The Commodification of French Intellectual Culture, 1945-1990

From Ideas to Icons: The Commodification of French Intellectual Culture, 1945-1990 By Hunter K. Martin A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (History) at the UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON 2012 Date of final oral examination: August 9, 2012 The dissertation is approved by the following members of the Final Oral Committee: Laird Boswell, Professor, History Mary Louise Roberts, Professor, History Suzanne Desan, Professor, History Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, Professor, History Richard Staley, Professor, History of Science © Copyright by Hunter K. Martin 2012 All Rights Reserved i Table of Contents Abbreviations ii Tables and Illustrations iii Introduction Commodification: A New Concept for the History of Intellectual Culture 1 Part I From Inspiration to Implantation: The Origins of Maisons de la Culture 24 Chapter 1 Local Cultural Centers and the “Great Intellectual Struggle of Our Time” 24 Chapter 2 The Commercialization of Maisons de la Culture in Paris and Grenoble 65 Part II Off the Page and onto the Stage: The Making and Marketing of Intellectual Culture at Maisons de la Culture 106 Chapter 3 A Considerable Track Record: Encounters with Intellectual Culture in Paris and Grenoble 106 Chapter 4 Maisons de la Culture and the Creation of Demand 141 Part III Appropriations and Parallel Evolutions 174 Chapter 5 Out with the Old, in with the Pompidou 174 Chapter 6 A Virtuous Cycle: Intellectual Culture on Television and in Journals 207 Conclusion Intellectual “Engagement” in a Consumer Society 263 References 286 ii Abbreviations ACTA Association Culturelle pour le Théâtre et les Arts AMG Archives municipales de Grenoble AMCG Association Maison de la Culture de Grenoble APMCG Association Pour une Maison de la Culture à Grenoble ATAC Association Technique pour l’Action Culturelle BNF Bibliothèque nationale de France CAC Centre d’Action Culturelle CAC Centre des archives contemporaines CDN Centre dramatique national CNAC Centre National d’Art et de Culture Georges-Pompidou CNRS Centre national de la recherche scientifique DTMAC Direction du Théâtre, de la Musique et de l’Action Culturelle FR3 France Régions 3 IMEC Institut Mémoires de l’édition contemporaine INA Institut national de l’audiovisuel JCEG Jeune Chambre Économique de Grenoble MCG Maison de la Culture de Grenoble MJC Maison des Jeunes et de la Culture MPT Maison Pour Tous ORTF Office de radiodiffusion et télévision française SERES Société d’Etudes et de Recherches en Sciences Sociales TEP Theâtre de l’Est Parisien TF1 Télévision Française 1 TN Théâtre national iii Tables & Images 1. Maison de la Culture Openings by Year and Location 35 2. National Budget Allocation for Action culturelle, 1961-1977 60 3. Distribution of Theaters in Paris, 1962 67 4. Street View of the Théâtre de l’Est Parisien 73 5. Interior Layout of the Théâtre de l’Est Parisien 76 6. Exterior View of the Maison de la Culture de Grenoble 87 7. Exterior View of the Maison de la Culture de Grenoble 87 8. Socio-Professional Composition of Maison Members (1968-69 Season) 93 9. “BHL,” Bernard-Henri Lévy 231 10. Launching the “New Philosophers” 231 11. Apostrophes, Book Show 234 12. Apostrophes, Book Show 234 1 INTRODUCTION Commodification: A New Concept for the History of Intellectual Culture “The writer must refuse to let himself be transformed by institutions, even if these are the most honorable kind.” Jean-Paul Sartre (1964) In 1964, the Swedish Academy selected Jean-Paul Sartre for the Nobel Prize in recognition of “his work, which, in the spirit of freedom and in the name of truth, has had a great impact on our era.”1 Sartre hastily and famously declined the honor, thereby creating a cultural scandal of international proportions. Insisting that his refusal was “not an improvised act,” he offered the Academy, via Swedish writer Carl-Gustav Bjurström, a combination of personal and objective reasons for his surprising and iconoclastic decision.2 Sartre explained that, at present, in a world bifurcated by the Cold War, “the Nobel Prize appears to be a distinction reserved to writers of the Western bloc and rebels of the Eastern bloc,” a fact at odds with his conviction that “the only possible combat on the cultural front should aim at the peaceful coexistence of the two cultures, that of the East and that of the West.”3 As for Sartre’s personal reasons, the man who would come to be widely considered the most famous intellectual of the twentieth century began by remarking that he had always turned down official distinctions, noting that he had declined both the Legion of Honor and a chair at the Collège de France in the years following the Second World War. He then declared that, “the writer must refuse to let himself be transformed by institutions, even if these are the most honorable kind, as is the case here.”4 According to Annie 1 Dr. A. Osterling, member of the Swedish Academy, as cited in Annie Cohen-Solal, Sartre: A Life, trans. Anna Cancogni (New York: Pantheon Books, 1987), 446. 2 Jean-Paul Sartre, as cited in Cohen-Solal, Sartre, 447. 3 Cohen-Solal, Sartre, 448. 4 Cohen-Solal, Sartre, 448. 2 Cohen-Solal, the passage of time has enabled scholars to discern the true meaning behind Sartre’s cryptic words, which is to say that, “in an evasive gesture of freedom and pride, Sartre had refused to be made into a living statue and prematurely canonized.”5 Such an interpretation is consistent with the accepted trajectory of Sartre’s career and personal politics in the postwar era when, most notably, he abandoned his teaching post at the Lycée Condorcet to pursue writing on a full-time basis, refused to become a member of any mainstream political party, including the Parti communiste français, and rebuffed the institution of marriage in cahoots with his life partner, Simone de Beauvoir. Gérard Noiriel goes so far as to credit Sartre’s fixation with safeguarding his liberty of thought and action as a key motivator for the creation of Les Temps modernes in 1945, a publication that, beyond exerting “a veritable hegemony over French intellectual life during the 1950s,” allowed Sartre to carve out an “autonomous milieu with respect to academic institutions and the world of politics.”6 The autonomy of Les Temps modernes and intellectual engagement (or socio-political commitment) was thought guaranteed by their being rooted squarely in the public sphere.7 There is little doubt 5 Cohen-Solal, Sartre, 449. 6 Gérard Noiriel, Les fils maudits de la République: L’avenir des intellectuels en France (Paris: Fayard, 2005), 89. Noiriel is not alone in positing a connection between intellectual life, or the intellectual vocation, and the pursuit of institutional autonomy. Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen makes a similar claim in her analysis of the “Nietzsche trope” in the United States. Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, “Conventional Iconoclasm: The Cultural Work of the Nietzsche Image in Twentieth-Century America,” The Journal of American History (December 2006), 738. See also Jean- François Sirinelli, Intellectuels et passions françaises: manifestes et petitions (Paris: Fayard, 1990). 7 Scholars have devoted copious attention to the development and evolution of the public sphere since the Enlightenment, as well as the corresponding emergence of public opinion and the politics of contestation to which it gave rise. Much of our thinking about the public sphere as a concept owes to the work of Jürgen Habermas, who defines the public sphere as a “network for communicating information and points of view” that are then converted into public opinion. Building upon this oft invoked dictum, the public sphere refers to a system of institutions or places, and the behaviors associated with those loci, which, in tandem, came to provide a forum for self-expression and a means for lay people to air opinions about issues of public concern outside the traditional power structures of the Church, State, and economy. With time it became an important new source for the legitimation of cultural works and ideas, and, in this manner, those who participated in the public sphere, through their criticism or approval, were increasingly able influence the regulation of civil society. Thus there is a direct correlation between the development of the public sphere and the belief in the power and righteousness of “public opinion,” defined as the collective opinion of the people of the nation as a whole, which contributed to the perception of philosophes (and, in 3 that the central pillar of intellectual expression and communion with the tribunal of public opinion during the middle decades of the twentieth century was the revue (journal). However, while this configuration may have allowed intellectuals to remain independent to some degree from political and academic institutions, the same cannot be said when it came to cultural institutions, most notably journals, but also television, newspapers, radio, theaters, cultural centers, publishing houses, and so on. As the nature of these institutions’ cultural production changed in response to the emergence of consumer and mass culture, so too did the nature of intellectuals’ interactions with the public.8 Determined though Sartre may have been to reconcile institutional autonomy and intellectual engagement, these ambitions remain antithetical. This is a common misconception in—and about—France. As we shall see, Sartre—along with a great many other thinkers and even “intellectuals” as a category—was repeatedly and, in fact, systematically canonized by a variety of French cultural institutions across the postwar era. *** the modern era, intellectuals) that they had license to assert themselves on any topic, even those that were taboo (such as politics and religion) prior to the Enlightenment. Noiriel’s analysis extends this tradition into the modern era and counts it as one of the most important legacies of the Enlightenment for contemporary French intellectual culture.

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