From: "Tobin Nellhaus" <nellhaus-AT-gis.net>
Subject: Re: "un"natural academic et al
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 1999 00:36:54 -0500


Hi Debbie--

Many thanks for the clarification/elaboration, which was helpful.  I
(still?) feel that there's a certain, hm, well it could be any number of
things--uncertainty? unclarity? prevarication? ambivalence?--well, a
"something" on your part, so I'll just point it out, say what I think, and
see where you go with it.  So to be concrete, your discussion of the female
executive (I'll leave it quoted below) sits uncertainly between being either
a generalized discussion of that social position within a social structure,
or being a discussion of a particular historically existing woman who
actually had the insights you attribute to her.  (Another possibility is
that she is meant to be emblematic or a "concrete universal" or somesuch,
but that basically folds into the first reading.)  Your phrasing of the
example (especially your use of the present tense) leaves me unsure which
you mean it to be; but as I see it, there's a world of difference between
the two interpretations.  If you are giving us what amounts to a
universalization, her insights appear to be intrinsic and necessary products
of her social location.  If you are giving us a specific historical
situation, then the meaning is more that her social background, current
location(s) and apparent trajectory made "a greater understanding of the
logic of the game" ***possible*** for her, that they are conditions of
enablement, but still not understandings that *anyone* in that social
location (etc) would necessarily draw.  I'm very much in favor of the latter
interpretation and see the former as deeply problematic.  My--guess?
suspicion? hope?--is that the latter is what you have in mind as well, and I
base this on some of your other comments: first,

> Regarding the notion that the most marginalized would be privileged
> epistemologically, I'd have to agree with Tobin, that this is "at best a
> kind of compensatory
> fantasy."  Unless, perhaps through a praxis of some sort, oppressed people
> developed a critical consciousness of the dominant standpoint and the
> experience of oppressed people in dialectic relation:  the double
> consciousness.

and then later

>                 So yes, it would be of value to look
> at someone whose habitus does not perfectly align with the logic of the
> field, as there is the potential for rupture.

These statements focus on the *possibilities* or *potentialities* that a
specific social location presents--but imply that actually achieving a
greater understanding or a rupture or whatnot is contingent on the
particular social actor's background, skills, and resources for "taking
advantage" of this "opportunity."  Thus while Flaubert, Baudelaire etc
accomplished what they accomplished, and were able to do so because their
"liminal" situation enabled those achievements, the fact remains that *most*
people in their social location(s) managed nothing of the sort.  That
reality has to be explained as well, and I think it could tell us a lot
about the dynamics of such locations.  The notion of "epistemological
privilege" just doesn't cut it on this score, which is one reason I take
exception to it in any form.

Still, one or two of your other comments point toward the "universal"
interpretation, for instance:

> This transcendence of the field is accomplished by those in the position
of
> dominated dominant

If you'd said that this is *frequently* or even *usually* accomplished by
[etc], I'd be a lot less cautious.  But I fully realize that email (like
other forms of conversation) is not terribly conducive to the precise
formulation of thoughts--especially at the end of a semester!  Anyway I'll
be interested in your response.

PS to Kay: I think some of us will *always* be new to this list.  After all,
like any other field it has (as you note) those within and those on its
borders.  The liminal latter certainly has its dangers, but also its
transformative possibilities.  So what the heck, challenge away!

Cheers & beers, T.

---
Tobin Nellhaus
nellhaus-AT-mail.com
"Faith requires us to be materialists without flinching": C.S. Peirce


> So, if Bourdieu's privileged epistemological position is that of dominated
> dominant, it is somewhat different from that which I read among some
> feminist standpoint theorists.  Or is it?  Let's refer back to the poor
> female executive, dealing with multiple subjectivity.  At the simplest,
she
> is both (feminist) woman and executive.  She comprehends the experience of
> dominated women who by virtue of gender and class in this particular case
> are victims of sexual harrassment, understands it to have potentially
> longlasting traumatizing material and psychological effects.  She knows
the
> everyday world of the sexual harrassment victim.  She also understands the
> dominant (and arguably male) structures of the corporation; how else could
> she have arrived in her position of power?  She knows the wariness of the
> corporation toward those (mostly women) who stir things up, accusing their
> (mostly male) superiors of behaviors that may have been misconstrued, made
> up, or furthermore the innocent products of a longstanding set of tacit
> rules of practice between men and women.  Feminist standpoint theorists
> like Dorothy Smith would say that because this female executive is both a
> good player of the game, and an occupier of a marginalized position in the
> game, she therefore has a greater understanding of the logic of the game;
> it is both natural and unnatural for her.


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