Intellectuals and the Popular Culture Issue: Interpretations and Initiatives in the Context of the Popular Unity

This paper examines the different ways in which Chilean intellectuals interpreted the objective of creating a "new culture" of a "popular" nature in the context of the Popular Unity (1970-1973). To this end, I propose four analytical categories of cultural production: "about the people", "for the people", "with the people" and "from the people". With examples of discourses and works produced in different fields, I will highlight how transversal the topics of the debate and the cultural production of the time were. Unlike prior scholarship that emphasize the limitations of the absence of a guiding line of cultural policy, I argue that the simultaneous presence of different references was a stimulating factor for the debates and allowed the development of various initiatives in the cultural field. In line with this, my article aims to: contribute to overcoming the common trend of approaching the cultural policy of the Popular Unity with the bias of failure or insufficiency; to draw the attention on the limitations of reducing the cultural policy to the sole government's action; and to provide elements to relativize the notion of closed and internally coherent positions within the Chilean left.