Reclaim (the millennial) Generation by Martabel Wasserman
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Each generation fucks with form. To break the rules of writing remakes possibilities for how we relate to the past, each other, and knowledge production. The avant-garde, popular culture, and mainstream media collectively constitute how form and language change over time; reinventing the radical, colloquial, and conventional prose on the regs. Millennials processed their youthful angst in live journals, met over AIM, and played with identity on Myspace. We articulated our political awakening with 140 characters or less. The call for content of this issue debuted on the magazine’s new Facebook page, making its way through internal debates about brand, network, and platform. In response to the subject matter, this letter from the editor is a mash-up of Buzzfeed and buzzwords. XOXO, Martabel 10 THOUGHTS ON MILLENNIALS 1. The political is too personal, the self is too central.
2. But identity politics still matter.
3. Flailing narrative = symptom of the systemic disaster that is late capitalism.
4. We can divert the individualism we were brought up with toward radical anger and a refusal to participate in the systems that are drowning us.
5. The glass ceiling may or may not be shattered, but it’s irrelevant because we got to burn that house down.
6. Health and wellness need to be re-conceptualized as conditions of the collective body.
7. The power structures of information we are implicated with the hyper- mediation of each moment are ripe for subverting. No need to give this guy all of the power.
8. Language and the expression of emotions are being transformed by these creatures. Let’s continue to play with their potential.
10. We are not the first generation to use cuteness as a tool to cope with constant crisis, but we are the best at it. Let’s hold each other through it but remember these little guys are drenched in BP oil.
10 THOUGHTS ON GENERATION 1. Generational identity is inherently incoherent yet we continue to be obsessed with naming it.
2. Generational identity is how we culturally contain a state of crisis and chaos.
3. The material of generation is representation.
4. It is the outsiders of a generation that define it.
5. We all occupy the same historical moment but it is branded by youth culture.
6. Youth culture is a 20th century construct ready to be re-worked.
7. Generative potential resides in the gaps of a generational model.
8. Queer kinship disrupts a linear model of generation.
9. The changing conditions of the earth and its environments are an under-recognized factor in generational identity formation.
10. Generational identity is ours to re-define.
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