Sixteenth International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

Any casual observer of millenial culture cannot fail to have noticed a surprising increase in our love of the absurd. From cat t-shirts to endless memes, millenials are aligning themselves with the bizarre in a variety of ways. Despite the popularity of “weird”, few millenials could draw the connection to the 20th century artistic movement, Dadaism. However, the philosophies that inspiried Dadaism are the selfsame theories as those at the center of current pop-culture. This paper includes a discussion of the similarities between Dadaism and the present as seen through the lens of mainstream culture. Some of the elements of mainstream culture that examined include fashion and social media, particularly memes and gifs. Furthermore, this paper seeks to explain the reasons why we are seeing a reemergance of Dadaism in our day.