There Is No Such Thing as Cultural Identity E-Book

François Jullien

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 83

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

As people throughout the world react to globalization and revert to nationalism, they are proclaiming distinct cultural identities for themselves. Cultural identity seems to offer a defensive wall against the homogenizing effects of globalization and a framework for nurturing and protecting cultural differences. In this short and provocative book, François Jullien argues that this emphasis on cultural identity is a mistake. Cultures exist in relation to one another and they are constantly mutating and transforming themselves. There is no cultural identity, there are only what Jullien calls 'resources'. Resources are created in a certain space, they are available to all and belong to no one. They are not exclusive, like the values to which we proclaim loyalty; instead, we deploy them or not, activate them or let them fall by the wayside, and each of us as individuals is responsible for these choices. This conceptual shift requires us to redefine three key terms - the universal, the uniform and the common. Equipped with these concepts, we can rethink the dialogue between cultures in a way that avoids what Jullien sees as the false debate about identity and difference. This powerful critique of the modern shibboleth of cultural identity will appeal to anyone interested in the great social and political questions of our time.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Preface

Translator’s Notes

I The universal, the uniform, the common

Translator’s Notes

II Is the universal an outmoded notion?

Translator’s Notes

III Difference or divide: identity or fecundity

Translator’s Notes

IV There is no such thing as cultural identity

Translator’s Notes

V We will defend a culture’s resources

Translator’s Notes

VI From divides to the common

Translator’s Notes

VII Dia-logue

Translator’s Notes

End User License Agreement

Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Preface

Begin Reading

End User License Agreement

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There Is No Such Thing as Cultural Identity

François Jullien

Translated by Pedro Rodriguez

polity

Originally published in French as Il n’y a pas d’identité culturelle © Editions de l’Herne, 2016. Published by arrangement with Agence littéraire Astier-Pécher. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

This English edition © 2021 by Polity Press

Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press101 Station LandingSuite 300Medford, MA 02155, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-4700-5

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Jullien, François, 1951- author. | Rodríguez, Pedro, 1974 March 24- translator.

Title: There is no such thing as cultural identity / François Jullien ; by Pedro Rodriguez.

Other titles: Il n’y a pas d’identité culturelle. English.

Description: Cambridge ; Medford, MA : Polity Press, [2021] | “Originally published in French as Il n’y a pas d’identité culturelle (c) Editions de l’Herne, 2016.” | Includes bibliographical references. | Summary: “A powerful critique of our preoccupation with identity and difference”-- Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020041249 (print) | LCCN 2020041250 (ebook) | ISBN 9781509546985 (hardback) | ISBN 9781509546992 (paperback) | ISBN 9781509547005 (epub) | ISBN 9781509547036 (pdf)

Subjects: LCSH: National characteristics, French. | Group identity--France. | Nationalism--France. | Social values--France.

Classification: LCC DC34 .J8513 2021 (print) | LCC DC34 (ebook) | DDC 306.0944--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020041249

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020041250

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Preface

France’s next election campaign,1 they tell us, will come down to “cultural identity.”

It will turn on such questions as: Shouldn’t we defend France’s “cultural identity” against the self-segregation of various communities?2 and Where do we draw the line between tolerance and assimilation, acceptance of differences and identitarian demands?

This is a debate that is occurring throughout Europe and, more generally, concerns the relationship between cultures within the schema of globalization.

But I think it starts with a conceptual error. It cannot be a matter of culture-isolating “differences” but of divides [écarts] that keep cultures apart but also face to face, in tension, and thereby promote a common [du commun] between them. This is a matter not of identity, as cultures by their nature shift and transform, but of fecundities, or what I will call resources.

Rather than defend any French cultural identity, as anything of the sort would be impossible to identify, I will defend French (European) cultural resources – “defend” meaning not so much protect as exploit. Resources arise in a language just as they do within a tradition, in a certain milieu and landscape. Once we understand this such resources become available to all and no longer belong [n’appartiennent pas]. Resources are not exclusive, in the manner of “values”; they are not to be “extolled” or “preached.” We deploy them or do not, activate them or let them fall into escheat. For this each of us bears responsibility.

A conceptual shift of this kind requires us to head upstream and redefine three rival terms – the universal, the uniform, the common – to draw them out of their equivocalness. In like manner, it will behoove us to head downstream and rethink the “dia-logue” of cultures: dia from divide [écart] and progress [cheminement],3logos from the common of the intelligible. For it is the common of the intelligible that yields the human.

Should we confuse our concepts we will bog down in a false debate, head straight away for an impasse.

Notes

1.

This book was written prior to the 2017 French presidential election

– Ed.

2.

A sociological phenomenon known in France as

communautarisme

. [All notes by the translator unless otherwise specified.]

3.

I.e., progress in the sense of heading down a path.

IThe universal, the uniform, the common

We should specify our terms on entering this debate, lest we flounder about. There are three rivals: the universal, the uniform, and the common. These are easily conflated, but we must also strip each of its attendant equivocality. Sitting atop our triangle is the universal, for which we must distinguish two meanings, or else fail to understand both the reasons for its trenchancy and its societal import. One meaning of the universal we will call weak, a matter of observation, limited to experience. Such-and-such, as we have been able observe until now, has always been as it seems. This is the general sense. It poses no problem and is in no way striking. But the universal has a strong meaning as well: that of strict or rigorous universality. We in Europe have made this sort of universality into a requirement of thought. We presume from the start, before seeking any confirmation from experience, or even dispensing with confirmation altogether, that such-and-such must be so. Not only has it always seemed so, but it cannot be otherwise. This sort of “universal” is not general; it is necessary. It is universal not in fact but ineluctably (a priori). It is not comparative but absolute, not so much extensive as imperative. It was on this strong, rigorous universality that the Greeks founded the possibility of science, and that seventeenth-century Europe, effecting a transference from mathematics to physics (Newton), conceived “universal laws of nature” – to spectacular and well-known effect.

Hence the question that has divided modernity: is the rigorous sort of universality – to which science owes its power, which imposes logical necessity on natural phenomena, and mathematics on physics – applicable to behavior as well? Is it equally pertinent in the domain of ethics? Is our behavior subject to the absolute necessity of moral, “categorical” (Kantian) imperatives, like the a priori necessity that has rewarded physics with its inarguable success? Or must we follow Nietzsche and Kierkegaard in the separate domain of morality, in the (secret) recess of our inner experience, and claim for ourselves the opposite of the universal: the individual or the singular? In the sphere of subjects, and of society more generally, the universal as a term remains equivocal. The question is therefore all the more pressing. When we speak of “universal history”1 (or of a “universal exposition”2) we mean universal in the sense of a totality or generality, not of necessity. But does the same apply when we speak of the universal rights of man? Is the necessity we accord to the rights of man not ascribed in principle? What legitimacy does this necessity have? Is it not improperly imposed?

A pressing question, as we have since undergone a significant experience – indeed, one of the decisive experiences of our time. As we have now discovered in our encounters with other cultures, the requirement of universality that has carried science along, and that classical morality has demanded, is anything but universal. It is in fact quite singular – that is, the opposite of universal – because, at least when taken to the European extreme of necessity, peculiar to the cultural history of Europe. To begin with, how should we translate “universal” outside of Europe? With this question the requirement of universality, which we had comfortably stowed within the credo of our certainties, among the most obvious of our precepts, once again becomes salient. It emerges before our eyes from its banality. It reappears as an inventive, audacious, even adventurous thing. And, we find, it takes on outside Europe a fascinating strangeness.

The notion of the uniform