[log in to unmask] wrote:

> In a message dated 06/01/2000 5:49:13 AM Eastern Daylight Time,
> [log in to unmask] writes:
>
> <<   And are you [carlo parcelli] not an integral part of American culture? >>
>
> I can say with absolute certainty and without hesitation, that the answer to
> this question is obviously no, . . . .
> ......  the very last word that one would use in describing carlo
> parcelli's role in american culture is 'integral'.  an absolutely
> preposterous proposition.....

This seems to assume an individualist conception of a culture (or a
society) -- that a culture is merely the sum of its parts, and that
therefore only "big parts" really count. This also makes relations merely
accidents of a culture's or an individual's "essence." But if relations are
real, if wherever and whenever we find ourselves we are always already
caught up in an ensemble of social relations -- if we do not have but
*are* our history, then it is impossible to say that any one "individual"
is or is not "integral" to a culture. The question is meaningless. If X
or Y (or Carlo) exists, than he/she is certainly "integral" to some
culture -- that is, has no existence independentlyof  or in abstraction
from that culture.

Carrol