Date: Mon, 17 Nov 1997 14:45:55 -0500 (EST)
From: Kelly A Murphy <kamst90+-AT-pitt.edu>
Subject: Re: From Tony Lack -- Mastery/androcentrism in Bourdieu


>From Tony Lack (whose email isn't working)


Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 17 Nov 1997 12:50:05 -0500 (EST)
From: Anthony L Lack <lack+-AT-pitt.edu>
To: bourdieu-AT-jefferson.village.Virginia.EDU
Subject: Re: Mastery/androcentrism in Bourdieu



On Fri, 14 Nov 1997, Angela  Zito wrote:
> 
> I agree with what TL says about the hidden assumption in Bourdieu (if
> I may restate-- that there exists a general [human] need and desire for
> control of an environment). But I wouldn't simply call this need for
> mastery "masculinist" if the implication is that women need to give it up
> or work outside of it. Or unless a counterproposal were made as to what to
> call women's human needs for the same sense of mastery. 
> (Maybe "feminist"?  :)   
> 
> There's a smart article that takes up the issue of mastery and skill
> for women (albeit in relation to Foucault) by Sandra Bartky on "Foucault,
> Femininity and the Modernization of Patriarchal Power" in Irene Diamond
> and Lee Quinby, eds. *Feminism and Foucault*  I have often thought that
> what Bartky theorizes here is close to Bourdieu's habitus than Foucault's
> discursive regimes.
> 
> She asks the question: given how oppressive the condition of women often
> is, why aren't more women overtly committed to various feminist projects
> of change. She answers that the skills whereby women produce 
> "femininity" are also the way they produce personal/social identity and
> that the satisfaction of that mastery is such that it is not surrendered
> easily, especially if no clear alternatives are offered.  Seems obvious
> when you read it, but it opens a few doors.
> 

Angela: Thanks for your response. As Gabrielle and Patrick point out in
other posts, habitus never operates independent of a
relational field of struggle. 

In the case you cite above, is femininity produced in a competitive
struggle with other women on men's terms? In fields structured by a male
ethos of competition? I do not mean to suggest that women cannot 
and do not act competitively but point to the ways that (most?) fields are
structured such that competition favors men.

Is femininity a negotiated complement (and compliment) to masculinity  as
well as a cluster of competences that produce satisfaction because
the type of mastery they provide, i.e., the skillful enactment of a script
written by heterosexual male power and desire? 

If so, is this type of mastery you cite above something other than
masculine in its effects?

And I take Angela's important point above about an alternative
mastery (feminism) but some questions remain: 

How can we theorize this and stay within the parameters of bourdieu's
theory?

How can we explain social reproduction without relying on a set of
concepts designed to capture conflict, competition, mastery, etc.? 

As others point out, there are gendered habitus, there are
different aspects of habitus (its not ALL about mastery) but these aspects
seem to supplement the practice of mastery in Bourdieu's writings - not
substitute for it or suggest alternatives.


 Bourdieu is, after all, a theorist of social reproduction who wants to
explain how inequalities get reproduced - not a theorist of 'resistance'. 

> Sorry if this is an old topic by now. I don't check e-mail too often.

Tony

> 
> 
> 
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