Chapter 3 - ‘Books for All’

Summary

Chapter 3 analyses the cultural politics of protest in the 1960s. It examines the transformed understanding of high culture created by a mass market for paperback books.The chapter challenges the idea that the protest movements of the 1960s had their origins in a particular set of intellectual texts – often summarised as Mao, Marx, Marcuse. It traces the history of mass-circulation books in the 1960s and their perceived challenge to the organisation of high culture. I argue that the protest movements of the 1960s first promoted open access to high culture, then attempted to recast the meaning of high culture and developed a critique of commodification. I argue that this transformation did not democratise knowledge as expected, but it did contribute to the desacralisation of high culture and an old regime of elite culture.