From: S.Pines-Martin-AT-iaea.org
Subject: RE: Games, Wittgenstein and the Logic of being too long-winded fo
Date: Fri, 26 Feb 1999 13:59:39 +0100


Hello, Emrah. I really appreciate your "academic" reply to my comments. Now
I think I understand a bit better what's eating you. The following is also
not an attempt to refute or argue against you but, as with you, an exercise
in "clarifying my thoughts". (Again interminably long-winded. Sorry!!!)

You observe that Bourdieu

	seems not to believe
	that the ordinary agent not illuminated by the theory of genetic
	structuralism can be effectively self-reflexive. From time to time
he
	talks about the interviewing sociologist's "intervention" where s/he
	forces the interviewee to reflect on things never thought of. Or PB
also
	talks about the role of the social scientist (which I really
appreciate),
	exposing what is going on in the fields, thus creating a
counter-power
	group over repressive measures of capital or of state. However, the
	privileges of "enlightening" and "self-reflexivity" seems to belong
to the
	social scientist. The "layman/laywoman", although not an automaton
(that
	is very clear for me), is not recognized in Bourdieu as "resistant".


I can only agree with you. I also feel this aspect of Bourdieu's rhetoric
can be an obstacle for developing a more ample "technique" for  action, to
be applied by many more people than those privileged to approach the social
world as a spectacle and who then, having gotten terribly upset about doing
just that, perform "socioanalysis" on their interviewees. You further argue
that

	When resisting, I
	will of course use the properties that mark me as dominated, that is
my
	"identity"; but that is not all I have, I elaborate, I respond, I
react, I
	plan, and I can do these despite my habitus as it is inscribed inits
form
	that marks me as dominated. Moreover, I do not resist only to claim
aloud
	my properties, for example, I do no resist racism only to say "black
is
	beautiful", or I do not resist heterosexism only to comfortably
continue
	my life as a gay, and so on. I also resist to "change", to
"transform", to
	"revolutionize" what marks me dominated, so that no one will benefit
of
	suffer from what the field does anymore. PB very easily gets rid of
the
	Marxian formulization of resistance.   
	  
I agree entirely; only the last sentence gets stuck sideways down my mental
stomach(?). I would say: Bourdieu does not get rid of the Marxian
formulation of resistence but rather of the Marxian *teleology* of
resistance and the "magic of words" with which it is spun. To clarify, let
me jump a few parragraphs up your email; you say

	he does not focus on some of the possible future
	trajectories of action,"in which received structures of thought and
action
	may be creatively configured in relation to actors' hopes, fears,
and
	desires for the future" 

A passage from Calhoun's "Critical Social Science" (also in his contribution
to the volume "Bourdieu: Critical Perspectives") comes to my mind:
"Bourdieu's theory is at its best ... as a theory of reproduction, and at
its weakest as a theory of transformation. In this it shows its
structuralist (perhaps even functionalist) roots". I have a problem with
this. When people speak of "resistance", "popular culture", etc., I get the
impression that they read things between lines where I only see blank
spaces: I simply don't get the point. Isn't Bourdieu's theory of
"reproduction" a theory of "transformation", precisely because of the
emphasis it puts on the diachronic nature of social structure, i.e., in
reality and as a crucial element to be taken into account by every
empirically adequated model?

Perhaps you can help me here because, honestly and quite seriously, I have
tremendous difficulties understanding this common critique to Bourdieu,
i.e., that he does not account for transformation, resistance, etc. All of
the following probably express only my lack of understanding:

I think that there is here an epistemological problem which bears both upon
sociology as empirical science and as critical theory (and it should be,
indisociably, both): from the vantage point of empirical science it seems
impossible to *predict* social developments --we haven't really identified
any historical laws-- although to name them sometimes does the trick (the
magic of words): what we say must happen comes to happen (more or less). As
for critical theory, it seems to me that it cannot be sufficiently critical
if it is not seriously informed by its other aspect, as empirical science.
Hence the consequence of this lack of predictability would be for the
critical theory aspect: that there is more critical potential, or efficacy,
to *negation* than to affirmation; to point out to how structures of
domination are *reproduced* is both more sober and realistic than to claim
that we must, regardless how, affirm some coming state of affairs as
something inevitable, following some law as if by necessity. To know how,
and that, it is reproduced sharpens our attention, hence makes action more
critical (of itself and of the situation). Of course one can (or should)
argue, polemically, ethically so to say, for how things should be, for a
world entirely different and opposed to what is actually existing. Yet the
moment this steps beyond the moment of critical negation of the existing and
enters the moment of reified anticipation, this is already at a distance
from a social science theory, strictly speaking, isn't it? Do we need to
state, quasi- or pseudo-scientifically, how things will be in the future in
order to *act*? I can understand that this has a psychological appeal, but I
wonder how necessary or good it is. (Note: it just happens that I have been
recently reading a book by Gavin Kitching, "Marxism and Science: Analysis of
an Obsession", who, incidentally, draws a lot on Wittgenstein in order to
repudiate the understanding of Marxism as a natural science, with laws,
causality and what not; perhaps you might find it interesting.)

As I see it, the problem with seeking ways of formulating what is to come,
or what is to be done so that it, whatever, will come (in contrast to the
critique of what actually is and of its reproduction despite all appearances
and intentions) ties in with Bourdieu's analyses of the "magic of words",
the "rites of institution". As if it sufficed to pronounce a
reality-that-is-to-come (by teleological necessity, in Marx) in order that
it come-to-be, that it *exist*. This is tricky, as the historical influence
of Marx's work reveals. To pronounce "class", this historical substance of
sorts, *has* "sufficed" for it to come into existence (of course not out of
the blue, there were preconditions...). This has positive and negative
effects. To pronounce communist society as inevitable teleological
reality-to-come has made that reality come to pass - but, in many (though
certainly not all) of its moments, what a reality! If we strip Marx of all
pretense to natural scientific laws and keep the *polemics*, the actual,
practical resistence: what do we really loose? Or better: what do we *gain*?
I say to myself: beware of the magic of words: the root of many insidious
forms of ideology and symbolic violence; and yet simultaneously: be free to
deploy that common deposit for strategic symbolic articulation as you like!

Personally: I accept the form of "censure" that the specific field of
(social) science imposes and must impose as a condition for "universality"
(as Bourdieu argues in his Meditations Pascaliennes) -- yet when it comes
down to real, concrete practice, when I reach my personal grounds, beyond
personalism, all I feel is: some passion or another. (I say this in
connection with your sentence: "present-oriented, creative action
relatively-independent of what is symbolically imposed on the agent"). At
that nexus of social being I am unashamedly mythopoetic, (relatively)
uninhibited to think as thought may come, to use what may feel appropriate
to the course of this emotional flow of reason or reasoning flow of emotion,
and to discard whatever repels it. And from there I act, and from there
words flow, symbolic strategies develop without strategic reflection or
intention. At this level, intellectual, or theoretical, or academical
considerations appear to me false, hateful and devious (and I like to
understand Bourdieu's comment "I do not like the intellectual in me" in this
sense). But passion is as much a mischievous thing as is intellectualism.
Although intellectual constraint, which enables a bracketing of time and
thereby a "cold" objectivation, is something which passion natively sets
itself against, plainly because from its own point of view any such distance
seems false, an entirely contemptible relation to real life, its immediate
necesities ("reality"), its urgency (for liberation, opposition, freedom,
action), despite this, it is itself not for that reason the less guided by
an intellectual --or intelligible if you like-- appreciation of its
circumstance, towards which it relates, as passion. (And conversely:
although intellectual work puts a check on the distorting effect of one's
passions, it is not for that reason the less guided by their like.) Hence
the tricky balance between intellect and passion is more an art than a
theory - right? With what right then do we demand that Bourdieu offer us
anything of that sort?!?

My best regards,
Sergio
"En mi soledad he visto cosas muy claras que no son verdad"
(='In my solitude I have seen very clear things which are not true')
Antonio Machado


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