"
. With Marginalized is the new dominant
Posted Under: America
Design Observer has reprinted a piece from The New Republic that I really enjoyed (and would have linked to there, but I think the TNR site puts stuff behind a firewall or whatever). It’s by Rick Perlstein and it’s called “What Is Conservative Culture?”
The interesting thing about it to me is Perlstein’s point that conservative culture hangs together today partly because of a sense of marginality that is basically out of date. In the 1960s, conservative culture had much to do with an underdog/outsider feeling of fighting back against the oppressive liberal machinery, etc. That hardly seems to describe America today.
And yet … conservatives still rely on the cultural tropes of that earlier period: At one living room “Party for the President” in 2004, a woman told me, “We’re losing our rights as Christians. … and being persecuted again.” The culture of conservatives still insists that it is being hemmed in on every side. In Tom DeLay’s valedictory address, as classic an expression of high conservative culture as ever was uttered, he attributed to liberalism “a voracious appetite for growth. In any place or any time on any issue, what does liberalism ever seek, Mr. Speaker? More. … If conservatives don’t stand up to liberalism, no one will.”
I actually think one of the reasons that there are four or five Americas today is that each of the current multiple mainstreams strongly believes it is an oppressed underdog.
.
.
Kim Fellner's book 
.
A
Reader Comments
bunch of whiney brats
“…each of the current multiple mainstreams strongly believes it is an oppressed underdog.”
I wouldn’t agree entirely; I think that at least one of the mass-Americas you identify – probably either the “jet-set or cosmopolitan or maybe post-national America” – is substantially elitist and aspirationally exclusionary, even if it is, in practice, a freely available and commodified identity. It thrives on being smaller, on being a minority in any given community (this varies from place to place, and signifiers could be something as small as, e.g., drinking imported wines in Oklahoma) – but rather than basing its raison d’etre on an oppressed status, it sees itself as superior to the competing forms of identity.
Interestingly, I think that the “jet-set/cosmopolitan/post-national America” is also a different America in that it neither seeks total dominance (exclusivity being a key part of its appeal) nor does it claim to be in any way the “real” America (as I’d argue Blue Collar and Millenialist America claim). Its identiy is based on the coarseness of “real” America – depending where you are, again, this could be Blue Collar, Hip-Hop or Millenialist America – and on a selective hybridization of other “jet-set/cosmopolitan/post-national” identities from around the world – which I think also function in much the same way, relative to their native cultures. To wit – Eurotrash lounges around the world look and sound more or less entirely the same, while a roadhouse in Texas, a pub in Boston or Ireland, a bar in India are all quite different.
Yes, well said.
BUT, I think you could also say that part of the jet-set-or-whatever identity is this sort of “oh, if only we could secede and not have to deal with the idiotic mainstream products of the tasteless masses.” The trick is that they don’t really want this to happen, since as you note their identity is tied up in exclusivity, and they indirectly depend on the so-called tasteless masses as a comparison point. I think at least a feint at underdog-ness is in there somewhere. Maybe.
I totally take your point though. Again, well said.
I think the big irony is that many of the hipster class (probably what murketing referred to as the “alternative,” but maybe also “jet-set”, I’m not sure) seems to thrive by using marginalized culture as reference points – E.g. hairstyles that suggest punker ‘dos, faux-thrift-store designer clothes.
I’m addicted to reading internet personal ads, and I’ve noticed a frequent reference to “geeking out” among my fellow young urbanites. It seems to me like a phrase that suggests we aren’t comfortable with ourselves and feel like we’re under some censure, even when, in fact, geekiness has a definite cache right now. It’s as though we’re trying to talk about how unattractive we are.