For a narrative revolution of territories
What if true cultural power resided in the stories we write, daily, from our positions, with our words? Each territory produces a narrative. Not the frozen and smooth one communicated by institutions alone, but a living, multiple narrative, inscribed in human experiences. Faced with top-down discourses, it is time to organize a democratic revolution of territorial cultural speech. To rebuild an authentic cultural democracy, we must recognize the power of these sensitive narratives, fragile perhaps, but essential to the very legitimacy of cultural policies, and foster their emergence.
Rethinking territory beyond traditional boundaries
What is a territory today? The answer goes far beyond classic administrative divisions. A territory is first and foremost an instituting and institutional identification of a human collective within a geography that can be physical or digital. This definition encompasses both a neighborhood and a region, a collective of inhabitants and a university, a festival anchored in a given place and time, and a Telegram or LinkedIn community.
As Pierre Rosanvallon describes in The Parliament of the Invisible (2015), we live in an era of “expressive democracy” where individual narrative becomes a political act. This perspective invites us to recognize that the essence of a territory lies in the sense of belonging shared by its members, whether permanent or temporary. Territory is not just a place, but a network of relationships that necessarily produces a narrative, even implicit, that says “this is who we are.”
At the heart of each territory is invariably a communicating instance, more or less institutionalized. From members of a Facebook group spontaneously sharing information to the structured communication service of a metropolis, these instances shape the territory’s image. But a fundamental problem arises: the institutional narrative, distinct from daily reality, influences tourism, economic partnerships, and media perception, and often creates a gap with residents’ lived experience.
The soft tyranny of institutional narratives
Documents publicly emanating from a territory—texts, images, videos, books—powerfully imprint its image, often durably. This documentary imprint, as Dominique Cardon reminds us in Digital Culture (2019), is crucial because “algorithms shape our access to information by privileging certain formats and certain sources”.
In this informational architecture, text reigns supreme. Contrary to what one might believe, it is not images but written words that constitute the essence of memorial traces. Information transmission, via search engines, artificial intelligence, or aggregators, still relies today primarily on textual processing. Automated systems index, categorize, and redistribute information by massively relying on text, giving writings major strategic reach.
The report from the Economic, Social and Environmental Council (CESE), “Towards Cultural Democracy” (2017) emphasizes that cultural policies must integrate these narratives to strengthen citizen participation. Yet too often, official narratives mask or weaken minority, spontaneous, partial narratives—those very ones that bear the imprint of true cultural democracy.
Democratization versus democracy: the heart of the problem
We must clearly distinguish between democratization and cultural democracy. As Patrice Meyer-Bisch explains in Cultural Rights, Finally in the Spotlight? (La revue de l’Observatoire n°33, 2008):
“Cultural democracy assumes recognition of the diversity of cultural expressions and active participation by all in cultural life, unlike democratization which imposes a legitimate culture from above.”
Democratization narratives, carried by top-down academic or official processes, already have their automatic communicational force. They circulate easily in established channels, benefit from institutional legitimacy, and impose themselves in the public space. But these narratives, while necessary, often lack the warmth of personal testimonies and the credibility of horizontal recommendations.
Conversely, democratic narratives—those that emerge from lived experience, shared daily life, ordinary cultural practice—struggle to exist. People live their moments without necessarily making them into narratives, which explains their rarity. This absence is not trivial: it deprives our territories of narrative richness essential to their democratic vitality, for the present and especially for the future.
The paradoxical power of fragile narratives
Democratic narratives possess incomparable force, precisely because they are fragile. Their power comes from their intrinsic fragility: as citizens, we often feel illegitimate faced with authoritative speech, but it is precisely this humility that makes these narratives authentic and recommendable.
In today’s disintermediated digital space, this horizontality amplifies their impact. A democratic narrative circulates through peer-to-peer recommendations, humanized and valued, because it comes from someone “like me.” As Patrick Germain-Thomas notes in his article Cultural Democratization, Illusion or Utopia in the Making? (Quaderni, 2020), digital mediations promise greater inclusion, thus supporting the idea of horizontal circulation of narratives.
Writing from oneself, without authority, without mandate, without authorization, requires courage. One always feels too small, always late, always insufficient. But if we renounce these narratives, that of the territory will be written without us. Crafting these narratives requires constant effort, because we always doubt our legitimacy, but this is the very principle of democracy: a horizontal point of view that does not impose itself. The institution, to exercise its function as defender of democracy, must support these narratives.
A concrete practice of democratic writing
My recommendation for institutions is therefore clear: encourage each territorial agent, each citizen, whatever their position, to communicate and write the meaning of what they perceive on the territory. This invitation goes far beyond the framework of official communication services to embrace a logic of cultural democracy where everyone contributes to the elaboration of the common narrative.
Concretely, this means:
- Systematically documenting: always referencing places, dates (specifying the year), and the personal meaning of artistic, cultural, territorial, or heritage actions, both for the author and for citizens, ephemeral or settled.
- Renewing texts: in the contemporary attention economy, theorized by Yves Citton in For an Ecology of Attention (2014), the relevance of content depends on its freshness and its ability to inscribe itself in current informational flows. We must renew, without fear of repetition, because we add nuances and diversified viewpoints.
- Multiplying distribution channels: social networks, personal or group emails, WhatsApp groups, blogs, newsletters... No matter the medium, what matters is that it be situated, anchored in lived and shared experience.
- Emphasizing the democratic dimension: everything done at human scale, in co-decision, exchange, welcoming the other, circumstance. These “mundane” experiences deserve to be told, to be symbolically enhanced.
The crucial issue of public funding
This narrative mobilization is not just an abstract democratic exercise. It touches the very heart of the legitimacy of public cultural policies. Thanks to these narratives, we can contribute to refounding a cultural democracy on territories, essential for legitimizing public culture funding, present and future.
In a context of growing budgetary constraints, only a culture truly anchored in citizen practices and narratives will be able to durably justify its funding by the community. This funding, crucial for social bonds detached from commercial stakes, is today under-recognized, while its future rests precisely on this democratic dynamic.
As several reports remind us, ambition remains unfinished without active citizen participation. Democratic narratives illuminate this invisible territory of lived culture, testifying to a discreet fecundity that escapes the usual radars of evaluation.
A narrative ecology for our territories
We speak here of a true narrative ecology of territories: a system where each voice counts, produces meaning, and acts as a ferment of mutual recognition. A territory is above all what is told about it, and by it. Without democratic narrative, no cultural democracy. And without cultural democracy, public culture funding runs the risk of being subjected to purely commercial or instrumental logics.
This ecology requires devices, certainly simple, but recurrent, that call for writing, for collecting testimonies, support dissemination, accompany people. It assumes considering that democratic speech is not a marginal exercise, but essential to cultural governance.
Call to action: writing to exist democratically
Our future absolutely needs our narratives. Each testimony, each documentation of democratic cultural experience, each horizontal sharing of territorial practice contributes to weaving the narrative fabric that will support tomorrow’s public cultural policies.
I strongly invite organizing to be able to produce and disseminate these narratives in all possible instances, renewing them regularly to maintain their effectiveness. This narrative responsibility falls to each of us: territorial agents, engaged citizens, cultural actors. Our silence would amount to abandoning the field to purely commercial and top-down logics. Our voice, fragile but authentic, constitutes the foundation on which a true territorial cultural democracy can be built.
The invitation is therefore simple and ambitious: write. Everyone, from their position. And disseminate. So that, little by little, a common memory is written, traversing, fragile, but tenacious. A memory carried by culture agents, inhabitants, enlightened amateurs, passersby. It is this multiplication of situated narratives that will make, tomorrow, the democratic strength of our cultural policies. And it is on this that their long-term legitimacy depends.
My multidisciplinary practices—spanning creation, cultural action, training, and support in a wide range of cultural, social, and educational contexts across France—provide me with a privileged, subjective, and in-depth observatory of the cultural sector in France.
This sector is weakened by its position, often deemed “non-essential” by many political leaders, by the competition from digital platforms in cultural practices, as well as by challenges and obstacles related to the difficulty of establishing interdisciplinary collaborations and the scarcity of evaluations, which are often poorly conducted and instrumentalized.
My observatory allows me to identify dynamics that work, as well as difficulties I observe. Here, I propose to share my analyses, methods, and suggestions, hoping they may prove useful. My goal is to contribute to a stronger cultural sector in the future, as I believe that defending a cultural sector funded by taxpayers’ money holds the potential for emancipation, the development of freedoms, democracy, and the capacity to act—in a way that is fundamentally different from what private actors produce.
This is possible if there is no hypocrisy, and in my view, it comes at the cost of a commitment to lucidity and self-questioning, a choice to deconstruct representations, and perhaps to challenge certain privileges and systems of domination.
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The Fertile Margin
Reframe cultural and therapeutic practices within the current reality, where digital culture has become the dominant culture.
Publicly funded culture has become marginal in the face of digital practices. Rather than lamenting this, this article proposes to embrace that (…) -
Growing Up in Cultural Contempt
When the Emancipation Sector Manufactures Domination: A Sociological Analysis of an Intimate Experience
Contempt is not an accident of the cultural system; it is its fuel. What François Dubet analyzes on a societal scale, I experienced from childhood (…) -
What Artistic Discourse Reveals About Itself
A semiological analysis of a performance program text, when the talk about art speaks primarily of power.
A flyer distributed to audience members before a show may seem like nothing more than a mediation tool. Linguistic analysis reveals something (…) -
The Dramatization of Mistrust
When cultural venues stage the opposite of their own rhetoric.
An evening at the theater in a left-leaning city reveals a troubling paradox: the welcoming procedures produce exactly the opposite of the (…) -
What we avoid seeing when we defend culture
When young people are forced to go to the theater under threat of sanction, the promised emancipation can become suffered oppression.
Calls to defend funding for arts and cultural education are multiplying in the face of budget cuts. While these commitments are legitimate, they (…) -
The Representation of One’s Cultural Role
What the Association of French Mayors survey reveals about the cultural imaginary of local authorities.
What do we presuppose when we speak of “audiences distant from culture”? The AMF survey, read as an anthropological document, unveils the (…) -
For a Permanent Cultural Transformation
Moving beyond political infantilization to rebuild our institutions.
Faced with budget cuts in arts education, cultural actors appeal to those in power. This posture of supplication reveals, in my view, a dead end. (…) -
Is Culture Serving the Public?
Reflections on the dead ends of French cultural policy.
Do the 4 billion euros of the national culture budget truly serve the general interest? This question deserves to be asked pointedly, as budget (…) -
The True False Cultural Freedom
When defending creative freedom masks a corporatist conflict.
Faced with recent film deprogrammings by elected officials from various political sides, a collective statement expresses outrage at political (…) -
The Hypocrisy of Cultural Actors’ Independence
When the fear of political alternation reveals the unspoken truths of the French cultural sector.
Cultural actors have been regularly mobilizing for some time against an alleged threat to their programming and creative freedom. But does this (…) -
The False Public-Private Debate in the Cultural Sector
What is at stake in cultural policies is not the public-private opposition, but a transformation in what we expect from culture.
The rhetoric of scarcity masks deliberate political choices. Deconstructing the false public-private debate allows us to think differently about (…) -
The Free Institution
Opening spaces for creation outside the logics of cultural domination.
For thirty-five years, in response to the systems of domination that structure the cultural field, I have been proposing an alternative approach: (…) -
Why Are Cultural Actors So Fragile?
A plea for a democratic refoundation of cultural institutions in the face of political arbitrariness.
From Arcadi in Île-de-France in 2018 to the Agence culturelle Grand Est in 2025, cultural agencies are disappearing into indifference. Beyond the (…) -
Social Networks and Cultural Institutions: Breaking the Strategic Deadlock
Towards a digital policy that renounces communication in favor of citizen empowerment.
Local authorities are massively investing in their presence on social networks without questioning the relevance of this approach, and are (…) -
Beyond Mobilizing Audiences: Building Democratic Narratives
Rethinking the link between cultural institutions and citizens through collective storytelling.
Cultural structures struggle to mobilize audiences. Rather than perfecting communication strategies, I explore here a different path: that of (…) -
On the Fragility of Corporatism
When the defense of cultural privileges masquerades as freedom of expression.
The recent condemnation of the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region has aroused enthusiasm among performing arts professionals. Yet, this provisional legal (…) -
The connected audience
Rethinking cultural participation through building connections.
Cultural attendance does not depend on communication but on the bond woven between people and cultural offerings. This prior relationship (…) -
Culture and politics: the forgotten lesson of sanitary totalitarianism
Reflections on the submission of the cultural sector in the face of authority.
In 2025, the French cultural sector is alarmed by the rise of the Rassemblement National. However, its behavior during the Covid period reveals a (…) -
Rethinking the digital content strategy of cultural institutions
For a web presence that prioritizes editorial authority over social media dispersion.
Cultural institutions would benefit from concentrating their efforts on producing reference content rather than maintaining a dispersed presence (…) -
The artistic relationship with the audience
The paradoxical intimacy of live streams on social media.
Starting from the Belgian pop duo Candeur Cyclone on social media, I explore the dialectic of contemporary artistic encounters. Questioning our (…) -
The Non-Institutional Cultural Institution
For a citizen reappropriation of creation.
Rethinking culture beyond institutional walls: how spontaneous practices redefine our relationship with creation and question established cultural (…) -
The Accelerated Eye
Manifesto for a new ecology of the gaze.
What if speed were not the enemy of culture, but the instrument of a new form of sensitive intelligence? A radical reappropriation of our right to (…) -
The myth of recognition through cultural democratization
Rethinking artistic value beyond systems of domination.
Artistic recognition is less about talent than about a social game that some refuse to participate in. A reflection on alternative paths to (…) -
The Misguided Debate on Funding Cuts for Culture
Rethinking the Role of Public Funding Beyond the Numbers
In 2025, debates over funding cuts for culture are heating up, following unprecedented reductions in public subsidies and a political shift in (…) -
For a narrative revolution of territories
The urgency of a horizontal cultural democracy.
What if true cultural power resided in the stories we write, daily, from our positions, with our words? Each territory produces a narrative. Not (…) -
Implementing cultural dissemination
Towards a decentralized and participatory cultural network.
Faced with the crisis of cultural democratization and a growing disengagement of public action in the cultural domain, new forms of artistic (…) -
Culture and political power: from a marriage of convenience to a consummated divorce
From Louis XIV to Rachida Dati: anatomy of a rupture between subsidized culture and political legitimacy.
Culture is no longer the theater of power. Once an instrument of political influence, it now struggles to justify its public funding. How can we (…) -
What is a cultural policy? Why is culture political? And what is political in culture?
A critical approach to cultural policies through the lens of cultural rights.
All culture is political because it imposes rules of belonging and worldviews. Exploring this dimension illuminates the democratic stakes of (…) -
Dilapidation of resources in supply logic
For a democratic revolution of cultural practices.
Faced with the crisis in the cultural sector, it is urgent to shift from a top-down supply logic to a culture of connection and listening, (…) -
Formalizing the informal
Informality, essential to learning, resists structure while calling for it. How to tame it.
The absence of informal aspects in distance learning forces us to rethink its fundamental nature. This constraint becomes a laboratory for (…) -
Towards a distributed cultural sector
Hypotheses on the commons and digital diversity.
What if digital cultures showed us how to build the commons through distribution rather than centralization? This hypothesis invites us to rethink (…) -
France’s cultural sector faces the urgent need for a rethink
From 1959 to 2025, history repeats itself... in reverse.
French cultural sector funding is crumbling. Malraux’s “colonial” heritage (1959) is obsolete in the face of digital technology and political (…) -
Cultivating digital sovereignty
For a democratic reclaiming of our digital spaces.
Faced with our growing dependence on tech giants, digital sovereignty is becoming a major democratic challenge. It’s time to act collectively. The (…) -
Cultural investigation with artificial intelligence
Towards an open, non-directive methodology for revealing the unexpected.
How can we transcend the limitations of traditional cultural surveys? By combining spontaneous dialogues and AI analysis, a new approach could (…) -
Corporate memory at the service of cultural rights
Rethinking the relationship between cultural venues and people.
Cultural institutions, through their failure to collect and care for data, forget those they welcome, denying their dignity. This amnesia (…) -
Towards voluntary evaluation of cultural projects
For “cultural prevention” policies.
The subsidized cultural sector is going through a crisis of legitimacy after betraying its democratic values. I believe that a refoundation (…) -
Welcoming radicalized people to cultural venues
For a truly inclusive cultural democracy.
Do cultural venues filter their audiences, consciously or unconsciously, according to criteria of radicalism? This question reveals our (…) -
Cultural venues and social networks
How to turn audiences into ambassadors rather than chasing followers.
Cultural venues are on social media out of obligation, without a clear strategy or convincing results. We need to rethink their presence: no (…) -
Documentation and artificial intelligence
Rethinking professional practices.
Generative AI can profoundly enrich our professional practices. To exploit their potential for constructive synthesis and analysis, we need to (…) -
For a virtuous dispersal of the cultural sector
The end of traditional cultural influence.
The cultural sector is going through a major crisis that reveals a paradigm shift. In my opinion, we must now cultivate culture everywhere, in all (…) -
The marginality of cultural institutions
Lucidity of a paradigm shift.
Traditional cultural institutions, once central, have become marginal in the face of digital practices that now dominate citizens’ attention. This (…) -
On the role of artists
For a politics of the artist.
The political role of the artist is never neutral. Whether they want it or not, their social position and aesthetic choices reflect an engagement, (…) -
Primary and secondary cultural practices
For a cultural dialectic of public proposals.
Daily cultural practices (internal) are underestimated compared to external cultural offerings, yet the latter are secondary in people’s lives. (…) -
Re-engaging France’s public cultural sector as a good corporate citizen
Avenues of action for a permanent future.
Facing budget cuts, the public cultural sector must reconnect with its democratic mission. Beyond corporatism, professionals must strengthen their (…) -
Evolving forms of artistic creation
An anthropological reflection on the forms of subsidized artistic creation.
Subsidized art must distinguish itself from the commercial sector through a fundamentally democratic approach, favoring shared experience over (…) -
Beyond walls: video as a vehicle for cultural democracy
When digital mediation transforms the relationship between citizens and heritage.
Video in museums represents a challenge of cultural mediation and the democratization of heritage. In the digital age, it transforms the (…) -
Legitimizing unfamiliar cultural practices
Anthropology of the future.
To foster intercultural dialogue, we need to legitimize cultural practices that are unknown to us, without ranking them above our own. This (…) -
Putting Artificial Intelligence to good use in the cultural sector
Methodological approaches.
By 2025, it seems essential to enable employees and stakeholders in the cultural sector to share the challenges of AI within their professional (…) -
Overcoming the fragility of public funding for culture
Anthropological point of view, to sketch out future paths.
Public funding for culture is currently perceived as being under considerable threat, and so the cultural sector seems to be in an extremely (…) -
Systematize mutual discoveries between cultural players
Removing obstacles to cooperation.
Common-sense proposal for better mutual understanding among cultural actors in the same territory. Why don’t we know each other well enough?In (…) -
Pour une robustesse coopérative des projets culturels
Réflexion sur les modalités de coopération territoriale et d’évaluation.
Pour que les projets culturels puissent trouver pleinement leur sens social et devenir plus robustes face aux attaques politiques qui les jugent « (…) -
“Donotdo”
Methodological concept of setting the world in motion.
The neologism “donotdo”, which I develop here, describes the capacity we have to set the world in motion at great depth, to transform it in a way (…) -
New directions
A film by Emmanuel Vergès and Benoît Labourdette (1’25s, 2021).
"What if we gave ourselves new directions by seeking new points of view?Text by Emmanuel Vergès.Direction, image, sound by Benoît (…) -
Balance and supports
A method for the sustainability of projects.
Based on the way the human body balances itself, for a sustainable approach to project management.Observation of nature is often very good (…) -
Build antifragility for cultural projects
Methodological proposal.
What methodology should be adopted to build cultural projects that have the capacity to tame uncertainty and thus become more deeply rooted in (…)
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Video platform “The digital factory in Les Lilas” Video platform for a city.
Co-construction, development and transmission of skills for a local video platform designed to promote the productions of the inhabitantsThe (…) -
The Representation of One’s Cultural Role What the Association of French Mayors survey reveals about the cultural imaginary of local authorities.
What do we presuppose when we speak of “audiences distant from culture”? The AMF survey, read as an anthropological document, unveils the (…) -
What is a cultural policy? Why is culture political? And what is political in culture? A critical approach to cultural policies through the lens of cultural rights.
All culture is political because it imposes rules of belonging and worldviews. Exploring this dimension illuminates the democratic stakes of (…) -
Reflection on the Evolution of Audiovisual Media in Libraries For a citizen-driven heritage preservation of territorial audiovisual creations.
Libraries are facing the disappearance of physical audiovisual media. This technical transformation calls, in my view, for an anthropological (…) -
Cultural rights and professional postures Tools for the concrete implementation of cultural rights.
Cultural rights, stemming from the Fribourg Declaration (2007), represent a major advancement for cultural democracy. However, their practical (…)
