Date: Sun, 21 Nov 1999 08:32:50 -0500
Subject: Bourdieu, Subjects, and Althusser
From: "Nathaniel I. C=?ISO-8859-1?B?8w==?=rdova" <cordova-AT-wam.umd.edu>


Folks:

    Given the recent discussions in this list about appropriateness of
inquiries I start this post with some trepidation. Consequently, I offer the
following caveat:  I am just starting in my understanding of Bourdieu. I
have done some reading of his work (Language and S. P., Logic of Practice,
and other little bits I have found, interview with Eagleton, a piece on
habitus and structure, etc.) but truly have read more about him, than work
directly by him, and what I have read by him is not quite settled yet, which
I consider a good thing.  So, my inquiries here are not for an easy out, but
rather as a means of extending my understanding through conversation with
others engaged in the same process.

    I know last year a brief conversation ensued about Bourdieu and
subjects, agents, and actors. I have read the archives, but remain a bit
confused. I am trying to discern how Bourdieu sees this process of the
constitution of subjects (subjectivities). I believe it was in the Logic of
Practice that Bourdieu mentions that individuals need not always act as
subjects, that is from the position of subjects. I know he makes a
distinction between agent and actor, with agent being less "free" to choose
self-reflexively his/her actions. What I am truly interested in is whether
Bourdieu buys the ideological interpellation process posited by Althusser,
and to what extent. While Althusser is extremely deterministic in his
account, I see Bourdieu as wanting to move away from such an account.

Althusser also does not theorize much or well enough for me, what happens
after an interpellation has failed. For him the process is all or none, and
misses something rich there. Part of my interest is seeing whether Bourdieu
picks up after Althusser here. My understanding is that Bourdieu sees a
field not just as static structure but as a struggle for
positions/positioning. Thus, it seems reasonable to assume that there will
be a process of subjectification, that is of constituting subject positions
for others to adopt. But somewhere else I read that positions within a field
(for B.) are determined by the allocation of capital to actors. To what
extent can this allocation process be seen as an interpellative or
constitutive process imbuing the position with certain forms of capital that
create dispositions for such "subjects/agents/actors?"  At this point
subjects/agents/actors? are located in the field in particular ways bound to
act in accordance with a variety of dispositions but not necessarily
determined by those? Are these subjects/agents/actors also constantly under
interpellation or for B. I gather, positioning practices?

A next set of questions for me revolve around the notion of whether
positions should be looked at as identities. Or is it "postures" (having
more of an effect on the process of positioning in the field) that are
identities? Has anybody in the list commented on Stuart Hall's view of
identities as the suture point of ideological discourses and Bourdieu's
positions or "postures?" While I am clear on how the ideological discourse
approach theorizes the constant shedding and uptake of identities, I am
uncertain as to how Bourdieu theorizes this except for the possibility of
the production and exchange of forms of capital.

On pages 216-221 of Robert Paul Resch's "Althusser and the Renewal of
Marxist Social Theory" (Univ. of California Press, 1992)  Resch quotes
Bourdieu by stating that for B. individuals interpellated as subjects are
not so much determined by a set of rules as endowed with a social sense
(here he moves to Bourdieu --> "cultivated dispositions, inscribed in the
body schema and the schemas of thought, which enables each agent to engender
all the practices consistent with the logic of challenge and riposte, and
only such practices, by means of countless inventions, which the stereotyped
unfolding of ritual would in no way demand" (Bourdieu 1977, 15). This seems
to jive with my understanding of more flexibility for subjects, but I still
have the questions about how these subjects come to be and whither the
distinctions between subject, agent, and actor.

Well, enough here, I am just going on, but I would appreciate any responses
to help make this stuff a bit clearer and to see if others are seeing it the
way I am. Thanks for listening, and have a great day all.

NC
cordova-AT-wam.umd.edu

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