writings/rantings

Regular Converse -a classic look that often justifies itself/leaves much to be desired at the same time. It sort of says ‘I am a humble person’ but still lets people know that you are either 10-25% alt or 100% post-alt.

I may or may not be a hipster (or a scenester, or whatever), and I may or may not have hipster friends. Also, I may or may not be a philosopher, but I know enough about philosophy to make existential mountains out of conceptual molehills. The confluence of these facts presents the following issue, which I have given considerable thought to in the last few weeks: Everyone, hipster of not, has a visual identity, much like a corporation has a corporate identity, which we might call a “style” or more analogously, and more cynically, a “brand” (see hipsterrunoff.com). Visual identity most obviously and accessibly includes fashion and body modification, but also includes more subtle modes of communication like body language, and personal grooming. Hipsters implicitly reject the commercial (“mainstream”) project of fashion, while simultaneously establishing and enforcing inter-subcultural fashion norms (like the desperate high-school teen who tries to both fit in and be unique at the same time). In this regard, the Hipster, in his expression of in-group status through the visual identity, is not different from the punk or the goth. Punks forego the self-awareness of educated post-structuralism in favor of the naked aggression of antiestablishmentarianism. They have no interest in self-reflection, only in norm-destruction. Goths, unlike punks, do not engage in social criticism, instead favoring the psychological isolationism of apathy and nihilism (whether feigned or sincere). The hipster, however, operates in the context of a preexisting post-structural framework of self-aware and deeply cynical social criticism. One that should reject these systems of identity.

Hipsters (I can only speak on the ones I know personally, among whom there are clear patterns of behavior) express their criticisms of society by subscribing to the following value structures: veganism, feminism, and “political correctness” (extreme sensitivity to race/gender/sexuality in speech). I am sympathetic to all of these (though I do not subscribe to all of them), and after some consideration of the latter two, it occurs to me that these are (in their current state) both firmly post-structural ideologies. Being trained in philosophy, the issue of consistency is unavoidable for me: are the hipster’s behaviors consistent with this pattern? As post-structuralists, hipsters are  committed to (though they perhaps do not always recognize it) an uncomfortable self-awareness of the absurd arbitrariness of their own visual identities. In my experience (including, in no small measure, my own behavior), hipsters are quick to identify cases of fashion as irony or fashion as commentary, and in fact, they (we) have a reputation of engaging in ironic fashion. That is to say, hipsters are committed by consistency to an acute awareness of the problems that post-structuralism presents for the whole project of the visual identity, yet are not only active participants, but also fierce competitors in it. Whether they are ignorant of this inconsistency, accept it as an unfortunate hypocrisy, or could provide an argument for its compatibility with the rest of their social project, I don’t know.

(not my real friends)

All of this leaves hipsters with a unique problem, which is that they (we) exist in a social network of (to use the historically ironic description) “anti-establishment” characters (sometimes caricatures) who are firmly entrenched in a fashion arms race with the understanding that participation in any such endeavor is contrary to the project itself. The whole enterprise of engaging in hipster fashion is (paradoxically?) both identity-defining and by definition, impossible. This is not to say that there is no scene aesthetic (i.e. I don’t pretend to deny that you wouldn’t know a hipster if you saw one), but this aesthetic is at least in principle, self-negating.

This leaves one (me) with a dilemma: either embrace a visual identity as a hipster and engage in sincere participation (and hence endorsement) of it’s arbitrary conventions, or embrace the (apparent) spirit of hipsterism by rejecting the visual identity necessary to establish one’s identity as such. The former is at best hypocritical and at worst blatant self-betrayal. The latter is  at best useless and at worst logically impossible (that is, impossible by virtue of its being self-contradictory).

I can anticipate at least two obvious responses: a) Stop being a hipster. And sure, that solves the problem for me. I could be a hipster poseur, one who likes the aesthetic and sympathizes with some of the values, but is conceptually divorced from hipsterism. But that leaves the problem unsolved for hipsters in general. b) Embrace the existential absurdity of fashion in general and accept hipster fashion as equal in its arbitrariness to any other fashion choice. This “solves” the problem by denying that there is one. It’s decisive, but not very satisfying.

So for now I’m subscribing to the existential solution and remaining unsatisfied. I don’t have any really thorough and practicable solution for this problem, but at least I look good in skinny jeans.