A few months ago, I was sitting with an undergraduate art student and the conversation inevitably turned to activism. The young artist says to me, “I don’t like the activist scene. They are all self-righteous, they tend to be hippies and they don’t have any fun.”

What caught my attention was the description of activism as a “scene.” I countered, “but what if it isn’t a scene? What if anyone in any scene could take part?”

He then insightfully countered back, “You’re kidding yourself. Everything is a scene, activists being one of the more obvious.” I initially dismissed the idea as a defensive reaction by yet another naïve hipster but his point remained with me. He was right.

Activism is a scene and in fact, viewing the world as a series of cultural “scenes” has become normative. Instead of an ideological position, activism is yet another system of sign-play that allows one to differentiate themselves from others. If this kid sensed that most activists got into the game because they could carve their identity out of the rough-hewn block of self-righteousness, he was right. What he sensed, and what is absolutely accurate, is that what makes activism completely unpalatable for others is that activists are completely unaware of how transparent their disdain for the people they are trying to save is.

If activism, like all scenes, is built on the premise of defining who you are not versus who you are, then the contradiction reaches its most painfully obvious form in a scene dedicated to helping those in other “scenes.”

Activism, as a scene, must overcome its own cultural contradiction.