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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?
List of contents
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
About the author
Byung-Chul Han is the author of more than twenty books including
The Burnout Society,
Saving Beauty and
The Scent of Time.
Summary
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?
Report
"This book will be of use to a wide range of students of society and philosophy but also to those who wish to think differently about the world in which we reside either as Cul-tour or Culture."
Joyzine
"Hyperculture is an exhilarating exploration of culture in the era of globalisation, cyberspace and massively networked data."
The Morning Star
