Identity Politics and the Empire of Norms.
26th January 2025
“Roy’s theory goes something like this: In the age of the internet, and the global-liberal marketplace of goods, ideas, and cultural touchstones it ushered in, local cultures are subsumed into a global culture with its own lingo, assumptions, and norms. That culture may be dominated by American exports—more precisely the contributions of American tastemakers—but we are not hegemons. Young people who grow up on the Web inherit an admixture of cultural inputs with no authority capable or qualified to tell them how to make sense of it all. Culture—implicit understandings of what is and what ought to be, shared by members of a community—has globalized, commingled, and diluted to the point of disappearance. All culture, in the traditional sense, is gone.