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BY Zygmunt Bauman

Some notes on the historical peregrinations of the concept of ‘Culture’ from Zygmunt Bauman’s book ‘Culture in Modern Liquid Times’

Some notes on the historical peregrinations of the concept of “Culture”

Culture today consists of offers, not prohibitions; propositions, not norms. As Bourdieu had already noted, culture is engaged today in laying down temptations and setting up attractions, with luring and seducing, not with normative regulation; with PR rather than police superintendence; with production, sowing and planting of new needs and desires, rather than with duty. If there is anything in relation to which today’s culture plays the role of a hemostat, it is not the conservation of current state, but the overwhelming demand for constant change (although at distinct from the phase of the enlightenment, change without direction, or direction not established in advance). One might say that it serves not so much the stratifications and divisions of society, as the turnover-oriented consumer market.

Omnivorousness

Ours is a consumer society, in which culture, in common with the rest of the world experienced by consumers, manifests itself as a repository of goods intended for consumption, all competing for the unbearably fleeting and distracted attention of potential clients, all trying to hold that attention for more than just the blink of an eye.

As we noted in the beginning, doing away with rigid standards, with caprices, the acceptance of all tastes with impartiality and without unequivocal preference, “flexibility” of preferences (today’s politically correct name for spinelessness) as well as temporariness and inconsequence of choice, is the discriminant of a strategy recommended today as the most sensible and right. The sign of belonging to a cultural elite today is maximum tolerance and minimal choosiness.

Cultural snobbery consists of ostentatious denial of snobbery.

The principle of cultural elitism is omnivorousness – and the feeling at home in every cultural milieu, without considering any as home, let alone the only home. A TV reviewer/critic in the British intellectual press, praised a New Year’s Eve programme in 2007/8 for its promise of “delivering musical entertainment of a range to satisfy every taste”. “What was good (in this programme) – he explained – was the fact that its universal attraction allowed for leisurely browsing through the programme according to preference.” [French, P. A. „Hootenanny New Year to All”, The Observer, 30.XII.2007-5.I.2008] It is a praiseworthy and in itself admirable quality cultural supply in a society in which networks replace structures and an uninterrupted game of connecting to and disconnecting from the networks and the never ending sequence of connections and disconnections replace determination, allegiance and belonging.

Tendencies described here have yet another aspect: one of the consequences of liberating art from its past burden of weighty function is also the distance, often ironic or cynical, assumed towards it by its creators as well as its recipients. Art, when spoken about, rarely inspires sanctimonious or reverential tone so common in the past. There is no coming to blows. No raising of barricades. No flashing of knives. If there is any talk about the superiority of one art form over another, it is voiced without passion or verve; and condemnatory views and character assassinations are rare like never before. What hides behind this state of things is embarrassment, lack of self-confidence, a sense of disorientation: if artists have no great and momentous tasks to perform, if their creations serve no other purpose than to bring fortune and fame to a chosen few, and entertainment and personal pleasure to their beneficiaries, then how to judge it except by the public hype that happens to accompany it at any given moment? As Marshall McLuhan deftly summarized this state of affairs “Art is anything that you can get away with”. Or as Damien Hirst, current darling of the most fashionable London art galleries, and those who can afford to be their clients, admitted candidly on receiving the Turner Prize, Britain’s most prestigious art award: “It’s amazing what you can do with an E in A Level art, a twisted imagination and a chainsaw”.

Instantly spent

Forces driving the gradual transformation of the concept of “culture” into its liquid-modern embodiment, are the same forces which favour the freeing of markets from their non-economic limitations – mainly social, political and ethnic. Liquid-modern, consumer oriented economy, relies on surplus of its offerings, their rapid aging and untimely withering of their seductive powers. Since it is impossible to know in advance which of the offered goods or services will turn out to be sufficiently tempting to awaken the desire of consumers, the only way to sift reality from wishful thinking is by way of multiplying attempts and costly mistakes.

Uninterrupted supply of ever new offers is imperative for an increased turnover of goods, shortened time interval between their acquisition and their disposal and replacement with “new and better” goods; it is imperative too for the avoidance of a situation in which yet another disappointment with specific goods may turn into a general disappointment with life woven from the fibre of consumer highs on a canvas of commercial networks.

Culture likens itself today to one of the departments of a gigantic department store, which the world experienced by people turned first and foremost into consumers has been fashioned into. As in other departments of this megastore, here shelves are overflowing with attractions changed on a daily basis, and counters festooned with latest promotions which vanish as instantly as the aging novelties they advertise. Goods displayed on shelves as well as advertisements upon counters are calculated to awaken irrepressible, but as is in their nature, momentary whims (as George Steiner famously put it – “to create the maximum impression and be instantly spent”) Merchants of goods and authors of advertisements depend on the marriage of the art of seduction with the impulse of potential clients to court admiration of their peers and enjoy a sense of their own superiority.

No satisfaction

To sum up: culture of liquid-modernity has no “populace” to enlighten and ennoble; it does however have clients to seduce. Seduction by contrast to enlightenment and ennoblement, is not a one-off, once and for all task, but an open ended activity. The function of culture is not to satisfy existing needs, but to create new ones – whilst simultaneously maintaining needs already entrenched or permanently unfulfilled. Its chief concern is the prevention of satisfaction in its past subjects/charges, now turned into clients, and in particular the counteraction of their perfect, complete and definitive gratification which would leave no room for further, new and as yet unfulfilled needs and whims.

This article is a part of the Zygmunt Bauman's book “Culture in Modern Liquid Times” and was originally published on www.cultrecongress.eu. Subtitles were created by the editors of www.cultrecongress.eu