Cultural Interaction Summary
BA International Studies 2020/2021
Content
,Reading Lecture 01: Form of Life
● Distinguishing between “form of life” and “forms of life”
Form of life Forms of life
Naturalistic dimension Cultural, social, or communal
forms
Natural forms of life different types of humans
Different types of animals Diversity and contingency
Emphasizing unity Closed linguistic universe
● Forms of life create meaning in life, through being the patterns via which
we find meaning in the world
● Speaking a language is a game of dynamics, as worlds come and go
○ Enabling communication between people
○ It introduced itself as the condition of communication being
possible between humans
○ Agamben: determining language as the glass of the bottle where
are trapped in in our processes of interpreting the world around us
■ We do not see the glass itself however, and therefore may
not realize that the things we see or interpret are not the
same as someone else’s
○ Ethic not necessarily spaken
■ It is entrenched in thought, and is in itself arbitrary as ethic
may connote different things for different people
● Humans enable a split between speech and language
○ We deliberately choose to engage in language whilst already being
able to speak → language exists to logify speech and it is because
we have created it to be essential as a distinct feature in human
development that it becomes detached from speeched
○ Animals are already in language as they engage in speech/ noise →
have no incentive to engage in developing language as we do
○ Three notes
■ Infants thus must learn language to enter the world of
humans
■ Language is the vehicle of thought
■ Language is the basis of community-building through
establishing agreement in shared meanings
● Happiness would only be achievable in light of the end of the division
between life and its form, and thus of sovereignty
2
,Lecture 01: Culture as “form-of-life”
● Difficulty in defining culture; why?
○ It on the one hand indicates a collective of practices and commons
by which people organize their life
■ Scale is not important
○ Entire set of artistic expressions produced by a group of people
(high culture)
■ One may know what mushrooms to eat as there has been a
process through generations of learning so → someone may
have tried one, and may have taught others to eat or not eat
it
○ Structured in a hierarchy (culture with a capital C or not)
■ E.g. Why are movies written with a lowercase c for culture
and art with a capital C.
● Culture as dominant marker of difference between people and animal
○ Only people have a sense of their own mortality (Heidegger)
■ Animals, of course, also die, but do not express feelings of
anxiety and fear in the walk up to it; they do not consciously
think about it before the act itself
■ The entirety of human life depends on culture as it is a form
of life
● All cultures make people aware of life and death
○ It is not simply a matter of expression, but human life depends on it
○ Provides the entirety of means of which they are able to organize
conflict and violence with society
■ Finding, preparing and eating food is a means of culture, a
system of communication etc.
● We are a speaking and communicating species to transfer knowledge
○ Life, birth and death; dependent on influencing culture
○ Conceptualization of death
○ Difference in individual communities
● Necropolitics: “supposed might or right to expose beings to life or death”
○ Dealing differently with death in the face of global capitalism and
consumer culture
■ E.g. how comes one to think about the death of an animal
after being hit on a freeway (a consequence of global
capitalism)
○ Allowance to live: matter of politics and law in concerning life and
death, not just culture
● Organize themselves within culture through values that are structured
hierarchically
○ Valuing death over life, or life over death
■ Some cultures may value death over life
3
, ● Onodera Junai's wife (one of the 47 ronin) preparing
for jigai (female version of seppuku) to follow her
husband in death : legs are bound as to maintain a
decent posture in agony ; death is given by a tanto cut
at the jugular vein. Kuniyoshi woodcut, Seichu gishin
den series ("Story of truthful hearts''), 1848
● Flexibility of people
○ Causing a mix of cultures, or an adoption of outer cultures
■ Koreans adopting Christianity as bering of their own
● Culture is life itself
○ Humans themselves live on their culture
■ Slaves were robbed of their culture, and decided to reshape
their lives in including a new culture within America
○ Teaching themselves how to organize their own cultures in such a
way that they felt meaningful
■ Power resides in representation (B. Hooks)
● Representation within culture: Seeable aspects of a
certain culture may be used by another person to
determine the culture you’re in
○ In China: people that seem to be visibly acting
out certain habits are believed to be part of a
radicalized muslim culture
● How are the people themselves that are part of a
culture represented in the domains culture influences
○ Uyghurs or their language not at all represented
in the domains of business and politics
○ One expresses everything within the lines of their own culture
■ Every act represents their culture
○ An existent “desire or willingness to give one’s life for” a free
practice of one’s culture
4
BA International Studies 2020/2021
Content
,Reading Lecture 01: Form of Life
● Distinguishing between “form of life” and “forms of life”
Form of life Forms of life
Naturalistic dimension Cultural, social, or communal
forms
Natural forms of life different types of humans
Different types of animals Diversity and contingency
Emphasizing unity Closed linguistic universe
● Forms of life create meaning in life, through being the patterns via which
we find meaning in the world
● Speaking a language is a game of dynamics, as worlds come and go
○ Enabling communication between people
○ It introduced itself as the condition of communication being
possible between humans
○ Agamben: determining language as the glass of the bottle where
are trapped in in our processes of interpreting the world around us
■ We do not see the glass itself however, and therefore may
not realize that the things we see or interpret are not the
same as someone else’s
○ Ethic not necessarily spaken
■ It is entrenched in thought, and is in itself arbitrary as ethic
may connote different things for different people
● Humans enable a split between speech and language
○ We deliberately choose to engage in language whilst already being
able to speak → language exists to logify speech and it is because
we have created it to be essential as a distinct feature in human
development that it becomes detached from speeched
○ Animals are already in language as they engage in speech/ noise →
have no incentive to engage in developing language as we do
○ Three notes
■ Infants thus must learn language to enter the world of
humans
■ Language is the vehicle of thought
■ Language is the basis of community-building through
establishing agreement in shared meanings
● Happiness would only be achievable in light of the end of the division
between life and its form, and thus of sovereignty
2
,Lecture 01: Culture as “form-of-life”
● Difficulty in defining culture; why?
○ It on the one hand indicates a collective of practices and commons
by which people organize their life
■ Scale is not important
○ Entire set of artistic expressions produced by a group of people
(high culture)
■ One may know what mushrooms to eat as there has been a
process through generations of learning so → someone may
have tried one, and may have taught others to eat or not eat
it
○ Structured in a hierarchy (culture with a capital C or not)
■ E.g. Why are movies written with a lowercase c for culture
and art with a capital C.
● Culture as dominant marker of difference between people and animal
○ Only people have a sense of their own mortality (Heidegger)
■ Animals, of course, also die, but do not express feelings of
anxiety and fear in the walk up to it; they do not consciously
think about it before the act itself
■ The entirety of human life depends on culture as it is a form
of life
● All cultures make people aware of life and death
○ It is not simply a matter of expression, but human life depends on it
○ Provides the entirety of means of which they are able to organize
conflict and violence with society
■ Finding, preparing and eating food is a means of culture, a
system of communication etc.
● We are a speaking and communicating species to transfer knowledge
○ Life, birth and death; dependent on influencing culture
○ Conceptualization of death
○ Difference in individual communities
● Necropolitics: “supposed might or right to expose beings to life or death”
○ Dealing differently with death in the face of global capitalism and
consumer culture
■ E.g. how comes one to think about the death of an animal
after being hit on a freeway (a consequence of global
capitalism)
○ Allowance to live: matter of politics and law in concerning life and
death, not just culture
● Organize themselves within culture through values that are structured
hierarchically
○ Valuing death over life, or life over death
■ Some cultures may value death over life
3
, ● Onodera Junai's wife (one of the 47 ronin) preparing
for jigai (female version of seppuku) to follow her
husband in death : legs are bound as to maintain a
decent posture in agony ; death is given by a tanto cut
at the jugular vein. Kuniyoshi woodcut, Seichu gishin
den series ("Story of truthful hearts''), 1848
● Flexibility of people
○ Causing a mix of cultures, or an adoption of outer cultures
■ Koreans adopting Christianity as bering of their own
● Culture is life itself
○ Humans themselves live on their culture
■ Slaves were robbed of their culture, and decided to reshape
their lives in including a new culture within America
○ Teaching themselves how to organize their own cultures in such a
way that they felt meaningful
■ Power resides in representation (B. Hooks)
● Representation within culture: Seeable aspects of a
certain culture may be used by another person to
determine the culture you’re in
○ In China: people that seem to be visibly acting
out certain habits are believed to be part of a
radicalized muslim culture
● How are the people themselves that are part of a
culture represented in the domains culture influences
○ Uyghurs or their language not at all represented
in the domains of business and politics
○ One expresses everything within the lines of their own culture
■ Every act represents their culture
○ An existent “desire or willingness to give one’s life for” a free
practice of one’s culture
4
