From: "kent strock" <sigmund5-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: RE: Rules of functioning
Date: Sun, 21 Nov 1999 20:22:09 PST


S Pines,

I will begin with a concillitory note. i don't think there is much 
difference between what we are saying and I agree.  I do have to question 
how much of the thread you might have read previous to the posting you were 
remarking on.  Unfortunately its property of this medium.  I was in no way 
suggesting that one try to master Bourdieu's texts and agree with you 
completely on the integration of reading and "personal"socioanalysis, this I 
think has been going on in the posts that lead up to this.  The post I was 
responding to was a diatribe by  a person who a.)hadn't kept up with the 
thread and reacted to a small point by claiming some moral political 
highground in the name of Bourdieu, without entertaining the complexity and 
need to examine certain embodied dispositions which are the stuff of a 
scientific habitus that creates spontaneous sociology. b.) she claimed to 
have only read Reproduction.  That was the conditions within which I 
responded and tried to work out the second moment of socioanaylsis which you 
claim is so essential and which I agree with.

      Your tone of calling what I write garbage and your critique of my 
writing style I think is contrary to what you write below and against the 
spirit or Bourdieu when he writes in Logic about leaving the traces of 
production in the texts. Hey we all have time constraints etc. and because 
my writing style may vary from yours, given a different disciplinary 
background I don't see the need to call it garbage, maybe misunderstanding 
is more appropriate.  And since when did this become a forum for evaluating 
people's writings..its discussion not a forum for polished conferences.
Maybe there were parts that were clear in that I took certain 
liberties...sorry. In chastising me for spewing emotional garbage, the 
begining of your posts certainly is not lacking in that area. I don't want 
to claim to be an expert, tho in making claims at certain point one must 
make points in Writing, as Derrida says  that are always violent, yet if you 
read or had bothered to quote other excerpts of the post you would see that 
certain provactive statements, were refined and put under easure, in that I 
took what her post had to offer and made suggestions and observations or 
things to considering her lack of reading more than one book by Bourdieu  
Your taking certain comments out of context of the post and the thread I 
find to be "garbage".  But what is most problematic is in your use of 
critiqueing ME, you set up this false opposition: either you read everything 
and have mastery or just the fuck up.  Which was not my point AT ALL.  My 
point was that she seriously misread the post she was responding to and she 
was making ridiculous accusations, not discussion or taking what he had to 
say in good faith and thinking about it.  It was devoid of the rudimentary 
"ethics" or provisions of Bourdieu's work and the "spirit" which I think you 
describe quite well in the rest of your post.  Which I generally found to be 
though provoking and not far from my position.
    Again I am not calling for certification of amounts of reading, and I 
agree with the two-faced aspect of Bourdieu's work. Unfortunately I see in 
my experience of reading work that takes Bourdieu a tendency to pull him out 
by the roots.  yes the scientific habitus is reformed, "improved" etc by the 
back and forth between the empirical and reflexive.  But the reflexive is 
given short change in two respects. One is that its way too often ignored in 
favor of the empirical. Secondly, Reflexiveness requires close scrutinty of 
the concepts we use so that they don't become part of the normalized 
vocabulary of a Spontaneous Sociology which reifies a naturalized world. 
Reflexiveness is not merely a kind of liberal, protestant or even marxist 
observation of ones position in the social structure or a subjective "soul 
searching"(again see Reflexive).  I was not nor am I calling for theoretical 
reason, but recognition of the larger context which Bourdieu clears for his 
project and his relation to other thinkers and their practices or the ones 
they promote. B. project is more expansive and based on a historical and 
philosophical rupture that sets him apart and requires(ethically or 
pragmatically) a different form of reading than that accorded others.
    So yes in my posts here it may appear that I have favored one over the 
others. But in the midst of the lived and just doing practice, i see way too 
little attention paid to the "philosophical" reflexive aspects of his 
work-particularly in the published use of his work by "professional" 
academics in America. (as a side note I found the purely philosphical 
treatment of Bourdieu I have/had no intention of scaring off beginers who do 
need to read the more empirical works, I think it is the best way to 
understand Bourdieu and that is how I practice him when I teach.  But in 
looking at the social science field in general, I think it should be time to 
integrate his larger project into a more empirical project by the time one 
wants to publish.  Again, there is way too much, pulling his concepts out by 
their roots for the sake of displaying cultural capital or for the sake of 
more and more production of mediocre work.  Work which only reproduces the 
logic of the field.  Unfortunately, from my perspective, the American Social 
Science field in its educational aspects does not provide the philosophical, 
literary, and theoretical tools for appreciating how Bourdieu relates his 
work to others. This requires close textual and philosophical work, which 
the field doesn't really allow in terms of time and the rewards/capital 
attached to the publish or perish mentality.
I should stop now. what criteria do you use to determine scientific 
language?
sincerely
kent

>From: S.Pines-Martin-AT-iaea.org
>Reply-To: bourdieu-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
>To: bourdieu-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
>Subject: RE: Rules of functioning
>Date: Thu, 18 Nov 1999 12:39:10 +0100
>
>I find the ceaseless insistence on how much one READS Bourdieu repugnant; 
>it
>is more interesting to see how people actually apply him. And if somebody
>has hardly read him and asks a question: what is so strange, upsetting, or
>out of place in this?
>
>	>I am sorry if I was offensive and had a knee-jerk reaction.  ...
>	>I think that your lack
>	>of reading of some of B. texts, such as Reflexive Sociology and
>Logic of
>	>Practice, which suggests another view of the political, in his
>attack on
>	>Spontaneous Sociology, ...
>
>Kent: In what concerns most of your postings, I am not exactly amazed by
>their "scientific" quality, nor do I see in what way they break or help to
>break with "Spontaneous Sociology", as you so grandly pretend.
>
>	>I am sure several people
>	>think I should or should have followed in the past, know when to
>hold your
>	>tongue...
>
>I take it that holding one's tongue is a first step towards reflexivity and
>avoiding projecting one's mental garbage all over the place. I also think 
>it
>might help to improve one's style of writing.
>
>What happens when we first read, and then re-read and re-read, Bourdieu's
>works? Among other things, one picks up the subtle kind of censure that he
>produces against giving free, unreflexive, reign to one's social drives to
>expression (whose result is "spontaneous sociology"); and one grasps how
>this censure, coupled with careful observations on social reality, can
>enable an insight into aspects of our social unconscious. To an extent,
>Bourdieu aims with his concepts not so much at discursive theory but at
>presenting "so many programs for research", his books having to be read 
>more
>like gymnastics handbooks for experimentation, etc. And the fascinating
>thing about Bourdieu is that his texts are very cleverly set up to induce
>the reader to incorporate that attitude towards experimentation, 
>observation
>of the most diverse aspects of social practice, offering a series of
>concepts that help to coordinate those experiences in striking ways. As a
>result, the reader might suddenly obtain some almost intoxicating insights
>into his/her social being, perceptions, actions, manners of thought,
>frustrations, aspirations, ideologies, and perhaps even illumination on 
>some
>entirely forgotten or unknown aspect of one's social being that suddenly
>explains much about one's present being in the world. I think this makes
>Bourdieu's work especially attractive for many people.
>I take Bourdieu's claim that "every sociological analysis should
>simultaneously become a socioanalysis" as saying that the social-science
>field should ideally derive its autonomy and internal logic from a 
>two-sided
>activity, whose two sides should indissociably be interconnected: 1)
>interest in universal statements about, or objective analyses of, human
>social realities, coupled with 2) objectifying subjects' reflexive interest
>in the social history and forces that objectively determine their own
>various social pulsions and the structure of their social unconscious at
>various points, which an objectifying science of the social can sometimes
>help to reveal, but which it can just as often help to blindly conceal.
>Bourdieu's general tone is polemical because he conceives a social science
>as having to idiosyncratically be, by its intrinsic logic, polemical. For 
>if
>the reflexive, subjectively liberating drive to knowledge (this
>"contribution to the construction of something like a subject") is coupled
>with the objectifying ethos of a science, then there is bound to be an
>unending polemics of knowledge, a ceaseless work on, and thence a constant
>transformation in the values obtained by, the subject and object of
>knowledge.
>Good. Then I think that one can do three different things with Bourdieu's
>work:
>1)  If one is in the business of doing science, then one will carry out
>concrete research and seek to apply Bourdieu's programs for observation and
>analysis in relation to specific problems, reproducing or critically
>altering Bourdieu's insights in the light of these experiences; one will
>probably also seek to reflect on the social circumstances that structure
>one's perceptions and interests from the start, and which affect the course
>of inquiry (and anthropologists faced with stark experiences of social
>dislocation are especially forced to confront and perchance to inquire into
>this);
>2) if one is not in the business of doing science but wishes to prolong
>those "socioanalytical" insights into one's social being, one can continue
>to read Bourdieu and his critics/commentators, etc., carefully observing
>social reality and one's movements in/through it -the result of such work
>will not be discourse but silence, for it should be entirely clear here 
>that
>the target of analysis is one's own personal states of mind, of social
>being. The aim is not a scientific work of objectification but rather a
>cross between moral action and awareness-enhancement in social gymnastics.
>To oversee this -which means: to think that in this way one is gaining some
>special scientific insight into social reality - and to break one's silence
>is conducent to "self-complacent narcisism", for one would only be talking
>about oneself, under the cloak of the objectifying language that one has
>learned to parrot from Bourdieu's texts. Which leads us to the next point:
>3) There is what I call the "sorceror's apprentice": totally intoxicated by
>the insights gained in reading Bourdieu's work, our Don Quixote feels he 
>has
>gained a special standpoint on reality, he feels he has become initiated,
>has undergone a veritable "conversion in world view". The sorceror's
>apprentice will rapidly reproduce Bourdieu's sociological censure, but in a
>pitiful and ridiculous way: he will only commune with the initiated, and
>haughtily exclude those who don't breakfast, lunch and dinner with
>"habitus", "social field" or "symbolic capital". He will try to be polemic
>and to produce a field's censure -but in totally inadequate ways. Why?
>Because the darling object of our sorceror's apprentice is none other than
>his own shriveled ego, whose fears and desires he projects around himself
>with planetary ambitions. There is no real work here at scientific
>objectivity, at a genuine reflection. It is all pretence at building up a
>group of initiates that feel capable of transforming the world because they
>feel they are the world; and because they feel that they have undergone a
>radical transformation they also feel that they have already began to
>transform the world. It becomes a sacred mission of sorts. It is all an
>obsession with reading and re-reading Bourdieu, the sorceror's apprentice
>trying to get the key to what -in end effect-- he feels is a powerful and
>empowering magic.
>Earnestly: I so often meet people who have read Bourdieu and who are 
>nothing
>but sorcerors' apprentices. They feel they have a clue as to something
>quasi-magical. "Habitus, habitus" - as if one were talking about something
>special and esoteric. But there isn't much to that concept; it's not so 
>hard
>to understand. What is hard is to *apply* it concretely in a scientific
>practice - or if one isn't in the business of doing science, then in the
>reflexive analysis of one's social circumstance. It makes no difference how
>much nor how hard you READ Bourdieu. Someone who reads him a lot is in no
>better and no worse position than someone who does. Nor do I believe that
>someone who has read Bourdieu has better chances at becoming aware of the
>unconscious social mechanisms of his/her habitus than somebody who hasn't.
>In fact, I could well imagine that reading Bourdieu can hinder that kind of
>awareness, especially when one is filled with religious awe upon reading 
>his
>work and goes off to play the sorceror's apprentice. I have often met
>extremely intelligent people who are anything but academics and who can
>hardly read, but whose awareness of social being is by far keener than that
>of those who actually encover it by having learned to say clever-sounding
>things about it.
>If one uses Bourdieu to unconsciously satisfy one's social pulsions, one
>talks a lot but realizes (and actually says) very little; but if you are
>struck by the fact that your social pulsions keep on getting in the way of
>an objectve understanding, then you start learning to keep silence; and,
>finally, if persevering in this kind of silence one has also had the
>opportunity to do research and obtain something like an objective
>understanding of a specific reality, then one will talk, but in a very
>different tone and with respect to some very specific issues. When this
>crucial activity, socioanalysis, is left out, then the difference between
>(apparently) sophisticated sociology and spontaneous sociology often boils
>down merely to their different choices of language; the apprentice may take
>up the robes of the sorceror, but he is only the greater fool.
>The sorceror's apprentice is not so intensely confronted with a *specific
>problem of social science*, which is always both theoretical and empirical
>and which can only be solved in practice; and neither his/her objective
>social position, nor the form that his/her subjective personal interests
>take with regard to these, encourage a special interest in genuinely
>objective knowledge. He/she is not especially motivated to give certain
>drives to expression a moment of reflexive silence in order to understand
>what they may conceal. The reason for this is that the sorceror's 
>apprentice
>is not attuned to, and does not expect, the kind of profit that is to be
>gained from taking interest in being disinterested, i.e., taking an 
>interest
>in doing objective science; the kind of profit to be gained from true
>scientific work. And if the sorceror's apprentice does not foresee this 
>kind
>of profit it is because he/she is not genuinely engaged in a genuinely
>scientific field of activity.
>There is a theatre director called Bobadella who says that with nationalism
>it is the same as with farts: the only people who have fun are those who 
>cut
>them. There is a difference between 1) drives to objective and reflexive
>knowledge genuinely interconnected, and 2) a de-coupling of these,
>manifested as a drive to expressive assertion of one's own social pulsions
>by means of the languange and general discursive structure of an
>objectifying science. And the difference between the former and the latter
>is noticeable in how people react to either: when the latter takes over the
>situation, people begin to get irritated, uncomfortable, they will insult
>one another. We simply get the feeling that somebody is getting a great 
>kick
>out of cutting farts.
>This ongoing controversy on who is allowed to ask things and who is not, 
>who
>has a right to speak or not, all in a function of one's accumulated
>Bourdieu-reading-capital: what is it but an attempt to produce a closure,
>one that resembles both nationalism and the fun one gets (and others do 
>not)
>in cutting farts?
>
>Amen
>
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