September 15th, Serendipity, Pre Class Habermas LATE

The reading on Habermas was once very confusing to me, but reading it over again I understood it so much better since we had the whole semester to talk about it. His two main ideas (avant gardism and Cult of the New) have actually been incorporated with the other theorists from the rest of the semester. He explains that nothing is ever really different or new. Firstly, because of bricolage. We are just taking old things and making them seem new again because we are putting them together in a different way. However, once something is a little different (because of the way it has been put together again and recreated) it automatically becomes normal again, and gets swallowed up by mainstream culture. Example: the urinal in the museum. It becomes not such a big deal once a couple of years go by and people have started putting even stranger things in museum, and the cycle starts up again. This is also similar to fashion. People first think that what they are wearing is so different (for example, punks) but as soon as people start copying them and it becomes just another group, they all start to look the same instead of looking different. These are little subcultures. There is a stereotype with each, but no one thinks “wow punks are so different from anyone else” because there is a whole group of people that are exactly the same and they end up trying to mimic and imitate each other in order to fit in.