58 lines
2.2 KiB
Plaintext
58 lines
2.2 KiB
Plaintext
Bulletin #1 1986
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KULTCHA: THE ISSUE OF KULTCHA AND THE CULTURAL ISSUE
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These days, everybody wants to talk about culture - particularly when it
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is related to diverse issues such as Religion, sex or whether a given
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painting or flower arrangement is subversive.
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That there are a lot of cryptic symbolism in the arts (and in ads,
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political speeches etc.) is onlt symptomatic that censorship is a reality
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which has driven politics into the cultural realm in cases where politics
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has not simply chosen to invade.
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That the arts are an excellent forum for spreading political ideas while
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sidestepping the boredom associated with blatant propaganda is
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recognized by anarchists as it was by Maso Tse-tung.
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Even Mao, though, wrote beautiful apolitical poetry -- contrary in
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practice to his urging that "all our art" express the proletarian line.
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Without the State there would be no politics; it would be the "end of
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history." Culture would endure.
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The statist socialist and Objectivist capitalist contention that culture
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should be dominated by political goals -- as in Socialist Realism and
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Romantic Realism -- conditions people to think there is no culture or
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society without government. It contracidts liberty as harshly as the
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bourgeois notionthat culture should never be contaminated with socially
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relevant criticism.
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In a world with hundreds of cultures there is, however, a far more
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pertinent problem: how to ignore cultural differences in order to cooperate
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in political struggle.
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When Lawrence of Arabia first began organizing desert tribes he told
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them they were "a silly people" for quarreling about customs instead of
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uniting against the Turks.
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In reading Fanon I was most impressed by the similarities in problems
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African cultures face struggling against colonial cultural values to those
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encountered here in the U.S. by the counter culture against the same
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imperialism.
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I feel like telling the people who always want to change the subject
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from genocidal racism to religious theories and sexual lifestyle disputes
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that they asked for this.
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This is KULTCHA: Dedicated to Dylan Thomas -- whoever he was.
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ORGANIZE
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