Les stratèges de la culture

Democratizing culture ? Is this not actually a discourse on culture ? Culture is a battleground : battles of forces are played out, stratégies are registered. The thème of culture reappears at times of nation-wide crises (the Dreyfus Affair, the Popular Front, the Liberation, the coming of the Fifth Republic). It functions as a symbolic means of unifying the middle and working classes by minimizing their cultural différences. The affirmation of a common culture acts as a sort of jacobine reflex toward dangers. How do intellectuals, in différent periods and with différent beliefs, corne to play a décisive rôle in such attempts at unifying cultural représentations ? Which éléments in their social origin, their itinerary push them to want to transmit knowledge, to «go to the people», to become their spokesmen? How can they not see that, in their populist drive, they are the best artisans of cultural reproduction ? As for the people, they remain silent.