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What Was The Hipster? A Sociological Investigation (2010)

by Mark Greif(Favorite Author)

3.27 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0982597711 (ISBN13: 9780982597712)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

n+1 Foundation

review 1: Somewhere between irreverence and academia, there is this book. Absolutely wonderful. It may seem like a self-indulgent exercise in developing a taxonomy of hip, but it really is an intriguing and eye-opening look at the socio-cultural movement that is hipsterism. A series of essays, a transcribed discussion from a New School debate, and a series of response essays. The best: probably, the identification of hipsters as promoting an infantilized, entitled white-ness, politically nihilist, representing nothing, and circling around an almost neo-conservative fetishism of suburban whiteness from the 80s. The worst: I was horrified (HORRIFIED) to learn that my beloved Slavoj Zizek is apparently a hipster fetish object, and thus loathsome to those who don't want to be seen as hi... morepsters (i.e. everyone). CAN THIS BE TRUE!? I refuse to accept it.
review 2: Equal parts funny and obnoxious, I can't help but be amused that this treatise serving as a sort of ethnography of the modern hipster, manages to also be the very distillation of hipsterism itself. But because I think that the panellists are achingly aware of this, I give it a general thumbs up. As one reviewer said, I think I like the idea that this exists more than I actually enjoyed the work iteself. less

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