Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 09:51:07 +0200 (EET)
From: Emrah Goker <egoker-AT-Bilkent.EDU.TR>
Subject: Re: Games, Wittgenstein and the Logic of the "Practical Logic"




Dear Andrew,

Thank you for your valuable comments! I'm gonna try to clarify my points,
in a way responding to you.

You write, concerning my remarks on "resistance":
> Did this question arise from a difficulty in accounting for change in a
> specific field in a historical moment of what you consider radical,
> transformative activity? 

My question, although I have difficulties in expressing myself here
clearly, arises from three consideraions on PB's whole project --which, in
fact, is remarkably useful, without criticisms, in understanding the
sociology of my own country, Turkey, today--: 1) Agency: I think that PB's
understanding og agency needs to be elaborated on the creative dimension
of action (more on this in my response to Sergio's post); 2) Resistance:
On this I expand below; 3) Practical logic: I am  trying to understand the
dialectic between cognitive processes and external --eg, socialization--
conditionings in the formation of practical logic within any field.

You continue:
> And I'm not sure what you mean by the "political
> field"--that field composed of agents actively involved in politics
> (electioneering, organizing, reporting, dallying with interns, etc.), or of
> the much broader interaction of the social body in its entirety with
> "political" questions? I ask because of my growing concern with the manner in
> which "resistance" is privileged in much current academic discourse. It seems
> to me that sometimes, as in Judith Butler's Excitable Speech, for instance, it
> is possible to critique someone (in this case PB) for not offering an account
> of how "resistance" could be mounted--without at the same time providing an
> extended account of how resistance has been mounted somewhere, sometime,
> somehow: wouldn't resistance necessarily have to be a phenomenon highly
> specific to the social world in which it occurs?

If I am not mistaken, PB talks about the "political field" --in Language
and Symbolic Power, for example-- in terms of "party politics". I believe
that his conceptual toolbox allows us also conceptualize a field of
"extra-party politics", of which he does not seem to talk much. I agree
with his criticisms of the closure and constraint party politics dictate
on agents, however, "resistance", if it could be "brought back in",
requires a broader and more complex field of politics. I do not yet know
"how" exactly, but I believe that methodological relationism can account
for (_contra_ Touraine's sociology) "new social movements" in a critical
(but not as pessimistic as PB) manner. 

I am not familiar with Butler's work, but I myself am highly critical of
the "popular is good" approach we find in mainstream Cultural Studies,
where resistance is fetishized (found everywhere, even in daily shoopping)
so that concerns about social justice and struggle is sacrificed. You are
quite right about wondering how and where is resistance mounted, here PB
has a point on criticizing Foucault that power is not so fragile, that
resistance cannot be everywhere. Yet I believe that in either at the
organizational or the personal level, resistance which undermines the
political field's conditionings in order to transform it, is possible
(perhaps even "actual" everywhere in the world, but not in terms of
revolution).

You finish by saying:
> Finally, maybe the most sustained account of
> "reistance" leading to "transition" in PB's work is in The Rules of
> Art--Flaubert does successfully change the literary field, for PB. I know this
> isn't "political," but perhaps you may find here at least a useful analogy.
> Andrew Haggerty

I have not read The Rules of Art, so I will follow your advise gladly. And
what Flaubert did or didn't, as far as I know from the Field of Cultural
Production, is  surely "political".

Best wishes,

Emrah GOKER


**********************************************************************
Contributions: bourdieu-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Commands: majordomo-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Requests: bourdieu-approval-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu