REVIEW

THE CULTURAL EXCEPTION: CULTURE AND POWERS UNDER THE 5TH REPUBLIC

ANNE POSTAIRE
MA "CULTURAL MANAGEMENT AND CULTURAL POLICY IN THE BALKANS"
UNIVERSITY OF ARTS IN BELGRADE
2003 / 2004

THE CULTURAL EXCEPTION: CULTURE AND POWERS UNDER THE 5TH REPUBLIC
BIBLIOGRAPHIC
This book has been published in 1995, by Grasset edition, Paris. The book has 299
pages, includes an index. Pages of references include the usual theorists which have
written on the cultural policies, especially french writers.
Part I This contains several chapters on the cultural policies implemented in France,
and the historic relationship between power and culture in France.
Part II This contains several chapters developing precise point concerning the french
cultural policy : the issue of the audience, the issue of the structure of the Ministry of
Culture.
SUMMARY

Underlining the place which always the culture in the initiatives of the State occupied,
even under Ancien Rgime, Jacques Rigaud recognizes with the Popular Front, Jean
Zay and Lo Lagrange the beginning of a cultural policy. It also pays homage to the
action of Jeanne Laurent which works in favour of theatrical decentralization.
Underlining the positive initiatives taken by Malraux and his team, he estimates that two
achievements are particularly interesting: houses of the culture on the one hand; the
policy of the music, on the other one. But he detects three goals missed.
The socio-cultural action, the bonds with national education as with television are
regarded as insufficient by the author: "By many aspects, the assessment of the
administration of Malraux is dark or at least in half-tone. Soon canted right inspirations,
missed occasions, hesitations, brutalities, awkwardnesses, failures of management,
insulation, are to put in parallel with a great inspiration and considerable ambitious and
innovative actions".
Not less than eight ministers will follow one another between 1969 and 1981. Jacques
Rigaud stops especially on the work of Jacques Duhamel and pays homage to Michel
Guy. Of the action of Jacques Duhamel, he retains for example the creation of the
Funds of cultural intervention, of the Council of the cultural development, or the
construction of the George Pompidou Center, decision of the President himself.
Jacques Rigaud points out that the Management of the museums of France, which was
"deliberately held with the variation" of the project, which is not without evoking the
implementation of the Library of France.
The policy of Lang Jack is considered as being in continuity with his predecessors. With
his credit, Jack Lang has developped: the law on the flat price of the book, the policy of

THE CULTURAL EXCEPTION: CULTURE AND POWERS UNDER THE 5TH REPUBLIC
the music and in particular its opening to all the kinds of music. It is expressed for
example, by the creation of the Festival of the music. Quasi-doublement of the budget
of the Ministry for the Culture, will have, however, evil to arrive well at the famous 1 % of
the total budget of the State. Revealing choices of the forces and the limits of the policy
of Lang Jack: "A real, and increasing base in the opinion, a powerful effort of cultural
investment, increased tools given to the ministry to achieve its multiple missions and to
support at the same time creation and many relays of the cultural diffusion, an attention
supported, and sometimes obliging, with the interests of the cultural professions and,
stitching on the a whole omnipresent spirit of initiative, a style at the same time relaxed
and blazing, and the good conscience of a left which, persuaded to have the confidence
of the intellectuals and artists and to be entitled to speak on their behalf, does not see
any more limits with legitimacy of the intervention field of the culture".
Comparisons and gaps
Comparing the French cultural policies with those of his European neighbors, Jacques
Rigaud underlines one of the paradoxes of it: the French State is strongly present and
follows a policy which is not necessarily more exceptional than that British neighbors
carry out whithout never obtained a Ministry for the Culture. The gaps, Jacques Rigaud
especially sees them in the shape of lapse of memory of the public. If he disputes the
sociological analyses on the failures of the democratization of the culture, he however
estimates that the public is the large one forgotten recent cultural policies, and in
particular of the Lang time: "It is resulted from it the conviction, disastrous in my eyes,
that cultural industries and the circuits of equipment and of consumption which they
generated, were intended to become the royal voice of the cultural development", giving
to audio-visual the role of leaven of the social division. Disastrous error, responsible for
the failure of the cultural action, according to the author.
Another gap: administration of the ministry. A ministry victim of its success, which
spends its time managing, to distribute subsidies, whereas it had been born "for
launching ideas". This one would have "to concentrate on tasks of design, general
orientation and also of inspection". Some of the high persons in charge are not far,
according to the author, to estimate that the ministry is in a state "of inconsistency of the
thought as regards cultural policy ".
Proposals
From where some proposals for a reorganization, where Jacques Rigaud is thinking
again the implementation of the structures of the ministry. What he considers, it is
neither more nor less than disappearance of the ministry, for which the responsibilities

THE CULTURAL EXCEPTION: CULTURE AND POWERS UNDER THE 5TH REPUBLIC
would be, to be better integrated in the whole of the actions of the French State,
distributed between the various administrations. Jacques Rigaud is not unaware of until
which point its proposal is iconoclaste. This is why he stresses that should be
maintained in the State "a recognized place, radiant, uncontested, with the crossroads
of all the disciplines of the alive culture and from where a word can be emitted, strongly,
so that the culture has its place, all its place, in a political project worthy of this name".
Such a place resembles like a brother at a Direction of the cultural development alived
and reinforced.
EVALUATION AND SIGNIFICATION
Jacques Rigaud is one of the references in the field of french cultural policy. The various
experiences gained during his career, as well as a director of cultural structure or
advicer of the Ministry of Culture, allows him to have a global view on the functionning
and the challenges carried out by the cultural policy in France.
His description of the relationship between policy and power shows how much this
relation is strong. In order to show it, he develops first a historical approach of the
relationship between culture and power. For then, from its professional experience, he
clarifies this relation under V Republic and its consequences on the French cultural
policy. He shows how much the personality Ministers for the Culture and Presidents of
the Republic could affect the development of the French cultural policies. Charisma,
sens of communication, relation with the artistic field, but also political experience are
the caracteristics of the several Ministries of Culture which succeded to Andre Malraux.
This book is a remarkable basis to understand the relations between power and culture.
But the proposal made by Jacques Rigaud at the end of the second part of his book
seem to be unadapted: disseminating the functions of the Ministry of Culture in the
various French administrations. It is absolutely necessary to reconsider the cultural
policy in France, but the solution proposed by Jacques Rigaud is not adapted.
Disseminating the functions of the Ministry will maybe give more flexibility to the
programs implemented, but it will lost the unity of the french cultural policy. Isn't the
solution rather in the continuation of the process of decentralization, which will give to
local authorities more power in the cultural field, and will be able to adapt cultural
policies to the need of the audience and of the artists ?

THE CULTURAL EXCEPTION: CULTURE AND POWERS UNDER THE 5TH REPUBLIC
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