It has almost become a rhetorical question. Culture – the “real” one – is sinking, right? It is cut up and drowned under the waves of timelines social networks, taken hostage by the notifications from our smartphones, overwhelmed by the bulimia that streaming imposes on us. Music is no longer a matter of artists, it is now consumed in playlists “Music for falling asleep” or “Songs for jogging”. Or maybe she's full of hooks seducers to make you listen and re-listen to a track over and over again. Books that sell now do so with hashtags on TikTok. Movies repeat themselves in déjà vu loops with endless franchises. And series, even prestigious ones, are no longer what they were, disintegrating in the overabundant supply of platforms… The matter is settled.
However, Katherine Dee, in a fascinating article entitled “No, Culture is Not Stuck” (“No, culture is not at a standstill”, editor’s note) on the blog Wisdom of Crowdsshows that the problem of culture is a little more complicated than that. Complaining about one's disappearance, she notes, generally garners two types of response. On the one hand, there are those who shrug their shoulders in recognition, settling for “What? Are you only realizing it now?” And on the other, there are those who blame these remarks on aging: there is so much quality music, films, books, and if you don't like them, it's because of your inability to keep up. Opposite responses which both arise from the same misunderstanding, underlines Katherine Dee: a static vision. For its part, it offers a third possible answer, namely that new practices are emerging all around us without us yet considering them as “culture”. Because it is transforming before our eyes, without us realizing it.
“Adopting a vision that allows us to understand what emerges is perhaps what culture is all about.”
This reminds us of Theseus' boat from antiquity. The philosopher Plutarch recounts that the boat which brought back the heroic Minotaur fighter and the young children embarked with him safely to Athens was long preserved by the inhabitants as a relic. They removed the pieces as they eroded, replacing every last one with new ones. So this boat became a subject of lively debate among the Athenians. Was it still the same or had it become another boat since no original parts remained?
Dizzying question we experience with culture : cultural practices disappear, but they are replaced by others, which we do not always succeed in perceiving as cultural practices. Because culture does not leave the camp, it is constantly reconfiguring itself, just as creativity moves: it is mobilis in mobile – mobile in the mobile element – as the motto of another boat says, Captain Nemo's Nautilus in Twenty thousand leagues under the sea, by Jules Verne.
Also, when it comes to culture, it is also absurd to want to freeze everything as it is in a cultural backyard, as the opposite of only thinking in terms of blank slates of the past. The challenge, notes Dee, is not so much to resurrect what is dead in the hope of maintaining the culture as it is at all costs, as to learn to develop another language to understand what is at work. Moreover, she cites numerous “works” on the internet which remind her of the collective and anonymous work of the builders of the Middle Ages. Adopting a vision that allows us to understand what emerges is perhaps what culture is after all.
