Hipster

Punk in Italy has largely been overlooked as a research topic in the past, focussing instead on the scene in other nations. This article examines the Italian punk scene and its transition from classic to post-punk, focussing on its most famous and significant band: CCCP – Fedeli alla linea.1 After a short introduction to the historical and cultural background, the results of a qualitative textual analysis of CCCP lyrics using algirdas Greimas’ methodology for narrative semiotics (1983) will be presented. as the results show, CCCP’s artistic production can be interpreted as a subversive and ironic parody of the collectivist traditions that were dominant in Italian politics and culture at the time (communism and Catholicism), and as a creative critical reaction to neoliberalism. The conclusion briefly discusses certain theoretical issues such as the relationship between punk and authenticity, and compares Italian punk with british and Portuguese punk.

Acta Sociologica, 2013

Evoking a level of animosity from a bygone cultural moment, the hipster belongs to a time when the economic advantages of cultural innovation in the arts were seriously believed. What that time was, and where we are now, is this book’s subject, examined through the lens of art history and the creativity hype of neoliberalism. Having been associated with post- World War Two bebop and beatnik subcultures, the hipster re-emerged in the early 2000s as a form of generic individualism that was easily identifiable even if endlessly mutable. However, in recent years “hipster” has become increasingly impotent as an accusation, shifting in its meaning to refer less to an external identity than to a mode of deflection in which authenticity and discernment are challenged only to be surreptitiously reinforced. Marking a transition from a period in Western art when irony and high-minded nonchalance reigned, the hipster appears in the context of contemporary art not as a critical standpoint in itself but as the continually deferred subject position of creative practice. Today, ethical considerations of identity overshadow discerning proclamations of cultural taste, making palpable an uncertainty about our capacity to untangle capitalism’s thirst for reinvention from the artist’s thirst for subverting norms.

The pejorative term 'hipster' has been prominent in popular culture since the early 2000s, typically used in reference to connoisseurs, elites, poseurs, or anyone who is unaware of their own pretentiousness. As cultural stereotypes, hipsters have been allied with a striking diversity of aesthetic forms over the last twenty years, so much so that the trope has less to do with a specific aesthetic style and more to do with the attempt to foster a counter-mainstream sensibility. In this article, I provide an historical backdrop to the rise of the post-postmodern hipster, locating its emergence in the global spread of culture in the 1990s. I argue that the current pervasiveness of so-called 'hipster hate' – visible on the Internet and on social media platforms such as Twitter – is exemplary of a post-critical perspective, where the hipster stereotype serves as a point of distinction that reinforces the ideologies of cultural pluralism. Keywords: hipster post-critical aesthetics pluralism post-postmodern connoisseurship

Revista Crítica de Ciências Sociais, 2016

Acta Sociologica, 2014

ABSTRACT

Electronic Melbourne Art Journal

What is a hipster, and why has this cultural trope become so resonant of a particular mode of artistic and connoisseurial expression in recent times? Evolving from its beatnik origins, the stereotypical hipster today is likely to be a globally aware " creative " who nonetheless fails in their endeavour to be an exemplar of progressive cultural taste in an era when cultural value is heavily politicised. Today, artist memes and hipster memes are almost interchangeable, associated with people who are desperate to be fashionably distinctive, culturally literate or as having discovered some obscure cultural phenomenon before anyone else. But how did we arrive at this situation where elitist and generically " arty " connotations are perceived in so many cultural forms? This article will attempt to provide an historical context to the rise of the contemporary, post-1990s, hipster, who emerged out of the creative and entrepreneurial ideologies of the digital age – a time when artistic creations lose their alternative credence in the markets of the creative industries. Towards the end of the article " hipster hate " will be examined in relation to post-critical practice, in which the critical, exclusive, and in-the-know stances of cultural connoisseurs are thought to be in conflict with pluralist ideology. Hipster Aesthetics: Creatives with no alternative Although the hipster trope is immediately recognisable, it has been allied with a remarkable diversity of styles, objects and activities over the last two decades, warranting definition more in terms of the attempt to promote counter-mainstream sensibilities than pertaining to a specific aesthetic as such. People rarely identify themselves as hipsters, and the term itself has long been contested, a generic signifier for those who embody both a generic brand of artiness and a pluralist cultural ideal. While more specific terms such as " twee " , " health goth " , " normcore " , " lumbersexual " and " yuccies " (young urban creative yuppies) describe a range of hipster subgroups, the currency of the term " hipster " has hardly diminished, remaining relevant, perhaps, by virtue of its totalizing sensibility – a shorthand term for people we can easily identify but also find difficult to define without implicating our own tastes. Fundamental to the hipster trope then is the very perception of what a hipster is, as if entailing the processes by which displays of progressive outlooks are denounced in the name of even more progressive outlooks. But why has the hipster become such a dominant marker of twenty-first-century life in the first place? Where did it come from and where is it going? Writing for the New York Times in 2013, Steven Kurutz has observed that there no longer appears to be any clothes or hobbies that one could wear or participate in to avoid the hipster label, asking: 'has there ever been a subculture this broadly defined?' 1 He writes: 1 Kurutz, 2013:

2021

This study reconstructs and analyses the early punk scene in Bologna between 1977-1980 in the context of the socio-political climate of late-seventies Italy. The Italian Long Seventies – an historical period ranging from the end of the 1960s to the first half of the 1980s - have been characterised by violent ideological conflicts accompanied by frequent terrorist attacks, mass-scale demonstrations, street riots, and a general climate of social instability. In Bologna, a city which had been administered by the Communist Party since the foundation of the Italian Republic, punk found itself in the middle of a lacerating conflict within the leftist front. These peculiar circumstances produced a vital music scene which gave birth to some of the most notable examples of early Italian punk-inspired bands, labels, fanzines, festivals and live concert venues. Using the Bolognese punk scene as a case study, the main aim of this thesis is to provide a fuller understanding of the relationship b...