‘culture in the plural’

‘Culture in the Plural’

METU Faculty of Architecture Department in Industrial DesignID 501 Advanced Project Development in Industrial Design

Michel de Certeau

Gizem EVCEN

Chapter 6 MinoritiesChapter 8 Culture within SocietyChapter 10 Spaces and Practices

Michel de Certeau born in 1925

degrees in classics and philosophy

Chapter 6 - MinoritiesPolitical and Cultural Manifestos?

A cultural, social or ethnic autonomy always draws attention to itself by saying no… …risk identifying both with a political ideology and

an exclusively cultural formation.

…cultural expression is only the surface of a social unity that has not yet been given its own political and cultural consistency.

… do not possess any real political force…


They gained self-consciousness as “ Bretons” at the very moment when they were mixed together with non-Bretons. …feeling of being different…

…in order to “become” Breton, Bretons will perceive no means other than to “go” in reverse.


Large national structure…are now subject to the law of centralization.

Change of local magistrates Universities Urbanization of the country

The ideology of every liberal or capitalist movement… ..erases from history the conflicts and

relations… …thus eliminates all collective desire.

Chapter 6 - MinoritiesThe Imperialism of Ethnological Knowledge

“ethic” fundamental / not tangential

…a social group exists only when it runs the risk of existing.

…a political group exists only as of the movement when a group gives itself the objective and task to exist as such.


…minority movements are born in regions that have been exploited by majoritarian societies.

cultural form

“cultural form” is different from “existing” because it lacks of its own means Politics Economy


Autonomism is cultural… why? powerless

…no autonomy without struggles.

All movements that intend to defend autonomy must prepare themselves one way or another. It is impossible to hold to a political theory developed in some central office or in cultural diffusion. These metaphors or signs of future conflicts if we are really to take seriously the demand for autonomy.


bourgeoisienegating culture

desire for centralization/colonization

ethnology

Environment that becomes the object of their gaze

(…which these ethnologists belong)


The political foundation of a social unit is the condition of possibility for a new culture.

It doesn’t mean that all political autonomy will solve every dilemma…financial investments, sales of industrial products or commercial exchanges…these are advantages of colonizing countries.

Chapter 6 - MinoritiesThe Idiom of Autonomy

It is not true that independence would only possible by a language of one’s own. On contrary, it can bring the risk of being reactionary.

(ex: Breton, Algeria) A policy is characterized by linking a tactic to a

strategy. Autonomy is of the order of strategy; language is of the order of tactics.

Tactic Strategy

Language Autonomy

Chapter 6 - MinoritiesThe Idiom of Autonomy

The true language of autonomy is political.

In any event, language cannot be considered as an end without turning it into a taboo.

Chapter 8 – Culture within SocietyABCs of Culture

society production needs of population

• cultural

• elementary


Culture a labor to be undertaken over the entire expanse of social life.

Prerequisite operation is needed: A social functioning A topography of questions or a topic A field of strategic possibilities Political implications


Subculture : the culture of a subgroup, of a minority

Counterculture : judgment that a majority makes of subcultures


Cultural expressions:

Cultural Action: union action Cultural Activity: activity located in an inherited

culture Cultural Agent: who exercise one of the functions

or one of the positions defined by cultural filed

Cultural Politics: more or less coherent totality of objectives

Cultural Discourse: all language that deals with cultural problems

Cultural Development: extension of production or consumption ,ideology

of continuity


Cultural problems are introduced and reclassified in the sphere of long-range planning.

Thematic: progressively and concentrate Institutions: be drawn into structures of state and into an

administration of long term planning Objectives: revising social equilibrium

Chapter 8 – Culture within SocietyA Social Functioning1. Valorization of Knowledge:

Labor Automation Decrease in both value and profitability Increase in privileges knowledge Ever-growing amount of unskilled labor

2. A Restructuring of Private Life in Relation to Professional Life ..connection must exist between productive labor

and personal development Resituated in relation to

Private life Achievement on the basis of risk Explore other life styles :CULTURAL EXPRESSION

Chapter 8 – Culture within SocietyA Social Functioning3. The Society Of Spectacle:

CULTURAL GROWTH ( Symptomatic of the movement )

People Public

In new cities…spectacle & production link together…

Militansts cultural agentsPlanners cultural engineers

Chapter 8 – Culture within SocietyA Social Functioning4. A Neuter Form: The Cultural: social conflict society unable to

assimilate local economic development leave aside

Culture happens to be assumed something indistinct and soft.(chapter 10)

Chapter 8 – Culture within SocietyA Topography of Questions1 Institutions and Initiatives:

Institutions obey the rule of a two-sided game: the power inhibit reside public organization which belong to social group - owners of innovation

Public organizations remain in place and even extend themselves; but they are trapped in their victory over change.

Rejection of initiatives elimination of diversity

Chapter 8 – Culture within SocietyA Topography of Questions2. Culture Passivity: Leisure activities are compensatory for labor. They are a spectator within a passivity. Consumer Culture represents the sector where; the number of actors passive subjects

HierarchizationIntellectual-levels according to powers of groupsSchool-universitySport-serve only privileged layers of society and

cultureDiminution of creatorsMultiplication of consumers

Chapter 8 – Culture within SocietyA Topography of Questions3. Economic Production:

Commercial inflection Symptom of entire evaluation

Exchanges are measured in terms of economic relations.

“natural needs”

Conservative or revolutionary… go through the same way; economic exchanges

Enterprises, administrations and media powers set off in quest of values and seek to restore human relations.

Chapter 8 – Culture within SocietyA Field of Strategic Possibilities1. Sociocultural Units Taking Shape: alienation cultural isolation

Transformation of political or union organizations that until now represented the interests and the convictions of collective groups.

Associations; No longer follow the patterns of the same division Reunite people who take public transformation

Chapter 8 – Culture within SocietyA Field of Strategic Possibilities2. Institutional Connections: Interference between culture and labor:

• circulate cultural models • by taking account of motivations, the use of

surrounding space• The development of collective participation,

diffusion of common values.

Blockage of certain organizations (universities)• Resistances that are tied to earlier stages of

institutional development, that localize in discourse the values slowly drive out of social practice.

Chapter 8 – Culture within SocietyPolitics and Culture1. A condition of possibility: Political Power

Politics:

Do not:• Assure happiness,• Give meaning to things

Does:• Creates or refuses conditions of possibilities• Prohibits or allows• Makes possible or impossible

Politics and Culture2. The Relation with the Authorities

The relation between the authorities starts to change, exploit culture without compromise.

Cultural commodities serve class of those who create them The authorities secretly suck off the richness investment in

the different sectors of culture, from national television to countless institutions that recycle the victims in the name of education or psychology.

Chapter 8 – Culture within Society

2. The Relation with the Authorities

Chapter 8 – Culture within SocietyPolitics and Culture3. A necessary Politicization

Cultural politics camouflages the coherence that links depoliticized culture and decultured politics used for ends used for heralds

Politics subtracted from democratic, ideological and cultural language as it is really practiced

There can be no cultural politics unless sociocultural situations can be fashioned in term of present forces and

commonly known oppositions.

Used for ends Used for heralds


Chapter 10 – Spaces and PracticesThe Soft and the Hard

Ways and styles of practicing space take the control of city planners. (city planners map out city but…)

HARD REGION EXPLOIT SOFT REGION: Corporate trust Profitable enterprise disarmed culture

with their commodity

Workers Consumers Public Mass Political authorities : Get Rich! Get rich!


Chapter 10 – Spaces and PracticesThe Soft and the Hard

SOFT CULTURE HARD

SOCIEYFolklorization of Technocratization of civic expression economic progress

RESULTS: Regression of the country A political disappropriation Dissappearance of the democratic power


Chapter 10 – Spaces and PracticesA Pathological Zone

Boredom of adults in professional sectors Bredom in school depressive Passivity experiences in leisure activities

Loss in the sense of festival and play and the taste for risk and reasons for living..

Major cncern Get rich! Firm up!

The vivid color a stone gray color

Behind the personal instinct racism


Chapter 10 – Spaces and PracticesThe French Theater

Press, radio, television turns into theater Political Theater

Public appreciates but no longer believe: discovers the actor behind the character: evaluates the way it is but no longer goes after it’s content.

Mass media produces a rift : what is said what is experienced ( but is not real) ( but cannot be put into words)

Language becomes a fiction in relation to an every day reality that has no language.


Chapter 10 – Spaces and PracticesPermanences: The Borderline of a silence

what is invented

Culture :

what permanates

İrruptions future generation will Deviations successively draw their Margin of inventiveness cultivated culture

Elitist action of scientists and governments

Silent culture of collectivity (as an obstacle, a neutralization, dysfunction of its own projects) Culture in the singular always imposes the law of a

power.


Chapter 10 – Spaces and PracticesA Creative Swarm:

Creation: disseminated proliferation perishable, passes because it is an act. can not exist without a relation to a collectivity We distinguish what is written from the gesture that

produces it:

Cultural Experience A social group is produced by producing language;


Chapter 10 – Spaces and PracticesA Creative Swarm:

A ‘literary’ or ‘artistic’ form could never establish the norms of culture that practice of marginality assumes.

In places where production is concentrated, creativity seems to be shameful, camouflaged in the minimal technical improvements.

Workers claimed the right to use their trademark, to introduce their ideas.


Chapter 10 – Spaces and PracticesSome Cultural Operations: Techniques of expression are integrated into a social

practice.

Cultural expression is an operation.

1. To do something with something2. To do something with someone Striking points in3. To change everyday reality description We move toward a perspective centered on practices, on

human relations and on the transformation of the structures of social life.


Chapter 10 – Spaces and PracticesSome Cultural Operations:

A qualitative gap between the acts of reading and writing. 1. silent creativity (what the reader does with the text) 2. very creativity (made explicit in the production of a new text)

Cultural operation might be represented as a trajectory relating to the places that determine its conditions of possibility.



places: the determined and differentiated places organized by the economic system, social hierarchies, traditions of customs and mentality, psychological structures.

practice of a space: that is constructed when it introduces an innovation or a displacement



Cultural operations are movements. They inscribe creations in coherences and trace them with trajectories that are not indeterminate but that are unsuspected, that deform,erode and slowly change the equilibrium of social constellations.

CONCLUSION His approach is interdisciplinary How cultural system functions, what are its characteristics… he introduced an important issue: that the requests publicity

are at the same time cultural and political. The new cultural value requires new political realities.

negritude came out as a demand when a new political issue appeared. he described his ideological condition and his discomfort considering bureaucratic state and bureaucratized institutions such as universities.

Thank you…

‘culture in the plural’

Documents

political autonomy

cultural manifestos

cultural form cultural

cultural diffusion

cultural formation

cultural expression

cultural consistency

political group