Page 39 - Communication Processes Volume 3 Communication Culture and Confrontation

14 Guy Poitevin

mere representation, superstition or devotion’ (Ahearne 1995: 59).
This is evidenced by the ‘unprecedented dichotomisation of linguistic
practices’ (ibid.).

A passive sector of language shifts in the direction of areas where
opinions, ideologies and superstitions will find themselves gathered
together, forming a pocket isolated from politics and science (two
domains indissolubly united, despite their frictions, through the
marriage of rationality and efficiency). From all the outward signs,
religious expressions are the most important elements of this
inert sector (this place will be filled later by folklore and popular
literature). (de Certeau 1975: 170, 185 cited in Ahearne 1995: 59.
Emphasis mine)

A group of operative uses of language is differentially set apart
from a zone of linguistic passivity, which comprises merely expressive
forms, such as folklore and marginal and ordinary cultures, in short,
the ‘popular’. The latter is counter-distinguished as the ‘other’—a kind
of residue—in relation to directly productive types of linguistic compe-
tence. The popular is construed as a by-product of duly certified mental
operations. It cannot, as a result, be apprehended in reference to the
effective existence of other people’s meaningful practices.
The popular residues are, moreover, assigned the subaltern status of
a set of ‘fables’. ‘The term is of strategic importance. It connotes both
fictionality (fables have been set off from authorised regimes of truth)
and also orality (they have been set aside by official economies of writ-
ing)’ (Ahearne 1995: 60). But for all that, modern forms of rationality do
not simply forget and leave alone the mass of fables. Scriptural practices
of interpretation are designed to extract the important truths from
speech, which is believed to implicitly and unknowingly harbour them.
‘Fable’ is a speech which does not know what it is saying (de Certeau
1984: 160, 233). Competent interpreters with an adequate equipment
of correct interpretative keys are needed to make this truth explicit.
They establish the legitimacy of their learned exegesis and intellectual
control on the unilateral assumption that carriers of popular cultures
are incompetent and unable to meaningfully articulate the truth of
their speech and practice.
The puzzling and significant fact—to take the example of France—
is that studies dedicated to ‘popular cultures’ became possible from
1852 onwards following a state intervention withdrawing ‘subversive’