Rethinking Cultural Theory
 
Aims
 
My RJ Sabbatical book project “Rethinking Cultural Theory” (“Nya perspektiv på kulturteorin”) aimed at synthesising previous ideas in a coherent book and to integrate an international research visit in this process. More specifically, the overarching goal of my project was to clarify the development and key dimensions of the concept of culture and to enter critical dialogues with its contemporary theoretical challenges from antihermeneutic, neomaterialist and posthumanist scholars. This was to be enhanced by a stay as visiting scholar at the University of Amsterdam.
 
 Some changes were made in relation to the original application. For instance, I abandoned the rather awkward notion of a “Culture 1.0/2.0/3.0”, which after a while felt superfluous. I also added several more texts to my critical overview, for instance by Sara Ahmed and Bernhard Siegert. Since I did not know in advance how I would solve the theoretical problems dealt with, or even if I could keep the hermeneutic concept of culture or would be forced to go in some other direction, I had to develop the structure and key arguments of the second and third part of my book considerably as my theoretical work proceeded. My project was really no simple writing up of already finished thoughts, but indeed an open-ended theoretical research work whose outcome could only be estimated at the end of the working process. Hence, the final book result deviates considerably from some of the models tentatively suggested in the original application.
 
Three main results
 
One main result was that my model of four main concepts of culture, first presented in my Swedish book Kultur, was consolidated and refined. A fifth, rather rudimentary “sociological” concept was placed as a transition bridge between the anthropological and the hermeneutic ones.
 
 Second, I distinguished one “hard” and one “soft” version of antihermeneutics, concluding that they do not make the hermeneutic concept of culture as meaning making obsolete, since the hard version is untenable and misses its target while the soft version of new materialism supplements rather than replaces the interpretive dimension.
 
 Third, I found that the recent problematisations of interpretation and meaning necessitated three main considerations for renewing the hermeneutic concept of culture, so as to avoid logocentrism, cognitionism and a kind of reifying culturalist hubris by taking seriously other symbolic modes of expression than writing, emotive levels of experience and meaning making as interminable practice and process.
 
New research questions
 
The last mentioned three problems point at new research questions. There are promising efforts to approach non-verbal modes of expression, emotive experiences and the dialectical interplay between meaning and materiality in signifying practices, but more theoretical work is needed to develop a better understanding of their implications for the concept of culture.
 
International aspects
 
The spring 2016 stay at the University of Amsterdam proved highly successful. The Amsterdam School of Cultural Analysis (ASCA) is an internationally well-known hub for rich and complex theories and research with a cultural perspective. Besides visiting ASCA/UvA as well as some other Dutch university settings, getting a chance to present and get feedback on my ideas while also learning from how these hosting environments worked, I organised eleven recorded and transcribed dialogues with key Dutch scholars: Carolyn Birdsall, Sudeep Dasgupta, Charles Forceville, Joke Hermes, Christoph Lindner, Wayne Modest, Patricia Pisters, Richard Rogers, Markus Stauff, Jan Teurlings and José van Dijck. The resulting 70 page (37,000 words) document, though not itself intended for publication, became a useful resource for me when writing my book, as it offered me new ideas but also confirmed and exemplified my own understanding of the main uses of the concept of culture as well as its neo-materialist contestations.
 
Non-academic information
 
This is a rather theoretical and intra-academic project, and I have so far only made presentations at conferences, workshops and seminar lectures in various academic contexts. However, as soon as my book manuscript is delivered to the publisher, I plan to develop ways to present some of my ideas and findings to a wider audience.
 
Main publications
 
So far, only one publication is intended: a monograph titled Defending Culture: Key Foundations and Contemporary Debate, which will be published by Palgrave Macmillan. The contract is already signed, and the manuscript will be delivered to the publisher by the end of February. The manuscript comprises some 170 pages (80,000 words) and will hopefully be published before the end of 2017. It has the following main contents:
 
CHAPTER 1. Introduction: Which culture?    3
PART I. Towards culture: Concepts    8
CHAPTER 2. The ontological concept of culture as cultivation    9
CHAPTER 3. The anthropological concept of culture as lifeform    18
CHAPTER 4. The aesthetic concept of culture as art    24
CHAPTER 5. The hermeneutic concept of culture as meaning making    33
Towards signifying practice    39
Hermeneutic culturalisation    52
PART II. Against culture: Contestations    63
CHAPTER 6. Interpretation    64
Hermeneutics, structuralism and ideology critique    64
Sontag and Foucault against interpretation    69
CHAPTER 7. Things    77
Around Latour’s ANT    77
Barad, Ahmed and Butler    83
Grossberg, Massumi and Thrift    93
CHAPTER 8. Media    102
Around Luhmann    102
Kittler, Ernst, Gumbrecht and Siegert    106
Peters and Galloway    114
PART III. Rethinking culture: Considerations    119
CHAPTER 9. Culture returns    120
Imagination    120
Mediation    134
CHAPTER 10. Moving forward    141
Modality    141
Emotion    143
Materiality    147
CHAPTER 11. Conclusion: Post-antihermeneutic culture    158
 
The final writing phase was strongly motivated and encouraged by two anonymous reader reports provided by Palgrave, describing the book proposal as “a welcome contribution to the ongoing debates concerning culture and cultural studies”, “a brave effort to evaluate certain recent developments in cultural theory”, “very timely” and of “great synthetic value”, “enthusiastically” recommending Palgrave to “publish the book as it stands”, arguing that “this is top quality in the research tradition it presents”, with a “logical and elegant” structure and “lucid” writing. No modifications at all were deemed necessary; on the contrary, I was judged to be “spot on”, myself being “the right person to take this on”, “able to handle in a lucid manner most complicated issues, produce fruitful syntheses and juxtapositions and develop [my] own interesting standpoints”. “There is a need in the market for this book, and Johan’s long term scholarship makes him the person to provide it” – such formulations convinced me that my chosen topic has a strong resonance in the contemporary intellectual field.
 
 I will also try to briefly summarise my main ideas and findings in a Swedish and more non-academic text if a suitable occasion turns up, but right now, my focus is on finalising the book manuscript itself.
 
Publication strategy
 
When my book contract was secured, I learned that the publisher charges no less than 11,000 GBP or 17,000 USD for adding a digital open access edition. Even though my original RJ funding had to be reported now in January 2017, and the remaining money paid back to RJ by Södertörn University, I may separately apply for RJ to support this. I do find this sum ludicrously large, and as far as I can see, RJ only demands journal articles and conference publications to be published with open access, with no clear rules for books like this. Adding an OA edition can be done at any stage, so I still have some time to consider the alternatives. Should I later publish some article or conference paper on the same topic, I will use all efforts to make it open access.