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what is counterculture »definition and concept

Some fashions, social movements or intellectual currents are characterized by their radical opposition to the dominant culture. These types of trends express their concerns regarding conventional cultural values ​​and, for this reason, to refer to them we speak of counterculture.

The term counterculture in Spanish is a literal translation from English, specifically the word counterculture. From a historical point of view, the creator of the counterculture label was the American Theodore Roszak.

General features of the counterculture

- Those who promote this type of demonstration express their social nonconformity. Thus, the hippies of the 60s had a lifestyle opposed to consumerism, the values ​​of capitalism and the moral values ​​of society.

- These movements initially have a marginal, oppositional and radical component. Rockers in the 1950s or punks in the 1970s were urban tribes whose aesthetic was considered subversive by wide sectors of society. With the passage of time, both movements adapted to conventional culture.

- The ideal of freedom is the predominant one in these types of currents. In this sense, the American writers of the Beat Generation defended drug use and sexual freedom as flags and, in parallel, they opposed the American way of life, the American way of life.

- Most countercultural manifestations incorporate diverse elements: a specific aesthetic, a type of music and an alternative life model.

- The counterculture is normally associated with youth (sometimes the young people who oppose the conventional are university students and sometimes they are minority groups from the marginal neighborhoods of the big cities).

Many countercultural movements emerged in the 1960s

In the 1960s, several episodes occurred that, to a great extent, can explain the emergence of the different countercultural currents. Some of them were the following: the Vietnam War, the disillusionment in broad sectors of the left by Soviet totalitarianism, the struggle for civil rights in the United States or the philosophical criticism of the capitalist model. All these elements were creating a new social conscience and a spirit of rebellion.

In this line several events can be remembered:

1) in May 68, many French students sympathized with Maoism, an alternative communist current to the Soviet one,

2) the student riots in the United States opposed the Vietnam War and racial segregation and

3) Spanish university students expressed their discontent against the Franco regime and the Mexican student movement of 1968 opposed the police repression against university students.

Freud and the counterculture

Freud is a key thinker to understand the 20th century and some of its cultural and countercultural manifestations. For him, culture generates a malaise in society as a whole, as it ends up imposing a majority and oppressive model that leads the individual to alienation.

This silent imposition generates nonconformity in some social sectors and from there the need to create new heterodox currents inspired by freedom and contrary to traditional culture is developing.

Photos: Fotolia - Anvino / Ebamo

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