VLVL the "Movement"

[jbor]

>>>> the counterculture ... having once been a more or
>>>> less unified and potent sociocultural entity and
>>>> political lobby.
>> 
>> And indeed it was. For a number of years during the 1960s.
>> 
>> It was never a single, unified Organization, however. That was the straw man
>> argument.

mike weaver wrote:

> there were two intersecting youth cultures in the 60'/early 70s, both
> having their reps in Vineland - one was the political -'movement'  the
> other the 'counterculture'. To put it another way, radicals and hippies.
> The counterculture was only political along one fringe, being mostly more
> mystically or hedonistically minded. Plenty of rads smoked dope, plenty of
> hippies took part in demos, but they weren't the same sociocultural entity,
> and were more or less allied but never unified.

I can go with that. It's the alliance between the various political groups
within the student movement, and the common causes (civil rights and
anti-war) these groups shared with the less-demonstrative "hippies", which
I've been focused on, but it's also the way that "the counterculture" was
being presented as more or less cohesive and idealistic, and often in a
positive light, in the media and popular culture of the time -- the "jukebox
solidarity" (117-8) and so forth. There was enormous potential for change
which never came to fruition, and I think that is what Pynchon mourns in
_Vineland_.

I don't have a problem with the preferred style of argumentation of our
scornful friend; surely we're all used to it by now. I disagree with his
assertion that "strife" and disunity characterised the counterculture and
student movement from the start, however.

best