Freedom of Expression

Abstract

The significance of Sartre’s encounter with the audiovisual media in post-war France transcends the fate of one intellectual, however prestigious that particular intellectual happens to be. Sartre’s attitude to and relationship with the press, radio and television between 1945 and 1975 are ultimately symbolic of the decline in status of the traditional intellectual in a cultural environment increasingly dominated by the audiovisual media. From the ebullience of the Temps Modernes radio programmes in 1947 to the acquiescence of the aborted television history series in 1975, Sartre’s individual trajectory mirrors a struggle between traditional intellectuals and media magnates in which cultural power has been progressively transferred from one social group to another. This transference of cultural power between social groups is itself a reflection of a transition from one mode of cultural production to another, from the written text to the audiovisual image. Traditional intellectuals who had invested in the rational discourse of the printed word were progressively left on the sidelines in the post-1968 period once the centre of gravity of cultural transmission became the emotive visual imagery of the television screen.¹