Date: Mon, 15 Jun 1998 12:11:45 +0000
Subject: Interart field: thanks


Thanks to everyone who responded to my search for a method for Victorian
interart analysis last week. I will look at Distinction, the MLQ Bourdieu
issue, and the Gamboni book--thanks for those leads. Thanks too to those
who suggested ways of proceeding, especially in the matter of the different
social realities produced by literature and art during this period.
Dennis's point, that the local and global poles of the analysis--the
various fields of a national culture, on the one hand, and world dominating
British capitalism on the other--need to be set in motion towards one
another, is well taken, as is his reminder of B's empirical rigour, and his
remark that 'capital' is not just a solve-all. The force of the different
'legitimation structures' he speaks of, structures which underwrite the
dominant social reality, and the institutions which back up those claims to
legitimation (the British navy implied in the Royal Academy), hadn't
occurred to me. Nor did I properly see, I think, the relationship between
habitus and field as a relationship between the subjective space of
cultural production and the objective space of positions--the space of
aesthetic consumption, which is obviously comprised of the subjectivities
of cultural producers (?), thus generating and being generated by the
habitus. 

>From the point of view of interart relations, Carsten's point that the main
tenets of the intellectual part of the habitus are likely to be common to
both painters and novelists with common social backgrounds, is, again,
something I need to consider when setting about analyzing what he describes
as the expression of the intellectual habitus through the medium of the
space of possibles of different cultural forms. It seems that they are
distinct fields, but, as Dennis writes, their distinctness is mediated
through different institutions all tied to the one overarching power
structure.

Sorry to frame all this in the awkward third person, but I couldn't think
of any other way of summarising. And thanks again to everyone.

Tim
Dr Tim Dolin
The Department of English
The University of Newcastle
Callaghan NSW 2308
Ph: 61 2 49 215176
Fax: 61 2 49 216933
eltpd-AT-cc.newcastle.edu.au
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