Page 262 - Communication Processes Volume 3 Communication Culture and Confrontation

Introduction 237

IntroductIon

eDitors

Three sets of opposite concepts modulate the testimonies and studies
presented in this part: ‘tradition’ versus ‘modernity’, ‘medium’ versus
‘use’ and ‘form’ versus ‘process’. They will help us to articulate elements of
a conceptual framework adequate to meet the central query that we
wish to clarify, namely, the contours of creativity with regard to cultural
forms of symbolic communication in the context of conditions and
constraints particular to various environments. These three sets are
analogous by their origin and function to other misleading dichotomies
that we eschewed in the previous contributions of this book.
Tradition and modernity are opposed and mutually exclusive for
reasons that vary according those who propound them in order to give
grounds to vested interests. Their dichotomy is analogous to that of the
‘popular against the ‘other’, deconstructed in the seminal essay of Guy
Poitevin (see Chapter 1 of this volume). The ‘elite’ or the ‘dominant’
discriminates one upon the other to ideologically legitimate a claim to
excellence, to actually maintain a status of superiority through denial
of contact and interaction. Non-communication gives a guarantee of
secure ascendancy. Cultural distance measures social superiority and
authorizes control and repression.
The second set of opposites, ‘medium’ versus ‘use’, takes for granted
that the media mastermind mentalities as much as stereotyped cultural
forms designed by the dominant just imprint their exact patterns in
the minds. ‘The medium is the message’ actually proved a short-lived
slogan. Fast-growing modern technologies pretentiously claimed to
hold total sway over people’s minds. Their claim may obviously hold
good, but to the extent only of their ‘consumers’ remaining passively
gullible. Are they ever, though ambiguously, ‘active users’? The growth