Page 76 - Communication Processes Volume 3 Communication Culture and Confrontation

Interventionist Tendencies in Popular Culture 51

in defining ‘national culture’ marked the biggest challenge to the legit-
imacy of the state as the central and sole interpreter of Brahmanical
Hindu symbolism.
Emphasis on the market and the state should not blur the fact that
there have persisted throughout history communication processes
outside such dominant spheres. These have been articulations of the
marginalized or the underdog, whose expressions have been relegated
to the background of our social landscape. Often their means of com-
munication have been either ‘peripheralized’ or enveloped by the glut
of dominant communication; consequently, it is alleged, they ‘failed’
to attain universal appeal. Such institutions and practices of what can
be called ‘non-dominant communication’ are viewed by the culture
industry as ‘remnants’ of history, and by the modern state as a cultural
fossil needing ‘preservation’.
The term ‘popular culture’ has been used to refer to a wide variety of
practices arising from either the overarching web of mass (-produced)
culture, or from the contesting ideologies of national culture, or from
the analytical category of non-dominant communication. Popular
culture can be addressed from a range of perspectives—some limiting,
others testing; some static, others more dynamic. The term was ini-
tially used by European social historians to indicate the history of the
‘inarticulate’. However, in the last decade the term has gone through
various redefinitions, been the subject of critique and has benefited by
conceptual clarity and expansion. To begin with, there is wide consen-
sus around the fact that popular culture is a political activity—directly
and indirectly, consciously or otherwise. The study of popular culture,
now undertaken by sociologists, media theorists and political scientists
in addition to historians, is increasingly being linked to debates on
the public sphere and those of transformatory politics. In India, add-
itionally, its study has been linked with those of decolonization,
subaltern consciousness and, most recently, modernity. Accordingly, it
is alleged that we have arrived at a situation where either popular
culture is thriving within the culture industry, or its very existence is
threatened by homogeneity inherent to the culture industry.
Instead of arguing from such extremes, it would be more fruitful to
approach cultural practices in general through the dialectics between
processes of dominance and resistance. Equally, what is required is
to approach cultural processes in a differentiated manner—a difference
arising from their varied modes of production, relative prevalence