File spoon-archives/bourdieu.archive/bourdieu_2000/bourdieu.0008, message 35


Date: Tue, 15 Aug 2000 16:38:45 -0400
From: Yves Gingras <gingras.yves-AT-uqam.ca>
Subject: Re: Robbins book--review


As a reply to my comment about "justified intellectuals", Simon wrote:
>Of course it doesn't mean anything literally. My point was to draw
>attention to
>the tone of Bourdieu's claim, to the gestural and performative aspects of some
>of his writings.

I find it very interesting that he admits that it "doesn't mean anything
literally", whereas I was suggesting that what Bourdieu said did mean
something specific that could be understood by taking his trajectory in the
French field into account.

Simon also wrote that  he is
>thoroughly familiar with Pascalian Meditations and the many dissembling
>prose gestures Bourdieu makes to cover his tracks. Not for a moment
>am I suggesting that he is insincere -- but once you concede that it is
>possible to approach Bourdieu's writings from this perspective (one partly
>prescribed by
>his own theory), the spectacle of successful  academics protesting a sense of
>unease at their own success can come to seem rather absurd and histrionic

I never suggested you were not "thoroughly familiar with Pascalian
Meditations" neiher was I talking about anybody being "insincere", for this
language is besides the point and I was simply suggesting to APPLY the
theory of habitus to Bourdieu instead of theorizing in the abstract about
"gamesmanship" or worst moralizing about  what is "absurd" or "histrionic".


Simons asks me:
>Would you agree that it is useful to talk of Bourdieu's analysis of
>academe (in
>Homo Academicus and elsewhere) as a theory of gamesmanship and strategy? Isn't
>this a very appropriate way of describing his exceptionally penetrating and
>illuminating account of the strategems, devices, ruses and so forth by which
>successful academics -- virtuoso players with a supreme 'sense of the game' --
>acquire distinction? Are you suggesting that Bourdieu himself is not adept at
>the logic of academic practice which he has done so much to chart and expose?
>Are you implying that we cannot apply his own theory to his own practice?

What I suggested implicitly with the comparison with Bouveresse was simply
to do a sociological analysis (no moral indignation or judgement) of
Bourdieu and his habitus: for example, taking into account the structure of
the French field in which he is part. Thus, Bourdieu is part of the French
field and acts accordingly.His trajectotry is psecific and his "ennemies"
are arounf him and he answers them in "the French way". One could analyse
along these lines the discussion about the absence of explicit citations to
"colleagues" in works like Foucault, Boudon, Derrida etc all "top" French
thinkers who are trained to think for themselves and who, from their
'chair', are above the others and not with them as we tend to do in North
American departments or our annual congresses where we can discuss with our
"top" colleagues from across the country or even from many countries. Can
you imagine a French congress of sociology in Paris where Bourdieu would be
on a panel with Boudon and Touraine?

But this is only an example.



Yves Gingras


Département d'histoire et
Centre interuniversitaire
de recherche sur la science
et la technologie (CIRST)
UQAM
C.P. 8888, Succ. Centre-Ville
Montréal, Québec
Canada, H3C 3P8
http://www.ost.qc.ca/


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