MATERIAL IDEA. On the Legibility of Culture

What we call the real is also the result of a protocol of reading. Such a reading is unavoidably historical and contingent, as a product of a specific temporary sense. It also stands also within a complex correlation of marked and unmarked spaces, therefore in a spatial sense too. But this last one also carries the evidence of time. Such marks, taken as individual projections or choices, are not only constantly changing, according for instance to the daylight (or nocturne illumination, or twilight palettes), to the instant temper or mood, to the physical conditions and the cultural antecedents of the perceiving and exposing subject – to sum up, according to a whole package of conditions and circumstances. If we put together the myriads of individuals on the global surface, we constantly have to redraw the lines of intersection and re-read the mappings of an interactive geography made of partly individual options, partly mimetic movements. Like ruins, views are constantly being destroyed and rebuilt; like lines, they are constantly being erased and rewritten. But this never happens completely anew. Culture work may also be seen as a patient attempt to read palimpsests – which are, as we well know, marked spaces par excellence. Introduction: Rewriting Culture between the Lines I – Marked and Unmarked Spaces. Reading Culture Figurations The Oblique Web in the Narrative World Dr. Schiller and Mr. Mankind – Anthropological Analysis, Diagnosis and Therapy in the Late Enlightenment The Escher Principle: Is there any Alternative to Candle Lights and Raw Vegetables? WB against the Grain or the Devils of History On the Edge of the World Play. The Skeptical Look of Director Schiller Should the Temple Stand near the River? About the Signification of Intermediary Spaces II – At the Crossroads of Conflict and Peace: The Birth of Peace out of the Spirit of War? The Torn Texture: Five Theses about Rescue in the Midst of Danger (2003) Two or Three Things that Did Not Happen: Is There any Possible Peace without Somewhat Tragic Memories? (2004) Terrorism of Expression as a Means for the Sake of Freedom (2006) The Walls inside Us or: What Kind of Resistance is at Stake? (2007) Abolish Conflicts? Do we Not Need Them for the Sake of a Stable Peace? (2008) Understanding versus Acting: a Silent Effect? (2009) Rapid, the Shadow of Peace, between Hinge and Door (2010) On the Road between Pages with a Multitude of Strangers, and Me among Them (2011) A Handful of Sand: Looking for a Lost Paradigm? (2012) Close to the Next Door (2013)