It's interesting to me when various affinities, friendships and intersecting communities become defined as "generational," and when they don't. The Sputnik/Beatnik thing makes me think that the broader culture has to be receptive to the possibility of a "counter-culture" (either as a promise, or as a threat, or most likely as both): Kerouac had been writing since the 1940s, but the idea of a counterculture in this case only becomes legible in the context of a hot Cold War: "they must be commies, or at least pinkos."
What made me think of this are recent arguments about the end of a cohesive, singular counterculture. On this I sort of agree: there doesn't seem to be a contemporary counterculture, in part because of the stupid, aspirational transgressivism of tech elites and venture capital. I don't think this is permanent, however. Political repression in the US will catalyze a generational rebellion that has already started in places like Columbia University. This movement doesn't yet have a soundtrack or canonical texts, but that will happen in time.
The "generation" part of "Beat Generation" was always troublesome. Ryan Mathews wrote about it in the last issue of Beatdom. There were some big age gaps, meaning that the term was fairly inaccurate. It wasn't a movement, exactly, either. But hey, it's convenient to group artists rather than tackle them individually...
It's also interesting to me to remember that Allen Ginsberg was expelled from Columbia for vandalism; I have no doubt that he would support the students there against administration
I found this really interesting, and it connects with something I'm writing right now as well.
It's interesting to me when various affinities, friendships and intersecting communities become defined as "generational," and when they don't. The Sputnik/Beatnik thing makes me think that the broader culture has to be receptive to the possibility of a "counter-culture" (either as a promise, or as a threat, or most likely as both): Kerouac had been writing since the 1940s, but the idea of a counterculture in this case only becomes legible in the context of a hot Cold War: "they must be commies, or at least pinkos."
What made me think of this are recent arguments about the end of a cohesive, singular counterculture. On this I sort of agree: there doesn't seem to be a contemporary counterculture, in part because of the stupid, aspirational transgressivism of tech elites and venture capital. I don't think this is permanent, however. Political repression in the US will catalyze a generational rebellion that has already started in places like Columbia University. This movement doesn't yet have a soundtrack or canonical texts, but that will happen in time.
The "generation" part of "Beat Generation" was always troublesome. Ryan Mathews wrote about it in the last issue of Beatdom. There were some big age gaps, meaning that the term was fairly inaccurate. It wasn't a movement, exactly, either. But hey, it's convenient to group artists rather than tackle them individually...
It's also interesting to me to remember that Allen Ginsberg was expelled from Columbia for vandalism; I have no doubt that he would support the students there against administration