The common saying is that people have a culture. This book argues that people live a culture - which may explain why they are so affectively attached to it. By considering cultural interactions on a global scale, this book investigates how cultures can be understood in terms of conflict and cooperation, in relation to the nation-state, a multiplicity of worlds, society, civilization and community. It considers how culture is at the basis of the construction of individual and collective selves; how they can come to be alienated; are defined in relation to others; are perhaps in-comparable; when they are considered to be dis-abled; and whether we can speak of animal cultural selves and mechanical cultural selves. Its twelve chapters consists of two parts each that both start with a piece of music. The pieces are taken from different cultures and all connote that getting to understand cultures depends on listening, first and foremost.

About the Author
Frans-Willem Korsten holds the chair by special appointment in Literature and Society at the Erasmus School of Philosophy and is associate professor at the Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS). At AUP he published 'A Dutch Republican Baroque: Theatricality, Dramatization, Moment and Event' (2017) and his latest publication is 'Art as an Interface of Law and Justice: Affirmation, Disturbance, Disruption' (Bloomsbury, 2021).


Book Information
ISBN 9789463720380
Author Frans-Willem Korsten
Format Paperback
Page Count 192
Imprint Amsterdam University Press
Publisher Amsterdam University Press