The crisis of culture: identity politics and the empire of norms

Are we confronting a new culture that is global, online, individualistic and hedonistic? Or is our existing concept of culture in crisis, as explicit, normative systems replace implicit, socially anchored values and representations?

Olivier Roy's new book explores the extension of individual political and sexual freedoms from the 1960s, leading us to today's fractures. For Roy, twentieth-century youth culture disconnected traditional political protest from class, region or ethnicity, fashioning a generational, temporary identity premised on repudiation rather than inheritance of any shared past or values. Expanded and diversified by neoliberalism and the internet, youth culture now transcends generations--an individualised, ersatz culture open to everyone.

When a shared culture no longer exists, everything becomes an explicit code of how to speak and act. Increased reference to 'identity' in political discourse, on both left and right, is symptomatic of the failure to confront a deeper crisis of culture. Identities are now defined by traits (race, sexuality, diet) that fragment social cohesion, creating sub-cultures seeking safe spaces: universities for the left, gated communities and hard borders for the right. Our only option, Roy argues, is to restore social bonds at the grassroots or citizenship level, rather than building communities of affinity online.