The cultural field and the world of letters in the West: training and development

Abstract

The objective of the article is to reflect on the historical process of configuration of the cultural and intellectual field in the modern world. In the first instance, a synthesis of the development of what some intellectuals in the West have called the Republic of Letters is presented, as a literary space that emerged in the late Middle Ages in Europe as a result of the confrontation of Latin with the vernacular languages of the territories, consolidating itself in the 18th century as a relatively autonomous intellectual space. Subsequently, the tension in the modern intellectual field is shown between the intellectual as a professional who intervenes in symbolic production in different areas of culture and as a politician, participating in ideological production to the extent that it contributes to the construction of political horizons. Finally, the article reports on the effects of globalization and the market on cultural production, which tends to homogenize, but also results in the articulated division of the world, reordering differences and inequalities according to the linguistic regions of the producers.