Culture Returns

Abstract

Part III suggests ways to improve the concept of culture and propose what culture should mean, defending a post-antihermeneutic approach. It offers systematic considerations for rethinking culture: refining a communicative concept of culture, integrating insights won through close and dialogical readings of contesting texts. Through such extensive detour, culture returns, in a critical hermeneutic shape sharpened by the previous critiques. Chapter 9 starts by differentiating between strong and weak critiques, and presenting two inseparable cornerstone theses derived from cultural theorists such as Yuri Lotman and in particular Paul Ricoeur. Thesis 1 says that culture is meaning-making practice involving creative imagination. Thesis 2 specifies that culture relies on communicative mediation between texts, subjects and contexts.