The phenomenon of interculturality has always been at the core of my preoccupations and of my research. In the first article I ever wrote, thirty years ago, I compared, the phenomenon of socialization necessary for every child to enter society, to the awakening of an adult to a new and different culture. Both are crucial to understand not only our society as a whole, but the global world as it is today. It is crucial not to abide merely to a nationalistic and often unavoidably narrow-minded view. Those who seek to understand the world and transform it, those who desire to affect the universal or reflect upon it, should first dig into the local.
Having worked on Sartre (1905-1980) and on Castelli (1907-1999), on an intellectual and on a gallerist, I have been facinated to see how many unexpected common points they shared; I was interested of their function as world citizens, as Europeans looking at American culture and interacting with it in unusual ways, because they were bridgers. Castelli uses his Europeanity, his sense of the length of history to integrate it into the short-pace of the American market life. Sartre on the other hand, is inspired by American democracy and civil society, though he does criticize American foreign policy. Refering to several models, extremely aware of the world and cultures around them, looking beyond borders, they are able to create a wider approach.
Through this blog, I will try to develop and to coin the concept of bridgers: bridgers as the citizens of tomorrow, as those who pave the way to a new ecology. Last week-end, in Cherasco near Alba, around Turin in Italy, I experienced a beautiful coming together of excellence between American artists and Italian wine makers, the Ceretto family, with the memory of the Dukes of Savoy. More later...
No comments:
Post a Comment