Towards a new world order of culture and communication
by Fernando Buen Abad
Every political organization (and, therefore, every organization) must have in its "agenda" the current historical problems in the field of Culture and Communication. It is not much to ask and there are no loopholes. We already had plenty of time to learn that, among all the battles waged by humanity towards its emancipation, the "territories" of Culture and Communication have been specially colonized and mostly plagued with very severe defeats.
It is not possible to accept Culture and Communication policies without consulting from the bases and from history.
But it is not about prioritizing Culture and Communication in an "agenda" where they are exclusively understood as "spectacle", "entertainment" or "curiosity" ... as a certain sector of the oligarchies and their bureaucracies usually do. It is not a question of pretending, with speeches, that we are occupied or concerned by the expressive "diversity" of the peoples. It is not a question of repeating the clientelist grimace that distributes scholarships, or subsidies, to friends and friends of friends. It is not about convincing us with brainy academic disquisitions or international conventions plagued with trifles in practice. What it is about is to enable, deepen and broaden the exercise of inalienable human rights such as the Right to Culture and the Right to Communication, not only in equality of "opportunities" but, mainly, on equal terms.
An "agenda" of Culture and Communication for our time, should be interested in the democratization of the tools of production, distribution and interlocution of "meaning". Should be interested in the rise of a semantic current renewed by the clamor of social struggles in all areas (sciences, arts, philosophies, technologies ...) is freeing the human species to ensure a dignified place in their own development and not a place of "spectator" submitted by a hoarding and historically oppressive social sector of the majorities. Such an "agenda" should be interested, (inter, multi and transdisciplinarily) in eradicating the means and ways in which the peoples have been infiltrated with "values" or "anti-values" that only agree with the status quo that have inoculated nuclei of "false conscience" "Profitable to functional ignorance, to the world of the lie as truth, to the submission of consciences and to the unbridled mercantilism infected with individualism and consumerism.
Of the current political forces (which claim to be the emanation of the popular will or of the working classes) we can not expect less than a comprehensive and dynamic model that, in the field of Culture and Communication, is willing to correct the asymmetries in the field of dispute for the meaning. That he knows how to develop an arsenal of tools for criticism (in all "senses") before the hegemony of the "Private Initiative"; against clientelistic bureaucratism and against the silencing of the most varied semantic communities that, in addition to diverse ones, are an overwhelming majority. That, in addition to the tools for criticism, make available to all legal bodies, methodological sources, training spaces, production tools, transmission infrastructures, evaluation models and the dynamics of feedback. Open, participatory, self-managed, autonomous and revocable consensus from the bases. To get started.
It is not possible to accept Culture and Communication policies without consulting from the bases and from history. It is not acceptable to abandon oneself to the vagaries of patronage, it is not advisable to aspire to the happy world of the "cultural industries" reproducing the logic of the commodity in the field of ideas and social emotions. Culture and Communication are not merchandise, they are Fundamental Human Rights and the State is responsible for their development, broadening and deepening. Or it will be nothing.
A political organization that in its "agenda" does not contain, as a short-term priority, the development of a Politics of Culture and Communication, decolonizing and transforming, must be thoroughly reviewed in contrast to the hard and raw facts that have been threatening the democracies in recent decades, as the MacBride Report of 1980 warned. It is not that there are no examples, complainants or bitterness really existing in the current scenario where Culture and Communication have been hijacked by the transnational monopoly powers. What is lacking is the political decision of organized forces, with a mandate from the working class, to unfold a new and renewing experience attentive to the demands of current times and of the immediate future.
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