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Transculturality Now, Ever, and Forever: Comments on Wolfgang Welsch’s We Have Always Been Transcultural: The Arts as an Example
Madalina Diaconu
Abstract
The concept of transculturality is indissociable from Wolfgang Welsch’s theoretical contributions since the early 1990s. His latest English book on this topic argues that far from being a new phenomenon related to globalization, transculturality has always accompanied the history of culture, in particular art, and must be defended against the promoters of supposedly closed, “spherical” cultures that are “owned” by their members. An impressive diversity of artistic examples from all cultures, epochs, and genres illustrates the two dimensions of transculturality: the mixing of elements of different cultural origin as result of the circulation of cultural goods and people, and the existence of universals that are activated in specific cultural contexts. Transculturality is described as dynamic par excellence, covering processes of cultural influence, adaptation, transfer, interpretation, inspiration, and transformation that engage a dialectics of the own and the other and is mutually beneficial by expanding our horizon and promoting communication and understanding beyond any borders.
Key Words
art history; cultural transfer; intercultural; transculturality; universal
New phenomena in new times call for new concepts. The notion of transculturality responded to the intensification of cultural exchanges in the age of globalization and gained foothold in philosophy and aesthetics with the decisive contribution of Wolfgang Welsch, who has been extensively publishing on this issue since the beginning of the 1990s. In a time when discourses about multiculturality and interculturality were ideologically competing, Welsch promoted the concept of transculturality in both descriptive and normative respects: as capturing the spirit of our age and as an ideal to be pursued.
Although Welsch’s explorations of transculturality varied their focus over time, they maintained fresh the author’s pleasure of (thought-)provoking, his polemical tenet, consistent argumentation, and the typical Welschian (and rather untypical for German philosophy) clarity and fluency of style, which is supported also by a slim scholarly annotation apparatus. All these qualities make the reading of his writings enjoyable despite their (always non-ostentatious) erudition. We Have Always Been Transcultural confirms this fortunate combination of qualities. Moreover, its publication in a book series of the International Association for Aesthetics hosted by Brill, on glossy paper and with a high number of art reproductions in the best technical quality, recommends the book to a broad international readership that, given the language, is expected to reach more people than its German original, published in 2024 with Schwabe Verlag.
In essence, Welsch’s book invites us to embark on a fascinating journey that crosses (transgresses) various artistic genres, epochs, and cultures. Most examples are drawn from the fine arts, seconded by music, (music) theater, literature, film, design, and dance; this display is enriched with samples from contemporary popular culture and everyday life, reaching from jazz and hip-hop to mangas and our transcultural menus. This impressively broad showcase, which can only be expected from an experienced art scholar, testifies to the author’s insatiable curiosity and openness—otherwise put, his transcultural sensibility.
The book’s main hypothesis is already mentioned in its title: notwithstanding its recent introduction, the concept of transculturality does not exclusively address a new issue, given that cultural transfer represents a historical constant; particularly, “art has long been at the forefront of transculturality.”[1] The idea of artistic borrowings, resonances, and analogies across cultures is not likely to arouse resistance; therefore, the real difficulty regards the proper selection of artistic examples and their ordering in a systematic manner that promises to shed light on the manifoldness of transculturality. Welsch’s answer to this challenge was to begin with a theoretical introduction to the concept of transculturality and concentrate on case studies in the following ten chapters. Nevertheless, the empirical material was ordered neither according to a historical or geographical principle nor to artistic genres, but according to types of transculturality, which also give the title of most chapters. Notwithstanding Welsch’s presumable intention to use the theory of transculturality merely as the “gray” springboard for diving into the “green” life of art—to paraphrase Goethe’s Faust—my following comments focus on the theoretical scaffold that underlies the interpretation of examples.
The introduction suggests that the author is neither interested in repeating the main points of his theory of transculturality nor in engaging with the meanwhile vast literature in the field that he simply “bans” into footnotes. Instead, he briefly mentions the present pervasiveness of transculturality in various disciplines and in the everyday life both at the macrolevel of cultures and in the individuals’ biographies. Further, he contrasts the transcultural with models of “outdated spherical thinking,”[2] mainly multi- and interculturality, nationalism, and identity politics. Since 1992, Welsch has repeatedly rejected the representation of secluded cultures that coexist within the same (multicultural) society or engage in an exchange, including (intercultural) dialogue. The notions of multi- and interculturality suggest an external relation in which originally separate terms are subsequently connected, ignoring that cultures have always been mixed. Although Welsch’s intuition appears correct at first sight, it operates with an oversimplified understanding of intercultural philosophy, as it has been developed since the 1990s. Some of its prominent proponents, such as Franz Martin Wimmer, explicitly distinguish between intercultural and comparative approaches—the latter being indeed based on an external relation. Others, like Ram Adhar Mall, point out that the project of an intercultural hermeneutics underlies the assumption that cultures are neither identical, which would make any dialogue superfluous, nor completely different and incompatible, otherwise any understanding would be impossible, as Welsch suggests that the theory of interculturality assumes. Instead, the world cultures build a network of overlaps and analogies. Moreover, according to Mall, interculturality can be at work within the same culture, giving as an example Socrates’ polemics with the sophists.
This view is consonant with Welsch’s idea of transculturality: intersections are explainable through historical influences; similarities and correspondences are based upon universal structures of the human nature. Intercultural philosophy has constantly defended itself against the accusation of endorsing cultural relativism and has never given up seeking the universal, which Welsch assigns to “deep” transculturality. In this respect, Welsch’s impression that intercultural philosophy “lashes the other in an identity corset and admires the distant identity in order to then explain (or suffer from the fact) that we cannot possibly make this other our own”[3] results from a regrettable misunderstanding. Moreover, the intention of “discovering common ground in the midst of diversity,”[4] that Welsch ascribes to the theory of transculturality, characterizes the aim of intercultural approaches as well. Welsch reduces the intercultural dialogue to a back-and-forth movement, whereas intercultural philosophers often reinterpret the “inter” as the common space of encounter from which a consensus—and not at all appropriation—may (but not necessarily) emerge. Nevertheless, Welsch is right to claim that the arts can be considered exemplary for transculturality: in art, cultural exchange has always been the rule and “met less resistance than in the fields of politics and society.”[5] Aesthetics remains indeed a minor domain of intercultural philosophy compared, for example, to moral and political philosophy, where cultures are more conservative and their clashes open and violent. In addition to this, intercultural philosophy heavily relies on language, which explains why issues of conceptualization and translation are essential for its approaches, whereas Welsch mostly draws his examples from the nonverbal arts. Finally, speaking about terminology, it also would be interesting to know how Welsch situates the concept of transculturality in relation to the “cross-cultural” approaches.
Less problematic seems to me the delimitation of transculturality from theories of modern nationalism and its recent revival; these illegitimately equate culture with nation and tend to conceive both as closed entities. Welsch no less harshly rejects identity politics. Notwithstanding their differences, nationalism and identity politics keep individuals prisoners in their own culture of origin as in a “bubble” and react to a lack of recognition. Once again, differentiations would be necessary, for example, between the nationalistic ideologies of powerful states and those of the small states and colonies that demanded economic protectionism, cultural emancipation, and political independence, or between the “defensive” nationalism of the nineteenth century and the “self-assertive” (including “offensive”) nationalism of the twentieth century.[6] As for identity politics, Welsch abhors them as an inversed racism or separatism that manifests “small-mindedness and stubbornness,”[7] and compromises the possibility of a mutually beneficial dialogue. Finally, Welsch does not shy from engaging in polemics with the recent discourses on cultural appropriation, understood as cultural theft, arguing the necessity of a differentiated discussion and the absurdity of considering cultures to be “owned” by their members. In a nutshell, transculturality represents a framework of relational thinking that favors networks over an essentialist view of cultures as static, homogeneous, and self-sufficient monads.
The only viable alternative to these problematic and dangerous theories is, in the author’s view, transculturality, which he defends both from a theoretical and political perspective: firstly, this model fits the real and inevitable entanglement of cultures in all times; secondly, it is useful for collectivities, given that it fosters communication and exchange. In this context, cultural theory is conceived performatively, as a tool for sociocultural change, which must therefore assume responsibility. The recognition of the advantages of transculturality does not underplay its ambivalence throughout history; its processes include the transfer of information, the dissemination of values, and the circulation of material goods no less than mechanisms of power, exploitation, and injustice. Remarkably, Welsch regards this dark side of transculturality through an anthropological lens, as manifesting “the mixed constitution of the human,”[8] and interprets it in a quasi-Hegelian manner as a conversion of the human (economic and political) evil into cultural goods; eventually, it is the positive dimension of transculturality that prevails. This reconciling and harmonizing view is not unusual in aesthetics, yet the bird’s eye view that makes it possible does not fit well the complex historical contextualization of the case studies the author discusses in the following chapters.
Before entering different types of transculturality, let me remark that Welsch seems to make no distinction between transculturality and transculturation (in the meaning of cultural transformation), conceiving both as processes. For example, a preliminary list loosely enumerates the following forms of transculturality: “adoption or assimilation, grafting or reinterpretation, reduction or enrichment, adaptation or change, simplification or hybridization, contamination or appropriation.”[9] Two dimensions of transculturality are detectible behind these manifestations: the bringing together of elements stemming from distinct cultures and an encounter of cultures that is possible due to their common basis, in other words, “the activation of the human core underlying all cultures.”[10] Welsch calls these two basic versions a combinatorial or surface transculturality and an universalistic or depth transculturality. Finally, in order to clarify the meanings of transculturality, Welsch reactivates the family resemblance model, which he previously applied to the definition of the aesthetic dimension, and replaces the minimal common denominator of various phenomena with a web of overlapping features.
The amazing variety of artistic examples discussed in the book is meant to warn of hasty theoretical simplifications that ignore the complexity of reality and conveys “flesh” to what would otherwise risk to remain a bloodless philosophical abstraction. Therefore, Welsch often cautions that transculturality represents a “complicated matter”[11] that may involve quite opposite phenomena.
First, the concept of transculturality brings into play a complex dialectic of the own and the other. This can take the form of a bilateral exchange that contradicts the unidirectional influence implied by acculturation. In other cases, a foreign (possibly depreciative) image of the own is appropriated and converted into an instrument of (proud) self-identification and political and cultural emancipation. The other can also be idealized and its projections instrumentalized to satisfy the longing for a different other that invites one to flee from the reality of the own. Borrowings can be superficial and distort the other or follow an intensive study of the foreign culture; they can be used to shed light on the value of a previously ignored or underestimated culture, or to give an impulse to the own creativity, or finally have both motivations at the same time. The latter situation is extensively discussed in the chapter on transformations, which include phenomena of “adoption, appropriation, and integration.”[12] Welsch’s examples demonstrate that the best globally known cultures have their roots in foreign models that they creatively reinterpreted: the ancient Greek sculpture in Egyptian prototypes, Buddha’s statues in Greco-Roman art, the traditional Japanese architecture in the Chinese one. Archetypes can be programmatically revived and refashioned, as was the case with the Greek-Roman art in Europe since the Renaissance and until the twentieth century. While European culture is commonly regarded as one, Welsch’s idea of a “transcultural continuation of Antiquity”[13] is not exempt of ambiguity, since it allows to reconsider the Renaissance, the opera libretti drawing on ancient myths, various versions of (neo)classicism in architecture, and Joyce’s Ulysses both as perpetuation and rewriting of ancient models. This can raise the objection of using an unspecific concept of culture. However, once again, the author is less concerned with conceptual clarifications than with displaying the various intentions behind the gesture of reactivating historical models: this goes beyond merely rediscovering the past, since it reinterprets it and sometimes employs its cultural authority as a means of self-legitimation.
Foreign inspirations involve transformations and influences as well, yet according to Welsch’s examples, operate at the level of individual creation. The foreign sources of inspiration can be reconstructed grace to biographical details, artists’ statements about “kindred spirits”[14] they found in remote times and places who helped them to a better self-knowledge, and on the basis of analyses of their works. In addition to such cases, Welsch claims that “intericonic” flows[15] (put in an old-fashioned manner, intertextual games) are omnipresent, demystifying the Romantic cliché of original absolute geniuses.
Further, transculturality emerges not only from the borrowings of ideas, leitmotifs, narratives, stylistic features, and atmospheres, but also from the cultural agents’ genealogies. Both individuals and entire cultures can be transcultural “by constitution”[16]: artists may have a complex migration background, and the “genome of Europeans”[17] itself was essentially marked by successive migration waves. In this context, the theory of transculturality acknowledges the multiple roots of individual and collective subjects of cultural production, and art history provides plenty of examples of hybridization. Hundreds of years ago, Christian churches were converted into mosques. In the twentieth century, Zen Buddhism influenced US-American artists before being “reimported” in a new form to Japan, which represents an exemplary case of East-West cross-fertilization. Furthermore, phenomena of eclecticism in all epochs, including the programmatic patchwork of postmodern art and the cultural fuzziness of contemporary design and performative arts, are subsumed to transculturality as a form of “coming together.”[18] The fact that historical revaluations of past sources may have relied on confusions, and apparent continuities include adaptions and reinterpretations of the original in a new context, does not compromise transculturality; quite the contrary, it confirms that borrowings and relocations rarely remain sterile imitations, usually implying transformative processes, be these deliberately or not.
A special kind of cross-cultural encounter is related to the universals, whose existence, according to Welsch, underlies the very possibility of influences and transfers across boundaries. The author has already anticipated this issue when he discussed the congruencies between the “twins” Goethe and Hafiz, but the universals are extensively discussed in a separate chapter that confirms Welsch’s preference for a “staccato” style throughout the book. The universals remain a hotly debated problem in contemporary philosophy and cultural theory. In the context of this book, the issue at stake is to understand how art that was born in culture-specific contexts can be highly appreciated in other cultures as well. Welsch’s explanation points out two possibilities. Firstly, he briefly rejects the radical cultural relativism, often promoted by cultural anthropologists who deny the existence of universals. Not only emotions are expressed in a similar way worldwide, but also aesthetic preferences for regularities, specific proportions (including the human face and body), and even landscapes indicate the presence of aesthetic universals, which Welsch tends to trace back to the biological and evolutionary basis of our aesthetic experience. Secondly, the universal appreciation of foreign works of art can also result from a “sustained effort” of studying and understanding the other, [19] a process that ends by transforming the artists themselves. Both basic dimensions of transculturality, the combinatorial and the universalistic, the mixture of the same with the other and the awakening of the deep, trans-cultural and universal self, come together in specific cases of transcultural forms of art, such as Peter Brook’s attempts to develop a theatrical universal language of signs and the affinities with and without influences between modern Western and traditional Japanese architecture.
The deeper the reader dives into the book, the broader it opens the horizon of transculturality, and with it a vague feeling of disorientation arises. This discomfort derives from the underdetermined concept of culture mentioned above, given that the transcultural not only connects distant cultures in time and/or space through the circulation of its elements but also links artistic schools within the European culture, such as the Italian Renaissance with French nineteenth-century painting, mixes elements of consumer culture with high culture, and gives account for the transfer between artistic genres (which contemporary German scholarship would rather call “Intermedialität”). Obviously, transculturality transcends the field of art, pervading our entire material culture, as Welsch exemplarily demonstrates in the case of the “migration” of food; the same applies for the circulation of nonedible vegetation, tools, and even animal species. Eventually, if transculturality crosses boundaries, its framework is likely to be inexhaustible, including artworks that blur the difference between the human and the animal world, for example, the fashion of singeries in eighteenth-century European painting, in which monkeys act like humans, or bridge distant social milieus. The first example raises the question of whether the entire respectable tradition of animal alter egos in art, from fables and fairy tales to Kafka’s bestiary, children’s literature, and Disney movies are subsumable to transculturality. As for the second example, it confirms Welsch’s inclination for the positive dimension of transculturality as an instrument of communication and harmonizing different groups; compared to other domains in which territorial and religious boundaries (let alone those in our minds) lead to conflicts, art appears as the role model of transculturality.
The chapter, “Problematic Aspects and Failures,” endorses the potential of art for criticizing the enemies of transculturation, mainly, nationalism, racism, and identity politics. Noteworthy is the case of the Benin bronzes, whose display in Western museums, on one hand, was made possible by colonial looting, but on the other hand, was crucial for drawing the attention to the world to the historic treasures of African culture. The fact that their origin was linked to the slave trade additionally complicates their story, marking one of the few cases in which Welsch mentions the negative or at least dilemmatic side of transculturality. His fundamentally optimistic view appears in full light in the Afterword, where Welsch launches a manifest for preserving, promoting, and defending transcultural exchange against its enemies, proclaiming it “the very elixir of human existence,” which “increases people’s opportunities, their possibilities for action, their horizon and overall liveliness.”[20]
In sum, Welsch’s recent book sets forth and refines his previous theory of transculturality by enlarging the historic horizon and highlighting two main dimensions of this phenomenon: the mixture of elements of different origin as result of historic contact and the activation of universals that explain the cross-cultural resonance of great art. Occasionally, Welsch integrates further research directions, such as his lasting and fertile interest in evolutionary aesthetics. The vastness of the historic panorama, whose analyses move lightly between different cultures, epochs, and arts, the mastering of complex historic information and its subtle interpretations, and last, but not least, the moderate steering of this kaleidoscopic showcase grace to a flexible taxonomic order highly recommend the book. Welsch’s polemics with the theories of multi- and interculturality overlooks their overlaps with his own approach, especially after integrating historic examples, and risks to compromise their possible alliances against the real enemies of cultural exchange. The historic perspective conveys his unrestrained eloge of cross-cultural interaction and fertilization a deeper meaning than the defense of contemporary globalization. Finally, We Have Always Been Transcultural invites to be read as a refreshing and hopeful manifesto for openness and creativity in an age in which normativity, security, and the obsession with control tend to take over.
Madalina Diaconu
madalina.diaconu@univie.ac.at
The author is Dozentin for philosophy at the University of Vienna, member of the editorial board of “polylog. Zeitschrift für interkulturelles Philosophieren,” and has published extensively on phenomenology, the aesthetics of touch, smell, and taste, and on urban aesthetics. Her latest book is Aesthetics of Weather (Bloomsbury, 2024).
Published on January 14 2026.
Cite this article: Madalina Diaconu, “Transculturality Now, Ever and Forever: Comments on Wolfgang Welsch’s We Have Always Been Transcultural: The Arts as an Example,” Contemporary Aesthetics, Volume 24 (2026), accessed date.
Acknowledgment
I gratefully thank Anne Berleant for her careful copyediting of this paper.
Endnotes
[1] Wolfgang Welsch, We Have Always Been Transcultural (Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2024), x.
[2] Welsch, 3.
[3] Welsch, 125.
[4] Welsch, 125.
[5] Welsch, 14.
[6] The latter distinction was made by the Romanian philosopher Constantin Rădulescu-Motru in Opere politice (Bucharest: Nemira, 1998), 498.
[7] Welsch, 28.
[8] Welsch, 10.
[9] Welsch, 6.
[10] Welsch, 197.
[11] Welsch, 20.
[12] Welsch, 38.
[13] Welsch, 60.
[14] Welsch, 87.
[15] Welsch, 99.
[16] Welsch, 100
[17] Welsch, 101.
[18] Welsch, 111.
[19] Welsch, 187.
[20] Welsch, 208-209.