Date: Tue, 8 May 2001 13:45:04 +0100 (BST)
Subject: Re: Quest


Simon, I liked your point about hyperliteralism and philosophy, but your
following post got me thinking...

On Tue, 8 May 2001, bourdieu-digest wrote:

> bourdieu-digest          Tuesday, May 8 2001          Volume 01 : Number 449

> Date: Mon, 7 May 2001 12:01:44 +0100
> From: "Simon Beesley" <simonb-AT-beesleys.freeserve.co.uk>
> Subject: Re: Quest
> 
> Much more common than literalism or hyperliteralism in philosophical and
> theoretical thought is something like the opposite. I read some time ago of
> Whitehead's phrase "misplaced concretism". I haven't been able to find the
> source of this (and would be grateful if someone could point me in the right
> direction) but I take Whitehead to be talking about the practice of treating
> abstractions (in some cases, figurative, non-literal abstractions) for concrete
> things; that is, to take a contentious, tendentious, stratospherically rarified
> theoretical term, which may draw what meaning it has only within a system of
> theoretical concepts, for a solid untendentious thing -- which can then be used
> to beat dissenters over the head.

Of course, some might say that this is similar to Bourdieu's practice, in
that he takes terms and abstractions out of their rarified contexts, to
reposition them in the rather more concrete world of power and
postion-takings (sometimes, indeed, to beat dissenters over the head).

While it is clear that Bourdieu's practice is rather dissimilar to Geoff
Nicholson's (as described in your review of _Bleeding London_), it raises
the question of the extent to which his general economy of symbolic
practices inevitably draws accusations similar to those you make against
Nicholson.

Take care

Jon

Jon Beasley-Murray
Spanish and Portuguese
University of Manchester
jon.beasley-murray-AT-man.ac.uk

http://www.art.man.ac.uk/spanish/jbm.html
http://www.art.man.ac.uk/lacs/

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