Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1999 14:51:27 +0000 (GMT)
From: Jon Beasley-Murray <spn037-AT-abdn.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: request and the keys to knowledge


[much of the following is a response to Ania, but I'm also trying to open
things out a little...  -jon]

On Mon, 15 Nov 1999, bourdieu-digest wrote:

> Date: Mon, 15 Nov 1999 21:46:49 +1000 (EST)
> From: Ania Lian <ania-AT-lingua.arts.uq.edu.au>
> Subject: Re: request
> 
> If knowers are those with richer reference framework for assessment of
> the reference logics/contexts which inform people's action then there is
> such a bibliography: it is called read not only more than just yourself
> but also those who read more than just themselves.

Can you explain this?  I mean, I get the first half of this sentence
(though the "richness" of any framework is and should always be the object
of struggle), but not the second half. 

> In my profession, Bourdieu does not exist: I dream of the time when he and
> other critical authors will be put as a must on the reference list. 

Why this dream?  I suppose that my own dream (and I sometimes think,
Bourdieu's) is rather more torn: between that of a time when there will be
no more "musts on the reference list" and between a time when the
reference list will be absolutely demystified.  (I think the two responses
I outlined earlier correspond to the two, contradictory, sides of this
programme: the strategic response encouraging a death to reference lists,
the cynical response working towards their demystification.)  

It is probable that your dream will be realized--at least, Bourdieu's work
has been put on the required reading lists of a remarkable number of
disciplines or sub-disciplines.  Mine won't, but I hope that this list
could work towards de-canonisation rather than the ever-rolling march of
canonisation.

> > seems to cry out for the cynical response.
> 
> Right, as I say: it is always easier to hit or insult than to be kind. The
> latter requires us to think from the perspective of another person about
> ways which they would find nice: a harder task than to say: idiots.

This is a complete mis-reading.  As I've said various times now, I don't
think cynicism is (in this case, at least) insulting or unkind; it's a
question of recognizing what the stakes are.

> > To
> > take knowledge strategically is to demand context (precisely the context
> > that is ignored or repressed in most educational systems, paradigmatically
> > in the exam or test system: your starter for ten will be "which are the
> > five most important books on art?").
> 
> Re-read my mail: is this what I asked? 

Re-read yourself.  Your request was (practically) contextless, just as
examinations present themselves as (practically) contextless.  I think
there's a problem in both cases and for similar reasons; do you not agree?

> This is what happens to people who get so bogged down into their own
> little corner that can't see past it: no I did not read things on theatre
> if only because theatre bores me, imagine that. 

I'm sorry that you feel bogged down in your own little corner; I suppose
that such are the constraints of time.  Though not all of the relevant
emails has "theatre" as the subject line--Deborah Stevenson particularly
kept on trying to provide more relevant subject lines.  In any case, and
on exactly the same lines as your own logic, I was trying to point you to
where I was coming from, to my own context or to the context helping to
determine my reading of your message, which was that of a discussion about
the mode of address on this list.  This context (my context, where I was
coming from) was fully available to you, unhidden, but you chose to ignore
it.

I have to say here as an aside, however, that I am torn again.  It's a
question of the limits of community, as has been discussed very recently
on this list.  I am not saying that you have to read all (or even, any)
Bourdieu to participate on the list; rather that the list would not
function if those who participated failed to read the list itself--it
would become the one-stop convenience store that Kent invoked.  On the
other hand, as others have suggested, the list is not so damned important
that we should be following it the whole time.  This is the delicate
balance (between list newbies and oldies) that is played out and
negotiated (and the cause of so many frictions) on such lists
continuously.

And then, it is so difficult to judge tone on these fora.  I feel that
Ania missed my tone (and my ironies) completely; and I'll bear some but
not all of the responsibility for that.

> my humble reading of Bourdieu tells me that to be a keeper is not enough
> to hold a key: people must believe that you do hold it. 

Ach yes, but you must first believe that there is a key.  My (whole?) 
point is the impossible one that a) there isn't one but that b) we always
(necessarily?) like to think that there is.

Another aside: it's this impossibility that provides one of the most
troubling points for me in Bourdieu's work.  He wavers, I think, between
1) the cynical (functionalist) view that there are socially determined
keys to socially determined knowledge; 2) the technocratic (scientific)
view that self-reflexive sociology provides some kind of objective key to
objective knowledge; and 3) a utopian (strategic and socialist?) desire
for there to be no key and no categorisation of "knowledge" over
"experience."  As I am not at all happy with the second of these three
possibilities, I am torn, as I said above (and before) between the first
and the third. 

> Ania Lian

Take care

Jon

Jon Beasley-Murray
Hispanic Studies
University of Aberdeen
jbmurray-AT-abdn.ac.uk
http://www.abdn.ac.uk/~spn037

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