Term
Imperative Culture
used in 8 texts across the archive
“This progressive relation to the center is what I have been calling “imperative culture,” or the “imperative order,” or “imperativity.” The center issues commands, commands with their origins in the injunction to suspend appropriation of the object on the originary scene; the participants on any cultural scene make requests of the center.”
In use
“What emerges within this imperative culture is a continual attempt to reduce the difference between performance and effect.”
“In his analysis of imperative culture, Gans notes that the memory of the sacred object must conceive of that object as a sacred being that exists above and beyond the concrete manifestations it may take on.”
Key texts