The Eden of a shared culture

In the United States, Highbrow/Lowbrow From the historian Lawrence Levine (1933-2006) has been a classic of the social sciences since its publication in 1988. Today translated into French, this work deals in a pioneer of the emergence of cultural hierarchies in the United States at the turn of XIX^e And XX^e centuries. The central thesis of the book is that the “ rich shared public culture “Experienced a” bifurcation “In the 1850s, physically and aesthetically separating a” culture from above “, Become characteristic of social and literate elites, and a” Culture from below “, Characteristic of genres without dignity (preface by Roger Chartier, p. V). How does this division (touching the theater, opera, symphonic music, libraries or museums) ? By what aesthetic and social means to generalize the concepts that are still significant today to “ Culture from below “And” culture from above »» ? By leaning on the paradigmatic example of the reception of the works of William Shakespeare, Levine shows that the categories to which we refer today to talk about culture are the product of ideologies that have been constantly subject to transformations and that The cultural borders were more permeable than impossible, contrary to the vision that we have today (p. 22).

300 pages long, this work, of which Marianne Woollven and Olivier Vanhée sign a translation as clear as she is dicted in five main parts: a prologue which recalls his genesis during conferences given to Harvard, a chapter entitled “ William Shakespeare in America “, Rewriting an article published in 1984, the two unpublished chapters” The sacralization of culture ” And “ Order, Hierarchy and Culture “, Then an epilogue which discusses the persistence of cultural categories in America in the 1980s. The preface by Roger Chartier is very useful because it replaces Highbrow/Lowbrow In Levine’s intellectual journey, and notably specifies his parentage with his previous work on the forms of protest of black communities by folklore. It also positions Levine’s work in the debates having been used in the late 1980s in the American academic world on the challenges of cultural history, particularly its relationship to white ethnocentrism.

Towards the sacralization of the “ high culture »»

Levine’s demonstration is based on materials as diverse as programs of performance halls, song lyrics, posters, testimonies of personalities (authors, criticism, actors, etc.), dictionary entries or commemorations and exhibitions. This material encourages an unusual reading of art history: it is not only a question of studying the mutations of forms (register of aesthetics), but also the transformations of production and the reception of these (social domain). Levine shows that in the first half of the XIX^e century, culture was “ commune ” And “ shared »: Publics of all social classes could attend together the same shows and the shows themselves were made up of various genres (theater, dance, song, music, acrobatics, etc.) without the notion of hierarchy being present. Shakespeare, for example, whose work was so known through the whole country (including on the border) that simple allusions or diversions of its texts aroused the connivance of the public, was a prized author “ simultaneously By the people and the elites (p. 98). Likewise, the opera was before 1870 a form of ordinary entertainment and “ flexible »: It was common for popular tunes of the time (like Yankee Doodle,, home Sweet Home Or Jump Jim Crow) Replace some famous Rossini or Mozart arias.

This eclecticism aroused the reprobation of criticism in the last decades of XIX^e century. Shakespeare then became a sacred author, an unrivaled genius, a timeless artist who had to be reserved for scholars and schoolchildren in order to educate them and not to entertain them (pp. 82-88). At the same time, the opera was canonized, represented independently of other forms of entertainment for an audience which was more homogeneous than before, gathered in new rooms with strict codes, that Levine compares to “ temples (P. 112). This sacralization of culture particularly affects symphonic music. At the start of XIX^e A century, musicians known throughout the country played the tunes of Mendelssohn, Verdi, Schubert, Wagner as well as popular and patriotic songs (p. 116). However, under the major influence of the critic John Sullivan Dwight and the conductor Theodore Thomas (to which Levine devotes long pages), the function of the concert changed: it was necessary to present the masterpieces of classic composers in full version and original played by professional and non -amateur musicians in programming that “ Street melodies (P. 151) did not come to contaminate (p. 156). In the three cases mentioned, Levine therefore describes, without naming it, the emergence of a reactionary movement seeking to regain the timeless purity of works behind the slag of eclectic representations, to praise the author rather than the interpreter, to “ raise the mind “Rather than” flatter the senses ». In short, the “ high culture As we know her today, elitist, discriminating, disciplinating, would have supplanted the “ shared public culture (P. 217).

Cultural hierarchy and social domination

If the description of this “ bifurcation “Is very convincing, we can regret that the work remains long evasive on its causes, with the exception of references to an internal change in the world of theater and the financial organization of the Opera (pp. 93 and 138) . It was not until the third chapter for Levine, reluctant to any theoretical generalization, explains that the invention of a discriminating culture would have served as “ lifeboat (P. 214) to a fringe of society threatened by the massive influx of foreigners in American cities at the end of XIX^e century. The elites, supported by manufacturers and new rich, would have hierarchical culture to the means of vertical categories Highbrow/Lowbrow In order to preserve their hegemony in a public space. Based on assimilating rhetoric (educate the masses by art), these groups also had an interest in closing the doors of official culture to “ uncultivated In order to keep them in an inferiority state. Cinema, Vaudeville, sport, booming at the time, then became leisure “ popular “, That is to say without” legitimacy ». However, Levine stands out from the work on the progressive era (1880-1920) stressing that the intention of “ Temple goalkeepers “Was less to exercise social control than to set up” A real culture in the United States, free of intrusion, escaping the dilution and the requirements of the market, a refuge far from the feelings of alienation and helplessness so current at the time (P. 215).

Despite a sometimes repetitive organization, some essentialist references to “ expectations of America “(P. 57) and the regrettable absence of a prosopography of the new” Taste referees “, Culture from above, culture from below lives up to its reputation. In addition to treating mutations in the XIX^e A century, he passionately defended a plural vision of culture, open to so -called minor forms, freed from the weight of the reifiating categories and the ideology of those who states them.