Filozofija i drustvo 2020 Volume 31, Issue 4, Pages: 515-568
https://doi.org/10.2298/FID2004515L
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On the dark sides of the “exposed” cultural life. An objection to the recently raised, optimistic tone in cultural theory
Liebsch Burkhard (Ruhr Universität Bochum), Burkhard.Liebsch@rub.de
The text begins by charting the current seeming resistance of understanding
one’s own culture as inherently heterogenous, transculturally mixed with
the foreign. Looking at classic contributions to the theory of culture, the
text continues by dealing with the identitary temptation so as to
understand it from the perspective that cultural life forms can only be
approached from the perspective of the intractable foreignness of the world
- on the condition that we are permanently accepted in them. The fact that
foreignness cannot thus be “removed” means that we never experience
“complete” enculturation, but rather we remain always tied to the
precultural. The article thesis is that for this very reason we have an
indelible affinity to everything transcultural, which can foremost be
understood as what can be found ‘beyond’ familiar forms of life, and which
can bind us to the ‘beyond’, as we will never fully feel domesticated in
this ‘here present’. Ironically, however, the transcultural draws on the
precultural. Apologists of identity negate this latter insight, offering
warped images of homogenized belonging that, it would appear, allow for no
interior disagreement, oddity, or distance.
Keywords: culture, foreignness, exposure, hospitality, violence