Date: Wed, 19 May 1999 01:12:47 +0300
From: Nikos Gousgounis <ngousg-AT-itel.gr>
Subject: Re: The content and the context


At 08:13 PM 5/18/99 +0100, you wrote:
>Oh, please, let's end with this 'celebrity' and 'morbid curiosity' talk.
>What do you mean by a 'celebrity'? Of course he's not a 'Hollywood'
>celebrity, but of course he's an 'intelectual' celebrity, one of the great
>european intellectuals. What is this list for? Let me tell you: celebrating
>his intellectual celebrity. We are just 'reproducing' it.
>
>The rationale behind your distinction is: "well, for the celebrities you
>may have a morbid interest for their private life, but for the serious
>guys, well, that's a taboo! Just matters what they wrote and produced". I'm
>sorry, but :
>
>1=BA I cannot draw a boundary between the Bourdieu 'intelectual' and Bourdieu
>'man': I think that Jen Webb has made it clear - my intellectual admiration
>for Bourdieu's work means that I am emotionally tied to him. Until now (i'm
>only 22), Bourdieu has been the sociologist and intellectual that
>contributed more for my intellectual formation - so if he dies, I die a
>little bit with him. If you know a 'magic' solution to separate the
>'intellectual' admiration from the 'emotional' admiration, please tell me.
>
>2=BA  you cannot draw a boundary between an author's private life and an
>author's work. Why is the family life of the artists and intellectuals
>(more divorces, less children) much more unstructured than the family life
>of the university professors (more children, lesse divorce - as Bourdieu as
>shown us in 'Homo Academicus', english translation, p.36-37)? Why did
>Anthony Giddens wrote 'Modernity and Self-Identity' after three years in
>psychological therapy due to his second divorce? Why are the biographies of
>Louis Althusser (in his case, auto-biography) and Michel Foucault so
>important? Why are some of the most brilliant thinkers of our century
>passed long moments of their lives in psychiatric asylums (Althusser,
>Foucault, but also Weber, for example) or died using so radical methods
>(Poulantzas or Deleuze, who commited suicide')? Are this uninteresting
>questions? I think they are astonishingly revealing.
>
>Returning to Bourdieu - this is obviously a speculation, but: can't a
>possible (serious) illness of Bourdieu - or simply his ageing process - be
>related to the turning of his strategy as an intellectual, more engaged and
>with more public and medicatic visibility than he enjoied during his past
>professional career? Or that is just the 'logical' product of his 'purely'
>intellectual trajectory, from the margins to the center of the field
>(position that he obviously denies - the Swartz book has one or two
>references on this point, Bourdieu seeing himself as an outsider...)?
>
>This questions are sociological, not the result of gossiping or 'morbid
>curiosity'. If they sometimes overlap, that is probably because in every
>meddler is a potential sociologist.
>
>Yours,
>
>Hugo Mendes
>[ISCTE/Lisbon]
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>


Hugo is right AND PUTS VERY IMPORTANT QUESTIONS
to reflect in spite of his young age. I agree to his points and I have to add
that sometimes some ilnesses are made out of the intellectual condition of their
subjects especially if they happen to be intellectuals. Cancers and circulatory
problems are related to this intellectual condition. If that is the case
with B.
then the point of Hugo gains further importance and we all have to think again
once more on the role that certain intellectuals have played or are still
playing
to our post-modernity. I believe that the intellectual work of a person is the
reflection of his/her everyday life or personal life-style.

Nikos


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