Page 54 - Communication Processes Volume 3 Communication Culture and Confrontation

From the Popular to the People 29

a discursive asset drawn into contests for ascendancy between closely
related groups. It becomes a stake through which social categories
and groups compete for positions of supremacy. Culture here does not
figure substantively, as an autonomous symbolic world independent
from a socio-political context.
No wonder then if those representing ‘the popular’ do in return
counter that supremacy and try to subvert it on the basis of innate
potentialities and rights to be recognized to the ‘popular culture’. It is
9
then forcefully vindicated and owned as the culture of the proletariat,
and for this reason seen as incorporating an in-built spirit of resistance
and social transformation. ‘Popular culture’ stands as antagonistic
discursive component in a conflictual process where counter-culture
carries the assertive will of subaltern.
The dichotomy of ‘classical’ versus ‘popular’ is ideological. It logically
leads to dead ends with regards to attempts of insight of the specific
nature of the ‘popular’ as specific creative process of expression and
communication.
The following dead ends pre-empt scientific cognitive operations.
Once the popular has been isolated as an entity per se, some like to glor-
ify it as a potent patrimony, which though doomed to die under the spell
of modernity—or precisely because of this onslaught to come—shines as
a venerable memorial to be revisited with emotion. The category of ‘folk’
may sometimes carry this association of respect for obsolete traditions
(rituals, dramatic forms, aesthetic objects, myths, beliefs and practices
particular to a community considered as ‘primitive’, ‘ethnic’ or ‘exotic’)
with a condescending regret for their inanity. As a consequence, ‘folk’
and ‘ethnic’ objects become fit for entertainment and trade usages
meeting a great variety of needs.
Others would still like to draw upon popular potentialities as an
asset against the forces of decay of the present age, or even use them
as stakes for counter-cultural (anti-modern) reconstruction: post-
modernity may advocate them as opportunities of the survival for
humankind. Many are satisfied with at least archiving and preserving
a patrimony for the curiosity and knowledge of future generations. On
the contrary, others would simply forget, purposively discard or look
down upon a continent of irrationality replete with lack of scientific
outlook, superstitious beliefs and magic rituals, doomed anyway to
disappear sooner or later.