Generation Bubble

Telescopic Philanthropy: The Pseudo-Solidarity of Recession Chic

Yes, the Great Recession can strip us of just about everything, but it cannot touch our many-layered, flip-chapeau, self-consciously ironic identifications. It’s comforting to know that while economic crises make the prosperous poor, it makes the poor poorer still. At least structures of class relations remain in place, having only adjusted downward to accommodate prevailing conditions. By choosing ironically to emulate the truly poor, we fetishize the choice as eagerly as any commodity. The choice alone keeps absolute equivalence at bay; as poor as we are, we’re never so poor as that if for no other reason that the truly poor cannot choose their poverty, while we tarnished, knowing angels of postmodernity always can.