File spoon-archives/bourdieu.archive/bourdieu_1999/bourdieu.9907, message 17


Date: Wed, 7 Jul 1999 22:40:44 -0400 (EDT)
From: George Free <aw570-AT-freenet.toronto.on.ca>
Subject: Re: Bourdieu the "Top Guy"


On Wed, 7 Jul 1999, Victor Braitberg wrote:

> If the only acceptable terms of sociological
> debate are those which have been devised by Bourdieu than what are we left
> with? We are left with La pensee unique-- a totalizing framework of
> thought which is incapable of intering into dialgoue with thinking that
> differs from itself. Bourdieu's  apparent incapacity
> to recognize reasoned and well-informed disagreement with his
> understanding of social life suggests that as far as he is concerned he
> cannot be wrong unless of course he has misapplied his own method. 

But what are these "reasoned and well-informed disagreememts"? That is the 
question I am asking. And are they really so well reasoned?


> Bourdieu's authoritarian tendencies are, I think, abundantly clear in his
> Concluding Remarks: For a Sociogenetic Understanding of Intellectual
> Works-- his response to some  American critics.  In: Craig Calhoun
> Ed. Bourdieu:Critical Perspectives (Chicago:1993).
> 

I fail to see these "authoritarian tendencies." If I remember correctly,
in this response, he says its not worthwhile to address each of the
individual criticisms levelled against him, because they all stem from
basic misunderstandings which arise from the social situation of the
critics. By pointing out these social conditions, and how they give rise
to these misunderstandings, Bourdieu is doing the service of clarifying
the situation and preparing the ground for real dialogue. Far from being
authoritarian, it is "liberalizing" one might say, in the sense that it
helps establish the conditions of free discourse, and genuine exchange. 

To reverse the argument: it could be said that those who refuse to
consider the social and historical conditions that (nonconsciously)
determine their thought are the mystifiers, the enemies of reason and
of democracy. ...this is the basic claim of all "materialist" tendencies 
from Marx, to Freud and beyond, as I see it. 

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

   

Driftline Main Page

 

Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005