Vincent Dubois SAGE (UMR 7363)
Sciences Po, Le Cardo, 7 rue de l’Ecarlate CS 20024 67082 Strasbourg Cedex France
+33 (0)3 68 81 65 70 vincent.dubois@misha.fr
Vincent Dubois SAGE (UMR 7363)
Sciences Po, Le Cardo, 7 rue de l’Ecarlate CS 20024 67082 Strasbourg Cedex France
+33 (0)3 68 81 65 70 vincent.dubois@misha.fr
Accueil du site > publications > Articles et chapitres / Papers & Book Chapters > “Cultural Democratisation in the Struggle between Public Intellectuals and (…)
This paper deconstructs the golden legend of cultural democratisation as the achievement of the French Republican model. To do so it goes back to the years 1895-1905 when the debates on cultural democratization were first structured. It shows how the intellectuals who “went to the people” to give them culture and/or to promote a “people’s culture” found in this proselytism a way to express their vision of the ways to transform the social order, and to define a form of democracy in which intellectuals could play a prominent role. By doing so they tried to oppose an alternative to the traditional methods of political representation, that is to say they tried to compete with State officials as legitimate political representatives. Beyond this short-time historical period, this paper sheds light on the articulation between cultural democratization, cultural policy and democracy in France.