Date: Fri, 10 Dec 1999 02:22:34 +0000 (GMT)
From: Jon Beasley-Murray <spn037-AT-abdn.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: habitus


On Thu, 9 Dec 1999, bourdieu-digest wrote:

> Date: Thu, 9 Dec 1999 16:17:05 +0100 
> From: S.Pines-Martin-AT-iaea.org
> Subject: RE: habitus
> 
> I had just written a
> very long post; I tried to explain in utter detail why casual talk about the
> who and what (when not the who's who) of habitus should be rejected --as a
> matter of principle. [...]  Further, I had tried to clarify Bourdieu's
> relation to "the subject" by
> refering to the last page of the introduction to Sens Pratique, where he
> speaks of his eminently *critical* "contribution to the construction of
> something like a subject" .
> But I am not sending that post because I get the impression that it falls on
> deaf ears. 

Oooh, S.Pines, don't be a tease; send us the post.

I'm mostly going to sit back, listen, and think for a little while, but as
I think I need a clarification of your criticism of me:

> And then Jon Beasly-Murray agrees with
> me, rightly points out that there is always a kind of "feedback" and
> "feedback loops", but goes on to speak in causal terms of the habitus'
> "production of people". But as Emrah very well says, "Habitus does not
> "generate" person ontologically".

Can I just confirm that you mean to write "causal" rather than "casual" (a
possible confusion partly suggested by the fact that you earlier (also?)
reject casual talk).  Of course, my problem could be *both* casualness
*and* causality, but I'd like to know.

Meanwhile, I think I understand better what Karl Maton's concerns are (and
they seem to relate to these questions of ontology, but I could be wrong
there also); but later, later... Still, I can't resist one comment.

> 	>"Habitus is my body, habitus is me, habitus is structure embodied"
> I hate the word "revelation", and I am queasy about Bourdieu's insistence on
> a necessary "conversion of world view". 

Your reaction to this statement of Emrah's (and in fact much of the
following part of your message) simply reinforces my initial impression
that this is mysticism, some kind of gnostic chant...  Prove me wrong. 
I'm all ears (hopefully not too deaf). 

> But at times you just can't find a
> better word. There is indeed something like a "revelation" in grasping the
> social dimension of "my body, me", as "structure embodied". The "revelation"
> is not exclusively intellectual: it is also highly personal, somatic. And
> yet again something is "revealed" here only through an unfolding of the
> understanding, through some intellectual symbolism capable of grasping the
> situation in an objectifying manner. The genius in Bourdieu's writing is to
> convey both necessities --the necessity for a (personal, subjective)
> conversion of viewpoint, and the need to unfold an intellectual symbolism
> capable of grasping social realities in disregard of our proclivity to think
> exclusively in terms of subjects. But the latter capacity to disregard
> subjectivity is absolutely *useless* and leads to abstraction if it is not
> deployed together with the viewpoint on the social world that was gained
> through a very *personal* "conversion of world-view", i.e., *in practice*.
> The interconnections between objectivist and subjectivist viewpoints on
> social reality, which Bourdieu argues are both necessary and must always be
> interlinked, is not exclusively a question of theory, but of actual,
> concrete, real practice. Of course it has to do with "real people"!!
> 	>So you do not LOSE the 
> 	>good old subject, you just, following the French tradition of
> philosophy of 
> 	>science, "build a better, more realistic explanation which breaks
> with 
> 	>quick, non-reflexive, commonsensical interpretations" of the
> subject.
> Bachelard says somewhere that "A discovery on the objective side immediately
> implicates a correction on the subjective side. If the object teaches me, it
> transforms me. The most important benefit that I expect from the object is a
> spiritual transformation." Bachelard is speaking in the context of modern
> physics and so on, but Bourdieu seems to have caught on to it in his own
> social-science way. If there is a subjective, personal conversion of world
> view, it is because an objective reality has "taught me something"; and I
> aim to learn more about that reality for the benefit of an ulterior
> correction on the subjective side, hence, for a transformation in my
> outlook.
> The whole point in rejecting questions concerning the who and the what of
> habitus is to favour this dynamic kind of learning-through-objectification.
> But we are not "abandoning the subject"!
> 
> "The greatest pleasure is to swing back and forth between extroversion and
> introversion in a spirit that has liberated itself from the slavery of the
> object and the subject" -- says Bachelard. That's what makes Bourdieu's
> theory a pleasure to read (and for the lucky ones who can: to practice).

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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