Date: Mon, 22 Feb 1999 12:47:08 +0200 (EET)
From: Emrah Goker <egoker-AT-Bilkent.EDU.TR>
Subject: Games, Wittgenstein and the Logic of the "Practical Logic"



Warning! This is an awfully long post. Sorry for that, but I wanted to
share my problems with you all.

For some while, I was having troubles in putting PB's concept of practical
understanding (or, practical logic, or, practical reason) in its place.
The question in my mind was (still is, anyway): Beginning from the
embodied agent --given that the dynamics of a political field can be
dramatically oppressive and constraining-- how can we politicize PB's
approach so that "resistance" is not an epiphenomenon of field dynamics
(from time to time PB treats it so) but a radical, transformative, action?
Brainstorming on this brought me (among others) to asking how
intelligible is practical logic as PB tells us, the "feel for the game",
the thing which usually hinders the questioning of its own "conditions of
existence" in everyday action. I am still unsure (or, confused?) whether
main Bourdieu texts elaborate on this.

Worse, I came upon an article by Theodore R. Schatzki, "Practices and
Actions: A Wittgensteinian Critique of Bourdieu and Giddens" in
_Philosophy of the Social Sciences_ (vol 27, no 3, pp 283-308). I omit
here his Giddens discussion. He basically criticizes Bourdieu's
formulation of the "practical logic". Schatzki has a more linguistic
approach to the question of rules, strategies, games implied by everyday
action or more structural issues. Following Wittgenstein, he calls
"representations" in, believing that PB's theory of action is
nonrepresentational. Although he acknowledges that a sociology of body
elaborates an original action theory where action is determined by
practical logic (and he admits that representational models lack this
"bodily" dimension), Schatzki does not believe that practical
understanding is formulable.

According to him, no definition can capture the numerous understandings of
"game": "At best, the intelligibility of proceeding in particular ways in
specific situations can be spelled out in detail, and general rules of
thumb about how to proceed in certain sorts of situation devised. These
rules of thumb, however, even more than putative definitions of _game_,
fail to anticipate how people go on sensibly in all situations in which
the rules (prima facie) apply" (p.296). He holds that offering a map of
action and expecting that map to govern practice cannot be backed
theoretically (then, talking about the reciprocal dependency of habitus
and practices is meaningless).

What he offers is the Wittgensteinian concepts of rules and
teleoaffectivity. I won't get into the details of his alternative. In sum,
he rejects ant causality between what is involved in "the _feel_ for the
game" and actual actions. 

Aww, this is becoming a very long and perhaps boring post. Now, I think
Schatzki exaggerates Bourdieu's notion of causality and his structuralist
overtones. And what he offers can comfortably be placed in a Lyotardian or
Rortian world of "free play", which would be an unthinkable sin for me
<smile>. Nevertheless, practical logic in Bourdieu seems to have
poorly-defined mental/psychological bases... And if Schatzki is right,
then my whole project (based on embodiment-habitus-field assumptions of
the political) collapses <sob>...

Am I on the wrong track? Or have I misunderstood both Bourdieu and
Schatzki?

Hope you did not fall asleep... Love to all,

Emrah GOKER
 

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