Paradoxes and Traps in the Democratisation of Culture. An Introduction

New divisions into winners and losers are an unavoidable cost of any change. It is the voice of the latter that resounds long after the former have set about consuming their gains, it is they who nostalgically invoke those lost values and portend an age of new barbarism. The critique of the state of modern culture that intellectuals have been engaged in since the first decades of the 20th century is not only not abating but is even imposing itself with growing intensity in the 21st century. This indicates that the modernisation processes reflected in culture feature a very serious ambivalence, which with the passage of time is not only not disappearing but is actually growing in strength.