High civil servant, psychoanalyst, the author of “The Comedy of Culture” leaves an abundant and diverse work, where he notably evokes his family history, music, his favorite authors … He died on July 21, at The age of 78.
by
The writer, senior official and psychoanalyst Michel Schneider died on Thursday July 21 in Villejuif (Val-de-Marne), following cancer. He was 78 years old. Born May 28, 1944 in Dammarie-les-Lys, in Seine-et-Marne, in a family of Alsatian origin, he had studied at the Paris Institute of Political Studies, then at the ENA (Promotion Thomas More). During the few years following 1968, he leaned for the far left Maoist, Lacanian trend.
In 1971, leaving ENA, he began his career at the financial forecast subdivision, at the Ministry of Economy and Finance, before becoming, ten years later, referendum advisor at the Court of the Court Accounts, until his retirement in 2009. But the most salient, the most visible moment in his career in the public service began in October 1988, when he entered the Ministry of Culture as Director of Music and Dance. From this position, in full Mitterranda era, with Michel Rocard in Matignon, he resigned in May 1991, and returned to the Court of Auditors.
Of these three short years of experience rue de Valois, he will draw a violently critical book, but without personal resentment, against the choices and funding of French cultural policy: the comedy of culture (Seuil, 1993). Michel Schneider attacks Jack Lang, then Minister of Culture, who, he says, distributes subsidies, without necessarily promoting a real democratization of culture. “Nothing is worse than a prince who takes himself for an artist,” he points out, and also the role of these courtesian artists who consider their generous funding by the State perfectly. What dominates, according to him, is an advertising logic and the obsession to multiply the cultural offer, without taking into account the diversified demand from the audiences.
One of its main targets is then composer Pierre Boulez (1925-2016), founder and director of the Research Institute and Acoustic/Music Coordination, which benefits from large subsidies, to the obvious detriment of other creators . “Icamian music, which claims to be all contemporary music, is the computer plus the grant”, he creaks. It is from a “left -wing” point of view that Schneider takes stock of a requisite form against “a spectacular and dispersed cultural policy, proactive and expensive, expensive even in certain areas”. In February 1993, a memorable program by Bernard Pivot, “Bouillon de Culture”, will see, in a spectacular way, Michel Schneider, Jack Lang and (especially) Pierre Boulez.
You have 66.25% of this article to read. The continuation is reserved for subscribers.