also, under certain circumstances, negative singularities. Of course, most social entities that never achieve singularization – the things that do not seem unique or the people who lack originality, for instance – remain invisible in the cultural sphere. This is not a matter of negativity but rather of indifference.8 Negativity, in fact, was a defining feature of normative rationalization and the logic of the general. Under that logic, people distanced themselves from that which did not follow the general pattern – from the particular and abnormal (which was in turn classified as a type). Beyond indifference, however, instances of strong devaluation can occasionally occur in the cultural sphere, so that something will be regarded as worthless or as a sort of “non-value” and thus be seen as problematic, threatening, or inferior. What is crucial here is that the “other” from which people keep their distance is in fact a singularity with inherent complexity, yet it has been endowed with a decidedly negative valence.
When they appear, negative singularities are met with considerable cultural, and above all narrative and aesthetic, interest. In the case of subjects, for instances, negative singularities have included serial killers, mass murderers, and terrorists, who tend to capture modernity’s cultural imagination. A less drastic example would be a troublemaker politician who attracts attention and negative recognition. Other subjects can become stigmatized singularities, which are more than mere abnormal types.9 It is also possible for places, events, and things to be negatively singularized: certain “no-go areas” in cities or entire problematic regions (West Virginia, for example, as the stronghold of hillbilly culture), repulsive and disgusting objects, violent rituals, or horrific historical events (such as the Holocaust). Finally, collectives can mutually perceive one another as negative singularities (fundamentalist communities versus liberal metropolitan culture). In the form of devaluation, de-valorization often involves a complicated dynamic. Here, in Julia Kristeva’s terms, the “other,” or the negative singularity, becomes something “abject” – an abject singularity and the object of condemnation.10 Negative singularities are closely associated with negative affects, but even more often with ambivalent – or even fascinating – horror.
With this we have come to yet another element that, in addition to the concept of value, has to be salvaged from the legacy of the traditional concept of culture in order to develop a contemporary conception of culture and culturalization: the affective character of culture. In the traditional understanding, which is familiar from the comparison between culture and civilization or society,11 culture was identified as a counterforce to formal rationality – as a non-rational or even irrational force that generates strong emotions and cannot be tamed by the rational and moderating rules of civilization. Although the opposition between culture and civilization may be obsolete today, the association of culture with the non-rational, the emotional, and its unpredictable possibilities can still be used analytically. As I have already noted, culturally endowed objects, subjects, places, events, and collectives function in a thoroughly affective manner; they exude a considerable affective intensity.12 Here, too, we can draw a connection to our analysis of the social logic of singularities: a central feature of singularized objects, subjects, etc., is their ability to affect people, whereas the entities in the realm of the logic of the general produce little if any emotions and are treated in an almost affect-neutral manner.
To summarize: in the cultural sphere in the strong sense, singularities are endowed with value and have affective qualities. We are moved or touched by them, fascinated or disgusted in a compelling way; we experience a sense of horror or comfort in their presence. Positive singularities affect people in an intensely positive way, negative singularities in an intensely negative way. These affective processes are not, however, irrational. They have a sociologically comprehensible logic of their own. Valorizing objects, subjects, events, and collectives as unique and being affected by them are inextricably linked to one another. They are both formational components of the culture’s sphere of circulation and its logic of singularities. That which seems to be valuable and unique operates in an affective manner because it is valuable and unique. And that which produces considerable emotions seems to be valuable and unique because it operates in such a strongly affective manner.
Culturalization versus Rationalization
In its valorizing and affective structure, culture in the strong sense always has the form of something non-rational or extra-rational, beyond any productive or intersubjective utility. In the history of cultural theory, such an understanding of culture was suggested in the context of the Collège de Sociologie by authors such as Georges Bataille and Roger Caillois.13 From this perspective, culture does not appear as the totality of human ways of life or as the world of meanings but rather as a counterpart to rationalism, and so it has been from archaic societies to the society of the present day. Rationalism is always oriented toward production and accumulation, toward conserving and reinvesting social energies, toward efficiency and regulation. Culture, on the contrary, is to some extent unproductive. Its practices are unconditional, which means that they are without a purpose or function. They have value; they are strongly affective practices of overspending. Whereas rationalism is based on labor and dominating nature, culture is grounded in sovereignty – in going beyond instrumental praxis by distancing oneself from necessities. In contrast to the tranquil and cold complex of formal rationalization, the cultural sphere is hot.
The idea that a contrary logic of rationality and culture forms the basic structure of all societies is instructive. This tension cannot really be understood, however, unless one is aware of the existence of the oppositional social logics of the singular and the general. In this light, rationalization and culturalization can be systematically and ideal-typically compared as two structuring principles of society that format the social in two different directions. We have already seen that formal rationalization standardizes, generalizes, and formalizes social entities according to the specifications of the social logic of the general. The culturalization of the social, however, is precisely that social process in which objects, subjects, spaces, temporalities, and collectives are singularized in the sense described above. The culturalization of the social means this: more and more of such singularized (that is, valorized and affectively operating) objects, subjects, places, events, and collectives are being fabricated, and the applied practices of observing, evaluating, producing, and appropriating them are becoming more and more extensive. This quantitative shift has a qualitative and structurally formational effect on society.
Culturalization can thus influence the macro-level of societies, but its effectiveness depends on the micro-level of the individual social entity. Food or a meal, for instance, can become the object of culturalization when it is valorized beyond its nutritional utility as a bearer of value (“healthy,” “original,” “holy,” etc.) and when it functions affectively (“uplifting,” “tasteful,” “extraordinary”). Culturalization is simultaneously singularization, and vice versa. The meal is elevated out of the general catalogue of nutritional means; it develops its own inherent complexity and inner density (through its particular preparation and spatial atmosphere, by being part of a religious practice, etc.). Food that had previously served the rationalistic aim of eating can thus be transformed by the logic of singularities and enter the cultural sphere, with its valorizing and affecting dynamics.
In that affective entities of this sort are fabricated with value, what takes place in the process of culturalization could be called “doing culture.”14 The process of rationalization is always concerned with reducing complexity, with confining social entities to just a few parameters and therefore making them predictable and cooperative. Here, complexity is regarded as disruptive. Culturalization, in contrast, allows select objects, subjects, places, events, and collectives to develop inherent complexity and inner density, whereby they are singularized. Here, inherent complexity and inner density are the very appeal; they are the whole point.
Why in society are there not only processes of formal rationalization but processes of culturalization as well? Above, I explained that the rationalization of social praxis can be interpreted as a response to the problems of scarcity and disorder in
