Hyperculture

In the wake of globalization, cultural forms of expression have become increasingly detached from their places of origin, circulating in a hyper-domain of culture where there is no real difference anymore between indigenous and foreign, near and far, the familiar and the exotic. Heterogeneous cultural contents are brought together side by side, like the fusion food that makes free use of all that the hypercultural pool of spices, ingredients and ways of preparing food has to offer. Culture is becoming un-bound, un-restricted, un-ravelled: a hyperculture. It is a profoundly rhizomatic culture of intense hybridization, fusion and co-appropriation. Today we have all become hypercultural tourists, even in our 'own' culture, to which we do not even belong anymore. Hypercultural tourists travel in the hyperspace of events, a space of cultural sightseeing. They experience culture as cul-tour.

Drawing on thinkers from Hegel and Heidegger to Bauman and Homi Bhabha to examine the characteristics of our contemporary hyperculture, Han poses the question: should we welcome the human of the future as the hypercultural tourist, smiling serenely, or should we aspire to a different way of being in the world?

Autorentext

Byung-Chul Han is the author of more than twenty books including The Burnout Society, Saving Beauty and The Scent of Time.

Inhalt

Tourist in a Hawaiian Shirt

Culture as Home

Hypertext and Hyperculture

The Eros of Interconnectedness

Fusion Food

Hybrid Culture

The Hyphenization of Culture

The Age of Comparison

The De-Auratization of Culture

Pilgrims and Tourists

Windows and Monads

Odradek

Hypercultural Identity

Interculturality, Multiculturality, and Transculturality

Appropriation

On Lasting Peace

Culture of Friendliness

Hyperlogue

The Wanderer

Threshold

Notes