Łukasz Wojtkowski
Arts & Cultural Studies Review, Issue 2 (32), 2017, pp. 176-190
https://doi.org/10.4467/20843860PK.17.012.7360The field of theoretical analysis presented in the paper is the hipster digital culture and its visual representations. We perceive hipsters’ digital formation as post-subculture and post-community that shapes specific cultural patterns with fragmented identity, inconstant group membership or high cultural mobility. Yet they form stabile connections with other members of post-community with strong emphasis on the common meaning of codes they use and circulate in visual communication. Moreover, we argue that hipsterism operates on two levels: (1) communicative acts of hipsters that are apparent ‘visual reflections’ of their desirable lifestyles. In other words, participants of digital post-community operate with codes created by other members, but relatively more often taken from dominant culture, and incorporated into hipster-like set of meanings; (2) hipsters and their visual representations are strongly mediatized even though there is no media mechanism of legitimization of this digital post-community, therefore the media are not able to seize a dynamic of codes’ circulation within culture.