File spoon-archives/bourdieu.archive/bourdieu_2000/bourdieu.0001, message 25


From: "Simon Beesley" <simonb-AT-beesleys.freeserve.co.uk>
Subject: Re: comprendre
Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2000 21:36:39 -0000


Dennis,

>>I hang out with grad unionists who don't have a whole lot of time to feel
>>sorry for their multiple exclusions from the academy (for gender, culture,
>>national identity, a lousy job market, and a thousand other things), but
>>do have time to support each other and discuss and think through theory,
>>because they understand from long experience that you need that stuff to
>>fight The System -- and win. To psychologize theory away as a mere elite
>>game, which we needn't bother about because, after all, the real action is
>>elsewhere, fatally underestimates multinational capitalism and the
>>importance of what we do. The Battle of Seattle was fought on cellphones
>>and ISPs; the class struggles of the new century are going to require more
>>theory, not less. Aux armes, Web-travailleurs!


If I declare my position as someone not working in university, does it
follow that I feel excluded from the Academy? I can assure you that I and
the 99% of other secular graduates are not eaten up with envy. It would be
very peculiar if anyone over the age of 25 --  in my experience unheard
of -- reasonably happy in their profession were to feel discontent because
they have not achieved success in another profession. Not, of course, that I
want to detract from the prestige and charisma of your own dizzy postion as
Teaching Fellow at a minor US university.

Snideness apart, the implication of your reply -- and most strikingly of
your tone with its marked note of academic amour propre -- seems to be that
people outside of the university have no right (or time) to think and
discuss the ideas that emanate from the university. The idea of using
Bourdieu's concepts to fight the System and win seems to me as fantastical
as F.R. Leavis's notion of turning English departments into "liason centres"
for the preservation of high literary culture (and I am a great admirer of
Leavis). You probably recall that Leavis liked to say "philosophers are
always weak on language". He could as well have said that literary theorists
are always weak on philosophy (theory). Far from psychologizing theory away
as a mere elite game, I am simply restating Bourdieu's implicit and explicit
attitude to theory in the humanities. The objection is not to theory per se
but to its low-grade, diluted and homogenised quality; that is, to the too
promiscuous way theorists (from your neck of the woods) have with theory.

Call it theory, philosophy, or concrete thinking ... whatever. I have put
forward an argument (or at least a consideration): you have replied with
speciousness and sophistry; in a phrase, bad argument. "the real action is
elsewhere, fatally underestimates multinational capitalism and the
importance of what we do". Get real. Are you not aware of how you sound?
Can't you hear the note of midget grandiloquence and grandiosity in
"importance of what we do"?

I hope this helps

- Simon


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