File spoon-archives/bourdieu.archive/bourdieu_2004/bourdieu.0410, message 18


Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2004 10:25:09 +0100
From: Shiera El-Malik <elmaliks-AT-tcd.ie>
Subject: Re: [BOU:] Derrida and Bourdieu


Thank you, Rohit!

Quoting Rohit Chopra <cosmicomic-AT-hotmail.com>:

> Managed to find this 1996 discussion from the archive, thru google.
>
> ****************
> File bourdieu.archive/bourdieu_1996/96-12-01.092, message 141
> From owner-bourdieu  Mon Nov 25 04:21:55 1996
> Date: Mon, 25 Nov 1996 11:30:57 +0200
> From: sestoft-AT-coco.ihi.ku.dk (Carsten Sestoft)
> Subject: Re: Derrida and Bourdieu
>
> Dear George
>
> Your very interesting comments merit some further words.
>
> >        The relationship between Bourdieu and Derrida is quite
> >fascinating. I wish I knew more about it.
>
> I suppose you know that Bourdieu and Derrida were born the same year (1930)
> and that they both have the agregation de philosophie, although I think
> that Derrida entered the Ecole Normale Superieure a year later than
> Bourdieu. As Bourdieu says in "Fieldwork in Sociology" (Choses dites,
> 1987), they were together in a group (around 1951) at the Ecole which aimed
> at defending liberty against stalinism. Derrida was born in one of the
> Maghreb countries (Maroc?) and arrived at Paris at the age of circa 18,
> much like Bourdieu, who also, with his time in Algeria, no doubt has had
> some of the same non-Parisian experiences, i.e. experiences of something
> different from the legitimate world of Parisian learning, which in that
> context became stigmata of social marginality. As Louis Pinto (in "La
> theorie en pratique", Critique, no 579-580, August-September 1995)
> suggests, their strategies in relation to philosophy can be seen as having
> much the same kind of non-conformist habitus as their condition of
> possibility, only with the difference that Bourdieu chose to leave the
> philosophical field, while Derrida remained on the borders of the field.
>
> >        On the surface they would seem to be worlds apart. What has
> >become known as "deconstruction" would seem to have nothing whatever to
> >do with Bourdieu's sociological approach to the study of culture.
>
> I think one should distinguish the image of Derrida produced in America,
> mainly by literary scholars, from the image of Derrida in France, although
> it becomes less and less easy as the American reception begins to influence
> the perception of Derrida in France. It is in the American reception that
> Derrida has become identified almost exclusively with deconstruction.
>
> >        Yet, I think that it is possible to identify commonalities. While
> >Bourdieu criticizes Derrida in his essay "Towards a 'Vulgar' Critique of
> >'Pure' Critiques" in _Distinction_, he does so by saying that Derrida
> >does not go *far enough* in his reading. Bourdieu obviously relies in
> >large part on Derrida's reading of Kant--for it uncovers the social
> >distinctions at the heart of Kant's critique without naming them as such.
>
> You are surely right here: Bourdieus critique is that Derrida doesn't go
> far enough in a questioning of the very activity of philosophy (the
> philosophical illusio), cf. above.
>
> >        I think the real point of identity lies in the fact that both
> >Derrida and Bourdieu uncover the pratico-logical dimension of culture. It
> >seems to me that Derrida concentrates especially on how practice can
> >revolutionize established relations (overturn and displace them--the true
> >meaning od "deconstruction"). While Bourdieu is largely interested in
> >breaking with idealized visions of the culture, exposing the social basis
> >of culture (while at the same time avoiding reductionism).
>
> I also agree here, although with one reservation: because Derrida remains a
> philosopher, he refuses (or is unable) to give a historical and
> sociological explanation of the ways practice changes and undermines
> established relations; he can only show that, in a philosophical
> perspective, the relations become unstable and contradictory, i.e. he shows
> that philosophy is somehow false, but not what could be true.
>
> >        One thing I find especially refreshing about Bourdieu is that he
> >encourages us to think about these points of commanality and
> >complementarity and not to remain stuck in typical (and ultimately
> >destructive) academic polemics.
>
> Yes, I agree, - and it has taken me a long time to understand that even the
> positions with which I disagree may be able to say something sensible on
> particular points! So much academic nonsense comes from the inability to
> discuss issues outside the traditional trenches (if you can say that in
> English).
>
> Carsten Sestoft
> University of Copenhagen
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Shiera el-Malik
Department of Political Science
Trinity College
2/3 College Green
Dublin 2
353/1 608 3528
353/86 105 3675
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