Reading, Watching, Listening #12

On cultural 'habitus', Hakan Fidan, Kızıl Goncalar, and American Exceptionalism

Perspective on the Culture Wars

Tanıl Bora, arguably Turkey’s preeminent historian of political ideas, has been speaking on the idea of “kulturkampf” lately, and as usual, made excellent points. I’d say his most important insight is that popular assumptions on the topic have been too narrow. The idea in Turkish political discourse has been that the Islamists have established political hegemony, but they haven’t been able to extend that into the realm of culture. I’ve touched on this idea in previous posts. The Islamists have long worried that in the high arts, education and popular culture, they are behind. They tend to see the left and liberal (read “globalist”) forces as having undue dominance in those fields, and are putting a lot of resources in fighting them. The left, meanwhile, sometimes prides itself on its relative advancement in this field.

Bora pops that that bubble in this recent column:

let's not forget that culture does not consist of opera-ballet-theatre-cinema-art-literature, nor does it consist of identity issues labeled as “cultural Marxism.” Even without relying on Bourdieu, we know that culture is about Habitus. Culture is habitus; in other words, it is established molds of thinking and perception, styles of behavior and action that have become operational spontaneously, without deliberate thought. It is an established way of life that is not limited to the secular-conservative distinction, but crosses both horizontally. It is “environments.” They are the prevailing tastes.

When we look at the habitus aspect of culture, there is no need for those in power [iktidar*] to complain that “we could not become the ruling power [ikitdar] in the cultural field.” Don't the cultural “codes” that have established their dominance in the protocol of daily life and “transactions” in the public sphere reproduce the cultural hegemony of the political power?

So “cultural hegemony” is not just about Hollywood or religious education in schools. Think of gangster culture, entrepreneurship, constant cost-benefit calculations, anti-intellectualism. These are whole areas of life where neo-nationalism and neoliberalism have quietly met and fused together. Looked at this way, the culture wars are a lot more complicated.

*For an explanation of the word iktidar, see here.