File spoon-archives/bourdieu.archive/bourdieu_1996/96-07-02.141, message 227


From: "Michael Kelly" <mhk-AT-LANG.SOTON.AC.UK>
Date: Wed, 19 Jun 1996 18:40:50 GMT
Subject: Re: Habitus


Robert
You wrote
> Hmm, why Bergson and not Durkheim? Condorcet? 
Yes, why not all of them. Since Durkhein was 'sociology' he is much 
more obvious in some ways, but the French intellectual tradition is 
very much linked in with (dominated by) philosophy in ways that 
non-French specialists may overlook. Hence Bergson as well. (I'll 
need to think about Condorcet).

>And there's still the question
> of the appeal to French rather than the various German sources. I also feel
> it's as technical a term as a writer wishes to make it; 'habitus' is just
> the Latin for 'habit'. Indeed, it appears that rendering it in another
> language appears to constiture precisely such as attempt to *make* it a
> technical rather than everyday concept. 
>
Yes there is a certain fluidity about the notion of 'technical 
terms', and introducing a foreign synonym is a standard way of making 
a term technical. One of the daunting responsibilities of translating 
a text into another language is having to decide which terms to treat 
as technical and translate in a consistent way. No doubt translators 
have both created and extinguished technical terms, including perhaps 
'habitus'. 


------------------------------
Prof. Michael Kelly
School of Modern Languages
University of Southampton, U.K.
E-mail: mhk-AT-lang.soton.ac.uk
Fax: +44 1703 593288
Tel: +44 1703 592191 (direct)
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