Date: Mon, 19 Jul 1999 17:40:02 -0400
From: Ralph Dumain <rdumain-AT-igc.org>
Subject: Re: Bourdieu and Reformism: SOCIAL FORM & OBJECTIVE CONTENT


A while back this discussion was steering close to the intellectual core of
the problem, but since, it seems to be floundering somewhere in the waters
of vagueness, off the radar screen, awaiting rescue before its inevitable
drowning.  Ahem.

The place where it got the closest to the mark was someone's discussion of
form and content and some of the posts immediately preceding and following.
 I'm going to try to feel my way toward the logical core of the matter,
which has not yet congealed in this discussion.

There's something about Bourdieu's approach to habitus, field, and cultural
capital that works most smoothly when there is something in the object of
study that warrants suspicion.  Two corrolaries follow:

(1) If the legitimacy of the pretensions of the object of study is
sustainable, then can Bourdieu's approach really capture its essence?
(Examples: the objective truths revealed by natural science, the authentic
aesthetic content of a work of art)

(2) When one applies Bourdieu's own notions reflexively to Bourdieu
himself, must this not engender suspicion as to the basis of Bourdieu's own
social position and cultural capital?

In addition, I would like to highlight further questions: How would our
perspective change, were we to begin an investigation from other
presumptions, that:  

(1) the success in an elite-oriented class society of an objectively
revolutionary theory is as explainable by the logic of the system as the
success of a theoretical framework that apologetically upholds the hegemony
of the ruling class;

(2) that "reflexivity" might itself be questioned as a value, as a
guarantor of accountability and the search for truth, as the highest stage
in the pursuit of truth or the critique of ideology;

(3) that the social form, i.e. institutionalization, of Bourdieu's work be
sharply distinguished from its intellectual content, and further, that the
logical distinction between content and social form be emphasized in
Bourdieusian studies of all other cultural phenomena.

I could go even further, but first I want to make sure these fundamental
points are understood.

Also, for the newcomer to this list who is militantly opposed to the
hogging of knowledge by academic experts: I've raised this issue from time
to time, as no one is more hostile to academia than I.  However, the fact
that we autodidacts can acquire books and read them outside of any official
institutional context must imply a potential distinction between the
objective content of the work and its institutionalization.  I've not been
apprised of the possible crimes committed by either the French or British
or American academic institutionalization of Bourdieu, but as a free-lance
reader of some of his texts, I've gotten the initial impression  that he
(if not his anglophone disciples) is on my side.


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