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Not so long ago, I think this essay would have seemed superfluous. As a sequence of obvious. As a Sunday sermon. A plea for uncomfortable, critical, pluralistic, hybrid art and culture from a liberal point of view? To be unimaginative! How to carry owls to Ans! Experience with authoritarian and totalitarian states has taught that respect for such a culture is a gauge for free societies. That not flatters deserve protection and promotion, but those who demand patrons. Alone, lessons of history are also subject to forces of historical erosion.
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In Europe, voices are louder, uncomfortable art and culture not only criticize what is sense of matter, but are flat as hostile to people, filthy, departing, even terrorist dismiss. Also hybrid and transcultural are suspected: Do y represent unavoidable stress factors in stress-stricken times? Thus, one demands reduction of support for supposed “foreign bodies” or outlawing and dismissal of lateral thinkers. At same time, one evokes reflection on a set of supposedly “own”, auntic values. Culture should become something clearly Umrissenem, positive, edifying, even intuitively understandable – which requires a uniform, collective identity.
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The growing rejection of critical art and transculturalism is becoming tangible in Poland, where national Conservative government has adopted a corresponding cultural policy course. Poland! The much-quoted “golden Age” of country in 16th and 17th centuries fell into a phase of religious, ethnic and cultural pluralism. The present homogeneity of Polish Republic is a tragic consequence of Second World War.
Hybrid buildings such as Poznań Town hall testify to this “golden age”. Built by Ticino architect Giovanni Battista di Quadro in middle of 16th century, gusset of arcade on ground floor house mythological and historical figures from Lucretia to Cleopatra. Philosophers of Greek and Roman antiquity are omnipresent. Inside you can find coat of arms of Sforza and Habsburgs. A Venetian globe dating from year 1688 also expresses cosmopolitanism like depictions of elephants and leopards in cassette ceiling. Here a strong, multifaceted cultural tradition, which even Patriots could invoke, was at that time Poland a major European power – not because of migration or cultural contacts, but as a result of short-sighted policy of Polish aristocracy.
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Ethnopluralisten, on or hand, would probably see a precursor of multiculturalism, political correctness, cosmopolitan Gutmenschelei and Anything goes in Poznań town Hall – those supposedly decomposing forces to be met with unification. For example, with a guiding culture that is not only supported by authorities, but also actively implemented, forged from religion, nation, ethnicity. It is necessary to make this construct seem natural, indeed self-evident, in order to strengn its acceptance and its potential for mobilisation. The philosopher John Rawls, in his Theory of Justice (1971), said true: “The extremity of teachings of a superordinate goal is often obscured by indistinctness of this goal. The subordination of all goals under a single… discards man and submits him to one of his goals for sake of systematics. “
