Abstract

SANCHEZ PARGA, José. El culturalismo: atrofia o devastación de lo social. Perf. latinoam. [online]. 2006, vol.13, n.27, pp.193-225. ISSN 0188-7653.

Culturalism, already present in the dominant ideology of Cultural Studies, is a complex phenomenon, that views culture at the crossroad of ideological, social, economic and political interests, linking it to present identitary and ethnicist obsessions, as a relativism that pretends to interpret and justify all social facts as a reflection of cultural differences. This article attempts to explain this modern culturalist phenomenology, by showing the manner in which it holds -in a very neo-liberal vein- a vision of culture without society, and even a reduction of the social to the cultural. Such an approach contributes to hide and neutralize the social logic that runs across the modern world. Even though "culturology", a paranoic discourse about culture has claimed inter-culturality as its main aspiration, it is incapable to understand that such an ideal becomes possible only when the "other" culture has meaning and value for one's own culture.

Keywords : postsocietal society; "reason market"; ethnicismes and identities; relativism; culture; interculturality; meaning differences.

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