From: "Torgeir Fjeld" <tor-AT-macnet.co.za>
Subject: Discourses and positions
Date: Mon, 21 Aug 2000 17:38:14 +0200


Hello all,

At the risk of flogging a dead horse, I have an issue I would like to raise
with those of you who might be interested in analogies between Bourdieu's
texts/analysis and those of Laclau and Mouffe. Well, ehrm, that's what I'm
busy doing, and I stumbled into an issue I wondered if you would comment on.

Bourdieu says in the preface to Homo Academicus (thanks George!) that one
cannot "seek the source of the understanding of cultural productions in
these productions themselves, taken in isolation and divorced from the
conditions of their production and utilization, as would be the wish of
_discourse analysis_, which [...] has nowadays relapsed into indefensible
forms of internal analysis. Scientific analysis must work to relate to each
other two sets of relations, the space of works or discourses taken as
differential stances, and the space of the positions held by those who
produce them" (xvii).

He appears to make a case for a domain outside discourses here, a space
which appear to have relative dominance to the cultural field, a known theme
from i.e. Distinction. Laclau and Mouffe on the other hand, "rejects the
distinction between discursive and non-discursive practices" (Hegemony and
Socialist Strategy 107).

Are we confronted with two opposing definitions of discourse here?

Regards,
Torgeir

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