What is Culture?

[Roberto Calvo Macias <rcalvom@ctv.es>]

      John King wrote:

This is precisely the problem - what is *a* culture? Maybe there were such
independent things, such as the Native cultures in the Americas before
Columbus and the Conquistadors arrived - but even the most superficial
look at the history of "Western" culture will reveal the influence through
trade and migration of Asian, Arab and African cultures and, of course,
vice versa. So, my contention is that these individual cultures cannot be
defined by precise boundaries and are the product of the interaction of
many different cultural practices over time. This does not, of course,
prevent ethnic, reliogous and nationalist fanatics from denying all of
this for whatever reasons and attempting to reconstruct, often with a
tragic degree of success, these "original" cultures.
[Roberto Calvo Macias]  Thats what Basque Country fanatics donīt
understand: that their vision is past, death. There is no way back.
There is no posibility of build another wall to preserve it in the prehistory. 
> Till what point the ethnic and cultural conflicts arenīt  a reply to
> western invasion?

erm, when they happen in the "West" - Thirty Years War, Northern Ireland,
Kosovo, Basque Country. Or when they happen when the West isn't even
involved- Imperialism isn'ta monopoly of the West. Cf. Tibet.


And in that respect I would probably join you. But maybe it requires more
reflection on a new aesthetics and a new poetics - but then wasn't it J in
"Der Arbeiter" who protested against Museum Culture and for a machine
aesthetic (belatedly borrowing from Marinetti's Futurism!). I think
the point is that one needs to try and avoid being fully disposed of not
so much by technology but its accompaniment the international markets and
the triumph of a blind consumerism. Here the creation of an individual
niche is paramount, and here I confess my sympathy for the "Anarch"...
[Roberto Calvo Macias]  Fully agree, but what could be that " new 
aesthetics and a new poetics" you talk about?Does it exist the posibility of
doing so?
By the way, the notepoint about Marinetti is quite good. I learn his works 
in my class - architecture; but I donīt know he was quite known. He was, 
in my opinion, a visionary. 
Just some more thoughts,

JK
[Roberto Calvo Macias] Greetings from a Infernal Madrid
roberto