On the dark sides of the “exposed” cultural life. An objection to the recently raised, optimistic tone in cultural theory

Abstract

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