the best short explanation I’ve got currently:
“The End” is an effort to write an intellectual history of Generation X. More than a history of what people born within a certain span of years did or thought, it will be a history of the concept of Generation X - what it meant, who it applied to, and what uses people put the concept to. The birth and rise to prominence of the more-or-less arbitrary identity category of “Gen X'' occurred during a historical era characterized by the retrenchment of ruling class power in societies throughout the globe, all in a context of dizzying social, technological, economic, cultural, and ecological change. The strains that made the concept “Gen X” ran through this era, shaping it and being shaped by it. Alongside getting a better grip on what made Gen X and it’s era what they were, I also hope to gain insight into how to write intellectual history “in the vernacular” - about thought and expression as lived and experienced.
Or, hell, let’s bullet-point it:
History of Gen X
Are generations a stupid made-up category? Yes
The ways people use stupid made-up categories tell us a lot about how people think
How the idea of Gen X was made and used tells us specifically about the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, where a lot of important shit happened
Looking at how the idea of Gen X functions in the world also tells us about how to look at other, similar ideas
The form this will project will take is likely going to be long-form narrative podcast. That might change.