Milan Kundera – le kitsch, un possible usage de la culture

Abstract

Admitting that the kitsch is the product of a certain culture, the article attempts to see how man can use it to give value to his life. A possible answer to this question can be found in the works of Milan Kundera, one of the greatest denouncer of existential kitsch in the 20th century. Kundera denounces two hypostases of kitsch, that of totalitarian regimes which rely on simulacra of the values of European humanism: love of other, fraternity, State, People, Nation, and that of contemporary society which lives under the dictatorship of imagology playing a reality-show. In his works, he protests with stinging irony against the false illusion of reality, the idyllic, sometimes ecstatic vision that the kitsch projects on the world.