Is it “Gen Z” Enough? The Limits of Generational Categories
Is it “Gen Z” Enough? The Limits of Generational Categories India’s 2026 Youth Mobilization and the Failure of Classification Posted on 21st October, 2026 (GMT 08:15 hrs) ABSTRACT Generational labels function as a historically specific technology for ordering persons; the classification itself, not the cohorts it names, requires analysis. Drawing on Foucault’s archaeological and genealogical methods, the article traces the grid’s descent through state registration, demography, journalism, marketing and consultancy, showing how it imposes discrete essences on a continuum of births, scales disciplinary seriation to the population, generates looping effects, and recodes structural antagonisms as conflicts between age cohorts. The 2026 Indian mobilisation, branded a “Gen Z” uprising, serves as the principal test case: its composition, demands and alliances exceed any single cohort, demonstrating the non-contemporaneity of the contemporaneous. The Yayati–Babur circuit names the patria...