Subject: Re: Bourdieu and North American literacy education:good question
Date: Wed, 18 Jul 2001 05:19:21 -0500



I haven't made a study of Bourdieuism in N.America, so Kent could be right
below--or at least his generalizations might carry some sort of truth
value.  But I have been in academia for 11 years and haven't found his more
or less dismissive characterization of the professoriate a la bourdieu very
accurate.  I have run into quite a few people (myself almost included) who
have read him seriously and use his concepts with some care.  I am
personally one of the cookie-cutter users, although I am not really trying
to beef up my citation list and so on: I am very happy with where I teach,
what I do, and the things I manage to get published here and there.  I
don't think all of us in my field (rhetoric and composition) are struggling
quite so hard for distinction as Kent seems to think we are.

At any rate, I think many of us read B. seriously, although not with the
rigor Kent seems to think is required for a responsible reading of
Bourdieu--i.e., that we trace his sources and traditions.  I personally
have read very little of Marx (although one can't help but read him in a
bakhtinian sense whereever one turns)--I make my choices of what I read
based on my own field of inquiry and my research interest, which is the
relationship between social class and writing.  So I am led to Bourdieu,
who has one of the most interesting takes on social class that I have come
across.  That's the cookie I cut out of his dough and I bake them a bit and
eat them with the cookies i have cut out of freire and few other favorite
doughers of mine.

One point I am trying to make: the concept of intellectual rigor manifested
in a desire to be true to bourdieu, etc., could use some interrogation.

Irvin Peckham








kent strock <sigmund5-AT-hotmail.com>-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu on 07/18/2001
01:46:40 AM

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Subject:  Re: Bourdieu and North American literacy education:good question


North American literacy,

Well it is somewhat, tho not much to blame the grad committees. The
secondary schools resist any type of questioning given its affection for
standardized testing concerning boring american history etc. My remarks
will
be reserved for junior and senior faculty at research universities
responsible for "training" grad students.  I have been attending a large
big
ten research university to set the ground work.  I had to learn/read
Bourdieu completely by myself in addition to teaching and taking classes.
To
raise the vulgar Marxist point this university as most others hired way to
many grad students to teach classes so that they didn't have to hire profs.
The question we all ask ourselves is what we do afterward.

    I have to say after reading some innane requests for citations and
posing your question is refreshing.  My initial reaction is the split
between French/continental pedagogy and ango-american.  There are two
points, in my experience in American academia, that bear on this question.
While B. makes a strong argument against the intellectualism of philosophy,
he does not in anyway tie it to rigor thought or writing. The
Anglo-American
tradition is far too utilitarian and pragmatic and wants a method or a
theory which explains social phenomenon in path of the sciences. This is
not
to to say B. is no scientific...it just more  in the continental and
Nietzschian sense of the word.
     My experience, as an American Studies major who works between various
disciplines lead to two observations both as a researcher and teacher. The
"social scientist" doen't want to mess with his language, which looks
philosophical in its rigorousness, but is not philosophical
in the traditional disciplinary sense. So you have American social
scientists who ignore the "theoretical" aspect of his work and pick out
certain concepts for empirical verification, without recognizing his
nondistinction between theory and methodololgy, because they have not been
exposed to the philosophical tradition. B. makes this point over and
over....you can not understand his work without understanding the
philosophical or rather the theoretical tradition from which he comes.
Being between disciplines I see all the cracks in the contemporary
sociological curriculum which focuses solely on empirical facts and gives a
facile nod to theory as outdated...even Marx, Durkheim, Polanyi
etc.  Its too much bother to read them other than quick citation so that
one
can fill their vita.
   The reading of B. in comparison is a question of filling one's vita is
of
vital interest in understanding the reading of B.  He takes time. Time and
urgency and doxa is of most import to Bourdieu.  One this point we can
introduce his point of self-reflexivity, which most ignore, but is of
supreme consequence in regard to social action. Those who use his concepts
in a cookie cutter fashion disregard the importance he places in the
relationally of his concepts and reify them as pure intellectualism or
empiricism.  why does this happen?   North American Literacy.
   To get thru grad school you pick a little niche.....if you hope to
impress the committee which might hire you.  Forget the fact that things
like phenomonology exist, or various readings of Marx or Baudrillard...this
stuff is a distraction to those who evaluate one to advance and receive
FUNDING. It is not brain science. why has not someone undertaken a study
similar to Bourdieu's of American Academia?  I don't see them published and
not to sound self-severing when I tried to undertake a project for
prelims....pure disavowal reared its ugly head from two Ivy league profs
and
I see it here way too often in people not taking B. concept of refexivity
seriously enough, mostly interpreting it as a Marxian Critique and thinking
that good is good


kent strock
Purdue university


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