What Culture Means and Doesn't: The Linguistic Theory of Giorgio Agamben

Over the past few years, I have found myself increasingly occupied with the question of what I have called “capital-C Custom” and, most recently, in my lecture for the Roman Forum, “containment.” I consider this concept to be at the very heart of what we mean by “culture,” or rather what historically men have experienced as culture, namely, the habitation of an understanding of human nature. It is symptomatic of the modern loss of a cultural sense, especially in the United States, that the word “culture” has come to mean nothing but a collection of artifacts, a set of achievements or products that, paradoxically, tend to be only souvenirs of a culture not our own. When we talk about becoming “cultured,” generally we intend little more than to place ourselves in the role of educated observers who can appreciate the structure and canon of a given artistic or academic school. This is not the primary sense of “culture” as I understand it. Rather, to live culturally is to live in a place with a set of customs and social relations that frame or “stage” a definite program of human perfection.