Presentation at The Tangled Bank, IKK Conference:
Abstract: As it is often noted, the word ‘culture’ stems from Latin cultura ‘growing, cultivation’. In early 16th century, the cultivation of land became a cultivation of mind, faculties, or manners, and from there, the metaphorical process continued to the various concepts of culture we know today. This presentation will sketch this idealizing and spiritualizing metaphorical process that travelled from a material source domain to a non-material target domain, based on Raymond Williams discussion in Keywords. Moreover, it will discuss whether recent concepts and synonyms of culture, developed in the shadow of the Anthropocene, in a sense reverses the idealizing and spiritualizing process by challenging the strict distinction between literal and figurative meaning, between spiritual tenor and material vehicle. Is it the task of contemporary cultural analysis to get cultivation back in culture?