Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • 21 views

    Book Review: Rethinking Culture and Cultural Analysis

    Uploaded by

    Angela Dean
    This book reviews papers from a conference on rethinking the concept of culture. The papers avoid normative or ideological definitions of culture and instead view it as a critical form of understanding human experience and social phenomena based on Ernst Cassirer's work. The authors analyze classical concepts of culture and apply philosophical tools to topics like cultural identity and difference.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Book Review: Rethinking Culture and Cultural Analysis

    Uploaded by

    Angela Dean
    21 views3 pages
    This book reviews papers from a conference on rethinking the concept of culture. The papers avoid normative or ideological definitions of culture and instead view it as a critical form of understanding human experience and social phenomena based on Ernst Cassirer's work. The authors analyze classical concepts of culture and apply philosophical tools to topics like cultural identity and difference.

    Original Description:

    review

    Original Title

    25_Review

    Copyright

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Available Formats

    PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    This book reviews papers from a conference on rethinking the concept of culture. The papers avoid normative or ideological definitions of culture and instead view it as a critical form of understanding human experience and social phenomena based on Ernst Cassirer's work. The authors analyze classical concepts of culture and apply philosophical tools to topics like cultural identity and difference.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    21 views3 pages

    Book Review: Rethinking Culture and Cultural Analysis

    Uploaded by

    Angela Dean
    This book reviews papers from a conference on rethinking the concept of culture. The papers avoid normative or ideological definitions of culture and instead view it as a critical form of understanding human experience and social phenomena based on Ernst Cassirer's work. The authors analyze classical concepts of culture and apply philosophical tools to topics like cultural identity and difference.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    You are on page 1of 3

    European Journal of Science and Theology, August 2013, Vol.9, No.

    4, 311-313

    BOOK REVIEW

    Rethinking culture and cultural analysis

    Joachim Braga & Christian Mckel (Eds.)


    Logos Verlag, Berlin, 2013, 182 p, ISBN-10: 3832533362,
    ISBN-13: 978-3832533366, EUR 39.00

    The present volume collects the papers presented at Coimbra International


    Conference on the Semantics of Culture Why Culture?, held in Coimbra, on
    24-25 November 2011, of course carefully reviewed by the two editors. At least
    two aspects characterize the contributions made within the volume:
    1. On one hand, it is the strict philosophical assumption regarding the
    perspectives on culture. In this way, contemporary interdisciplinary approaches,
    increasingly complex in respect to methodology and problematic receive a reply
    worthy of consideration. Defining the concepts of cultural theories, presenting
    the theoretical suppositions and the reflexivity of the analytical approach are the
    trademarks defining the critical discourses of this book.
    The authors of this volume do not assume, however, in a non-reflective
    fashion the thesis of the philosophy of culture traditionally represented by
    authors such as Georg Simmel and Ernst Cassirer. Jeffrey Andrew Barash or
    Christian Mckel are delivering remarkable analysis on the sources and equally
    on the connections that are to be traced between the theoretical frameworks or
    the classical concepts of the philosophy of culture. Having in mind the complex
    figure of Cassirer, these analyzes serve to highlight the theoretical gestures or
    parallels that can be considered as paradigmatic analysis of cultural
    phenomena. Mythical and magical thinking (in Cassirer's and Levi-Strauss's
    works) or the dispute regarding the essence of a rich vs. poor humanity (arising
    with the criticism served by Blumenberg to Cassirer) become operational
    concepts and theoretical options beyond their original context, worked now to
    describe the virtual space of a new kind of reflection. Olivier Feron starts over
    the problem of culture from the topics of Cassirer and Blumenberg discussions
    in order to deconstruct the idea of a metaphysical foundation of culture and turn
    it into a historical product of human activity.
    Based on the most relevant cultural faculty, the faculty of symbolization
    (Symbolisierungsvermgen), Joachim Braga describes the theoretical alignments
    of the reflections concerning culture. The author's thesis is that the philosophy of
    culture is not a philosophical domain, but a way of philosophy as such, by itself
    a form of culture. In resonance with the cultural definition of philosophy itself is
    Book review/European Journal of Science and Theology 9 (2013), 4, 311-313

    Jales Henrique Ribeiro interesting analysis on the concept of national


    philosophy and on the models that generates the construction of such a concept.
    Some other contributions, such as those of Paul Cortois and Liza Cortois,
    have a more applicative gain. They propose the extension of the analysis pointed
    above, studying the applicability of philosophical tools (arising from the
    twentieth century analytic stream) to the traditional topics of the philosophy of
    culture, such as identity or cultural difference. Is more than convincing that
    distinctions established in the philosophy of language or science, developed in
    the twentieth century, can carry out successfully the classic problems of the
    philosophy of culture. In fact, the authors establish that the process of
    communication and significations within a society always admits a specific
    interconnection to the processes of symbolization from which cultural
    phenomena arise.
    Oswald Schwemmers text describes, in the paradigm of language and
    then in visual codes, on one hand, the function of designation as operating the
    externalization of information (the occurrence of culture) and on the other
    hand, the social organization of the process understood as management of
    cultural codes. Finally, Joo Maria Bernardo Ascenso Andr or Ecaterina
    Ptrascu addresses specific areas of cultural analysis, for example, the theater as
    a form of intercultural dialogue and cultural trauma of post-colonialism or post-
    communism.
    As a preliminary conclusion, the perspective adopted by the authors of
    this volume is one of problematizing the concept of culture with the
    contemporary toolbox of philosophy, the angle chosen highlighting the
    articulations of the phenomenon of culture as a theoretical object and as a
    thematic object (Joachim Braga and Christian Mckel, Preface). Thus, a second
    aspect that deserves attention appears.
    2. Another notable mark of the papers is the redefined concept of culture
    that lies in the background of the author's concerns. The editors, Joachim Braga
    and Christian Mckel, mention in the Preface the specific elements of this
    concern. From the beginning, two types of deformations are avoided: the
    prevailing discourses of public space (engaging political actors and the media)
    for whom culture, loosely defined, is substantiated and excessively crossed by
    ideology, and that of philosophy itself, which sometimes grants culture a
    metaphysic normative burden not easy to carry.
    Joachim Braga and Christian Mckel point out that the evolution of the
    concept of culture has two main stages: the Enlightenment period with a
    normative understanding of culture, and the period described in terms of
    cultural turn in philosophy providing a generally critical significance of the
    concept. In this respect, Cassirer's work serves as the main reference of all the
    papers of this book. Culture is, in this context, a critical form of understanding
    the mental and social manifestations of human experience. At the same time, it is
    dissociated from modern schemes of interpretation which are based on the
    distinction between civilization and barbarism, and their application to the
    discrimination of ways of life regarded as inferior (p. IV). Avoiding the pitfalls

    312
    Rethinking culture and cultural analysis

    of normativism and those of ideology, this understanding precisely can produce


    a concomitant reassessment of cultural phenomenon as such and of theoretical
    suppositions underlying the investigations gathered under the name of
    philosophy of culture.
    Finally yet importantly in respect to the original context of present book,
    it is notably that professors Christian Mckel and Oswald Schwemmer are part
    of the Ernst Cassirer Nachlass Edition held at the Institute of Philosophy of
    Humboldt University in Berlin and they managed in time to coagulate a study
    group concerned with the revaluation of the concepts and ideas of Cassirer. This
    volume illustrates a confident success of the work produced within this
    framework.

    Dr. Ioan Alexandru Tofan

    Faculty of Philosophy and Social-Political Science


    Department of Philosophy
    Al. I. Cuza University, Iasi

    313

    You might also like

    pFad - Phonifier reborn

    Pfad - The Proxy pFad of © 2024 Garber Painting. All rights reserved.

    Note: This service is not intended for secure transactions such as banking, social media, email, or purchasing. Use at your own risk. We assume no liability whatsoever for broken pages.


    Alternative Proxies:

    Alternative Proxy

    pFad Proxy

    pFad v3 Proxy

    pFad v4 Proxy