Kultur

[Mark Smith]

In a review of a new book, "The Seduction of Culture in German History", by
Wolf Lepenies, Andreas Huyssen outlines how German notions of "Kultur"
became the de facto unifying principle for a nation otherwise lacking in a
central state organization ( The Nation, May
29<http://www.thenation.com/docprem.mhtml?i=20060529&s=huyssen>).
Although the influence of American rock and roll, pop, jazz, and Hollywood
movies have made huge inroads into the German concept of Kultur as a
unifying force, it is still possible at least to have a working
understanding of the difference between nonsense and serious cultural issues
in Germany, and entirely possible to conduct science without catering to
fringe religious beliefs.  If "Kultur" is what unifies a country in the
absence of real political organization, at least let it be the real thing,
and not some low-brow melodrama which purports to be culture.

"The intense focus on cultural issues like sex in the movies, evolution and
creationism, even academic curriculums, distracts from the hollowing out of
constitutional checks and balances, the dismantling of international law and
domestic threats to civil rights. Even more ominous, the "war on terror" and
the "march of democracy" have increasingly taken on shadings of a war of
cultures. As German historian Heinrich von Treitschke argued more than a
century ago, once war becomes war of cultures, there is no end to it."

I am reminded here of one our recent posts of Pynchon's proverbs for
paranoids
<http://www.newpartisan.com/home/literature-for-the-age-of-unease-reading-pynchon-today.html>:
"If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry
about answers." The political shell game that is being perpetrated on the
American public is symptomatic of a process that has successfully
substituted "culture" for politics.

More at downstreamer <http://www.downstreamer.com/>
--
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20060522/99940af2/attachment.html>