Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969), born in Frankfurt am Main as Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund, was a philosopher and co-founder of the Frankfurt School, known for studies on the authoritarian character.
Quote Category: Kultur
Culture is often seen as the opposite of nature, as something human-made which is not naturally present. The concept of culture has also long been associated with colonialism and racism, because culture was and is used as a kind of hiding place for race. So instead of “foreign races” one speaks of “foreign cultures”. That’s why in this timeline, we explore the development through history of the dominant view of culture.
In the timeline on the history of culture, we look at the following questions:
*When did the idea of culture develop into a conception of domination?
*How was it shaped and by whom?
*What is the dominant conception of culture, and which power relations does it reinforce?
*What kinds of resistance to dominant conceptions of culture and cultural policy have existed in history and in the present?
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The noble term “culture” takes the place of the frowned upon expression “race”, but remains a mere cover for a brutal claim to power.
Correct!
The noble term “culture” takes the place of the frowned upon expression “race”, but remains a mere cover for a brutal claim to power.
Year:
1960
Author Bio:
Source:
Theodor W. Adorno (1975): Schuld und Abwehr. Gesammelte Schriften Band 9/2. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp.
Context:
In 1933, Adorno was banned from teaching by the Nazis because he came from a Jewish family on his father’s side. He therefore emigrated to the USA. After his return in 1953, he observed how in post-Nazi Germany the term “race” had become taboo and was gradually being eliminated from everyday usage. Together with Max Horkheimer in their Dialectic of Enlightenment, he developed a critique of the Enlightenment and progressive thinking in the context of German society after Auschwitz. Etienne Balibar and Stuart Hall later built on observations made by Adorno in their research on “cultural racism” and “racism without race”.
Further Reading:
*Stuart Hall (1990): Cultural Identity and Diaspora.
OK
Peoples are the carriers of cultures. Peoples differ in language, origin, historical experience, religion, values and consciousness. Peoples become particularly aware of their cultural uniqueness when and where it is endangered. The preservation of peoples serves to preserve culture. Societies alone do not develop culture, but at best civilizations whose supreme values are material. “Multicultural” societies are in fact cultureless societies. The diversity of peoples must be preserved.
Correct!
Peoples are the carriers of cultures. Peoples differ in language, origin, historical experience, religion, values and consciousness. Peoples become particularly aware of their cultural uniqueness when and where it is endangered. The preservation of peoples serves to preserve culture. Societies alone do not develop culture, but at best civilizations whose supreme values are material. “Multicultural” societies are in fact cultureless societies. The diversity of peoples must be preserved.
Year:
1996
Author Bio:
Party manifesto of the NPD. The extreme right-wing National Democratic Party of Germany was founded in 1964. In 2017, the Federal Constitutional Court ruled that they bore a resemblance to the NSDAP in language and programme.
Source:
NPD (1996): Parteiprogramm.
Context:
The concept of culture is also used by right-wing extremists and charged with ethnic ideology (around blood and soil). The idea of purity and the segregation of cultures builds on the construct of race, as does that of the superiority or inferiority of individual cultures. In 2002, the NPD published a position paper on ethnopluralism, one of the New Right’s concepts. According to Kurt Lenk (2008), this is a mixture of social Darwinism (the struggle for existence) and racism, under the pretext of cultural self-determination. Ethnopluralism propagates the notion that each culture is self-contained and should not mix with others. This ideology has followers in Austria and France (the identitarian movement), as well as in Greece, the USA and South Africa.
Further Reading:
OK
In hot countries, men mature more quickly in every respect but they do not attain the perfection of the temperate zones. Humanity achieves its greatest perfection with the white race. The yellow Indians have somewhat less talent. The Negroes are much inferior and some of the peoples of the Americas are well below them.
Correct!
In hot countries, men mature more quickly in every respect but they do not attain the perfection of the temperate zones. Humanity achieves its greatest perfection with the white race. The yellow Indians have somewhat less talent. The Negroes are much inferior and some of the peoples of the Americas are well below them.
Year:
1764
Author Bio:
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was the most famous German philosopher of the Enlightenment. He spent most of his life in Königsberg. He was central to the shaping of racial theory in the German-speaking world.
Source:
Immanuel Kant (1764): Physische Geographie 2. T. 1. Abs. § 3 (IX 195). Königsberg: Göbbels und Unzer.
Context:
Although universal human rights are commonly associated with the Enlightenment, this was also the period during which racial theories emerged. The idea that all people were free and equal was a threat to those who benefited from inequality. So a parallel theory was needed in order to prove why some could not, after all, be fully equal (see Adorno and Horkheimer’s Dialectic of Enlightenment above). Immanuel Kant attempted to construct a “race hierarchy” based on “reason”, “morality”, “maturity”, “the potential for being educated” and “laziness” as characteristics of otherness. He placed the white man at the centre of this ideology and made him the norm by which progress was measured. Kant’s devaluation of people of colour went so far that he wondered why certain regions of the world existed at all.
Further Reading:
*Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze (1997): Race and Enlighenment. A Reader.
*Jamelle Bouie (05.06.2018): The Enlightenment’s Dark Side. How the Enlightenment created modern race thinking, and why we should confront it. The Slate.com.
OK
Pursuing colonial politics can sometimes be a cultural act. (…) If the representatives of cultivated and civilised peoples, for example, the European nations and the North American, come to foreign peoples as liberators, as friends and educators, as helpers in need, to bring them the achievements of culture and civilisation, to educate them into becoming cultured people, and if this happens with these noble intentions and in the right way, then we are (…) the first who are willing to support such colonisation as a great cultural mission. (1806+1906r]
Correct!
Pursuing colonial politics can sometimes be a cultural act. (…) If the representatives of cultivated and civilised peoples, for example, the European nations and the North American, come to foreign peoples as liberators, as friends and educators, as helpers in need, to bring them the achievements of culture and civilisation, to educate them into becoming cultured people, and if this happens with these noble intentions and in the right way, then we are (…) the first who are willing to support such colonisation as a great cultural mission. (1806+1906r]
Year:
1906
Author Bio:
August Bebel (1840-1913) was a German politician who founded the organised labour movement in Germany, and was considered the father of German social democracy.
Source:
Reichtstagsprotokoll from 01.12.1906
Context:
August Bebel’s speech in the Reichstag, from which the quote comes, was a contribution to the debate on how to deal with the war of annihilation against the Herero and Nama in what was then the German colony of German Southwest Africa (from 1904 to 1908). Bebel favoured a “civilising mission”: i.e. colonisation no longer as a “means of destruction” but as a “means of preservation”. This way of thinking was based on a racist concept of culture and a division between “civilised” and “primitive” peoples. The self-proclaimed civilised peoples thus legitimised their rule over and education of others. There were bitter disputes among the social democrats about colonial politics (see Kautsky 1907). Eduard Bernstein and Gustav Noske were not entirely averse to colonialism, while Rosa Luxemburg, Karl Liebknecht and Karl Kautsky were staunch opponents.
Further Reading:
*International Press Correspondence (1928): Social Democracy and the Colonial Question.
OK
The people whose condition and origin I intend to deal with in this writing, the Z*******, are an extremely strange phenomenon in Europe. We may look around their homes, or sit as spectators at their meals, or finally just get a glimpse of their faces. We always find them peculiar and are surprised at every step by a new and unusual scene. But the strange thing about these wandering strangers is that neither time nor climate, nor example have hitherto had any appreciable influence on them.
Correct!
The people whose condition and origin I intend to deal with in this writing, the Z*******, are an extremely strange phenomenon in Europe. We may look around their homes, or sit as spectators at their meals, or finally just get a glimpse of their faces. We always find them peculiar and are surprised at every step by a new and unusual scene. But the strange thing about these wandering strangers is that neither time nor climate, nor example have hitherto had any appreciable influence on them.
Year:
1787
Author Bio:
Moritz Gottlieb Grellmann (1756-1804) is regarded as the founder of “Tsiganology”. In his work he claimed Rom*nja stole and probably ate children. He also described the Romni as extremely sexually permissive. He was appointed professor in Göttingen in 1787.
Source:
Gottlieb Grellmann (1787): Historischer Versuch über die Z******* betreffend die Lebensart und Verfassung und Sitten und Schicksale dieses Volkes seit seiner Erscheinung in Europa und dessen Ursprung. Göttingen: Bey Johann Christian Dieterich.
Context:
Although Grellmann is considered the so-called founder of Tsiganology, he probably never spoke to Rom:nja himself. His entire body of work was either copied or written in conversation with a priest who worked with Rom:nja. Nor was it Grellmann who proved, through linguistics, their Indian origins. This piece of writing is an example of how social science research talks about, but not with, its “objects of research”.
Further Reading:
*Ian F. Hancock (1987): The Pariah Syndrome: An Account of Gypsy Slavery and Persecution. Ann Arbor: Karoma Publishers.
OK
Then we will understand that the American Indian population, which seems so enigmatic to us with its social structures and its peculiar instincts, must be quite different. The African, the Ethiopian, the N**** race is different again. There are instincts which connect to the lower human. (…) The population that is called the Caucasian race represents the actual cultural race, which (…) can no longer handle the magical powers, but has to rely on the mechanical.
Correct!
Then we will understand that the American Indian population, which seems so enigmatic to us with its social structures and its peculiar instincts, must be quite different. The African, the Ethiopian, the N**** race is different again. There are instincts which connect to the lower human. (…) The population that is called the Caucasian race represents the actual cultural race, which (…) can no longer handle the magical powers, but has to rely on the mechanical.
Year:
1905
Author Bio:
Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) was an Austrian philosopher, esotericist and founder of anthroposophy. His works are still influential today, for example in Waldorf schools or in anthroposophic medicine.
Source:
Rudolf Steiner (1905): Die Grundbegriffe der Theosophie der Menschenrassen. In: Rudolf Steiner, Die Welträtsel und die Anthroposophie, Band 54. Dornach: Rudolf Steiner Verlag, p. 143.
Context:
Rudolf Steiner built on the racial theories of his time which he was familiar with, and developed them further into an anthroposophical, spiritual racial theory. Today, these ideas only play a secondary role in anthroposophy, yet anthroposophical institutions have yet to officially distance themselves from Steiner’s racial theories. Sonnenberg (2003: 21, quoted in the Waldorfblog) writes: ‘A critical reading of Steiner’s communications is rarely seen in anthroposophical circles as an opportunity to expand the horizon of knowledge, but rather as a threat to internal social plausibility and even power structures.’
Further Reading:
*Waldorfblog: Waldorf und Rechtsextremismus.
OK
Western movies always seemed to show Indian women washing clothes at the creek and men with a tomahawk or spear in their hands, adorned with lots of feathers. That image has stayed in some people’s minds. Many think we’re either visionaries, “noble savages”, squaw drudges or tragic alcoholics. We’re very rarely depicted as real people who have greater tenacity in terms of trying to hang on to our culture and values system than most people.
Correct!
Western movies always seemed to show Indian women washing clothes at the creek and men with a tomahawk or spear in their hands, adorned with lots of feathers. That image has stayed in some people’s minds. Many think we’re either visionaries, “noble savages”, squaw drudges or tragic alcoholics. We’re very rarely depicted as real people who have greater tenacity in terms of trying to hang on to our culture and values system than most people.
Year:
2000
Author Bio:
Wilma Mankiller (1945-2010) was a Native American activist, feminist and chief of the Cherokee/Tsalagi Nation.
Source:
Jone Johnson Lewis (2017): Wilma Mankiller Quotes. (Orgina source unknown).
Context:
Stereotypical depictions of Native Americans are widespread, especially in Western films, but also in other genres. They were often presented in one-sided terms as a violent threat, which retrospectively justified the dispossession and genocides of indigenous peoples in the Americas by the Hollywood culture industry. At the same time, white people were mostly portrayed as individuals and representatives of a higher culture, thereby strengthening white supremacy. Wilma Mankiller, the first female chief of the Cherokee, worked with empowerment techniques and the dissemination of positive self-images from marginalised groups in order to counteract this specific racist image production. John Wayne, the best-known Western actor, said of the dispossession of indigenous peoples: ‘We did nothing wrong in taking this great land from them. This so-called theft was nothing but a matter of survival’ (Der Spiegel, 06/11/2019).
Further Reading:
*Neil Diamond (2010): Reel Injun. Dokumentary. (Trailer)
*Red Haircrow et al. (work in progress): Forget Winnetou. Going beyond Native Stereotypes. Dokumentary.
*Matika Wilbur (2013): Changing the way we see Native Americans. Dokumentary.
*Der Spiegel (11.06.2019): Wild ist der Westen, schwer ist der Beruf.
OK
Today’s cultures no longer correspond to the old ideas of closed and uniform national cultures. (…) Cultures are deeply intertwined and permeate each other. Ways of life no longer end at the borders of national cultures, but transcend them and can also be found in other cultures. The new entanglements are a consequence of migration processes as well as worldwide (im)material communication systems and economic interdependences.
Correct!
Today’s cultures no longer correspond to the old ideas of closed and uniform national cultures. (…) Cultures are deeply intertwined and permeate each other. Ways of life no longer end at the borders of national cultures, but transcend them and can also be found in other cultures. The new entanglements are a consequence of migration processes as well as worldwide (im)material communication systems and economic interdependences.
Year:
1995
Author Bio:
Wolfgang Welsch (born 1946) is a German philosopher and advocate of transcultural approaches.
Source:
Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (1995): Migration und Kultureller Wandel. Schwerpunktthema der Zeitschrift für Kulturaustausch, 45. Jg., 1. Vierteljahr.
Context:
The transcultural approach emerged from criticism of the intercultural approach and attempts to develop it further. One of its central characteristics is that it does not conceive of cultures as separate units, but rather as networked, mixed and dynamic. It also rejects the idea of cultural geographies. One of the criticisms of this approach, however, is that it does not take power relations into account.
Further Reading:
Laila Abu-Er-Rub et al. (2019): Engaging Transculturality. Concepts, Key Terms, Case Studies.
OK
Had these people been of an unfriendly temper, we could not by any possibility have escaped them, for our horses could not have broken into a canter to save our lives or their own. We were therefore wholly in their power, although happily for us, they were not aware of it; but, so far from exhibiting any unkind feeling, they treated us with genuine hospitality, and we might certainly have commanded whatever they had.
Correct!
Had these people been of an unfriendly temper, we could not by any possibility have escaped them, for our horses could not have broken into a canter to save our lives or their own. We were therefore wholly in their power, although happily for us, they were not aware of it; but, so far from exhibiting any unkind feeling, they treated us with genuine hospitality, and we might certainly have commanded whatever they had.
Year:
1844
Author Bio:
Charles Sturt (1795-1869) was a so-called explorer in south-eastern Australia.
Source:
Charles Sturt (1849): Narrative of an Expedition into Central Australia. London: T. and W. Boone. S. 76
Context:
Europeans did not always describe “others” as cultureless. In addition, as in this quote, non-Europeans were often described as polite, friendly, hospitable, simple and good. These “noble savages” often served as role models for “civilised” Europeans (Hall 1992: 131f.). However, this paternalistic characterisation of “good primitive peoples” constituted a gross generalisation that did not allow for any individuality and only served Europeans in their own process of reflection. Nonetheless, these comparisons often held up a critical mirror to Europeans.
Further Reading:
*Stuart Hall (1992): The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power. In: Stuart Hall & Bram Gieben: Formations of Modernity. Understanding Modern Societies: An Introduction. Trowbridge: Redwood Books, S. 275–320.
OK
Culture is the collective programming of the mind that distinguishes members of a group or category of people from others.
Correct!
Culture is the collective programming of the mind that distinguishes members of a group or category of people from others.
Year:
1991
Author Bio:
Geert Hofstede (1928-2020) was a Dutch social psychologist, cultural theorist and pioneer of “intercultural learning”.
Source:
Geert Hofstede (1991): Cultures and Organisations: Software of the Mind. New York: Mcgraw-Hill Education Ltd.
Context:
From 1967 to 1972, Hofstede conducted comparative intercultural research from which he developed a cultural theory. This was based on cultural areas that were clearly distinct from one another, each with its own characteristics. Hofstede’s theory has been used for decades in business and in international youth exchanges as a basis for intercultural learning and intercultural management. For him, a cultural area was synonymous with a nation. He was criticised, amongst other things, for ignoring differences within countries. His Culture Compass App [https://www.hofstede-insights.com/product/culture-compass/], allows people to enter which country they come from and where they currently are in order to see what cultural difficulties they might encounter, based on this paradigm. The exhibition Geographic-Postcolonial critically examined this conception of cultural continents.
Further Reading:
OK
Kultūr (lat.), actually care and improvement of an object capable of improvement in any direction, e.g. of the soil, the woods, individual animals, but especially the development and ennoblement of human life and striving.
Correct!
Kultūr (lat.), actually care and improvement of an object capable of improvement in any direction, e.g. of the soil, the woods, individual animals, but especially the development and ennoblement of human life and striving.
Year:
1907
Author Bio:
Meyer’s Großes Konversationslexikon was first published in 1840 by the Bibliographic Institute under Joseph Meyer. The series was discontinued in 1986 after the institute merged with Brockhaus Verlag.
Source:
Meyers Großes Konversations-Lexikon (1907): Lexikoneintrag zu “Kultūr”, Band 11. Leipzig, p. 788
Context:
Here it becomes evident how clearly linked the understandings of culture and development were thought to be. While the role of dictionaries is to codify social knowledge, at the same time, they exercise the power of definition.
Further Reading:
*Stuart Hall (1992): The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power. In: Stuart Hall & Bram Gieben: Formations of Modernity. Understanding Modern Societies: An Introduction. Trowbridge: Redwood Books, S. 275–320.
OK
I can‘t see that there is a difference between black or white … The difference could be that … and this is not the fault of the individual – that the culture is not the same, or that they have not reached the same level that we have.
Correct!
I can‘t see that there is a difference between black or white … The difference could be that … and this is not the fault of the individual – that the culture is not the same, or that they have not reached the same level that we have.
Year:
2005
Author Bio:
Anonymous Danish development worker interviewed by Maria Eriksson Baaz for her book Paternalism of Partnership.
Source:
Maria Eriksson Baaz (2005): The Paternalism of Partnership. A Postcolonial Reading of Identity in Development Aid. London: Zed Books. p. 47
Context:
This quote exposes two common ways in which white people conceptualise culture: on the one hand, by completely negating differences and pretending that all people are the same (“colour blindness”). A primary problem with this view is that it does not take power relations into account. On the other hand, the quote also reveals an internalised sense of superiority. White people often assume that they themselves have reached the highest level (across different scales: development, democracy, etc.) and that other people or cultures still need to be developed.
Further Reading:
*Timo Kiesel und Carolin Philipp (2011): White Charity. Blackness and Whiteness in Charity Advertisement. Documentary.
OK
The more the culture of countries increases, the narrower the desert becomes, the rarer its wild inhabitants.
Correct!
The more the culture of countries increases, the narrower the desert becomes, the rarer its wild inhabitants.
Year:
1784
Author Bio:
Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803) was a German writer and philosopher. He was one of the most important minds in German-language Enlightenment philosophy.
Source:
Johann Gottfried Herder (1903 [1784]): Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit. Leipzig: Reclam. Darin: Alle zerstörenden Kräfte in der Natur müssen den erhaltenden Kräften mit der Zeitenfolge nicht nur unterliegen, sondern auch selbst zuletzt zur Ausbildung des Ganzen dienen. Fünfzehntes Buch, Kapitel II. p. 161.
Context:
Herder has had a strong influence on Western understandings of culture. It was from him that the idea of a linear development of human culture came. While before the Enlightenment, nature was understood within Christianity as something positive, and humankind’s original condition as “paradise”, Herder found nature to be uncultured. In his view, culture was itself ethnic. Thus he linked it to the concept of the nation: people and nation were one and the same, both given by God (Patton 2010).
Further Reading:
*Benedict Anderson (1984): Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso.
*Alan Patton (2010): “The Most Natural State”: Herder and Nationalism.
OK
Intercultural competence is the capacity to dominate.
Correct!
Intercultural competence is the capacity to dominate.
Year:
2010
Author Bio:
Paul Mecheril (born 1962) is a German education researcher. He researches education in the migration society from a racism-critical perspective.
Source:
Paul Mecheril et al (2010): Bachelor | Master: Migrationspädagogik. Weinheim: Beltz, p. 77ff.
Context:
Mecheril criticises intercultural competence as diversity management from a dominant perspective. Within it, it is considered desirable that (usually white) people acquire so-called intercultural competence through further training and stays abroad. Paradoxically, however, migrants and people of colour are usually not recognised as having these intercultural skills. Why is it that migrant strategies for surviving in a racist society are not understood as intercultural competence?
Further Reading:
*Paul Mecheril et al (2021): Regimes of Belonging – Schools – Migrations: Teaching in (Trans)National Constellations. Wiesbaden: Springer.
OK
Whereas our ancestors (not of choice) were the first successful cultivators of the wilds of America, we their descendants feel ourselves entitled to participate in the blessings of her luxuriant soil… We will never separate ourselves voluntarily from the slave population of this country; they are our brethren by the ties of consanguinity, of suffering and of wrong.
Correct!
Whereas our ancestors (not of choice) were the first successful cultivators of the wilds of America, we their descendants feel ourselves entitled to participate in the blessings of her luxuriant soil… We will never separate ourselves voluntarily from the slave population of this country; they are our brethren by the ties of consanguinity, of suffering and of wrong.
Year:
1817
Author Bio:
Resolution of assembled free blacks, Bethel AME Church, Philadelphia, January 15, 1817
Source:
Resolution of assembled free blacks “A Voice from Philadelphia. Philadelphia, January, 1817” in William Lloyd Garrison, Thoughts on African Colonization: Or an Impartial Exhibition of the Doctrines, Principles and Purposes of the American Colonization Society (Boston, 1831).
Context:
Culture or cultivation are also used to refer to the improvement of the soil for agriculture. Uncultivated soil is considered “wild”, as in this quote which comes from a gathering of free Blacks. They opposed moving to West Africa because they wished to contribute to the cultivation of American soil. Slave owners saw free Blacks as a threat because they might inspire those still enslaved to revolt; hence they were to be shipped to the yet to be created Liberia. However some abolitionists (opponents of slavery) also supported the move to Liberia, viewing it as an opportunity for emancipation (see History Today, April 4, 2020).
Further Reading:
*History Today (Angela Thompsell, 04.04.2020): The Foundations of Liberia.
OK
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