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News & ArtsSaturday, June 4, 2011
City Another Country in the City
Posted by Charles Mudede on Sat, Jun 4, 2011 at 12:48 PM
None of the three cultures I use (Zimbabwean, British, American) has an application for this kind of waiting.
- Under I-5, Chinatown
1
The Asian squat. Heels flat! I have a friend, shes chinese, she loves snapping photos of people doing this.including herself.
3
That's interesting. To what degree do we use a culture, and to what degree does it use us? I am intrigued.
6
@3: I really don't think you can separate the two. Part and parcel, carne y uña and all that. I'd be curious to know what Charles thinks, though.
8
Man #1: I'll give you a nickle if you grab that piece of paper.
Man #2: I'll give you a dime.
Man #1: I really need it man. Two dimes.
Man #2: I know. But I'll give you a quarter. I don't want to get up.
Man #1: You're fucking with me. And I don't like being fucked with...
Man #2: Deal is a quarter. Get the paper.
Man #1: I can't get up. You know that. The whole thing is just going to rip right through. Fuck. Get the Fucking Paper. 30 cents.
Man #2: That girl that looked at you. She was cute. I don't get that. Girls don't look at me. I'm as old as you. I'm not getting a fucking paper for you. Rot for all I care.
Man #1: Fuck.
Man #2: I'll give you a dime.
Man #1: I really need it man. Two dimes.
Man #2: I know. But I'll give you a quarter. I don't want to get up.
Man #1: You're fucking with me. And I don't like being fucked with...
Man #2: Deal is a quarter. Get the paper.
Man #1: I can't get up. You know that. The whole thing is just going to rip right through. Fuck. Get the Fucking Paper. 30 cents.
Man #2: That girl that looked at you. She was cute. I don't get that. Girls don't look at me. I'm as old as you. I'm not getting a fucking paper for you. Rot for all I care.
Man #1: Fuck.
10
I'm living in Korea and constantly marvel at the eighty-year-old ajummas squatting like this in the shade. They literally have a chair everywhere.
11
Oh shit, there's a culture here besides the three Mudede claims to come from. Someone sound the alarms.
13
It's Mudede, so I'm sure that his choice of phrasing about using a culture was deliberate. But I'm not on board. Culture is like a virus. As such, culture is the agent and you are the host in which it which it acts. It forms or transforms you, but you do not use it.
At most, perhaps, we enact a culture. We perform culture. We transmit a culture to the next generation: socialization is the inoculation of offspring with the agent (virus) of culture.
Mudede might perhaps argue that he has performed a survey of world cultures and that he chooses the culture and paradigm and tradition from which he engages life -- that he "uses" a culture of his choosing. But I assert that he was infected by the cultures of his upbringing, and that any additional cultural assimilations are just a superbug -- more powerful, perhaps, for their recombinant nature. But culture is the agent that uses you to its own end (reproduction and transmission of itself.) Not the other way around.
At most, perhaps, we enact a culture. We perform culture. We transmit a culture to the next generation: socialization is the inoculation of offspring with the agent (virus) of culture.
Mudede might perhaps argue that he has performed a survey of world cultures and that he chooses the culture and paradigm and tradition from which he engages life -- that he "uses" a culture of his choosing. But I assert that he was infected by the cultures of his upbringing, and that any additional cultural assimilations are just a superbug -- more powerful, perhaps, for their recombinant nature. But culture is the agent that uses you to its own end (reproduction and transmission of itself.) Not the other way around.
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