Culture is the perennial claim of particularity against unreconciled generality.

Evidence

What is called cultural with good reason must recollectively assimilate whatever has been left along the way in the process of the progressive control of nature, reflected in increasing rationality and ever more rational forms of control. Culture is the perennial claim of the particular over the general, as long as the latter remains unreconciled to the former. — Theodor W. Adorno, The Culture Industry, 154

Categorization

• XREF: This is the definitional spine against which administered culture is measured — an essential definitional anchor for running Adorno’s analysis on new objects. — connects to: Culture’s truth depends on immanent critique of its own untruth. — Dirk Braunstein, Adorno’s Critique of Political Economy, 966; Culture divides and discriminates before it ever unites a community. — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 815
• DEEPTHINKING: Culture as the ‘claim of the particular over the general’ is a compact, paradigm-level definition that resists summary and repays sitting with.