A Critique of the Millennial: A Retreat from and Return to Class

Abstract

Since the turn of the millennium, millions of people born between the late 1970s and the late 1990s have been categorized as millennials. A media discourse tells people what a millennial is and is not, shaping how those people it depicts as millennialmay perceive themselves and how others perceive them. This paper examines fourmedia representations of the millennial: a member of a youth cohort, a consumer, aworker to be managed, and an immiserated victim of hard times. It argues that these four media representations of the millennial distort the capitalist determinations ofmillennial life and labour and prevent the millennials from seeing themselves as part ofthe working class. By way of a critique of these four ideological media representations of the class-less millennial, the paper forwards a historical-materialist account of themillennial working class in a new capitalist millennium.