Page 60 - Communication Processes Volume 3 Communication Culture and Confrontation

From the Popular to the People 35

Table 1.1
Processes of Production and Consumption
Consumed by people Not consumed by people
Produced by people People’s theatre, painting, Touristic art, dance, music,
dance, music theatre taken up by media;
state, cultural industries,
rap in the USA and Europe
Not produced by Negritude, ethnic Great traditional art of
people authenticity, elitist experts, priests, artisan
discourses on culture castes, professionals
Source: Jules-Rosette and Martin (1997).

specific point in time or space, one from the other. There is an unbreak-
able idiomatic continuum and this continuum is no static mixture of
elements but permanent cross-fertilization in time and space.
By temporal and spatial continuum I do not mean identity. I mean
to say that despite mutual ideological discrimination and denials,
no classical culture exists apart from the so-called popular culture,
and no popular culture can stand aloof and immune from the elitist
one. Both are bound to exist through interaction with one another as
the two poles of a magnetic field. The focus should, therefore, be on
the modalities of this interaction within a given context.

Dominance versus Interaction

One cannot overlook the fact that highbrow and popular traditions
share many elements. They speak the same idiom. This is precisely
what explains their conflict as they confront each other on similar
grounds. Two absolutely heterogeneous cultural configurations would
not be in a position to interfere or be in conflict for the lack of a com-
mon idiom. In a given constellation, popular and elitist traditions
are neither absolutely similar nor absolutely opposite entities. Their
relation is polemical. Their clash occurs as a conflict of interpretation,
whatever be its substantive object—whether a common patrimony or
the immediate reality. The concept of culture makes sense as a chap-
ter of the scientific constituency of conflict as it refers to ‘strategies’
seeking ‘differentiation’ and identity through antagonistic rhetorical