Date: Wed, 8 Dec 1999 10:25:49 -0600 (CST)
From: SHANK <aqbr96-AT-falcon.cc.ukans.edu>
Subject: RE: habitus


At one level, I must agree with Sergio when he questions whether an
individual can have a habitus and that the entire point of the concept is
to escape theories of the subject.  But I worry that to abandon the
concept of the individual or the subject is to swing too far in the
structuralist direction, becoming too objectivist and not retaining enough
of the subjectivist impulse that Bourdieu also claims.  Why would Bourdieu
write about Flaubert at all if the individual and the subject are not
"real" entities?  Of course, I agree with Jon that the habitus generates
the person, but only in articulation with specific fields.  Is the
person/individual/subject also a relational construct?  That can help us
to see the intersections of capital/habitus/field?  

One of the great pleasures that I find in Bourdieu is this insistence on
having both---both structuralist multi-causal determinations that evacuate
the subject and that are appropriately understood at the aggregate level
AND an interest in the subjective felt effects of those structural
determinations.  

Barry Shank
American Studies
University of Kansas


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