Bourdieu, Pierre. 2002. Some Questions For The True Masters of The World
Bourdieu, Pierre. 2002. Some Questions For The True Masters of The World
Bourdieu, Pierre. 2002. Some Questions For The True Masters of The World
.
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170
SomeQuestionsfortheTrue MastersoftheWorld*
PierreBourdieu
I shall not riskridiculeby tryingto describethe stateof the world
of the media in frontof people who know it betterthanI do, people who
are amongstthe most powerfulin the world,as holdersof thispower that
is not only that of money but that which money can give over minds.
This symbolic power- the power to make the world by imposing
instrumentsfor the cognitive constructionof the world- has in most
societies in historybeen distinctfrompolitical and economic power. But
today it is being gatheredin the hands of the few who controlthe large
communicationsconglomerates,that is, the ensemble of the means of
productionand distributionof culturalgoods.
I would like to submit these very powerful people to a
questioningof the kindthat Socrates wielded on the powerfulof his age.
In one of his dialogues, he asked, with as much patience as insistence,a
general famous for his courage what courage really is; in another he
asked a man known for his great pietywhat pietyis, and so forth.Each
dialogue served to reveal that his interlocutorsdid not trulyknow what
theywere. But since I am not in a positionto proceed thus,I would like
to raise here publiclya numberof questions which those powerfulmedia
people no doubt do not ask themselves(in particularbecause theydo not
have the time to do so), and which come down to this: masters of the
world, do you have the masteryof your own mastery?Or, put more
simply,do you reallyknow what you are doing, all the consequences of
what you are doing? To these questions Plato replied by the famous
formula,which no doubt applies here also: "No one is willfullywicked."
You tell us thatthe technological and economic convergence of
the broadcast media, telecommunications,and informaticsindustriesand
the resulting merging of the networks make totally inoperative and
useless the juridical protections of the media (such as the rules
stipulating quotas for European contents on European television or
radio). You tell us that the technological proliferationand profusion
linked to the multiplicationof thematicdigital channels will answer the
*
BOURDIEU:
17 1
172
173
This being said, the logic of speed and profit,merginginto the quest for
maximumshort-termprofit (driven by audience ratings for television,
best-sellerlists for books, circulationfiguresfor newspapers and ticket
sales formovies) seem to me hardlycompatiblewiththe idea of culture.
When what the eminent historian of art Ernst Gombrich calls the
"ecological conditions of art" are destroyed,art and culturethemselves
soon die.
For proof of this proposition,I need only mention the fate of
Italian cinema, which not long ago was universallyconsidered as one of
the best and most original in the world, and which today survives only
throughthe work of a handfulof directors;the same applies to German
cinema, or the various cinema traditions of Eastern Europe more
generally. I could mention also the crisis that strikes everywhere
independent cinema, especially due to the faltering of distribution
circuits. Not to speak of the censorship that movie distributorscan
impose on filmmakers the most spectacularrecentillustrationbeing, in
France, the blackout of the movie by Pierre Carles on censorship in the
media.4 Or yetthe fate of a culturalradio stationsuch as France Culture,
one of the last sites of freedom from market pressure and editorial
marketing,which is now being liquidated in the name of "modernity,"
betteraudience ratings,and intra-medianepotism.
But one cannot reallyunderstandwhat the reductionof cultureto
a commercialproductmeans unless one recalls how the universeswithin
which the works thatare universallyconsideredas universal in the realm
of the visual arts, literature,and cinema, came into being. All these
works which are exhibitedin museums,these novels that have attained
classic status,these movies preservedin film archives and repositories,
all were the productof social microcosmsthatconstitutedthemselvesby
freeingthemselvesgraduallyfromthe laws of the ordinaryworld, and in
particularthose of the economy.5Here is an example to flesh out what I
mean: the painter of the Quattrocento,as we know from reading the
contractshe signed, had to struggleagainst his patronsto ensure thathis
work cease to be treatedas a mere product,evaluated by the surface of
the canvas paintedand the cost of the colors used. He had to strugglefor
the rightto sign his own works,thatis to say, the rightto be treatedas an
author and also for what has for a relatively short time been called
4
to PierreCarles's award-winning
Pas
[Trans,note]This is in reference
documentary,
and structural
collusionbetweenFrance's
vu,pas pris,on thepersonalcomplicity
televisionjournalistsand top-levelpoliticians,whichwas originallycommissionedand
thencensoredbytheprivatechannelCanal + (now partof Vivendi-Universal)
as well
as by all Frenchtelevisionschannelsand radiostations.The moviewas subsequently
shownon Belgian televisionand thenreleasedon theindependent
movietheatercircuit
whereitdrewrecordcrowds.
and GenesisoftheLiteraryField,
See PierreBourdieu,TheRules ofArt:Structure
Cambridge,PolityPress, 1997 (orig. 1993).
174
175
176
BERKELEY
JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
6 1 am
drawinghereon theanalysesofPascale Casanova in herbook La Rpublique
mondialedes lettres(Paris,Editionsdu Seuil, 1999).