Culture is commonly treated as expression: a way for individuals or groups to articulate who they are, what they believe, or how they see the world. On this view, cultural forms are outward manifestations of inner states — identities, values, commitments — waiting to be interpreted.
This picture is reassuring. It flatters our sense of agency and preserves the idea that meaning originates inside subjects and merely finds cultural form.
It is also wrong.
Culture does not primarily express what people already are. It trains people in how to coordinate.
Expression Presupposes a Subject
But culturally speaking, the subject is not prior. It is produced.
Before people know what they believe, they learn:
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what feels normal
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what feels awkward
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what feels admirable, embarrassing, serious, funny, or excessive
These are not propositions. They are coordination cues.
Culture does not wait for a subject to speak. It teaches the subject how to speak, how to feel, and when to align.
Training Without Instruction
Cultural training rarely looks like training. There are no lessons, no exams, no explicit rules. Instead, there is repetition, saturation, and affective reinforcement.
Through music, images, narratives, genres, styles, and pacing, culture trains:
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temporal expectations (what counts as timely or outdated)
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affective responses (what to feel before knowing why)
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normative boundaries (what “goes without saying”)
This training happens prior to reflection. By the time beliefs form, the field of intelligibility is already shaped.
Why Recognition Feels Like Authenticity
People often describe cultural uptake as recognition: “This speaks to me,” “This feels like me,” “This is my kind of thing.”
But recognition is not evidence of expression. It is evidence of successful training.
What feels authentic is often what is already coordinated:
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familiar rhythms
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recognisable distinctions
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affective patterns that require little effort
Culture feels expressive precisely because its training has been effective enough to disappear.
Coordination Before Meaning
Culture trains people to coordinate before meaning becomes explicit:
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before ideology
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before ethics
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before politics
This is why cultural alignment often precedes articulated belief. People learn how to move together long before they agree on why.
From a relational perspective, culture operates at the level of intelligibility formation, not message transmission. It shapes what can be noticed, tolerated, admired, or rejected — and only later what can be said.
The Political Consequence
If culture is training rather than expression, then political struggle does not begin with arguments or positions. It begins with:
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rhythms
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styles
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genres
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affects
This explains why:
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ideological critique often fails to shift cultural alignment
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aesthetic shifts precede political change
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power can be exercised culturally without issuing commands
Culture stabilises or destabilises coordination without appearing to do so.
Reframing Cultural Responsibility
Seeing culture as training changes how responsibility appears. Responsibility is not primarily about “what messages we send,” but about:
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what patterns we reinforce
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what distinctions we normalise
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what forms of coordination we make effortless
Cultural responsibility is thus structural rather than expressive.
Closing
Culture is not a mirror held up to identity. It is a field in which identities are rehearsed, stabilised, and revised.
In the next post, we will examine how this training operates aesthetically — how alignment occurs through tone, vibe, and form long before ideology appears.
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