individuals as resources for their self-development. In other words, hyperculture understands global culture as a single, gigantic reservoir from which to draw diverse resources for self-actualization – the Japanese martial art Aikido or Indian yoga; Scandinavian design, French films, or American video games; Creole or southern German cuisine; city trips, active vacations, or thematic travel; world music or the art museum, and so on and so forth.9
Hyperculture is literally über-culture; it is a sort of overarching dynamic principle that creates a sphere in which potentially everything, in a highly variable way, can become an object of value – but, of course, not everything is of equal value. Two entities are decisive for hyperculture’s form of culturalization: on the one hand, the goods that circulate on cultural markets; on the other hand, the subjects who encounter these goods with a desire for self-development. In this global hyperculture, culture always takes place in cultural markets in which cultural goods compete with one another.10 In the background of commercial competition, there is a fundamental competition between goods for scarce amounts of attention and valorization. In a sense, the cultural sphere of hyperculture forms a market in which there is a competition to be perceived as valuable – a competition, that is, for visibility, attractiveness, and ennoblement. This market is highly dynamic and unpredictable. It is frequently oriented toward what is new, innovative, and creative (and therefore surprising); however, it also values cultural goods that, over time, have acquired the status of classics.
The central pillar of hyperculture’s markets is global cultural capitalism: the constantly growing creative economy, which ranges from computer and internet companies to design, architecture, and tourism.11 This economy forms the basis of post-industrial society, in whose cities cultural objects and spaces, such as styles, fashions, or scenes, are in immediate contact with one another and thus stand readily available as the aforementioned reservoir of hyperculture. Interestingly, the trans-regional system of cities itself has increasingly transformed into a cultural market in which, nationally and even globally, there is competition for residents, investors, and visitors. Individual cities have become cultural goods that fight for attention and value. This is indeed something new. In industrial society, cities were essentially expected to provide work and housing; in late modernity, on the contrary, cities such as Berlin and Seattle, Amsterdam and Singapore, Sao Paulo and Melbourne, Cape Town and Freiburg are thought about in cultural terms – that is, they are evaluated in terms of features such as their attractiveness, authenticity, and quality of life. They no longer compete to be recognized simply for their functionality but also for their value.12
In addition to cultural markets, the second entity that is decisive for the development of hyperculture is, as I mentioned above, individuals with a desire for self-development or self-actualization. Hyperculture is oriented not toward the collective, but rather toward the individual: its anchor is not the group, but rather the individual with his or her own interests and wishes. At the same time, it is singularistic: individuals are intent on getting to know and appropriating cultural elements in all of their uniqueness, particularity, and singularity – the uniqueness of a city, landscape, event, brand, object, religious belief, or body culture, to name just a few examples. For these late-modern subjects, cultural goods thus acquire the significance of resources that are meant to help them to develop their own uniqueness as individuals. As early as 1900, Georg Simmel spoke about modernity’s individualism of particularity, noting that the modern individual strives to cultivate his or her “subjective culture.”13 Yet, in fact, it was not until the 1970s and 1980s that the motif of self-actualization became broadly established throughout society at large, and nearly ubiquitous among its new middle class – that is, within the group of urban and highly qualified people who often work in the knowledge economy.14 In the meantime, this development has also reached the aspiring societies of the global South.
For such individuals, who strive for self-development, global hyperculture is a paradise of possibilities waiting to be appropriated. Between art and cuisine, travel and spirituality, education and body culture, they can assemble any combination of their choice – an entire lifestyle and identity all of their own – and acquire in this way, both in their own eyes and in the eyes of others, the value of uniqueness. Hyperculture and the search for identity are thus closely related. If identity denotes the way in which individuals or groups interpret themselves – that is, the way in which they understand themselves to be something unique and different from others – then, for the late-modern individual, hyperculture is the medium of this identity formation. The late-modern individual acquires his or her personal identity as a unique individual by processing and combining what global culture has to offer.
Because hyperculture enables potentially everything to become culture, the boundaries that once defined “legitimate culture” have dissolved. In particular, the boundaries between high and popular culture, between the culture of the present and the past, and between one’s own culture and foreign cultures (the latter understood as that which exists outside of one’s national culture) have now become porous to the point of disappearing. Unlike the classical culture of the bourgeoisie, hyperculture no longer devalues what is popular in favor of education-based high culture. Rather, it is now the case that everyday practices such as cooking or playing football, and formats such as pop music and tattoos, can also potentially become culturally valuable. At the same time, however, the formats of high culture have also maintained their prestige. Think of the great appeal that concert halls and museums have managed to gain since the 1990s: the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, the MOCAA in Cape Town, etc. Without any inhibitions, moreover, hyperculture also admits both present and historical entities into its circulation: Netflix series, art installations, or photos on Instagram accounts, as well as old stucco apartment buildings, vintage fashion, or revitalized historical city districts. Finally, hyperculture has burst open the fixation on national traditions in favor of a balance between one’s own culture and that of others. Here, what is foreign – from the Western perspective, for instance, Asian body cultures or spirituality, or, from the German perspective, Scandinavian or Italian design – potentially seems like something interesting, attractive, and valuable to discover and appropriate.15
It is no surprise that diversity and cosmopolitanism are the guiding principles of hyperculture. In hyperculture, diversity is good in itself.16 A multiplicity of cultural practices from various national, regional, ethnic, historical, social, or religious origins is considered an enrichment, because it enormously expands the field of cultural resources for individual self-actualization. Conversely, a reduction of cultural diversity, or a monoculture, would mean that there are fewer cultural resources and therefore fewer options for self-actualization. Within today’s hyperculture, diversity goes hand in hand with the model of hybridity.17 Hybridity means that cultural features should not exist in isolation from one another but should, rather, be freely combined with one another. It is this that gives rise to what can be called cultural cosmopolitanism. In this sense, cosmopolitanism means having an essentially open attitude toward the diversity of cultural practices and goods, regardless of their origin. Not coincidentally, cosmopolitanism typically overlaps with globalism: it welcomes and promotes the global flow of goods, ideas, and people.
Culture as hyperculture thus designates not only a specific understanding of culture but also, and above all, a particular way in which cultural entities are produced, circulated, and appropriated in society. The fact that culture as hyperculture has been able to become so significant and powerful over the last few decades is due to several aspects of the structural transformation of society that have systematically promoted and favored it. First, the transnational new middle class of highly qualified individuals – which is endowed with extraordinary cultural, economic, and social capital – has sought and discovered its identity in the medium of hyperculture, which defines its lifestyle of self-development and singularity-based prestige. Second, cultural capitalism – which is not focused on industrial functional goods, but rather on goods and services with symbolic and experiential value – fuels hyperculture by constantly introducing new cultural goods into the world and making existing local cultures useful to its own ends. Third, liberal cultural politics, which endorses diversity and globalism,
