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sooner or later our remissive elites will have to rediscover the
principle of limitation. The modern project may have run its
course. The idea that men need not submit to any power other
than their own is by no means discredited, but it is losing its
capacity to inspire heady visions of progress.47
Moreover, Lasch considers “the persistence of old-fashioned
moralities among the ‘less educated’ as another reason to hope.
Popular resistance to the ‘religion of criticism’ enables us to hope
for a renascence of guilt.”48
4. Conclusion
Pasolini died more than thirty years ago, Lasch fifteen years ago.
Although Western society has undergone a sweeping transforma-
tion since then, it is remarkable how thorough and sharp their ideas
still appear, as well as their coherence in counting on the grassroots
level of societies, the ‘culture of necessity’ of the so-called develop-
ing countries, wistfully admired by Pasolini, and the popular cul-
ture that Lasch championed.
Historically, culture is divided into two categories: ‘high’ or
‘dominant’ culture which has always been identified with ‘official’
school and academic culture, and ‘low’ or ‘popular’ culture subordi-
nate to the dominant one, often connected with non-official centers
of education (family, rural world) and non-official educational sys-
tems (such as oral history, empiricism, learning through imitation).
Both members of dominant and subordinate culture have tradition-
ally known and recognized hierarchies pertaining to cultural facts.
It is no longer like this. Dominant elites drive public debate and
information through media conglomerates encompassing radio and
television networks and newspapers that they control or possess.
These media also act in a pervasive way in order to promote a sort
of ‘culture of entertainment’ based on sport, fashion and show-busi-
ness, all profitable ‘audio-visual’ fields connected to advertising.
STEFANO ROSATTI
269
47 Ibid, p. 223.
48 Ibid, p. 223.
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