‘Culture in the Plural’

1. ‘Culture in the Plural’ Michel de Certeau Chapter 6 Minorities Chapter 8 Culture within Society Chapter 10 Spaces and Practices METU Faculty of Architecture Department in Industrial Design ID 501 Advanced Project Development in Industrial Design Gizem EVCEN

2. Michel de Certeau • born in 1925 • degrees in classics and philosophy

3. Chapter 6 - Minorities Political 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…

4. Chapter 6 - Minorities Political and Cultural Manifestos? • 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.

5. Chapter 6 - Minorities Political and Cultural Manifestos? • 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.

6. Chapter 6 - Minorities The 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.

7. Chapter 6 - Minorities The Imperialism of Ethnological Knowledge • …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

8. Chapter 6 - Minorities The Imperialism of Ethnological Knowledge • 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.

9. Chapter 6 - Minorities desire for centralization/colonization ethnology The Imperialism of Ethnological Knowledge bourgeoisie negating culture Environment that becomes the object of their gaze (…which these ethnologists belong)

10. Chapter 6 - Minorities The Imperialism of Ethnological Knowledge • 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.

11. Chapter 6 - Minorities The 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

12. Chapter 6 - Minorities The 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.

13. Chapter 8 – Culture within Society ABCs of Culture • society production needs of population • cultural • elementary

14. Chapter 8 – Culture within Society ABCs of Culture • 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

15. Chapter 8 – Culture within Society ABCs of Culture • Subculture : the culture of a subgroup, of a minority • Counterculture : judgment that a majority makes of subcultures

16. Chapter 8 – Culture within Society ABCs of Culture 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

17. Chapter 8 – Culture within Society ABCs of Culture • 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

18. Chapter 8 – Culture within Society A Social Functioning 1. 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

19. Chapter 8 – Culture within Society A Social Functioning 3. The Society Of Spectacle: • CULTURAL GROWTH ( Symptomatic of the movement ) PeoplePublic • In new cities…spectacle & production link together… Militansts cultural agents Planners cultural engineers

20. Chapter 8 – Culture within Society A Social Functioning 4. 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)

21. Chapter 8 – Culture within Society A Topography of Questions 1 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

22. Chapter 8 – Culture within Society A Topography of Questions 2. 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 Hierarchization Intellectual-levels according to powers of groups School-university Sport-serve only privileged layers of society and culture Diminution of creators Multiplication of consumers

23. Chapter 8 – Culture within Society A Topography of Questions 3. 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.

24. Chapter 8 – Culture within Society A Field of Strategic Possibilities 1. 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

25. Chapter 8 – Culture within Society A Field of Strategic Possibilities 2. 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.

26. Chapter 8 – Culture within Society Politics and Culture 1. 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

27. Chapter 8 – Culture within Society Politics and Culture 2. 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.

28. Chapter 8 – Culture within Society Politics and Culture 2. 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.

29. Chapter 8 – Culture within Society Politics and Culture 3. A necessary Politicization • Cultural politics camouflages the coherence that linksdepoliticized 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. • 2. The Relation with the Authorities Used for ends Used for heralds

30. Chapter 10 – Spaces and Practices The 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! • 2. The Relation with the Authorities

31. Chapter 10 – Spaces and Practices The Soft and the Hard • SOFT CULTURE HARD • SOCIEY Folklorization of Technocratizationof civic expression economic progress RESULTS: • Regression of thecountry • A politicaldisappropriation • Dissappearance of thedemocraticpower • 2. The Relation with the Authorities

32. Chapter 10 – Spaces and Practices A Pathological Zone • Boredom of adults in professionalsectors Bredom in schooldepressive Passivityexperiences in leisureactivities • Loss in the sense of festival andplayandthetastefor risk andreasonsforliving.. MajorcncernGetrich! Firmup! • Thevividcolor a stonegraycolor • Behindthepersonalinstinctracism • 2. The Relation with the Authorities

33. Chapter 10 – Spaces and Practices The 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 : whatis saidwhat is experienced ( but is not real) ( but cannot be put intowords) • Language becomes a fiction in relationto an everydayrealitythat has nolanguage. • 2. The Relation with the Authorities

34. Chapter 10 – Spaces and Practices Permanences: The Borderline of a silence what is invented Culture : whatpermanates • 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. • 2. The Relation with the Authorities

35. Chapter 10 – Spaces and Practices A Creative Swarm: • Creation: disseminatedproliferation perishable, passesbecause it is an act. can not existwithout a relationto a collectivity • Wedistinguishwhat is writtenfromthegesturethatproducesit: CulturalExperience • A socialgroup is producedbyproducinglanguage; • 2. The Relation with the Authorities

36. Chapter 10 – Spaces and Practices A 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. • 2. The Relation with the Authorities

37. Chapter 10 – Spaces and Practices Some Cultural Operations: • Techniques of expressionareintegratedinto a socialpractice. • Culturalexpression is an operation. • Todo somethingwithsomething • To do somethingwithsomeoneStrikingpointsin • Tochangeeverydayrealitydescription • Wemovetoward a perspectivecentered on practices, on humanrelationsand on thetransformation of thestructures of social life. • 2. The Relation with the Authorities

38. Chapter 10 – Spaces and Practices Some Cultural Operations: • A qualitativegapbetweentheacts of readingandwriting. 1. silentcreativity (whatthereaderdoeswiththetext) 2. verycreativity (madeexplicit in theproduction of a newtext) • Culturaloperationmight be represented as a trajectoryrelatingtotheplacesthatdetermineitsconditions of possibility. • 2. The Relation with the Authorities

39. Chapter 10 – Spaces and Practices Some Cultural Operations: • places: thedeterminedanddifferentiatedplacesorganizedbytheeconomicsystem, socialhierarchies, traditions of customsandmentality, psychologicalstructures. • practice of a space: that is constructedwhen it introduces an innovationor a displacement • 2. The Relation with the Authorities

40. Chapter 10 – Spaces and Practices Some Cultural Operations: • Culturaloperationsaremovements. Theyinscribecreations in coherencesandtracethemwithtrajectoriesthatare not indeterminate but thatareunsuspected, thatdeform,erodeandslowlychangetheequilibrium of socialconstellations. • 2. The Relation with the Authorities

41. 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.

42. Thank you…