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'An aphorism, properly stamped and molded, has not been "deciphered" when it has simply been read; rather one has then to begin its interpretation, for which is required an art of interpretation.' -- Nietzsche, 'On the Genealogy of Morals'

death of a culture « Previous | |Next »
April 9, 2007

In his review of Jonathan Lear's Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation, which is analysis of what is involved when a culture dies, Charles Taylor says that:

A culture's disappearing means that a people's situation is so changed that the actions that had crucial significance are no longer possible in that radical sense. It is not just that you may be forbidden to try them and may be severely punished for attempting to do so; but worse, you can no longer even try them. You can't draw lines or die while trying to defend them. You find yourself in a circumstance where, as Lear puts it, "the very acts themselves have ceased to make sense."

This is what happened to Australian aborigines---their culture died. Taylor says that one of the great contributions of Jonathan Lear's book is to articulate clearly and concisely what it really means:
The issue is that the Crow have lost the concepts with which they would construct a narrative. This is a real loss, not just one that is described from a certain point of view. It is the real loss of a point of view.... The very physical movements that, at an earlier time, would have constituted a brave act of counting coups are now a somewhat pathetic expression of nostalgia.

The text goes beyond simply describing a state of despair and describing the consequences of closing down a culture.

These consequences are well known: widespread demoralization, abuse of alcohol and drugs, domestic violence, and children who drop out of school, perpetuating the pattern in the next generation. Many well-meaning (and sometimes not so well-meaning) interventions from governments, such as setting up poorly run reservations, seem just to have made the situation worse. It has been difficult to break the cycle of apathy, despair, and self-destructive behavior, and this induces further apathy and despair. What way out of this impasse is suggested by Lear?

The suggestion Taylor makes is that this would require finding something in one's own culture or tradition that would enable one to draw new meaning from old definitions that are no longer appropriate.

| Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at 11:42 PM |