ABSTRACT
This chapter is a historical reminder to clarify the ambiguity of the notions of “popular culture” and “mass culture” and, in particular, to criticize the judgments of implicit value, from the romantic valorization of the first to the modernist depreciation of the second. The nonconformist hypothesis here is that the two notions are, basically, identical and seen differently depending on the conjuncture. Popular culture would then be the ancient form, the mass culture the modern form of cultural production and mediation as far as they are beyond the control of the elite. Everything else is ideology and the reaction of threatened leaders (including the “Marxists” of the Frankfurt School), in a recurring perspective of “cultural pessimism”. Yesterday’s collective autonomy is singularly idealized, as today’s individual autonomy is demonized. The spread of mass culture is neither absolute nor in itself inevitably producing mediocrity. In modern societies the continuous increase of the cultural agents at stake, the multiplication of supply, as well as the legitimization of the dominated cultures which result from them produce effects which it is impossible to index exclusively on the “least” of the decadence or alienation.
