Race, culture, civilisation

Résumé du document

As we can observe daily uses of concepts like race, culture, or civilization through newspapers, magazines, TV shows, etc. The need of defining them occurs repeatedly. What then are we talking about with respect to the concept of culture? Is it a political, artistic, or even ethnic pattern of values? What then is a race? Can we define a race biologically, genetically, culturally, or ethnically? Problems are getting worse when these questions are asked since these concepts are used with rough definitions. Considering this issue, we will focus on the subject of culture, as we may find it at the root of the two other concepts of race and, most importantly, civilization.

Extraits

[...] Benjamin, Theses on the Philosophy of History Philip Atkinson, A theory of civilization Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents in Against Civilization (enlarged edition) Feral House editions. Ibid. p.108. last but one of these occasions was when the progress of voyages of discovery led to contact with primitive peoples and races. In consequence of insufficient observation and a mistaken view of their manners and customs, they appeared to Europeans to be leading a simple, happy life with few wants, a life such as was unattainable by their visitors with their superior civilization”. [...]

[...] The paradox there is that to consider the nature feeds the culture as culture is not only the transformation of nature but also a way of perceiving it and, moreover, a way of separating oneself from it. But we need find roots to this culture, not only semantic but also theoretical roots. If we consider that a society is always political, and as culture is essential to define a society, thus we may conclude that culture is always, at the beginning, a political culture. And that a given culture in a given society could not be of another essence than political. [...]

[...] Bénéton, Histoire de mots, culture et civilisation, Presses de la FNSP Ibid. eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. [...]

[...] Domination becomes “internalized” for domination's sake.” Max Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason in Against Civilization (enlarged edition) Feral House editions, p “What is usually indicated as a goal the happiness of the individual, health, and wealth gains its significance exclusively from its functional potentiality. These terms designate favourable conditions for intellectual and material production. Therefore self-renunciation of the individual in industrialist society has no goal transcending industrialist society. Such abnegation brings about rationality with reference to means and irrationality with reference to human existence.” Ibid. [...]

[...] Can we really admit that a culture is always political? Or are there specific cases proving that sometimes, what gather a society is not politics but something else? The case of Israel and Zionism is there both interesting and subtle. If we go back to the Antiquity, Israel (or the Jews) were a people, a nation, and a state and were considered so by both their enemies and allies. So they were a society in the political sense. If we oversimplify the situation after the Second Diaspora (which dispersed the Jewish Nation around the Mediterranean) this political form faded, leading only to a community of spirit through religion, the only meeting point being the Torah. [...]