Multiculturalism, interculturalism, monoculturalism, and nationalism. They share a common idea – that cultural identity must be framed, defended, administered, sometimes imposed. Against this logic, anti-culturalism stands as a radical rupture: no national unity, no community mosaic, no managed dialogue of differences. No culture should govern our lives.
I. Culture as a Political Myth
For decades, states have worked to institutionalize culture: here by integrating minorities, there by imposing a language, a historical narrative, or a “way of life.” Whether it’s promoting diversity (multiculturalism), encouraging intercultural dialogue (interculturalism), or restoring a unified national identity (monoculturalism and nationalism), the result is always the same: individuals are assigned to identity blocs, their freedom of expression and affiliation reduced to a community-based grid.
This paradigm rests on a false assumption: that culture is a stable, transmissible, collective, and sacred essence. But culture is a shifting, fluid phenomenon—individual as much as social—and cannot be confined within policies of quotas, symbols, or commemorations.
II. Multiculturalism and Its Masks
Multiculturalism claims to value diversity. But in reality, it fossilizes identities, turning them into administrative categories. It essentializes differences instead of transcending them. It turns culture into a commodity, a folkloric showcase, a source of subsidies or state-backed claims. A person becomes an ambassador—against their will—for their community, reduced to their origin, language, or religion.
Interculturalism, supposedly more flexible, claims to orchestrate a dialogue between cultures. But who speaks? And by what rules? Once again, it is the state that defines, regulates, and subsidizes. The imposition of one culture is replaced by the staging of a forced consensus. Disagreement, unexpected mixing, or the voluntary abandonment of all culture become anomalies.
III. Monoculturalism and Nationalism: The Other Side of the Same Trap
In contrast to multiculturalism, some advocate for a homogeneous national culture, often based on the dominant group’s history, language, or ethnicity. This project is no better: it denies individual trajectories, imposes a single cultural norm, and reduces freedom to conformity.
Cultural nationalism turns culture into a tool of sovereignty, war, or exclusion. It claims to protect the soul of the people, but only succeeds in standardizing minds. Identity becomes a duty, not a choice.
IV. Toward a Radical Anti-Culturalism
The anti-culturalism we advocate here is the rejection of all imposed collective cultural policies. It rejects both the multiculturalist mosaic and the nationalist mold. It asserts that culture, like religion or the economy, must belong to the private, spontaneous, decentralized, and free domain.
This implies:
- The right to affiliate—or not—with a culture, without social pressure or political recognition;
- The rejection of all state cultural management (ministries, quotas, mandated celebrations, identity subsidies);
- Recognition of the individual as a cultural creator and mixer, free to abandon or reinvent their roots;
- A post-cultural—or rather a-cultural—society, where practices, lifestyles, and traditions are not the basis for law or citizenship.
This anti-culturalism does not oppose universalism as such—on the contrary, it fully embraces it, but only if it is a universalism of liberty and not of uniformity. The aim is not to impose a single human essence, but to recognize in every human being an autonomous moral subject, not assignable to any group, tradition, or language.
Properly understood, this universalism does not manage diversity: it liberates individuals from all prior assignment. It does not draw the boundaries of citizenship based on cultural criteria: it opens them to everyone’s equal capacity to choose their own path. In this sense, anti-culturalism is the ally of a non-authoritarian universalism, based on the individual, not the state.
V. A Society Without Imposed Identity
Anti-culturalism does not deny cultural differences: it frees them from any political weight. It does not destroy traditions: it lets them evolve or disappear freely. It does not negate attachment to languages, customs, or local histories: it only refuses to turn them into weapons, flags, or walls.
Against fantasies of purity or managed diversity, it proposes another path: that of a decentralized and anarchic. A society of free exchange, of voluntary and reversible identities. A society where no one has to be the cultural representative of anything.
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