I don't even know where to start with this one. Honestly, I was just sitting here thinking about how much stuff changes, you know? Like, one day everything feels solid, and then—bam—everything shifts. It’s kind of wild when you really stop to look at it. I was actually talking to a friend about something similar the other day while we were grabbing coffee in Chicago, and we ended up going down this huge rabbit hole about how little control we actually have over the big things. Anyway, my brain is just buzzing with all this. What do you guys think? Is it just me, or is everything feeling a bit more... unsettled lately? I feel like I'm constantly trying to catch my breath just to keep up with the pace of it all. Just a thought. Or maybe a lot of thoughts. I can never tell. kaže:
So, I’ve been chewing on this whole idea of that "expanded" view of culture—you know, the one where everything from high art down to a random TikTok trend or a greasy burger joint is all lumped together under the same umbrella. Honestly? It’s a lot to wrap my head around. On one hand, I kind of love it. It feels more... I don't know, honest? Like, if we only talk about stuff like Shakespeare or those massive Broadway shows, we're basically ignoring how most people actually live their lives. Real life happens in the suburbs, at the local diner, or while you're scrolling through your phone on the subway. Including all that grit and everyday stuff makes the whole concept feel more human, less like some dusty museum exhibit. But man, I can't help but wonder if we're losing something vital in the process. If *everything* is culture, then does *anything* actually matter? It’s like when my buddy tried to argue that a bag of Flamin' Hot Cheetos was just as culturally significant as a masterpiece hanging in the MoMA. I mean, sure, they're iconic, but there's a certain weight, a certain craft, to the classics that you just don't get from a snack food. I worry that by stretching the definition so thin, we might end up diluting the things that actually challenge us or push us to be better. If we stop making distinctions, do we lose the ability to say, "Hey, this is truly extraordinary"? It’s a fine line to walk between being inclusive and just being... well, messy. What do you guys think? Am I just being old-fashioned, or is there a real risk in flattening everything out?
Man, you really started off on a super pessimistic note there! 😁
I’m gonna try to be as thorough as I possibly can here, so please, forgive me if this turns into a bit of a novel... honestly. Most of this is just what I can pull from my own memory, though I am leaning heavily on an old notebook of mine to keep things straight, so bear with me—some of these details might feel a little broad or general.
I mean, look, at its core, culture is basically just this massive, tangible, emotional web of human connection—you know? It’s everything we pour into texts, the images we stare at, even those little gestures we make without thinking. It’s the actual fabric of how we live together.
So, this whole idea really started picking up steam toward the end of the 18th century. It was mostly these German Romantics who were getting pretty fed up with how much French thought was dominating everything back then. I mean, you have to understand—at that time, the French were absolutely obsessed with this grand concept of "civilization." They were basically riding that wave hard, trying to push their way of thinking on everyone else, and it just drove the German intellectuals crazy.
When you really sit down and think about what "civilization" actually means... it’s more than just buildings or technology, you know? It’s that whole layer of stuff we wrap around ourselves—our logic, our manners, the way we carry ourselves, even the specific way we speak. It’s basically everything that separates a modern American from what people used to call "barbarians." You know the type—those folks who were seen as just pure instinct, totally unrefined, living without any of those social filters we rely on every single day. It's that sense of polish that makes us feel distinct.
Back in the day, you had these romanticists over in Germany who were just constantly at odds with their king. It was such a mess! They were always breathing down his neck because he was obsessed with French philosophy. Can you believe that? They felt like he was basically turning his back on his own people—ignoring the local artists and all those brilliant intellectuals right there at home—just to chase after what was trendy in France. And don't even get me started on the language thing. They were furious that he was prioritizing French over their own native tongue. It’s wild how much ego and cultural pride can stir up drama like that.
So, I was digging through some old files and stumbled upon these letters written by Shiller back in 1795. Honestly, I can’t even remember who he was actually writing to, or if there were dozens more just sitting around somewhere. But man, what he says about France really sticks with me. He basically argued that they were leaning way too hard on pure reason. His whole point was that you’ve gotta factor in the body, too—because let's face it, logic can explain just about anything, but it can't exactly explain itself. It feels like we're seeing this happen again today, where standards of taste have just completely shattered. There's no unity left. You can't just look at what the high-society elites like and call it a rule anymore; that kind of unquestionable authority is dead and gone. It’s actually pretty wild because the Germans used to look at France and see nothing but a barbaric state that cared way too much about surface-level form. For Shiller, though, true culture is something much deeper—something archaic, rooted in our actual senses. He was actually being pretty gentle in his critique, trying to find a middle ground between those two extremes. He called this balancing act the "play impulse," which is basically this drive to find a shared framework of agreement. Of course, he was mostly talking about art, but you can see how it applies to everything else, right?
You know, when you look at Goethe, his whole perspective really starts to make sense once you consider how much literature he felt was losing its spark back then. He was actually pushing for this comparative way of studying different civilizations—which, let's be honest, was a pretty wild idea at the time. Most people were just focused on conquest, you know? Just taking over and moving on. But he wanted to understand. And when it comes to the whole debate over civilization and culture, he was totally on the same page as Shiller. It’s that classic tug-of-war we always talk about: pure reason versus raw emotion.
So, you've got these two guys, right? And over the years, a whole swarm of intellectuals has basically built their entire legacies on top of them. It’s like they laid the foundation, and everyone else just kept adding floors to the building. Take Raymond Williams, for example—he’s out there deep in his feelings, totally rethinking what we actually mean when we talk about "culture." He breaks it down like this:
Culture isn't just some dusty thing you find in a museum—it’s more like this massive, invisible web woven right into our daily chats, whether we're just gossiping over coffee or debating big stuff in the public square. It’s layered, you know? It touches everything from the symbols we use to the weird little habits we all share. Because it's everywhere, "culture" has basically become this rhetorical tool itself. Its meaning keeps shifting depending on who's using it and where. Honestly, it's such a broad term that Hartley points out how it's totally multi-discursive. That's just a fancy way of saying it isn't stuck in one box; it can mean as many different things as there are different ways to talk about it.
Back during the Enlightenment era, people used to toss around the terms "culture" and "civilization" like they were basically the same thing. It was all part of this big push to frame culture as the ultimate symbol of progress. Basically, the rising middle class started using it as their main weapon against the old-school aristocracy—you know, those elites who had always been the face of French "civilization." It was their way of saying, "Hey, we're moving forward, and you're just stuck in the past."
So, I was sitting here thinking about Raymond Williams—you know, that guy we were talking about? It turns out he actually lays out three different ways to define culture. Three! It’s kind of wild how much depth there is when you really start digging into his work. It's not just one simple thing; it's layered, like how you might look at a classic movie versus just the way people hang out at a local diner on a Friday night. There's so much more to unpack than I first thought.
The "Ideal"—it’s basically this whole concept of polishing humans up to fit these universal standards and values. But honestly? I think there's a huge flaw in how he defines it. He just completely ignores the reality of social circumstances. It’s like he doesn't even care about the distinction between reaching some lofty peak of human development and actually, you know, having enough food on the table and meeting basic material needs. You can't really talk about perfecting the soul if people are struggling just to get by.
Documentary—think of it as this massive collection of mental imagery and imagination that acts like a storage unit for human thought and lived experience.
This basically birtched a whole branch of critical work that heads in a few different directions: it can highlight the absolute best of us (like an idealist would), it can zoom in on specific little pieces, or it can grow into this big historical critique that tries to link everything back to a specific tradition or the society that actually produced it. The only real headache with this definition is that you can't just boil culture down to what’s been written in books, nor can you ever really rip it away from the rest of what makes life, well, life.
Social—this is more about describing a specific way of living where certain meanings and values aren't just stuck in fine art or academic stuff, but show up in our institutions and how we act every single day. Or, if you want the short version, it’s the total sum of a way of life.
We really have to give Raymond Williams credit here; he’s the one who moved the whole concept of "culture" out of that stuffy, elitist bubble of "eternal values" and dropped it right into the messy, everyday experience of real people.
For me, the most fascinating bit about culture as a concept is this idea of webs of meaning. Geertz argues that humans are basically tangled up in a web of meanings they spun themselves, and our job is to try and crystallize those meanings. So, if we look at it analytically, we can define culture as this battlefield where everyone is fighting over what things mean. When we read the meaning behind a product or a text, we're looking at a production process with all sorts of social outcomes happening at different stages of its creation. We read a text as a byproduct of the context—the specific time and place it was born into. The tricky part is how differently everyone interprets those meanings, especially when every single interpretation tries to assert itself as the final, ultimate rulebook.
So, now we get to your take:
Your perspective is pretty structuralist, with a healthy helping of Marxism mixed in, 😁 and it mostly revolves—led by Foucault—around power dynamics. That brings us to the idea of hegemony, which is basically when an ideology is pushed so successfully that the ones promoting it (let's call them "the authorities") convince the people being targeted (let's call them "the public") to actually *want* to be part of that ideology. In a nutshell? It's colonization with consent. Talk about power at its peak.
