Christian Caliandro on Culture and Conflict in the 21st Century

Christian Caliandro argues that culture has undergone a fundamental mutation in its role, function, and structure in Italy and the West over the past three decades. He contends that society increasingly demands conformity and pacification from culture, rather than its traditional role of articulating contradiction and trauma. Caliandro cites Harold Bloom's "The Western Canon" to support the idea that great writers and artists are subversive of all values, and that the true use of art is to foster interiority and the dialogue of the mind with itself. He criticizes the current expectation that culture should produce "perfect citizens" or serve profit, decoration, consensus, or gentrification. Instead, Caliandro asserts that art and culture confront us with our mortal condition and enable rebellion and opposition. He concludes that radical opposition and the elaboration of alternative models of existence are the tasks of culture, and that the dimension of solitude and interiority, though currently unfashionable, possesses the power to shape the 21st century.