Gatekeepers of Culture

Last week I discussed Part One of Hannah Arendt's The Crisis in Culture,  and the social importance of the crisis. As promised, this weeks Weekend Read offers you Part Two of Arendt's incredible reflections on politics and art.

The connection between politics and art is that artworks, if not the activity of the artist, always appear in public. Like words and deeds that appear on the political stage, artworks "can fulfill their own being, which is appearance, only in a world which is common to all."  The public realm offers a space of appearance—an opportunity for display—to artworks that must, as works of art, appear and show themselves to others.

Culture, from the Latin colere—to cultivate, to dwell, to take care, to tend and preserve—is that political and aesthetic judgment that judges what political words and deeds and what works of art will be preserved, cared for, and cultivated in public. Politically understood, culture is an activity of judgment, so that "cultural things" can only be loved and preserved "within the limits set by the institution of the polis." In other words, the cultural critics and gatekeepers of culture must know which cultural products to cultivate in the political sphere.

Enjoy Part II of The Crisis in Culture which begins on page 211.

-RB