1. ADAM KUPER; CULTURA. LA VERSIÓN DE LOS ANTROPÓLOGOS.

PAIDÓS, 1999

In the beginning of the text, Kuper explains that the term 'culture' has become ubiquitous, used by both
anthropologists and the general public, including non-Western societies, as noted by Marshall Sahlins:
"Tibetans and Hawaiians, Ojibway, Kwakiutl, and Eskimo, Kazakhs and Mongols, native Australians,
Balinese, Kashmiris, and New Zealand Maori: all discover they have a 'culture.'"
● What’s interesting is that many use the term culture to differentiate themselves/or resist the
western imperialism. Kuper notes that this is quite contradictory as the concept of culture itself is
western.
○ Culture is often associated with status and is used to measure and compare different
groups, with a tendency for people to value their own culture more highly.

The text outlines different theories and traditions of culture (18th century), including
1) French Tradition:
a) The French tradition views culture as a progressive, cumulative achievement of
humanity, emphasizing the universal capacity for civilization through reason.
b) It is associated with the Enlightenment and its belief in human progress and the
overcoming of traditional cultures through the forces of civilization.
c) The French often identify their culture with universal culture, and while they
acknowledge the struggle of reason against tradition and superstition, they are
confident in the ultimate victory of civilization aided by science.
2) German Tradition
a) In contrast to the French tradition, the German tradition, often associated with
Romanticism, values spiritual culture over materialistic civilization.
b) It emphasizes the uniqueness of national traditions, the importance of language and the
arts, and the idea that cultural differences are natural and not based on a common
human nature. ⇒ authentic culture / Kultur
c) The German tradition sees culture as subjective and relative, with its insights being more
profound than the universal laws of civilization.
3) English Tradition:
a) The English tradition, influenced by both the French and German traditions, is
characterized by a concern with the spiritual crisis brought about by industrialization.
i) Culture is seen as a contrast to industrialization and the materialism that comes
with it
b) It values eternal cultural values distilled from the great tradition of European art and
philosophy, which are seen as under threat from the materialism of modern civilization.
c) It was associated with the arts, literature, and the cultivation of the human spirit.
d) The English tradition, as exemplified by thinkers like Matthew Arnold, defines culture as
"the best that has been known and said," and sees it as a marker of the educated elite
against the unlettered barbarians.

These traditions have had a lasting impact on future views of culture:

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 1. The French tradition has influenced ideas of modernization and globalization, where culture is
seen as a barrier to be overcome by the forces of progress.
2. The German tradition has contributed to the idea of cultural relativism and identity politics,
celebrating the diversity of cultures and their resistance to homogenization.
3. The English tradition has shaped the debate around high culture versus mass culture, with
implications for class distinctions and the role of education in society.

18th/19th century: the introduction of Darwin's theory of evolution sparked debates that led to a
redefinition of culture, as he introduced the idea that human behavior and culture might have biological
underpinnings. This led to debates about whether culture was a product of biological evolution or a
distinctively human phenomenon. Whereas anthropologists like Franz Boas, on the other hand, were
emphasizing culture as learned and independent of biology.
● Some people used Darwin's theory to prove that some cultures are superior over others

20th century: there was a division among the conceptions and study of culture. For instance, the rise of
structuralism, which sought to understand culture through linguistic models, or poststructuralism,
which focused on deconstructing cultural symbols and meanings.
Contemporary thought, see's culture in a more complex manner as there is an emphasis on its role in
identity politics, social power, and the construction of meaning. It is recognized that cultures are not static
but are constantly evolving through interactions with other cultures and in response to global influences.

Kuper argues that cultural anthropology remains influenced by idealism, which posits that culture
significantly shapes human action and the course of history.

CULTURE VS. CIVILIZATION

CULTURE CIVILIZATION

Culture(s) often points to the degree in which In the French-Enlightenment conception, culture
residual older traditions or systems of belief is perceived as a mark of egalitarian society (=
survive from the advancement of civilization. civilization)
⇒ however only within the limits of western
There is a tendency to treat such traditions and culture
systems as time capsules, i.e. clearly bounded,
isolated and unchanging social systems.

Sewell and Kuper ⇒ consider that cultures

should be perceived as malleable (changeable)
[leichtplastisch].

The idea of culture comes to represent the Civilization expressed the initial optimism about

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existence of communities bound by shared values,
even if in many cases the community has very
little in common with the modern societies we
live in.
It also became associated with humanities
education and with nationalism, both of which
stress the importance of learning the best
literature, art and philosophy of the nation (or the
European West) in order to become a fully
“rounded” human being.
The “Culture camp” survives as cultural
relativism (the claim that no culture is superior to
another, as there is only variety without shared
universal truths or values). Anthropologists on this
side of the debate deny the existence of universal
laws of progress. They therefore claim that
cultural singularities arise arbitrarily and that
historical development is not bound in any way by
economic and technological development.
The “Culture camp” has been important to certain
methods and approaches to understanding culture
and society: the structuralists,
post-structuralists and postmodernists can be
situated here. They have in common that they
believe symbols, myths, rituals etc. create an
entire world-view for a group, independent of any
material conditions. They are for that reason
called idealists (to indicate ideas stand at the
beginning of who we are). Agency > Structure
Culture or Kultur survives in our day in the idea
that the best form of society is one that accepts
plural forms, diversified expressions and
protected microsystems of cultural life. Defenders
of culture will therefore be more readily critical of
the gains of progress and modernity.
the establishment of modern science, free
markets, technological progress and the
conviction that individualism, human rights
and liberties are cornerstones of the advanced
world and / or democratic governance). It was
and it believed the more we promoted these
values, the more society and the world as a whole
would improve...
The “Civilization camp” survives as various
theories that regard human history as the
unfolding of universal laws of evolution. In
anthropology there are:
1) Darwinist evolutionists (who often
embraced the idea of superior races) and
2) Marxist evolutionists (who claimed that
Access to the means of production, i.e.
technology drove both wealth
accumulation, class and all culture)
The “Civilization camp” has important defenders
among Marxists and Materialists, including
psychoanalysts.They consider that only changes in
nature and human relationships can sustain a
cultural system . This means that possessions and
technology administer a reality of power
relations on which all cultural expressions
(symbols, myths and rituals) depend.
Structure > Agency
Civilization as a word falls into disuse as we start
to see more sustained attacks on capitalist
societies and on colonial structures (Romanticism,
Socialism). Often, these criticisms emphasize the
destructive force of modernization, i.e. the process
that leads to massified societies, and the
dominance of economic (industry, finance,
consumerism), scientific and technological pursuit
at the expense of all other areas of life.
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Culture has often been associated with Nevertheless, the values that accompanied
multiculturalism, but it also animates our idea of a Civilization (and now modernity) survive today in
plural democracy, the defense of minorities, or such notions as liberalism, globalism, the UN or
UNESCO’s lists of material and intangible the ideological defense of liberal democracy.
heritage. Additionally, much of the origins for
“high” culture must be found in this instance on
Kultur.

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2. MARK R. LEARY AND NICOLE R. BUTTERMORE, “THE EVOLUTION OF THE HUMAN
SELF: TRACING THE NATURAL HISTORY OF SELF-AWARENESS” (2006)

The modern self involves five distincts cognitive abilities

There is a gradual evolution of human behavior => from the common ancestor and the cultural big
bang
● Increase of cognitive abilities to face new environmental challenges
Cultural changes and technological advancement of the Cultural Big Bang are evidence of the
changes in human consciousness => ability to think about oneself in abstract, conceptual, and symbolic
way

THE “CULTURAL REVOLUTION” C. 50.000-30.000 YEARS AGO

Reconstructing the Evolution of Humans from paleontology and archaeology

The Nature of the Self

Focus on the ability to self-reflect. Different forms of information upon which self-knowledge is based
on, that rely on separate cognitive abilities. Modern humans are the only animals that possess all five.

Ecological Process information regarding the physical environment in the

present context.

Interpersonal Processing information regarding an organism’s unreflective

social interactions with other members= Raw awareness of one's
engagement in a particular present action.
- implicit coordination of one’s actions with those of
others + interpersonal-self processes information
regarding the individual in interaction with conspecifics

Extended Imagining yourself in terms of a visual image, somewhat beyond

the present physical and social context, so with some use of
memory and imagination. It involves past and future. =>
autobiographical memory.

Private Processing private, subjective information such as thoughts,

feelings, intentions, images, and other states that are not
accessible to other people source of self-knowledge or to
anticipate future reactions to an event manufacturing of
enduring tools for instance. Empathy, self-reflection.

Conceptual self-knowledge Ability to abstract and symbolic representations of oneself,

including self-representations, self-concepts, and identity => use
to conceptualize themselves, as well as people’s evaluations of

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 those self-characterizations Symbolic self. Needed for
symbolic culture.

The conceptual self-ability can be plausibly linked to

stages of early development in children. Language
acquisition presupposes an ability to deal with reality
(both external or perceived and internal or sensed)
through concepts and symbols, i.e. making abstract
connections.

Extended and private self ability (3,4) too can be

mirrored in infantile development. The process of
learning rules of behavior, for instance, implies more
than a capacity to apply (linguistic) concepts of bad
and good, and also proves more complex than a
memory of past “punishment” (which animals can
obtain). Think of shame, which offers us an insight
into how the other (“mother”) turns us into the visual
object of its judgments or bodily cuts us off from
loving care.

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Cultural Big Bang 50.000-30.000 YEARS AGO
● cultural big bang => after millions of years of no progress of culture, within a relative short
span, many features of human culture appear
● possible explanations
○ burst of cognitive fluidity
○ acquisition of symbolic ability
○ fortuitous mutation in the brian responsible for the human ability to innovate
○ emergence of language
● relevance of self-reflection => many of the factors that characterize the cultural big bang are
closely correlated to the development of self-reflection

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3. WILLIAM H. SEWELL JR, “THE CONCEPT (S) OF CULTURE.” IN PRACTICING
HISTORY: NEW DIRECTIONS IN HISTORICAL WRITING AFTER THE LINGUISTIC TURN
(2005)

William H. Sewell, aims to reflect on the concept of culture in contemporary academic discourse,
emphasizing the importance and challenge of clarifying the term amidst the the crisis the term was
suffering due to the culture mania

a. Evolution of the use of culture within disciplines

- early 1970s => general consensus about the meaning of culture and role of anthropology
anthropology had a monopoly on the term
- political science and sociology => culture was associated to the Parsonian theoretical
synthesis

- late 1970s => emergence of the sociology of culture: applying standard sociological methods to
studies related to culture
- emergence of postculturalism and applying Derrida’s study of text and meaning to the
study of cultures

- late 1980s => cultural sociology fades out, and the studying the place of meaning of social life in
a more general way gains power
- political science => interest in cultural questions is revived by religious fundamentalism,
nationalism and ethnicity

b. Why was there a crisis of the term culture

- abuse of the term => the use of “culture” has extended beyond the anthropological
discipline, a crisis in its meaning
- lexical avoidance behavior => anthropologist critics avoid the use of the term, at least
without quotations due to…
- implicit ownership of the term by the anthropologists + their responsibility on the
abuse of the term by others
- assumption that the anthropological abstention of the term will solve the issue
- author’s solution => rearticulate and revivify the concept

Fundamental meanings of culture

a. Theoretical category => culture is a theoretically defined category or aspect of social life that
must be abstracted out from the complex real­ity of human existence => claim for a particular
academic discipline
- contrast between what is culture and what is not culture
- Culture as singular
b. Social culture => culture stands for a concrete and bounded world of beliefs and practices.
Culture in this sense is com­monly assumed to belong to or to be isomorphic with a "society" or
with some dearly identifiable sub societal group
- contrast between one culture and another culture

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 - Culture as plural

Within the second meaning of Culture (as a category of social life), Sewell presents different
definitions:
a. Culture as a learned behavior => culture as a set of practices, believes, institutions,
costumes…that are passed on from generation to generation ⇒ human ability
- racial argument => the difference between societies is not biological, but cultural =>
now that racial analysis are behind anthropological discourse, it is not useful to analyze
social life

b. Culture as an institutional sphere devoted to the making of meaning => culture as the sphere
that produces and circulates the use of meanings ⇒ depending on one’s culture, its perception of
things will be different
- It is based on the assumption that cultures are made up of institutions
- Thus: study of cultural activities => occurs within institutionally defined
spheres + subspheres => disciplines
- Issues of culture as an institutional sphere
- Cultural studies perceived as a high artistic and intellectual activity (elitist)
- Focus on a limited range of meanings + complicit with the abuse of the term
culture in “non-cultural” institutions

c. Culture as creativity or agency => Culture perceived as an agent of powerful material

determinism
- Marxist tradition => culture as a realm of agency, in contrast with structure
- American sociology => does not make sense to differentiate between agent and structure
in anthropology

d. Culture as a system of symbols and meanings => cultural system as a system of symbols and
meanings with a particular level of abstraction of social relations
- contrast to the social system, based in norms and institutions or personality system, based
in motivation
- objective => abstraction of culture to analyze the semiotic influences of human behavior
from other influences (demographic geographic, biological…)
- create a structure of human symbol systems based on human behavior

e. Culture as practice => culture is a sphere of practical activity shot through by willful action,
power relations, struggle, contradiction, and change
- criticism to culture as a system of symbols and meanings => contradictory, politically
charged, changeable, and fragmented character of meanings
- Sewell=> culture is not a coherent system of symbols and meanings but a diverse
collection of "tools" that, as the metaphor indicates, are to be understood as means for
the performance of action

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The big contrast Sewell presents:
CULTURE AS MEANING-MAKING AND AS A WAY OF DOING
It is helpful to distinguish between:
1) Culture as meaning-making: Every institution has a disciplining force to which individuals
submit, and which closely interconnects bodily and personal agency with symbols and signs.
● It is helpful to understand culture as interconnecting every single realm of activity
(economic, political, juridical, religious, etc) through a sphere of symbolic signs that
possess autonomous operation.
● Autonomy implies that meaning-making does not depend on economic, political etc
factors. It floats freely between all realms that constitute a cultural space, so that it also
becomes a “language” of a society

2) Culture as a practical field of play, cultures contain a number of institutions: these are real or
virtual spaces governed by rules of doing specific to each of them. These spaces can be anything
from sports grounds and recreational spaces to learned bodies (academies, schools and
universities) or disciplinary and assistant spaces (hospitals, police…)

Conclusion: The author argues for a dialectical understanding of culture as both a system of
meaning-making and a practice, with each concept implying the other. He stresses the autonomy of
culture as a semiotic dimension of social practice and views culture as a network of semiotic
relations that is not isomorphic with other social networks.

Coherence
- Classic ethnographers say that cultures => are neatly coherent whole, logically consistent,
highly integrated, consensu.rl. extremely resistant to change, and clearly bounded

But, Sewell argues:

Cultures are contradictory => contradictions in culture are explained through how those
contradictions are brought together through ritual performance => ex. Trinity in christian
religion

a. Cultures are loosely integrated => societies are composed of different spheres of activity with
specific cultural forms
- COUNTER ARGUMENT by classic ethnographers => express how those separate
components come together in an integrated culture
- contemporary scholars => centrifugal cultural tendencies arise between this spheres,
integration occurs according to how power or domination is distributed

b. Cultures are contested

- COUNTER ARGUMENT by classic ethnographers => most relevant aspects of
culture are consensual and agreed upon all members of a society

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 - contemporary scholars => there is a division and social order among all members of
society, causing differences in the understanding of culture or idedntoty beliefs, thus
there is no consensus and some are bound to suppress their disagreement

c. Cultures are subject to constant change

- COUNTER ARGUMENT by classic ethnographers => assumption that cultures are
changeable
- contemporary scholars => simple societies are quire mutable

d. Cultures are weakly bounded => it is very unusual for societies to be isolated or sharply
bounded, since cultural influence and important social and cultural processes transcend societal
boundaries

Cultural coherence => the idea of cultural coherence is not possible since cultural practice in a society
is usually diffuse and decentered; that the local systems of meaning found in a given population do not
themselves form a 'higher-level, society wide system of meanings.

But by what is the creation of meaning making influenced? By a structure, or our own agency?
1. Structuralists (Lévi-Strauss, Lacan, Barthes)
Align culture with language as a system of signs or symbols and their meanings. Specific
meanings are often elaborated through the logic of language, ideologically and independently
from reality. (= through a rigid structure)
2. Post-Marxist historians and post-structuralist cultural analysts emphasize the performative
nature of culture, where a way of doing (agency) has some power to alter pre-existing meanings
or sign-content relationships.

SEWELL, being a post-structuralist:

● Sewell criticizes classic ethnographies for presenting cultures as coherent, integrated, and
consensual wholes. Instead, he argues that cultures are typically contradictory, loosely
integrated, contested and subjected to constant change. He acknowledges that cultures can
exhibit a degree of coherence, which is often the product of power and struggles for power.

In conclusion, Sewell rejects the notion of clearly bounded cultures and suggests viewing cultures as
partially coherent landscapes of meaning that are constantly changing and shifting. He calls for cultural
analysts to recognize and explain the forms and consistencies of local meanings and how they hang
together.

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 4. UTE FREWERT, “CHAPTER 3: FINDING EMOTIONS”, EMOTIONS IN HISTORY – LOST
AND FOUND. BRUSSELS, 2010

In the world of competing individuals, free of social hierarchy, we ideally try to achieve equality by
practicing sympathy. Otherwise, all we have left is endless competition. This back and forth exposed
that sympathy could very often be a mask for selfish self-fulfillment, or, worse, an exclusive nationalist
way of declaring some people to not have certain natural qualities to make them worthy of any sympathy.

Emotions Positive Considerations + Evolution Counterargument + Complexity aspects

Sympathy cornerstone of moral philosophy, as it set the
groundwork for social communication and
cohesion through the establishment of a common
morality (Scottish Enlightenment)
- resemblance increased sympathy ⇒
fostering social integration
Smith ⇒ self-love and self-interest were the
motivation and goal that allowed for the
existence of sympathy ⇒ sympathy was an
emotional transaction

Sympathy can be shaped ⇒ nations can cultivate Emotions are taught and economized in a way
and shape citizens behavior by establishing a that will suit society’s cultural framing
morality (through culture)

Sympathy ⇒ based on the feeling of empathy + Patriotism ⇒ love of the fatherland and nation
the pro-social and cooperative attitude towards at the expense of internal and external enemies
other - dynamic of superior and inferior races
Attachment of positive values + morale to that
Empathy Empathy ⇒ as the ability to feel what other who resembles us
fellow individuals are feeling by entering their
emotional state Compassion is reserved to us as the superior
race
Empathy as neutral (neither inherently positive
nor negative) ⇒ empathy as the ability of
knowing for sure that one’s feeling is different
from the other

Empathy is based on the assumption of the others

feelings through one’s projection

Fraternité french nationalism of creating a

Compassion community through love and reaffirm the unbound
of revolutionary action Abolitionism (reactionary movement) ⇒
movements of support among people who were
Human Rights ⇒ Considered as that of rights of exposed to human injustice and oppression
man ⇒ exclusionary compassion (culture of sensibility to others suffering)

Justice ⇒ modern social movements demand

justice rather than compassion
- Self-help movements that rely on group
solidarity rather than compassion for
external individuals that will not feel

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 identified

Goaled emotion ⇒ intervene and help the other Mendelssohn ⇒ love as a more symmetric and
purposed by the identification of other’s suffering reciprocal feeling than compassion
- Considered compassion as something
condescending that creates an asymmetry

Nietzsche ⇒ compassion and pity were acts and

emotions of power
Pity Result from sympathy and empathy, steams form - Pity ⇒ thirst to be pitied, to take
the assumption that individuals cannot see another pleasure in one's own ability to exert
individual suffer power over others
Asymmetricality ⇒ condescending emotion that
were shared among people who had few things in
common

Empathy or fellow-feeling is a concept that was coined very recently to indicate our capacity to imagine
what another person feels like. Before this, Enlightened culture (c. 1700-now) invented “sympathy”, and
before that, Christianity gave us “compassion” and “pity”.

Remember how symbols formed chains of conceptual oppositions, contrasts and “friends” (see
SYMBOLS) ? Well, when the West transitioned from Christian compassion and pity to Enlightened
sympathy, we had to arrange a new idea about what it means to be in society. In the new cultural system,
being an independent individual was paramount. Because of that, we needed to rethink friendship and
fellow-feeling

But what happens to the people who suffer from oppression, violence, injustice etc? The Enlightenment
created humanitarianism, a collective effort (associationism, solidarity movements) to relieve
fellow-humans in need. Whatever we do to help, we need to educate and stimulate a natural empathy
and understand sympathy is culturally constructed, even if somewhat universal… We need to teach
and give a certain shape to it, or it might actually become harmful.

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5. BELL HOOKS. "THEORY AS LIBERATORY PRACTICE." TEACHING TO TRANSGRESS:
EDUCATION AS THE PRACTICE OF FREEDOM. (1994)

CULTURE AS LANGUAGE AND EMOTION II: TRAUMA AND RESISTANCE

Some semiologists or post-structuralists: Julia Kristiva, bell hooks, Roland Barthes… although working
on very different topics (language, psychoanalysis, cultural theory), they were keenly interested in how
pervasive the cultural environment is to perpetuating inequality.

Aware of how powerful “structures” are, they thought inequality was very hard to fight. But they did
believe that intellectual and personal work with language and the creativity of the arts (our cultural sign
system) might hold the key for a better, more “healed” life.

One might practice theorizing without ever knowing the term → This means that one can live and act in
feminist resistance without ever using the word feminism. In the same sense, people that use the term
freely, like “theory” or “feminism”, are not necessarily practitioners of it.

THE DILEMMA ENCOUNTERED BY BELL HOOKS:

● She is active in groups that want to implement actions of black solidarity to fight systemic racism
● She is an active member of the intellectual debates, in particular academic feminist theory in the
US in the 1980s and 1990s.
● She found that in academic feminism, a tight grip on abstract categories and concepts made it
quite hard for her, as a black woman, to be heard, or for her experience of inequality to be
accounted for.
○ Hooks explains that academic production of feminist theory is formulated in hierarchical
settings that often enables the privileged to draw upon works of non-privileged authors
that are then not recognized.
○ At the same time women of color were often delegitimize in academia: the privileged
white thought prevailed over the oral narrative → Thus there is more than one factor and
different layers of discrimination.
○ Production of feminist theory is complex and usually, as Hooks explains, the result of the
engagement with collective sources.
○ She said that there seems to be an agreement between white women and male scholars to
influence and decide what is theoretical. They delegitimize the way in which black
women approach their work:
■ Aiming at making it more accessible to the public
■ If a theory cannot be used in the everyday conversation, it could not be used to
educate people

Theory-Practice Dilemma in Feminism⇒She also found that her black activist groups had a very hard
time understanding the need for cultural theory. Thus, academic feminism was elitist and white, blind to
the actual struggles of black Americans, and black americans were too narrowly focused on activism,
without asking questions about the grip that racism held over their daily lives.

14
The dilemma she explains in her text is that fighting inequality needs an awareness of both the
concrete problems and the complex concepts of theory. The way to unite both is by focusing on work
of personal, first hand experience.

But at the same time: Activists needed to be aware of the importance of studying the language we use
in order for activism to be effective.
- Demonstrations, for example, adopt their own codes.

Thus:
1) Activism needs to include and learn from the language of the theory to move forward, while
2) Theory needs to be more tangible and needs to include more real life experiences
= Theory has to be part of the liberatory practice, not something that can only be understood
by a few people. That would make it useless. Feminism and feminist theory are becoming a
commodity for the privileged. It has to take into account testimonies and daily life to speak to the
widest audiences.

She asks: in what ways are the members of the black community connected by shared trauma,
internalized cycles of neglect and abuse that, having their origin in structural racism, have come down
to them as emotional scars inside their very families and neighborhoods…

She thinks we could overcome this gap by acknowledging this emotional perspective, by telling what
actually happened to them, which will imply that insights from cultural theory will be needed, and
will need to be developed in active settings and community work… this is what she calls healing.

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6. SIMON DURING, “CULTURE HIGH AND LOW”, IN: CULTURAL STUDIES: A CRITICAL
INTRODUCTION, 2005

Since the advent of popular forms of entertainment (fairground attractions, novels, film etc), Western
societies apply a distinction between high and low culture.

High and low culture has a certain relationship with the use of symbols and signs. It would be logical
to assume that high culture is cultivated in the elite spheres (classical music, museums…). Below that,
a low culture region, which entails everything else. Symbols are more abstract than a simple sign. High
culture obeys the same dynamic, it uses more abstract references, you as a viewer need to be more
active to make associations, in contrast, low culture is very easy to consume, is less symbolic (most of
the time)

Pop culture → young audience is targeted and it appeared in the 50s and 60s. Music talked about
things that the young liked, it created a sub-culture of middle income people, for example cars were
fashionable, and young people, rather than meet up in the street, they would hang out in cars, race,
flirt, having a feeling of connectedness in a group. Some songs, at that time, added a symbolic
association between the sound of cars and things that happened inside them. ⇒ Popular culture. Here
the mimetic is more frequent, so it is more easy to relate from your daily-life into an abstract complex.

The enjoyment of high culture and popular culture is socially marked.

It becomes a social association and it becomes contaminated by ambition and pretension. It is
contaminated because whatever it is that the elite do, it becomes high culture. → They mark the
division between high and low culture (social determination).

Because of taste, culture again becomes a field of practices and sometimes performance and play.
Elites will determine the value of cultural goods by controlling the passage of items from being temporary
(trendy) to permanent durable.
- Old goods that are transient lose value constantly, (Have no value according to elite)
- Durable objects become more valuable with time. (Have value according to elite)

⇒ This means that the sphere of culture is autonomous in the sense that it functions according to signs
and its carriers, but it has important connections to the sphere of the economy and the dynamics of social
status (class and ethnicity).

Taste situates cultural goods in the sphere of symbolic signs, but it has an economic side, as it is
instrumentalized for personal gain. We can reconnect taste to the domains of the economy and social
status by seeing how elite education creates a cultural canon that in turn confers prestige on those
who know and cultivate the canon. The rich and powerful usually go on to become cultured.

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 How is this canon created?
High art/culture Low art

Privileged social groups usually go through more
schooling in order to differentiate themselves from the
rest of the society.
Knowledge of the canon through:
- Elite schools
- Latin, greek
- Humanities
All this forms something we call Canon
→ a group of objects that we define as complex and
that are refined/sophisticated. Usually it comes with
the obligation of wanting to be a cultural person. It has
little to do with the objects themself. The canon is the
social setting where it has been offered to you to spend
time on the artistic products of high art.
The reward/result of the canon is social distinction
The social distinction becomes social capital &
cultural capital
With the aid of technology and rapid distribution in the
music industry and film industry, there was a dependence
on massive consumption to be commercialized.
Therefore there was no need to be complex.
At the end of the 60’s, very quickly it shifted towards a
more symbolic work. It needed the active participation of
the audience to be understood. This was creating
subcultures.
● Rock music was popular, then hippie music was
a niche, because it also had different
implications, political and ideological
implications/meanings. They found clubs that
were also creating their codes and symbols,
because they wanted to identify their peers. In the
course of the 70's there was disco music, heavy
rock (drugs), in the 80’s punk came up with their
music and their spaces

There is always a selfish pursuit to knowing the canon. Sociability is no longer restricted to physical spaces,
It has been instrumentalized by dominant class → technology has allowed the creation of virtual spaces
forms and perpetuates class differences destined to sociability.
⇒ High art means social advantages

→ Gatekeeping through:
- controlling the spaces where the high culture
takes place
- The elite wants codes so they can gatekeep
and exclude the ones that don’t know the
codes:
- Not making any noise during
concerts/plays
- Applaus only in the end

This creates a universal code of culture:

- Inflexible culture, useful for the elite it to be
always the same authors, the same objects

That’s why the canon is so useful, to create networks

of closed groups defined by their internal codes and
symbols.

17
VALUE, QUALITY AND TASTE
It is helpful to distinguish between value, quality and taste for all and any products of art, literature,
commercial and pop culture. There is no objective way to look at cultural items.

1. Quality
Quality is the worth of a cultural object as judged within the institution from which it is produced or
consumed in relation to the autonomous features of its medium. Every object within a zone or a genre
may be different and unique, but it is not completely different and unique, so quality judgements are
possible. Each media has different criteria of quality (coffee, bottle).

To understand quality, we need to distinguish between use value and exchange value. ⇒ quality
expresses how well an artifact fits its current environment and use, not whether it can be sold for a high or
low price, nor its value in the symbolic domain.

2. Value
To understand value, we need to understand the spaces of exhibition and circulation for cultural goods.
The more objects are stationary or protected from circulation and exchange, the more they are considered
“unique”, invaluable museum pieces.

The symbolic identity is important and normally higher than the exchange value of an item. For simpler
societies, the number of symbolic goods that can not be exchanged is very high. In more developed
societies, the amount of goods that cannot be exchanged is smaller.

Money makes it possible to establish the value of every object, therefore everything can be sold and
bought. In the enlightenment, they realized that everything could become consumable goods, and they
were aware that they had to have certain goods that have to be passed from one generation to another, one
of them being buildings and museum collections.

3. Taste
Taste situates cultural goods in the sphere of symbolic signs, in an economical manner, rather than
spiritual. We can reconnect taste to the domains of the economy and social status by seeing how elite
education creates a cultural canon that in turn confers prestige on those who know and cultivate the
canon. The rich and powerful usually go on to become cultured. ⇒ using culture and taste as a way to
perpetuate class

18
7. WILLIAM F. WERTZ, "A READER'S GUIDE TO SCHILLER´S LETTERS ON THE
AESTHETIC EDUCATION OF MAN (1793)", 2005

The letters are offering the formulas for us to reconnect with arts and civilization.

Remember how culture came from the Latin colere - “cultivating”, “inhabiting”, “worshiping”,
“protecting”?

● In the Enlightenment, the reformist view of human knowledge and society was causing culture
to be increasingly considered as an unnecessary by-product of “superstition”, of “dynastic
power” or local “convention”.
● Enlightenment thinkers like Kant and Schiller defended the idea of a reformed society whose
foundations would rest on the accumulation of objective, scientific knowledge. If the hoped-for
reforms were implemented, society would move away from tradition or convention and into
progress through reason.
○ Schiller supports action related to the source of reform and abolishment of the antique
regime and he wanted to see implemented democratic reforms across Europe.
● However, both Kant and Friedrich Schiller understood that by separating reason from cultural
traditions and beliefs, they were sacrificing what had always been a central part of individual
happiness and the sense of community.
○ In other terms: Modernity was producing a lot of people to live merely for material
well-being, only interested in their self-love.
○ These people rationalize the world because they see the world in material terms, they
attach value to everything. Modernity led to the thought that politically modernity was
the implementation of rational policies. And that is overlooking the part of emotions and
aesthetics.
■ Dehumanizing everyone who was not on the side of the revolution (in the case of
French Revolution) creating a strange paradox (correcting inequality by using a
system that exterminates people that does not fit in).

● What was their answer?

1) Kant tried to offer an answer in his Critique of Pure Reason (1791), claiming that the
love of beautiful things formed a necessary element of human experience. It was directed
at appearances, i.e. at the exterior manifestation of things, about which we tend to form
judgements of taste. Always subjective, they also had a key interpersonal function (as we
wish to see them shared by all). However, the weak point in his philosophy is the
categorical imperative. Kant basically says that for a man to be moral, reason must
impose imperatives on his nature (he believes that the man is naturally evil).
- Schiller sought to fix this conception in Kant’s philosophy that could lead to
dictatorships and authoritarian regimes.

19
 2) Schiller wished to go further in his Letters on the Aesthetic education of man (1794). He
says: aesthetic experience was the origin of our sense of humanity. He thought that
unless we had aesthetic experiences, we could not become “whole characters”: sharing
love, showing care and experiencing joy were symptoms of this “rounded” humanity,
without which the community would tend to decline and corrode itself. Instead of
negating the negative essence of human beings, Schiller thought that emotion should be
educated to come in terms with reason.

Schiller´s text became a cornerstone of the notion of German Kultur. Through Wilhelm von Humboldt,
who adopted it to his idea of personal education (Bildung), it became the basis for our modern system of
University education. Rather than train youth into becoming public officials at the service of the state
(magistrates, economists, religious ministers, engineers and military officers), Bildung meant that the
young would encounter a mixed curriculum of literature, philosophy, history and history of art. Society
would remain vital and humane as long as it had a constant influx of critical, independent, cultured
individuals.

The thesis of Schiller was that societies suffer because individuals have two conflict sides, the side of
raw emotion and the side of reason.
The side of Raw sensing, raw emotion The side of Reason

All of us have a Sensuous life, which is to say, we
are stimulated by what our eyes see, our ears
perceive, and our bodies experience. More
importantly, we have moods: inside of us we are
moved, become upset, or want to act. When too
pronounced in a private individual, raw sensing
and raw emotion becomes slavery, as some people
dominate and exploit others. If everyone acts on
raw feelings, we can see horrible abuse or…
social chaos.
All of us have Reason too… unlike what was
often assumed, reason does not belong only in the
minds of people with education, status and power.
It splits individuals everywhere,
causing an internal self-alienation. Every time
an individual becomes too caught up in reason
alone, their life becomes one of calculation (trade,
material gain, personal interest). In the modern
world, everyone has a different, specialized
profession, but no common sense of humanity,
which means that modern society is full of
egoistic, commercial operators
(philistines/uncultured).

The violence of the French revolution was in part
the result of a collective unleashing of raw
destructive emotion. The popular classes shook
off traditional structures of religion, hierarchy,
family, authority etc. Schiller is worried about
this, but like others, he suspects its source is
actually very modern: the decadent aristocracy
and selfish merchant class of his time. Selfish
hedonism (the idea that only pleasure should fill
human existence) is the flip coin of violent revolt.
Schiller did not blame the violence of the French
revolution solely on popular insurrection and the
withering of authority. He argued that an
important part of the violence came from too
instrumental enforcement of a regime of pure
reason. The revolutionary elite believed that,
since their objective was rational, it warranted any
form of military, economic or institutional
imposition: it supported Terror and mass
executions, and forgot the common sense of
humanity.

20
However, there’s a third level of experience that exists between Raw sensing and reason: Freedom,
aesthetic and judging. He advocates for a connector between them both. This was to understand a state
that did not exclude the functions of emotion and reason. The individuals learn to rediscover tradition
through aesthetic exploration, admiring beauty and judging great art. For the individual, Schiller envisions
the consolidation of a lost humanist idea of rounded personality.

The greatest contribution in Schiller’s Letters is to advocate for a third level of experience that emerges
as a bridge and connector between sensuous life and reason: the space of aesthetic experience and
interpersonal play. This was to be understood as a state that did not exclude the functions of emotion
and reason, but that accepted them both! (And harmonized them)

● INDIVIDUAL: This means that authority is no longer imposed by coercion, but found and
cherished by the individual through life in personal Liberty. Rather than focus on material
progress (like the philistine) the individual learns to rediscover tradition through aesthetic
exploration, i.e. admiring beauty and “judging '' great art.
○ For the individual, Schiller envisions the consolidation of a lost humanist ideal of
“rounded” personality: as much sensitivity as judgment, his free sense of value and
authority selects and saves the best of our world.
● SOCIAL: A second aim is social. The future well-being of society depends on the proliferation
of “playful”, “joyful” individuals who view traditions and Works of art through the lens of
aesthetics. Only they could create vital spaces of community in freedom.

Schiller and Kant explain the cultural phenomenon: the nature of aesthetic enjoyment
When facing a cultural phenomenon, we do not simply try to “go deep” by leaving behind the superficial
engagement of our first encounter. The Surface of the work of art, piece of music, culinary product or
cultural phenomenon simply gives us fuel and energy to remain “hooked”, to go up and down constantly
between these three levels… they may become, for some, a life-obsession…

A. Ground floor: Superficial engagement

The phenomenon offers a surface, a mere image, an outer appearance that shows beauty,
harmony, or that moves us, and/or makes us intrigued and invested in a psychological sense.
These responses set off our aesthetic enjoyment of the phenomenon, which as Schiller thought
meant we as individuals use our freedom to give it a place in our mind, but also allow it to root us
in society (by expressing love) and the world (by expressing care)

B. Garage 1: Interpretative engagement

The phenomenon becomes something like a linguistic text. We try to understand it and make it
accesible through interpretation. We identify its symbols, try to explain what things included in it
mean for the (native) culture, for instance in Mexican Pole-flying Aztec calendar, cosmic signs or
deities. However, remember: a cultural phenomenon as a whole is never just a container of one or
many meanings… objective meaning is imposible since we constantly “work” on it subjectively,
bringing in our own connections and emotions.

21
C. Garage 2: Action-rooted engagement
In this level, the phenomenon becomes something you desire to actively become involved with.
We learn to perform it, to teach it to others, to experience it by practicing it regularly. This is not
just in order to get “better at it” in a technical sense of mastering how best to do it….repetition
rather insures that we show it to others and “save” it for future generations. It may turn into a
tradition, an institution, a vital collective “partimony”… although we must be careful that it
does not become a fixed identity mark used to exclude and discriminate. Is the Sunday practice of
football for men and boys an inclusive or exclusive cultural phenomenon?…

22
9. JULIA LIPTON, HANNAH ARENDT AND THE CRISIS OF THE HUMANITIES,
POLITICAL THEOLOGY 2014
Humanities are the space and institution in which art is discerned between culture and entertainment
(art as a mass consumed good). Thus avoiding a consumerist society to devour all art (cultural and
noncultural) as entertainment, causing the loss and non preservation of cultural goods and practices.

1. Introduction and Thesis

Humanities as an institution dedicated to the study of culture, in the kantian sense1, suffers a crisis
since, it lacks a practical form ⇒ Arendt considers that Humanities serve as judgment to
differentiate between culture, art and entertainment

2. Culture and Entertainment

The difference between both is not based on their content or aesthetic complexity, but on their
affinity with disposable goods. Culture is perdurable.

- culture: composed of elements and practices that contribute to humanity in the identity sense) ⇒
establish a duration and resilience of human environments for action
- entertainment: art that us being created to be consumed by individuals during their “leisure
time”
- issue identified by Arendt ⇒ a society based on consumption can not discern between
entertainment and culture, thus is not able to properly take care of culture as assumes that
all objects and practices are done with the objective of being consumed
- If we can’t distinguish between culture and entertainment, there is only
entertainment
- consequences ⇒ that of a mass consuming society (i.e environmental damage)

3. Judgment: Kant’s Aesthetics

judgment ⇒ There needs to be spaces and institutions that have the role of defining and
discerning between culture and entertainment ⇒ through the development of political institutions
that go beyond filling the basic needs of civil life
- judgment defined as ⇒ faculty that allows the individual to move from understanding
works of art through acts of reflective evaluation to participating in political deliberation

- role of spaces ⇒ the institution and space in which art is being preserved will impact the way
and how culture is being perceived and valued + will define if there is a space to exercise public
speech

4. Religion
What Arendt does is political theology. Her approach to culture is similar to religion in its critical
capacity to discern separation between time, space, persons or objects.

5. Conclusions: Role of Humanities

1
Reference to the Aesthetic education

23
Humanities are created as an institution that allows that judgment to discern between
entertainment and culture, through the creation of a shared space around “non-utility” cultural
institution and a public environment that allows for political speech

24
9. NGUGI WA THIONG’O, “THE LANGUAGE OF AFRICAN LITERATURE”, IN:
DECOLONISING THE MIND: THE POLITICS OF LANGUAGE IN AFRICAN LITERATURE,
1985

The British and the French divided Africa distributing the territory based on the interest of mining the
resources of the continent to continue to run and manage the international trade dynamics.

Modernity → look at existing critical discourses to modernity, people who did that (Marx, Nietzsche…)
they felt that the old colonial project had created a culture, was something more than an economic
domination, was a way of thinking the world, a relationship between people who find themselves
owning a citizenship and others that didn’t (based on physical appearance). It wasn’t an apartheid, it
was a constant exchange, and what people brought to the exchange was subjectivity, they were
constructing a common worldview for the colonial system to be maintained.
● Non Europeans see the Europeans as people of power, the ones who represent modernity, and
they started to see them as something to aspire to, as an ideal of an individual.
● The white Europeans didn’t accept a dialogue, an exchange with them. The Europeans
treated them in a paternalistic way, they thought they needed guidance, and they considered
themselves to be an authority to determine what they needed or not. ⇒ use of culture to
colonize and remove indigenous practices and national identity and/or community

Imperialism: African economies, politics and cultures continue to be dominated.

Language has always been determinant. In colonization, African countries were organized under
European languages → still

What is African literature?

- European languages were seen on having the capacity of unifying such a diverse continent
- African writers were worried about how to adapt the European language to the African ideas
- Gabriel Okara, as a writer believed in the direct translation from native to English → Creation of
new Englishes → Language is alive and evolves
- Under Imperialism, language was the means of spiritual subjugation.
- English was the vehicle and the magical formula to colonial elitedom → literature and language
taking children further from their community

What was the colonial imposition doing with the children?

Language domination was a manner of colonial alienation. Breaking the ties between children and their
natural and social environment.
→ Defined by the culture of the language imposed. — Triumph of a system of domination.

Unique literature by African in European languages

→ Literature that helped to explain to the world the complexity of Africa
- Critique of the European Bourgeois civilization, anti-imperialism.
- Literature because more cynical, searching new audiences
- Lack of identity: portraying African identity avoiding the conflict of language.

25
 - Neo-African literature → Claim that European langauges were African too or
Africanizing them
→ African languages refused to die → Kept alive by peasantry
- Kept alive in rituals/ daily practices
- Unifying elements during independence

Imperialism has distorted the view of Africa’s realities

→ Africa enriches Europe but it seems that Africa needs to be rescued.
→ Colonial alienation
→ African languages should reconnect with the revolutionary traditions
- Uniting for multi-lingual diversity and liberation
- These people are depicted as enemies by neocolonialists.

The side of the colonized (Thiong’o) The side of the colonizer (Said)

In the colonial episode , the colonized can be
compared to “heads without bodies and bodies
without heads” (Thiong´ o, p. 18). The negative
image that the colonial agent presents to the
colonized about their culture translates into an
alienated mindset where one is rooted “with the
body” in the local community, but holds the
Western values and perceptions “in the head”.
This is made possible through the control of
education, where children absorb a Western eye
by seeing their familiar environment in a negative
light, but are “redeemed” by their mastery of
English or French.
In a crucial volume on the image of the Arab
World, Orientalism (1978), Said observed that
many of the qualities that the West liked to find in
the Arab world, Africa, South Asia or East Asia
amounted to a “feminine mystique”: they were
seen to be incoherent, irrational, passive,
uncontrolled in their sensuality or blind violence,
close to nature, esoteric, mystical and incapable of
self-organizing or planning. After Said, it became
clear that orientalizing was yet another form of
othering: the marginal or subaltern was cast in a
specific role by a dominant subject in order for
them to have an (artificial, enforced and
delusional) relationship.

Wa Thiong’o writes that even when the Western
bias against local culture and its perceived
inferiority is corrected, as was done with the rise
of African nationalism, we see that the new elites
embrace European languages as objects of
prestige. After independence, African authors
wrote in French and English in order for them to
be able to broadcast the African experience into
the influential spheres where these languages are
read.
Said states that the misrepresentation of the
colonized culture does more than affect the
possibilities for the latter’s healthy development
and survival: it in fact creates a self-deceptive
ideology where the West dwells in a phantasy of
its own rightful power, supposed rationality and
capacity for planning, or its sense of a
philanthropic mission far afield in the wider
World. Examples of how such phantasies can
derail political, economic and military missions
can be found well after Orientalism (1978).

Said and Wa Thiog’o believe that solutions for the problems created by colonial power will be slow
and gradual. As with Han and Kristeva, we see that they advocate for a re-siting and even
re-enchanting of cultural life. This means that rather than striving to change or formulate fuller
ideological self-possessions (nationalism, islamism etc), communities should understand the value of
custom, ritual, artistic matter and live linguistic communication. Reminiscing about his native Kenya, Wa

26
Thiong’o described the enormous identity-building power of night-time story-telling, the basic expressive
dimension of language events which he regards as the building blocks for the growth and
development of a literary and artistic culture that can help local communities open undervalued
potential. Language events of dramatic and community-witnessed telling convey key values and
perceptions, as well as a community's history. We also need to grow aware, as Saïd remarks, that
systematic nativism, i.e. nationalism, is itself one of a variety of possible narratives. As such, the national
can be seen to perpetuate colonial problems, or show a fragile sense of identity (ie, an identity that
results from insecurity about one´s relative worth to the Western modern model).

27
10. BYUNG-CHUL HAN, THE DISAPPEARANCE OF RITUALS: A TOPOLOGY OF THE
PRESENT. 2020

SOME FOUNDATIONS OF CULTURAL THEORY as a practice of SITE-CREATION

Our contemporary world is marked by the a transferal of patterns of economic production

onto our subjective lives: we live to “produce our individual selves, then offer our identity in markets”.
● Byun-Chul Han makes a criticism of the neo-liberal system.

Nature of the problems:

1. We have lost a sense of proximity to the world we inhabit, and with that our ability to value
events of community and non-communicative interaction. The resistance it creates:
a. Han thinks we need to find places and rituals of closure. This entails abandoning
identity and opinion, and accepting “a world story” (p. 30)

2. A false sense of unfinished, constant “becoming” and provisional work-in-progress has

invaded us. We no longer accept transitions or closure.
a. On the level of individual life, we have to stop obsessing with ideals of transparency or
authenticity: the endless search for a “true” self denies the possibility of self-staging, of
constructing our public lives
b. A neo-liberal system de-sites: we need to found ritual communities “of common
listening and belonging… in the quiet unity of silence” (p. 31)
c. Affective communication2 in social media should be substituted by the principle of
“exteriority first”: politeness, gesture, gentleness work their way inwards and become
(inside of us) emotion.

CHAPTER 2: The compulsion of authenticity

● He says that the authenticity is narcissistic → it undermines the community
○ “The cult of authenticity shifts the question of identity from society to the individual
person.”
○ He says that authenticity is a neoliberal form of production
■ “You exploit yourself voluntarily in the belief that you are realizing yourself.”
■ “Once it [neoliberalism] is able to present itself as freedom, domination becomes
complete.”
○ One example he gives are tattoos: “Today, tattoos lack any symbolic power. All they do is
point to the uniqueness of the bearer.”
■ → In this way, authenticity destroys the public space and turns it into more and
more private space. What's the problem with this?
● The problem, he argues, is that this “narcissistic cult of authenticity” leads to an increasing
brutalization of society => We are not nice to each other anymore. What is missing are the

2
Expressing feelings, opinions, emotions…

28
 gestures, the traditions and rituals
○ “Where ritual gestures and manners decay, affect and emotion gain the upper hand.”
● He explains “External forms lead to internal changes. Thus, ritual forms of politeness have mental
effects. The semblance of beauty produces a beautiful soul, not vice versa.”
○ “Rituals make the world objective; they mediate our relation to the world. The
compulsion of authenticity, by contrast, makes everything subjective, thereby
intensifying narcissistic tendencies.”
○ “Their disappearance desecrates and profanes, transforming life into mere survival.”

The solution: “A re-enchantment of the world to create a healing power that could counteract
collective narcissism.”

CHAPTER 3: Rituals of closure

The problem he poses here is that neoliberalism (with its performance and optimization) doesn’t allow
for any closure.

Examples are:

● Computer software
● Life-long learning without any endpoint

This is again connected to narcissism. As he explains: “The narcissistic subject feels itself most intensely
not in what it does, in the work completed, but in ongoing performance.”

An example of closure he gives is the village with the pear tree in the middle

● “The rituals of closure stabilize the village. They produce a cognitive mapping, something that is
dissolved in the course of digitization and globalization”.

“The ritual community is a community of common listening and belonging, a community in the
quiet unity of silence.”

● “Collective consciousness creates a community without communication.”

● “Where such primordial closeness disappears, excessive communication takes its place.
Community without communication gives way to communication without community.”

He is saying that narrative is a form of closure

● Information is the contrary of that closure; it doesn’t have an end.

The problem is that complete openness leads to a reaction of counter violence as we can see between
globalization (no closure) and nationalization (excessive closure)

● However, Han sees the culpable as the neoliberal order that creates the enemy of excessive

29
 closure => both are bad but one is only a reaction to the other.
○ “The global produces a hell of the same. It is this violence of the global, in particular, that
stirs up site fundamentalism.”
○ “The strengthening of site fundamentalism, the Leitkultur, is a reaction to the global,
neoliberal hyper-culture, to hyper-cultural non-sitedness. The two cultural formations
confront each other in hostile and irreconcilable opposition, but they have one thing in
common: they exclude what is foreign.”

His answer: “We need to go back to actually having an identity, where we have closure. What gives us
this identity? => “Culture [with its traditions] is a form of closure, and so founds an identity.”

● And this is actually not excluding the foreign

○ “Thresholds transform. Beyond a threshold, there is what is other, what is foreign.”

→ “Rituals give form to the essential transitions of life. They are forms of closure. Without them, we slip
through.”

→ “Thresholds [or closure], as transitions, give a rhythm to, articulate, and even narrate space and time.”

30
11. TURNER, “BETWIXT AND BETWEEN: THE LIMINAL PERIOD IN RITES DE
PASSAGE.” (1979)

→ We try to filter ourselves, we put out a mask to sell ourselves

→ Cultural system bounces storytelling and fiction
→ Victor Turner looks to interpret it through liminal, trying to figure out how symbols are disconnected
from the West → He realized that, for example, rituals of initiation were aimed at undoing the identity of
people → Way to access a circle of powerful people

Victor Turner's essay "Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites de Passage" delves into the
transitional phase of rituals, emphasizing its cultural significance and the insights it offers into the
fundamental aspects of culture. Turner builds upon Arnold van Gennep's concept of rites of passage,
which are divided into three phases:
1. separation,
2. margin (liminality), and
3. aggregation.

Turner's focus is on the liminal period, often overlooked and considered amorphous, which he believes
reveals the basic building blocks of culture. His comparative, symbolic anthropology is focused on how
communities generate meaning out of ritual and symbolic objects.

During a rite's liminal stage, participants “stand at the threshold” between their previous way of
structuring their identity, time, or community, and a new way (which completing the rite establishes).

● His method is comparative: although focusing mainly on several African tribes, he also takes
plenty of examples from native American ethnography, and includes important forays into ancient
Greek orphic mysteries and some contemporary urban rituals (fraternities).

He notes a number of recurring features to liminal episodes, which are synonymous with rites of
passage [growing up]:

1. The invariable starting point for any rite of passage is that individuals subjected to it abandon
their previous identity (as children, for instance), but are not considered to have received a
new one yet. They are without self — in a state of “betwixt and between”.
a. A lot of symbolic ideas are applied to these precarious persons: they are dead, buried,
they have joined the night, the moon, have become dirt or earth. They must be secluded,
left in the wild, deprived of clothes etc.
i. → symbolic acts and themes of death and rebirth are representing the shedding of
the old identity and the emergence of a new one.
b. In this phase, neophytes are secluded and stripped of their social status, making them
“invisible” in terms of social structure.

2. With the other initiated (neophytes), they join a “peerage” (group of fellow initiates) governed
by absolute equality where sharing is crucial. These bonds between initiates seal later personal

31
 loyalties once the initiates have been allowed to return to their tribe.

3. Turner also discusses the communication of sacra (sacred things) during this period, which he
describes as a symbolic template of a culture's beliefs and values. An elder or master assumes a
teaching of ritual and esoteric truth through the authoritative sacra to the neophytes.
a. These sacra are often of formal simplicity but rich in meaning, and are told that they are
in the presence of forms established from the beginning of things.
i. the showing of crude images often based on animal-human hybrids.
ii. Secret names of deities are revealed, theogonies, cosmogonies and mythic (tribal)
histories are explained.

4. This communication not only teaches neophytes abstract thinking about their cultural milieu but
also transforms them, uniting them with their new social role. In other words: The function of the
liminal is believed to consist in dissolving all (linguistic) social structure of the “ordered
world”, which opens a window for the initiated into crucial relationships and deeper sense of
belonging in their social world.
a. They also act to close and seal phases, and to produce symbolic time through absolute
thresholds connecting life to symbolic “death”.
b. → Connection to Han: he says that these thresholds are important to create something we
can hold onto and not “slip through life”.

In summary, Turner's essay underscores the liminal period as a crucial and revealing aspect of rites of
passage, a time when the boundaries between states are blurred, and individuals are transformed through
exposure to the fundamental principles of their culture. He describes the liminal person as one who is
symbolically invisible, naked, and divested of the trappings of their previous role, reduced to the
substance from which the structured order of society will be regenerated.

The essay includes a critique of other scholars' views on African ritual and religion, particularly Max
Gluckman and Robin Horton. Turner argues that while ritual involves communion with supernatural
beings, it also addresses puzzling observations in the natural and social realms, similar to scientific
models in Western thought. He suggests that both religious and scientific language are necessary to
understand African religious systems.

Turner's analysis is rich with examples from various cultures, including the Swazi and Ndembu,
illustrating how the liminal period is a time of transformation and learning.

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DOCUMENTARIES

13. MONDO CANE

We believe that we sit in the place of civilization (the west). The movie makes us question this view.
The documentary shows that there is a set of basic instincts that count for all of us (like sex). In the
west we have become very hypocritical about the features of basic instincts because of the division of
functions.
● It’s also showing disturbing human tendencies which haven’t disappeared in western societies
● It also shows double standards of the west, which the other non-western cultures are not hiding
○ Thus, they are living their basic instincts in a more direct/open way

- juxtaposition of cultures => strong connection of western and “tribal” cultures

- use of irony and sarcasm as a tool to highlight the absurdism of culture against culture
- assumes the definition where culture has a meaning of social life, it is isomorphic with
the meaning of society ⇒ thus culture can be juxtaposed to another culture

- assumption of a hierarchy of cultures, with simpler and complex cultures ⇒ assumes that the
viewer is sitting in the position of a more advanced culture and observing simpler cultures

- highlights the limits of what is accepted ⇒ obsession with concepts or basic instincts that have
been stigmatized or tabooed by western cultures ⇒ death, sex, gluttony…
- showcases the hypocrisy of western cultures and its taboo on basic instincts ⇒ as they
also participate in what they might considered “depraved” + compare it with simpler
cultures that are more open to basic instincts
-
- The documentary can be related back to the dilemma of Culture as a Civilizing tool of
progression(French Tradition) and Kultur as Authentic culture (German Tradition)
- the primitive can be associated with backwardness and barren barbarity, but also with
natural emotion, nobility and deeper, uncorrupted justice…

Complex Culture ⇒ civilizing Simple Culture ⇒ to be civilized

perceived as more developed ⇒ has the morale
role to act as a civilizer to simpler cultures
Basic instincts are performed in private life
⇒ private life is more relevant than shared society
Perceived as less developed or complex
Basic instincts are performed openly and in
community
⇒ acts that could be performed in private
environment are performed publicly, thus society
is more community based

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Questionnaire
1. How do they regard the foreign cultures they set out to “document”:
→ As strangely reminiscent of our “own” modern Western world

2. How do they regard our own cultural position (ie Western, modern, industrialized,
city-bound etc):
→ In spite of initial appearances, our so-called advanced civilization and
technology has not changed the basis of who we are as humans

3. What is it that we learn, overall, from Mondo Cane (if we take what it shows us at face
value?)
→ All apparent distinction between civilized and savage, between poor and rich is
in fact superficial: in the core we remain the same

4. What, if anything, could be the sense of the title “Mondo Cane” (“dog world/mad
world”)
→ Our culture is not any different from animal life, that is, culture is simply an
extension of natural necessity and bodily thrives

5. Mondo Cane was made over half a century ago. What should be our stance towards
this film in 2023?
→ We find in it a form of multiculturalism or cultural relativism: its interest in
differences between cultures manages to unmask our false, privileged sense of being the
superior, rational, fully knowing observers of others

6. Is there anything to be said about feminism, race theory or LGBTQ+ in this film?
→ It allows for some visibility for race and LGBTQ+, but only as a means of
provoking the audience into feelings of dislike or rejection towards persons so denoted

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14. BARAKA

Baraka (1992) is a film that does not force us to interpret, yet it is full of ideas! It explicitly renounces any
verbal form of commentary, and forces us to engage it merely through attentive watching and listening. In
this sense, it encourages an aesthetic enjoyment of the cultures it puts on display, as opposed to the more
anecdotal, story-telling technique we saw in Mondo Cane (1962). Opting for the aesthetic approach does
not mean we are meant to take it all as empty beauty and plain fun!

- application of aesthetics ⇒ with baraka there is an application of the kantian aesthetics; the
spectator observes the aesthetically pleasing imaginary of the documentary, however once it
realizes that the images or its sequence can be linked to deeper layers of meaning, it can not
perceive the movie with the same perspective as before ⇒ as it will be searching over and over
again for different layers of meaning.
- It does not force us to interpret, yet it is full of ideas!
- meaning (signified and signifier) ⇒ images are used to convey a meaning
- non-traditional language can be used to inform ⇒ using
suggesting music, images and analogies + playing with the
viewers context and prejudice regarding a topic
- universal truth ⇒ there is an assumption that some
elements can be understood in a universal manner ⇒ the
lack of language can be interpreted as a way of connecting
concepts universally (love, construction, destruction…)

The documentary insists that the way people have created their
traditions, festivals, religions and social infrastructures corresponds to a deeply seated conflict in
human nature that we can best access through aesthetic contemplation.
● The conflict = conflict between:
1) our more life-embracing nature on one hand and
2) a destructive or death-oriented, darker self on the other.

What's the answer to that conflict?

● Passages in the documentary seem to suggest that the incomprehensible delight of life and horror
of death lead us to adopt complex religious ideas or to interpret the Universe, without meaning
to say there is a “right” religion or knowledge of the Universe.

It is interesting that the documentary itself is structured like the cycle of a day: it starts with light
emerging, and finishes with the fall of night and the visibility of the stars. In between, it sandwitches “us”,
humanity, caught up in an awe-inspiring dialogue between love and hate, tradition and modernity, beauty
and horror…

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15. BEING GAY IN THE THIRTIES

Gays in 1930s London led different existences, and witness accounts may inform us on the intolerant,
hostile environment in which they had no option but to survive. Much of it needed would be a game of
“not letting on”, of dissimulation, of concealing and suppressing one’s sexuality and love because of the
oppressive laws in place. However, some gay men managed to socialize by choosing certain spaces for
entertainment and culture, and by creating their own codes for forming homosocial friendships or seeking
sexual partners.

Culture is indeed an autonomous sphere that can “disobey”' important elements of social life, such
as legislation and law-enforcement.

● Despite the repressive nature of 1930s london, gay man were able to experiment and express their
sexual identity in specific spaces ⇒ creation of a common culture and codes to recognize each
other and create safe spaces (culture as an autonomous sphere) to love freely outside the
established norm
○ common symbols/codes ⇒ lighting a man cigarette, certain forms of entertainment
● This, eventually, leads them to manage a degree of visibility where other “know” but do not
“care”

The threat of repression did not just come from law-enforcement. Repression made a turn for the worse
when specialized “knowledge” about gay sexuality became widely available to society during the 1950s
(sexeology!).

● The idea of perverts (turned/corrupted gay) → “has to be protected”

● The idea of inverts (born gay) → “has to be pitied”

Before that, in the 1930s, the idea of homosexuality had not yet been diffused as such: “It was seen as a
sin that any man could commit” (so not like something you are but rather something you can decide to
do).

● They explain that many straight men had homosexual experiences without being considered queer
(like the soldiers)

→ However, if mainstream culture starts to focus on suspecting danger, this can be even worse than
legislative repression.

● danger was that heterosexual identity was itself under threat from the idea that people could be
“tricked” into turning gay
● Symbols and codes are now turned into evidence for this imagined identity battlefield, and people
get punished for the very fact that their lives have been marred by constant hiding and discretion.
● In the end, hiding makes matters worse, and simple openness, visibility and engagement works
best to curtail anger and hate…

Culture is indeed an autonomous sphere that can “disobey” important elements of social life.

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Questionnaire:

1. In the 1930s, gay men in London went to specific cultural or public spaces in order to meet up, such
as the variété theater and a Brasserie called “Lyon´s corner”. Why?
→ In the theater, there were certain areas in the auditorium where all gay men went to socialize. They
could do the same in the Brasserie, where the staff treated them well. /// It was really not possible at all
from outward behavior to determine who was gay and who was not, so only if you went to the same
places could you eventually come into contact with another gay man

2. Explain what meaning gay men created when they called each other “sisters” (min. 4 ff)
→ Since they (the friends that went to the bar together) didn’t have any other way of thinking of
themselves (concept of homosexuality not yet “invented”) they assumed that they are some sort of
intermediate sex.

3. How come London in the 1930s used to be a place “free of persecution”, as one of the witnesses says
(c. min. 13), when the UK had very strong laws prohibiting homosexual acts?
→ Homosexual acts were forbidden by law, but society had no reason to be concerned about the
presence of gay men in their midst. The 30s were considered the golden age by many gay men living
their lives in the cafes and theaters (even though it was also a time of ignorance, guilt and fear)

4. In Part 2 of the Documentary, we see this situation change. Why is this?

→ The emergence of specific disciplines in psychology (sexology) that tried to explain (homo)sexuality

5. How did developments in the mid-twentieth century affect the routines and spaces of
gay life in London?
→ Sexological theory introduced the distinction between “inverts” and “perverts”

6. In the 1950s, why was the “invert” and “pervert” causing such public obsession?
→ Because perverts were believed to be introduced to gay sex by inverts. The inverts were therefore
seen as traitors that are pedophiles and corrupting young people. They also created the idea of inherent
traits that differentiates inverts from straight men.

7. What is the recommendation given by the expert interviewed in the documentary for
contemporary gay men (min. 33)
→ Gayness should not be an identity that creates a “difference” between gay men and the rest; it should
be understood a way of loving, no matter what your identity is. Pride indeed can be helpful, but the end
goal should not be another strict definition people have to fit in; it is a spectrum.

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CONCEPTS

CULTURE:
Cosmopolitanism: emerged in the enlightenment. They believed that Europeans were in a superior stage
of knowledge and development and should become rulers. Through certain behavior patterns (politeness)
they could subverse other cultures.

Culture appears as something that complements civilization. There is the idea that when a society is
extremely focused on the economy, people identify themselves with their place in the economic cycle.
The defendants of culture, such as romantics, claimed that the system of universal values was destroying
and fragmenting society and a balance between it was needed.

Culture vs. Economy

Culture is used in two different senses (singular and plural)
Plural: culture is a unified entity with clear boundaries.
Singular: Everywhere there are cultural elements. Even though we’re mostly engaged with money and
society, culture is everywhere. Something that is crossing everything.

SEMIOTICS:
Signifier, Signified
1. Signifier → The material thing given to you: It could be the sound of dog (spoken word) or the
written word
2. Signified → The concept behind it

Language and meaning

Some of the cultural phenomena have to do with language. Language is found outside of the specific
language that we speak, therefore language and linguistics are not the same. Things that can be linguistic
but not language. When we look at a piece of art, an inflatable balloon in the shape of a toilet there’s a
thing that we recognize because of an association of the image, the artist is breaking the sign. For dogs,
the signifier can be the written form or the sound and then, there’s the idea, the signified. Here, there’s a
kind of disruption between the significant and the signifier. Semiotics is the study of the signifier and the
signified.

Agency and Structure

The structure and agency debate sets off in the early XXth C. It asks what relative power or relative
relationship can be said to exist between life lived on an individual level and life structured on a social
level.
● Structure is almost always set by all institutions exercising power over individuals, from
governments, church and the police to medical authorities and tennis match arbiters, parents etc.
The main channel by which these norms enter individual lives is by our languages and our system
of signs and symbols.

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 ● We see agency for individuals appear as soon as individuals master the signs and symbols that
pre-exist as part of a culture’s general rule. Agency means individuals have some room for
maneuver and for reinvention…

Signs are of two kinds: mimetic and symbolic ones.

1. Symbols
A symbol, properly speaking, shows you a picture, but means something more conceptual and abstract. ⇒
elements that have layers upon layers of meaning

Because symbols have a very loose attachment between the thing they show (the picture as such) and the
thing they mean (the concept), this association often stirs and changes. This is why cultural systems at any
given moment are most often carried by very specific sets of symbols…both in most modern worlds and
the least!

Symbols form relations among themselves. The Green and red puppets in semaphore lights are mutually
exclusive.

2. Mimetic
A mimetic sign, also known as iconic, shows visually or by sound, taste and touch what is intended:
the thief will point to a dog to make his companion be extra silent during the robbery. Seeing a dog is
understanding all that a dog can do, including barking or biting you.

Linguistic systems
A system of signs, symbols, sounds, gestures, or rules used in communication. As individuals attach
meaning to said symbol
- Ex. written words by itself do not have any meaning unless we attach it
- music can be considered a linguistic system as meanings can be suggested through melody

Symbolon
A broken object that has to be unified again.
Symbols seem interconnected in a logical way, but symbols can be manipulated so their meaning changes.
- Sometimes symbols survive, but what they stand for has changed.

Authenticity
Refers to the quality of something or someone to remain unique and true to itself; however, Han relates
this authenticity to an imposed and performative search to separate oneself to the other through shallow
and “commodified” elements leading to a consumption of authenticity from an individualist perspective
- Authenticity vs. Ritual ⇒ both concepts represent the alteration of one’s identity, though from
opposite processes ⇒ authenticity is performed and self stage for others and our own narcissism,
whereas rituals are performed through a public space and with a community or spiritually based
experience

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Aesthetic Education:
Aesthetics are the responses and reactions of someone participating in a cultural phenomenon.
- First Stage: Superficial Structure => participants and observants experience and appreciate the
superficial aesthetic of the practice or performance
- Second Stage: Attach Meaning upon Meaning => participant understand and related the
different meanings related to the cultural practice (world organization, place occupying,
identification, signify and significance) (attach significance to the signify, when you observe you
understand a deeper meaning)
- Final Stage: Institutionalisation =>development of an institution (embrace the cultural practice
to protect it and ensure its preservation through institutionalization)
- Institutions: aim at being repeated → generational replacement to keep the institution
- Identification: Inclusive phenomenon, abstract feeling of belonging

The aesthetic education is based on the idea that participants learn about culture and cultural practices by
experiencing it in an institutionalized environment. Through that experimentation they go through the
different levels or stages of aesthetic experimentation; nevertheless this stages are not static, and the
participant will go up and down each time they experiment something new
identification and sense of purpose

Aesthetics and Identity

Identity is something that is constantly developing and it can be triggered through cultural practices =>
the encounter with a cultural practice can cause personal or identity growth => “feel our way”
- identity can be shaped + create circumstances where you can develop your identity cultural
experiences or practices that can trigger this personal growth
- experience cultural practices goes beyond the superficial appreciation of beauty, but
seeking personal growth
- social structures and institutions => use aesthetic theory to shape the identity of the participants
and observants that experience the cultural practice to create a sense of specific community
(political tool)

Rituals
Our ‘modern’ society is based on individuals, there is nothing between society and individuals .We are
still living in a world imagined by the Enlightenment. → constitutional states with coded rights and
duties. → neoliberalism

In other words (or the words of Han) we live in a society where we have lost the capacity to care about
others, there is a comeback of authenticity (truth about oneself)
- Authenticity and rituals are opposed.
- Rituals are not about personal truth, they are about creating a common story aimed at performing
a truth

Universal truth

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Refers to the concept that elements, experiences and concepts can be understood universally, regardless of
cultural upbringing ⇒ it is a very contested idea, as the nuances of an a concept can not be and are not
properly translated or shared universally
- Linguistic systems are a way to establish universal truths, as is not attach to determined or
traditionally cultural (static) symbols

Ethnography
When a western culture is observing another culture because it objectifies it as a matter of interest
(something “stuck in time” that is worth studying)

Plessner Theory:
- society is completely dominated by economic forces (class society) => access to wealth and
social capital
- ex. a doctor will study within a prestigious university and he will gain social capital
- spiritual forces, values… it does not exist in the relation between individuals in society
=> there is no place for connections and true human exchange within society

- pragmatic society => divided between the public world and the private world (ex. relation
student-teacher is in the private world; within the life of an individual is where the private world
happens)
- any relation created with other individuals will be somewhat based on how we are
presented (masking)

- community => the idea of a group of people that created the need to create an emotional
connection through identification => two ideologies would create this concept of community
(communism or nationalism)
- communism => through class identity
- nationalism => through national identity
- once you enter the group, the individual seeks to create emotional connections with other
individuals => identification
- these communities were usually led by a charismatic leader => revolutionary ideologies
were made to return to a simpler society

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