Culture is a constant battlefield with no permanent victories

Evidence

The dualism of subjective culture and objective culture is, like the dualism of cultural objects and life process, inherent in the existence of culture. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 84 (#complicates, via linked claim)

No sooner has a form been objectified than it seems in some measure constricting or inappropriate to the vital processes which called it into being. From this tension arise the dynamics of culture history, a result of “the deep contradiction between life’s eternal flux and the objective validity and authenticity of the forms through which it proceeds.” — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 83 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Even the swastika has no fixed cultural meaning; Culture as constitutive of practice retains contingency and is never finally determined; No authentic working-class culture exists untouched by dominant ideology like imperialism. (+12 more)

Related

• Even the swastika has no fixed cultural meaning (similarity 0.88)
• Culture as constitutive of practice retains contingency and is never finally determined (similarity 0.88)
• Cultures represent themselves as fixed but are always changed by history (similarity 0.86)
• Cultural symbols carry no fixed meaning; meaning shifts with the social field (similarity 0.83)
• Each cultural form is inevitably replaced by its successor (similarity 0.83)
• Objectified cultural forms always lag behind the life that created them (similarity 0.83)
• Cultural value is historically mobile as forms move between elite and popular (similarity 0.82)
• Culture remained an indeterminate site of convergent interests, not a fixed concept. (similarity 0.82)
• No cultural form permanently expresses any class until struggle gives it that accent (similarity 0.82)
• Cultural forms ossify and drift apart from the life that created them (similarity 0.82)
• Cultural struggle shifts positions, never staying over the same meaning (similarity 0.81)
• Popular culture is a perpetual uneven battlefield of domination and resistance (similarity 0.80)
• Life and its cultural forms are fundamentally in tension (similarity 0.80)
• The tension between life and form drives cultural change. (similarity 0.80)
• Culture operates as signifying practice rather than a fixed way of life (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Cultural struggle shifts positions, never staying over the same meaning #corroborates (0.80)
• Subjective and objective culture necessarily oppose each other #complicates (0.80) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 84
• Objectified cultural forms always lag behind the life that created them #complicates (0.75) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 83
• Cultural meanings are unstable and shift with the social field #corroborates (0.70)
• Culture acquires class meaning only through present political struggle #expands (0.60)
• Traditions are mutable and contested rather than fixed and class-bound #corroborates (0.60)
• Cultural domination has real effects without being all-powerful or all-inclusive #qualifies (0.55)