Bourdieu. Pierre Bourdieu.

[sus]

Bourdieu.

You don't know Bourdieu?



Across the pond, in the old country of the Normans (long live William 1028-1087) are some folks we Americans prefer to call "intellekshuals." Very lost and impotent men these, by the bunch. I don't know what you all think of Barthes, but I'll take Credence Clearwater ("Roland... Roland on the river") over the old frog anyday. Robert Bolano's "Labyrinth" illustrates pretty well what we ought to think of this crowd: perverts, pedophiles... some were even homosexual (so I hear). All Normans are especially horny by nature, having in them a normal amount of testosterone if less Lutheran willpower to overcome it—but it's the "intellectuals" who invent perverse justifications, proving ultimately only their larger point that words can't be trusted.

However, one great man stands apart from this pack. I have it on good rumor that Bourdieu is not a Frenchman but an Nordic-German mongrel (this makes lots of sense). What was he doing in Algeria during the war?? No one knows, certainly not ethnographic work for his "country," or else... maybe... but on the side.

Point being, in the words of my unfamous friend Peli Grietzer, "every sentence by Bourdieu is the actual version of what people pretend a sentence by Derrida is: it just explodes your mind into a million pieces." It's been a long time since I read the book where he said something like that, but I'm pretty sure I got it close.

What have you read by this great Alemmanic Viking? What's stood out to you?

 

[sus]

Who one works with, where one writes, subsumes what is written or produced as the common barometer of quality, in part because first-principle evaluation proves time-consuming, there is too much out there; in part because associative thinking is a human universal. «The art trader is not just the agent who gives the work a commercial value by bringing it into market; he is not just the representative, the impresario, who ‘defends the authors he loves’. He is the person who can proclaim the value of the author he defends (cf. the fiction of the catalogue or blurb) and above all ‘invests his prestige’ in the author’s cause, acting as a ‘symbolic banker’ who offers as security all the symbolic capital he has accumulated (which he is liable to forfeit if he backs a ‘loser’).»

 

[sus]

The logic of the operation of fields tends to make the different possibles that constitute the space of possibles at a given moment in time seem intrinsically, logically incompatible, when they are indeed incompatible, but only from a sociological perspective... The logic of the struggle and the division into opposing camps which differ with respect to the possibles that are objectively offered—to the point where each one sees or wishes to see only a fraction of the space—makes options that are logically compatible seem irreconcilable... Very often... the social antagonisms underlying theoretical oppositions and the interests connected to these antagonisms form the only obstacle to getting beyond and to the synthesis.

 

[version]

View attachment 3913

I'd never heard of him until you brought him up. my first response is he looks like Dean Stockwell.

 

[Murphy]

View attachment 3913

Bourdieu.

You don't know Bourdieu?

View attachment 3914

Across the pond, in the old country of the Normans (long live William 1028-1087) are some folks we Americans prefer to call "intellekshuals." Very lost and impotent men these, by the bunch. I don't know what you all think of Barthes, but I'll take Credence Clearwater ("Roland... Roland on the river") over the old frog anyday. Robert Bolano's "Labyrinth" illustrates pretty well what we ought to think of this crowd: perverts, pedophiles... some were even homosexual (so I hear). All Normans are especially horny by nature, having in them a normal amount of testosterone if less Lutheran willpower to overcome it—but it's the "intellectuals" who invent perverse justifications, proving ultimately only their larger point that words can't be trusted.

However, one great man stands apart from this pack. I have it on good rumor that Bourdieu is not a Frenchman but an Nordic-German mongrel (this makes lots of sense). What was he doing in Algeria during the war?? No one knows, certainly not ethnographic work for his "country," or else... maybe... but on the side.

Point being, in the words of my unfamous friend Peli Grietzer, "every sentence by Bourdieu is the actual version of what people pretend a sentence by Derrida is: it just explodes your mind into a million pieces." It's been a long time since I read the book where he said something like that, but I'm pretty sure I got it close.

What have you read by this great Alemmanic Viking? What's stood out to you?

His work contributing to practice theory, Distinctions and everything on habitus

systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles which generate and organize practices and representations that can be objectively adapted to their outcomes without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary in order to attain them

 

[vimothy]

the king of structuralism

 

[sus]

some striking points of his career you might jive with WYH:
- Distinction manages to stumble on costly signaling theory from a totally different theoretic background
- Habitus/space of possibles manages to reconcile the silly dichotomous thinking of Existentialism and Structuralism in agency (something AFAICT other poststruct types didn't manage well, and that maybe only ethnomethodology did right)
- His idea that cultural capital policies inequality imo is the strongest critique of elite visual culture's hypocrisies, and one that it's only now beginning to concile itself to (see Christopher H Ko and Andrea Fraser's stuff)

 

[sus]

the king of structuralism

King is right

 

[constant escape]

@suspendedreason do you have any recommendations on where to start with Bourdieu? Realistically, any essays under 30 pages, if there are any. But I'd be interested in your suggestions regardless of length.

 

[sus]

@constant escape whatcha interested in? He has good writings on language, the structure of fields (e.g. "sociology," "the avant-garde"), and aesthetics.

 

[constant escape]

Structures of fields would be interesting, if you mean how one field/discipline is distinct from another, and how their contents are likewise distinguished. Unless he means something else by fields.

 

[sus]

Structures of fields would be interesting, if you mean how one field/discipline is distinct from another, and how their contents are likewise distinguished. Unless he means something else by fields.

I think Principles for a Sociology of Cultural Works might be your ticket, especially if you have any background with literary theory and the New Criticism/Structuralism/New Historicism debate (or alternatively, with the "aesthetic autonomy" vs "materialist/Marxist" discourse in the visual arts). If you don't, just know that there was a tradition of seeing art as this "pure" discipline that was "autonomous" from the structural/economic/political moment of its day—and that in the 20th C this increasingly was challenged.

 

[luka]

correct answr. it is part of the same set of conditions as the structural economic political rather than is determined by them. if you take the line that it is determined by them you get very very vulgar results. this is why marxists make good historians and geographers but bad art critics

 

[sus]

Yep, Bourdieu has a good bit about this in the chapter—that if you look at the material conditions, you've missed the point of the art entirely. To him, the art is what emerges from the social/economic/political/material structure of possibles—there is an array of choices, essentially, or ways to signify—moves that can be made in the chessgame at a given state—and there is a "disposition" of the author/artist towards making certain moves.

 

[constant escape]

Thanks again @suspendedreason for the recommendation. Just finished "Principles for a Sociology of Cultural Works" and, while I didn't understand most of it, there were some nice takeaways:

It is here that Max Weber and his theory of religious agents is of great help. While it is to his credit that he reintroduces the specialists, their particular interests, that is, the functions that their activities and products - religious doctrines, juridical corpora, etc. - fulfill for them, he does not perceive that intellectual worlds are microcosms that have their own structures and their own laws. It is these microcosms that I have called fields and whose general laws of operation I have attempted to describe.

Didn't know that Weber got into this, but this is something that I think is worth more elaboration - and it probably has been elaborated, perhaps by Jean Piaget in terms of disciplinarity, perhaps others. Namely, how do these fields emerge, and how do they carry/spawn smaller fields or subfields? We hear about how such and such scientific discovery revealed a whole new field of research to be explored.

Perhaps people are using the same terms in different ways, but I think there are common threads to be found, no? That is, a dynamics or mechanics of disciplinarity, as a function of logos: how do these departments of knowledge, these fields, with "their own structures and their own laws", form?

It is the struggle between the dominant and the aspirants, between those who hold titles (of writers, philosophers, scholars, etc.) and their challengers, as one would say in the boxing world, that constitutes the history of the field.

What do we gain through this particular approach to the work of art? b n worth reducing and destroying, in short breaking the spell of the work In order to account for it and to learn what it is all about?

 

[sus]

There's this great Bourdieu idea that if you wanna understand a field you needa get access to its gossip

I like that idea a lot

as for field creation, I think it's basically ad hoc? Maybe there's real mystery there obscured from me, I just assume that, like most systems, it's just living things' grown appendages being recognized and ossifying

 

[constant escape]

That is a great idea - hadn't considered it. It's from Bordieu? Do you think we outsiders (that is, outside in respect to the upper echelons, or inner circles, of these fields) can even get this info?

Do you think one can navigate the gossip/socios of a field as a means of finding the central/essential aspects of that field? Is that pretty much the argument here? I guess its true that people are more inclined to spill otherwise esoteric information if it means they get rewarded with status/recognition.

As for ad hoc field creation, I think I see what you mean: that one really just stumbles across these things? You can have an idea where you're heading, but by definition you cannot really know where you are heading until you get there? By pushing the discourse of a field in a novel/innovative direction, that growth can, perhaps, be visualized as an appendage growing - seeing as that is where the cognitive energy is being allocated. The areas that aren't being challenged or audited are the areas that either fall out of fashion or sediment into orthodoxy? Not sure, but one could make the case.

 

[sus]

I think with the internet we maybe can a bit, since that water cooler chat is happening over text, which is archivable

It actually used to be really entertaining and interesting, ILM. It had some seriously smart people, some real characters, weirdos. Lots of flare ups, really acrimonious fights that went on for pages and pages and days and days.

...

Way more than here, they seemed to be obsessed with music journalism and magazines (e.g. the endless, still going, thousand-page long by now thread Pitchfork Is Dumb). It could get very meta and inside-baseball. Which is fairly interesting if you're a music journalist but for most normal people, not so much.

I wanna try to scour that thread when I can

 

[sus]

Also podcasts. I listen to some great phil/psych podcasts hosted by practitioners in the fields... The amount of cynicism, the insider talk about conflicts and nagging suspicions... It seems like often years or decades before a problem comes publicly to light, insiders paying attention are already starting to talk about it

 

[luka]

You're going to talk about the problems ?