North America is a society of democratic diversity, and a concomitant grappling with freedom, equality and respect. Within this society there are various types of people – blacks, latinos, bikers, hippies, queers, doctors, scientists, goths, emos, ravers or punks. These have been researched from the perspectives of identity politics, labour studies or the human rights movements.
From the perspective of a Public-Intellectual, there are societal groups or formations which produce or act upon cultural forces – the arts, heritage, public events, or folk festivals. These cultural groups are broached here under the terms of Alternative Groups, Magazine & Event Types, Peoples & Tribes, and National Identities & Sub-identities. What they engender are cultural sensibilities within the context of a Neo-Romanticism, and what they allow is for individuals to examine a cultural community or to take part in a social circuit, to have a humanistic soiree.
Thus what is formed are processes of entertainment, or perhaps alternatively of political action or the resentamentality of traditions. These are aesthetic processes which indicate a preoccupation with republican humanism. Later I would like to examine a few such cultural communities, perhaps the punks or emos or indies, in an effort to understand their workings from a less macro perspective. Here I am merely outlining a type of frame-work of cultural analysis. For how is it possible to speak of humanistic sensibility within the context of the state apparatus, and of a potentially revolutionary social politics? Probably in terms of public rather than psychological processes of enactment. Although something does appear to be occurring to individuals as well, to their participation, involvement, rights, needs or desires.
Still these movements tend to build upwards, forming social groupings, identity formations. What modern post-industrial society appears to be witnessing is a shift in the nature of freedom, will and desire – in an attempt by individuals to access rights to these specific cultural communities or markers. These refigure social processes and what we gain is the right to be entertained by each other, to understand that our freedom is not won without a cost or investment, but rather through the revaluation of morality and public respectability.
The Opera de Paris, 1857 People Icons
From the perspective of a Public-Intellectual, there are societal groups or formations which produce or act upon cultural forces – the arts, heritage, public events, or folk festivals. These cultural groups are broached here under the terms of Alternative Groups, Magazine & Event Types, Peoples & Tribes, and National Identities & Sub-identities. What they engender are cultural sensibilities within the context of a Neo-Romanticism, and what they allow is for individuals to examine a cultural community or to take part in a social circuit, to have a humanistic soiree.
Thus what is formed are processes of entertainment, or perhaps alternatively of political action or the resentamentality of traditions. These are aesthetic processes which indicate a preoccupation with republican humanism. Later I would like to examine a few such cultural communities, perhaps the punks or emos or indies, in an effort to understand their workings from a less macro perspective. Here I am merely outlining a type of frame-work of cultural analysis. For how is it possible to speak of humanistic sensibility within the context of the state apparatus, and of a potentially revolutionary social politics? Probably in terms of public rather than psychological processes of enactment. Although something does appear to be occurring to individuals as well, to their participation, involvement, rights, needs or desires.
Still these movements tend to build upwards, forming social groupings, identity formations. What modern post-industrial society appears to be witnessing is a shift in the nature of freedom, will and desire – in an attempt by individuals to access rights to these specific cultural communities or markers. These refigure social processes and what we gain is the right to be entertained by each other, to understand that our freedom is not won without a cost or investment, but rather through the revaluation of morality and public respectability.
