Art, science, literature, all the intellectual activities that are gathered under the term of culture, are usually presented as the production of "great men" at the service of the whole society
This figure of the great man presents culture to us as the product of a relatively lonely activity but addressed -- if not accessible -- to all
It would be hard to find examples
corresponding to such a model in the real history.
In the reality, culture is rather addressed to educated people. Even in the case of what is called "popular culture", it is made by and for people who share the same culture.
More precisely: reality is the antithesis of this too quickly accepted model: peers are addressed by peers, exchange their work in relatively closed networks. There is not really such things as "great men" but rather groups, milieus, schools, etc... There is not more a direct relation between creators and a "public", the "city", customers or "the society", but initially a direct exchange between the formers.
At most between the activities of these
networks and the rest of the society there is a sort capillary
relation, mediatized by technology, architecture, urbanism, etc.
All that, one will admit, is not very satisfactory for a democratic and egalitarian spirit. Perhaps is it even less satisfactory for a pragmatic spirit concerned with effectiveness. Indeed, these partitions are restraints for the circulation of knowledge and ideas, and especially to their realization.
History shows that when groups venture too
far from the majority of the people among whom they live, in
avant-garde, they endanger their conquests, if not their existence.
The problem is rather generally admitted, and solutions have long been actively sought for. Those are then distorted by the unanimously admitted model, and if one objects that culture never was that, he will be answered that it must precisely become that
One will possibly question the figure of the
great man, of the genius and of inspiration. It will not be disputed
that culture must be made by producers for consumers. And yet it is
this initial assumption which is wrong.
Without playing too much on words, culture is nothing like a product for human consumption. It is not even a product, it is rather a production means.
In which aspects would "consumption of
culture" be a thing different from what Pascal calls "entertainment"?
In this case, culture would at most be a production means for the
entertainment.
Continuing along with this absurd thread, one could legitimately ask the question: would democratizing culture mean to democratize access to entertainment, or to democratize the production means of entertainment?
One shall observe that conflicts are already
focusing on this absurd question. But culture is not there.
Let us come back to the basic model: A certain number of particularly gifted men produces cultural goods for the benefit of less gifted others.
This model is sometimes partly criticized. Authors dispute that they are particularly gifted and will rather want to point out their craftsmanship, their method, their technique, things essentially much more accessible than "gift" at the cost of the necessary effort. Others will insist on the benefit of collaborations or on the means put into work.
Some others with sometimes opposite arguments, will question the fact that culture is at the service of whoever, would it be all. Sometimes they will point out that the benefit of all is very often the alibi of those who rule or exploit them.
All that is true, but partial, and the model
is thereby not seriously questioned.
Reading and writing might well be said to be the first claim for a democratization of culture. (One could add to counting, if it were not already an inherent part of writing.)
Reading and writing are a whole, one does
not do nor does not know one without the other. One can only read to
the extent and up to the level where one can write. No way one may
understand the subtleties of a text, if he is unable to approach them
through writing. It is to some extent true of any intellectual activity.
The objection here is often not long to come: can't one dance without knowing how to play music, quiver with the cinema without knowing to direct a filming team?
Let us be wary about what seems too obvious. Not just anyone will dance on any music; a raver on a Chinese traditional air, or a Chinese peasant on techno. One will not reach that without some cultural preparation.
Even more significant will be the work that the musician himself shall have to accomplish to reach that point. Particularly, he shall have to avoid abandoning himself to his own creativity, to which its large audience might not be sensitive.
On both sides, each one will move away from
the conditions of a true musical creation.
On the opposite, everyone knows that the greatest pleasure and the best condition for musical creation consist in playing together.
In any intellectual activity, the mathematician for example, will experience great difficulties to communicate with the ones who do not master his art, and in any case, will not succeed in communicating his thought without leading them in their approach.
When one understands this point properly, he
sees that this is not only the way culture is democratized and
disseminated, but more specifically the way that the imagination and
human creativity are stimulated.
To acquire culture implies learning how to master methods, instruments, languages, techniques, etc.
This has always been known. The ruling
classes who praised their (so properly called) classical music, always
had at least a piano in their house, and even in the people, ownership
of popular musical instruments was just as frequent.
Today, there is almost only one instrument for everyone and all the intellectual activities, an instrument that at least all have to use if they want to do something with others: the personal-computer.
The personal-computer hence ends up being
found everywhere. It is at the same time an excellent tool for
creation, training and exchange.
One may wonder how such a conception of culture as the one described above could be so unilaterally imposed, why, and especially when.
As regards the question "how" one can already put forward the answer: by detaching a "culture of classics" from a "techno-culture".
Regarding the question, "when" one can answer: with the rise of totalitarianisms which put an end to the avant-gardes progress in first half of the twentieth century. Heidegger is the main and the most consistent theoretician of this cultural model, and of opposing it with the "technique".
The answer to the question "why" can result from the preceding ones: so that a democratization of culture does not interfere with the control of the production means
On the whole it is a way of admitting the
need for a dissemination and a division of knowledge and ideas while
refusing them.
It is also a way to isolate a necessarily local "culture of classics", from a necessarily universal scientific and technical culture, to prevent them from mutually feeding eachother, and finally to sterilize them. In fact, it certainly is a way to reduce culture to an ethnic, geographical, national, and non universal dimension, while destroying the conditions of its development
In fact, the Modern West justifies and leans
the superiority of its local culture upon the universality of its
scientific culture.
Just as access to culture is by no means access to the consumption of entertainments, access to technique is not access to technology.
Technology, is the integration of technique in the object -- the productive object, tool, machine, or the consumable object, good, service. The appropriation of such an object does not suppose the appropriation of its associated techniques. Quite on the contrary, the technological object often saves us the need for understanding a technique that it puts into work for us.
Just as technology is very often used to de-qualify the worker without necessarily putting to work very new techniques, it may as well be used for de-qualifying the user.
The critic of the dominating model of
culture is also the critic of technology.
One will note that a critic of the model which dominated during almost a century does not come from the world of literature or arts, nor of philosophy or of social sciences. It comes from the other side of the culture, precisely of the data processing specialist engineers.
Such a situation is certainly not without
some sort of concealed relationship with the fact that the
personal-computer became the universal instrument.
The innocent claim for freely acessing the source code of the software programs irresistibly appears, even for those who are unaware of its practical meanings, as a powerful detonator which ends up contaminating, by focusing them, all the aspects of the intellectual life.
It is then not very difficult to prolongate
the reasoning until exceeding the false question as to know if the
progress of technique makes the happiness or the misfortune of men. It
is on the contrary the dispossession of any access to the technique
which condemns them to become the toys of those which, without even
possessing it, only have the right to direct it.
What determines the success, the value of an intellectual work, or at the very least the satisfaction of its author and of who discovers his work? The fact that it opens the door towards other inventions, other creations.
Whatever the narcissistic satisfaction or
the financial advantages the author may draw from his work, whatever
the pleasure another may draw from discovering his work, most
significant is the prolongations that others will make of it, as well
as the ones that in turn they will enable him to do.
This is why researchers, artists, authors...
tend to gather and work in networks, not to say to hunt in gangs. The
effectiveness that they get has much more value than a public success
or than any other reward, of which in the course of time, those which
marked posterity were often deprived of.
This appears to raise problems. The first problem is that these mediums and these groups must manage to get in trade with the rest of the world in order to acquire the means they need for their work or only for survival.
The second problem is more serious. One can easily admit that the agricultural world does not have anything else to offer but foodstuffs and raw materials. Of the intellectual work, one expects the means of its reproduction, rather than consumer goods, might it be of a productive consumption. It rather proposes the exchange of production means than of consumer goods.
The dissemination of ideas and knowledge is not easily separable of the means of their reproduction.
The model and the prototype of the Western civilization is the Florentine Renaissance. It primarily consists in a milieu of artists, engineers, poets and philosophers taking the power in an Italian republic.. Except if confusing their "Cultural revolution" with the sumptuous festivals that the Médicis gave, this "intellectual power" was not put at the service of the people but rather put at its own service.
"The prince" -- in fact the dynasty of
Médicis -- is much more the guard and the guarantor of the power
of this cultivated elite, a part of which it is entirely, rather than a
real "employer" for the benefit of the city.
This model may be criticized, and first
because it was not very viable. On several occasions the power was put
down, for the great benefit of the court of France where Leonardo da
Vinci and Pico della Marandola took refuge, Galileo was condemned by
the church, all Italy was subjected to the theocratic and feudal power
of the Holy Roman Empire, and this workshop of modernity ended up
moving towards Northern Europe.
Is it really criticizable because it would
have been better if the Médicis had indeed been the employers of
these intellectuals to the service of the city, or because it would
have been preferable that their concerns and practices had spread?
It should be carefully considered that the first answer could only mean the control of culture by the Masters of the city.
As for the second answer, it is not
necessary to have much imagination to understand that a generalization
of the cultural practices would radically transform the culture, to the
point that it would be absurd to preach one without the other.
From almost immemorial ages, as regards any
form of writings, the circle of the readers did not exceed much the
circle of those who were in the position to write. The reading
practices extended. How could writing practices not also extend? Would
one fear that there would soon be more authors than readers to read
them? It is time to understand that this was about always the case. The
circle simply extended.
In same time, also a culture of consumption developed, separated, as one already saw, of the scientific and technical culture: consumable and very often disposable literature, so little was it intended to resist to the changes of fashion, or to result in anything else than possible derived products; records, films, etc, and even a scientific popularization of the same brand.
The existence of such products is not always a bad thing, far from it, since each one can find pleasure in their consumption. Confusion, not very clear borders between this entertainment production and the intellectual work itself can also be a good thing.
Precisely, this was seen as a vector for
culture democratization, which is going one step too far.
The twentieth century was the century of the
masses: mass production, mass media, mass ideology... It was determined
by an industrial gigantism (oil, car...), giving to the political
institutions a role of managers of the economy and industry, and to the
giants of industry and trade, a political role. In the hands of both,
the time also generated a mass culture.
All that resulted in the fact that success,
the success of any project, of very undertaken, initially had to meet
the condition to be accepted by masses.
The principle of mass society is that nothing exists if it is not under the eyes of all. This relies on the erroneous but reasonable belief, that a thing is visible since it exists. From there, one passes to the extravagant belief that a thing exists as soon as it is visible.
This resulted in a race for visibility,
publicity, propaganda, celebrity, up to the point to make of what was
initially a means, the only means, and finally the ultimate goal.
The model of the mass culture is addressing the public
The significant point here, is less how the receiver perceives such of way of addressing him, nor how he would end up -- or not -- believing that any expression is ultimately addressed to him -- him, as a private person as well as an element of a Great Collective Whole. The significant point is rather how the author, the producer of every thought, knowledge or work, internalizes this addressing the public
The question may simply be translated as
follows: "who am I speaking to" as soon as I produce a statement or a
work which exceeds the private sphere? For driven back that it may be,
it is an essential question.
Except pathological cases, any person can
speak. When he speaks, everyone sees well enough who he is
speaking to. The orchestra that leads the ball sees well enough who it
makes dance. The professor knows his pupils, the one who writes a
research report has got some idea of the colleagues who will read it.
What does it mean to pass from such a circumscribed relation to an ad
infinitum opened relation?
One can speak in a restricted group without being constrained by the fact that unknown people joined the group. It is however probable that the arrival of unknown people will cause changes in the statements. As a matter of fact, one adjuts his thought based on what one knows of his interlocutors.
It is probable that from a certain moment
on, what one will knows of his interlocutors will no longer be anything
more than the fruit of his own imagination. In any case it will not be
what they will have let him learn from them.
It may happen that someone speaks to a
crowd, whether sings or plays for it. One will then adjust his own
behavior on the reaction of this crowd. The bigger the crowd is, the
more the crowd's reactions will be close to a trance -- cries, applause
-- and, on the other hand, the less one will be able to perceive the
reaction of only one person at the same time. Besides the reaction of
this one person will tend to disappear in the reactions of crowd.
Not anyone gets an occasion to speak to a crowd (there is not enough crowd for everyone). Each one is however trained to internalize such ways of addressing crowds.
The important point is not, as one often
underlined, that the spectator identifies himself with the popular
orator or the star, the important point is that by this identification,
on both sides each one assimilates this posture towards the crowd,
assimilates the crowd as being the ultimate interlocutor, and
irresistibly fixes his own thought on this posture.
Whoever made the experiment of addressing
the public had to observe that he was searching for faces on which to
take support. They are preferably well-known faces, and that requires
that the audience is not too numerous.
If he sufficiently practised, he may have
noticed that this attitude is disastrous, except when really shouting
to this person or these people, or answering their calling out. At best
may he switch quickly from one face to another. He will gain in
effectiveness if he is not addressing anybody in particular, if he
officiates for a virtual being, to some extent.
One could put forward that any intellectual work is not a two terms relation (transmitter, receivers), but at least a three terms relation. This third character is a virtual being, however a determining one. That practically means that one has no control nor no freedom on his intellectual activity without having first some control on this virtual being.
One can have an idea of the stake that
controlling this virtual being represents by recognizing it under its
names of "the public opinion", "the citizen", "the spectator", etc...
The one who controls it can deprive anyone of any stating power. He has
even nothing left to state anymore since every statement will be his
own.
One knows well, at least intuitively, this virtual third-party, this is why one tries to exorcise it in a triangular relation: public discussion, interview. One addresses one or more people under the eyes of an audience. Possibly, the relation with this audience in flesh and bone can be presented to another larger and invisible audience.
The fact is that one is always under the
eyes of a crowd, of an undifferentiated mass.
This virtual third-party is always present in writing, would it only be because the reader is always absent during the process of writing. Even in the case of a private letter, the virtual third-party is then, to use again Derrida's formula, the differance of the real recipient. It is by means of writing too that one has the better hopes to control it
It is enough, when writing a private letter, to imagine its public revealing, even in the long run and of one's full willing, for the virtual third-party to try to take the pen. It is so true that knowing how to write, once the lexicon and syntax is known, is to know what to make of this third-party
It is easily understandable that mass
communication makes such a control very problematic.
The man of today, the one who writes these lines among others, is a product of mass communication. This means that the least autonomous and personal thought is an extremely complex operation for him.
What is remarkable, it is that such operations may, in spite of all, be possible, and that one may then think just as well, or at least not more badly than he always did.
Writing, and then its reproduction, already
had largely complicated things. These difficulties once overcome, the
strength of the spirit was finally increased in the process.
This virtual third-party, which is in the essence of the Spectacle, and the spectacular character of the twentieth century culture, is losing step by step any consistency.
On one side, the modern communication means virtually offer to anyone a possibility to address the entire mankind, and on the other side, by offering this to more and more people, they withdraw any chance of such a realization.
The new conditions are due to the multiplication of the radio and television channels, of books and newspapers titles and their decreasing quantity of prints.
The ultimate point is the Internet, where
each one may virtually address the whole world, while knowing very well
that the whole world is not interested in each one.
We all are today products of the mass communication, while being in the objective situation not to believe in it more
The man of today is in this paradoxical situation to no longer be able to place himself in the posture of addressing the public while having the greatest difficulties to conceive himself in a different position than being under the eyes of all
It is important to avoid a psychological or
sociological interpretation of what has just been said, because it
would be sterile. It is important to understand it from a linguistic,
semantic, semiotic, pragmatic, and thus technical point of view. The
fulcrum that may be used is to consider the conditions of effectiveness
of any statement or any intellectual work.
Let us assume the existence of a mass
culture made for all. It would then be produced by professionals. Those
would constitute a branch of the production. It is probable that this
branch would be divided into two: one that would produce entertainment
and spectacle, and another one that would produce a type of knowledge
that would immediately be exploitable in the other production branches,
without relating to the common brand of people. It is more or less the
model of culture in the twentieth century.
Such a model has at least two serious disadvantages. It does not allow culture to be disseminated. It even supposes a will to prevent this dissemination in the name of the corporative interests of those who produce it, and who finally give place to those which have the rights and the patents on it. The "public" is satisfied to consume ready made products in the form of entertainment or of technology.
It does not allow either the actors of
culture to be constituted into an autonomous elite or avant-garde. They
may only be "workers of the culture" or "researchers", or be pushed
back in the margin of a "counter-culture".
A marginal counter-culture under such conditions is a myth. It is probable that what stands for it will only reproduce the mass culture under the colors of volunteer work. It will be a kind of experimentation and inspiration reserve, a manpower and think tank (assuming that this counter-culture would be, where would then be culture itself?)
To say things in an even simpler way:
refusing the model or submitting to it leads to the same dead end. Why?
Because this model is not viable.
The model is not viable because of a certain number of consequences that it draws with it:
It generates a pharaonic industry of entertainment, that may well be producing value in the strictly monetary meaning, but actually does not produce anything at all on the whole, is only a ruinous extravagant expenditure, constituting what George Bataille called the Cursed Part.
It trains the researchers to improve the
candles rather than to search for electricity. It forces each one to
daily reinvent the wheel and to perhaps be sued if he teaches it to
another. Etc.
Much similarly to psychology and sociology, it is important to avoid an economic, political or legal approach of what has just been said.
The intellectuals, the artists, the
researchers of the twentieth century only wondered too much whom or
what they were to be useful to, at the service of whom or what they
were to put themselves. Such justifications hardly cover unclever
claims about incomes, subsidies, statute or standard of living.
If the knowledge and the understanding of the world, the improvement of our cognitive tools, the acuity of our intuitions... are not justification as such, one wonders what would then mean "useful" or "useless".
The only question which is worth is then "how": what are the conditions of success.