The Thing of Culture

DOUG AOKI nt''("\hl,01'"Y'\ is once wrote rarnO'USlV one of the two or three most ....'-'......!-".u......... L ........... The sea,-Ct1lan]~es writ of the same culture runs any PrE~sumt:)tiOln same ...,,,....,.......... culture. who are the same culture may t"nr\l1n-n one were an Italian and the servation is UNIVE.RSITY OF TORONTO QUARTERLY, VOLUME 65, NUMBER 2, SPruNG 1996 1HE THING OF CULTURE 405 "WOGS OF ALL DESCRIPTIONS" discriminates between its normal and its deviant. These laws are means the external is a out.a That conversion may be familiar castiethnocentrism . What censure misses is that culture over another - the .1lV.L.1.U.Q.,u...",..... ,Ft nm(:non in so far as it converts and a identical to of'h,nnr'ov,""_ structuration of culture as is .......a,.r"I+.a,rf ethnos must be centred 406 DOUG AOKI 11 The culture palrnC:UJ::lr discursive r;l:licnTY'lt) 1"43I':I"r,,"1 to the status of culture comes out of Ithe failure to understand that culture is a .......L""'.......L>..>~JL.... creau4Dn, not a field or work to which ~~ ..,..~.~,..._ fact.'15 Culture as a in the ......111,.."..11'1 in our we could .The the THE THING OF CULTURE 413 la€~Ol('gy oec~aUf:;e itincarnates both which THE JEW, THE FATHERLAND, AND THE FASCISTIC MOMENT OF EVERY CULTURE Fatherland is 414 DOUG AOKI Forms of sodal and ....C''SatlceJ is of a "failure to " or "misconstruc17 18 corlCet)t is central to Lacan'5 since, for with meconnaissance.' Alan ~hE~rid.an, A Selection York: Norton xi. '-UILLVJ.U, Text and Culture, 86. Selected 60. 19 Interview with Miwon Kwon for the exhibition tmergl,ng 5ala Venezuela. Cited in Homi K. ~'" ............../ The Location 3. 20 23; 34, in OrlJ?;Jncil. The of 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 Latlgt:lage,' in On the to UU£VUjrlYf:. Universitv of North Carolina Press PhilOS(JphtjI trans Alan Bass ..............«.1".v. emphclsiS added. York: Out I.JV~L""'V.". like buttons on a mattress 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 some THE THING OF CULTURE 417 ("n11lh1"1la where there is a down" (cavit(mr,ravl:?) but rather "reference back" to a "'l'Tnh.'\I1t" 'Lacan and the Discourse of the 'The and the Dialectic of Desire in the Freudian Uncon99 . This is not to claim that tlocitiI1lg si.2:Itihe:rs have no l\!Iu·1"'\r.,nf'lCl that that relationis not thriOU~~ the Realness of the trru~1'ltesl0U!S~nreaSenl()vm!rnt l'Ih'::PT1lTPC:: tou;~S5ance also entails a tra!ns)!:rel!isicln a ....~'I.:;'-,~1 $, whose lack is turtCbOn, in the mathematical sense, of the Lacan Eniio1l1!flellt as'a Political Factor 418 DOUG AOKI 52 Parveen .n..u.,aUII;" the I differences 4:1 80. Note how Bhabha's of culture lends itself to figuring cultural lack as castration; 53 For t::lUpUi:lblb in on,?;ID,U. 54 Michel Foucault, letter to ~-'~4h'-~ Canguilhem, 7 June 1967, cited in Didier 55 56 Michel Foucault, trans Betsy Mass: Harvard 1...;,:,0,.1=1"7 Press 1991),192. Tarrying, 205-6. and University of ...