File spoon-archives/bourdieu.archive/bourdieu_1999/bourdieu.9907, message 117


Date: Tue, 20 Jul 1999 01:36:06 -0600 (MDT)
From: "Raymond V. Liedka" <liedka-AT-unm.edu>
Subject: Re: bourdieu-digest V1 #270


On Tue, 20 Jul 1999, Jon Beasley-Murray wrote:

> A friend and colleague of mine, Jeremy Lane, is writing a book more or
> less on this topic--and a very good book it will be.  
> 
> (Lane opens, incidentally, with a discussion of the fascinating and
> interwoven set of receptions that Bourdieu has had--praised as a Marxist
> as well as condemned as a Marxist; praised as an anti-Marxist as well as
> condemned as an anti-Marxist; praised as a postmodernist as well as
> condemned as a postmodernist; etc. etc. as well as all imaginable
> combinations...  certainly all things to all men; no doubt this is part of
> his appeal, in which case he shouldn't be forever complaining about how
> he's misread...  it's merely a sign that he's being read at all.) 
> 

Or merely a sign that B is, in crucial places, ambiguous and imprecise and
contradictory.  I have approached his work from mainstream American
sociology, and I have found much of his work a re-statement of themes that
are traceable to Max Weber, but re-stated in language that more closely
resembles Marxist terminology.  Perhaps this "restatement in a new
language" is more prevalent in the wider body of B's work, and it leads to
the "all things to all people" aspect.  

> While this means abandoning the fidelity to the master shown by some on
> this list (and also means perhaps abandoning even the question of "what
> does Bourdieu really think?"), this doesn't concern me overmuch.
> 

Agreed....the best lesson I ever received on reading the work of another
was this -- "Take what is useful to you in getting on with your own work"
-- which could have been easily followed by "and damnation to those who
feel you've somehow sinned."

ray


Raymond V. Liedka
Assistant Professor
Department of Sociology
University of New Mexico


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