Sartre and Commitment: Reinventing Cultural Forms

Abstract

Throughout his life Sartre refused to envisage cultural activity from the perspective of passivity. Culture was neither a pre-established concept, nor a definitively finished art object. In true existential fashion, culture was always conceived as a process of continual invention and re-invention. Whether it was a question of artistic creativity, of critical interpretation or of public consumption, the overriding principle remained the need to call into question previous cultural theories and forms, previous cultural objects and icons, in order to subject them to the legitimate critical scrutiny of the contemporary world. The reason for this was not mindless antagonism to pre-established cultural norms, but rather the profound belief that the very essence of cultural activity was intrinsically heretical and critical; that in order to be true to its primary mission, cultural activity needed to be redefined by every new generation of artists and consumers of art. Not to engage in this process of redefinition and critical renewal would consign cultural activity to the status of a trivial formalism, and would lead ultimately to degeneration and the loss of dynamism in the processes of artistic creation and critical reception.