Culture War, Culture Loss

Throughout the 20^th century, the question of culture was a central pillar of social scientific thought. Today, the concept has disappeared from the academic landscape, absorbed into other debates and terms (such as identity, affect and power) or discarded as an antiquated essentialist construct. Despite pressing political debates about culture wars, cultural appropriation, cancel culture, nativist culture etc., there seems to be little interest in discussing, debating, much less theorising, the concept of culture as a credible explanatory tool. The aim of this talk is to recuperate the culture concept by approaching it as an existential, rather than sociological, phenomenon. Drawing upon Heidegger, Levinas, Derrida and Zizek, culture is conceptualised as a refuge; a site where subjects endeavour to establish some ownership over a life that perpetually eludes them. Culture is not a set of social structures imposed upon fully realised subjects but something subjects cultivate and care for because it provides them the means to think themselves – to dream themselves – as sovereign self-standing beings.

Read more about Mitch and his work here: https://www.aber.ac.uk/en/dges/staff-profiles/listing/profile/mir24/