Date: Sun, 17 Jan 1999 16:26:52 +0000 (GMT)
From: Jon Beasley-Murray <spn037-AT-abdn.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: Event, Habitus, and Jon


On Tue, 12 Jan 1999, deleuze-guattari-digest wrote:

> Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1999 21:27:35 +0000
> From: amd <A.M.Dib-AT-lboro.ac.uk>
> Subject: Re: Event, Habitus and Jon
> 
>  12/23/98 -0500, Jon wrote:
> >I've always been interested in overlappings between Deleuze and 
> >Bourdieu.  
> 
> After a short absence, and due to some continuous interest in the discussion
> regarding Deleuze and Bourdieu, I shall try to specify more than what I have
> previously stipulated about the differences.  However, I shall not do it in
> this email. It is too late for me after a long day. What is important Jon is
> to initiate you yourself pointing out where are the insterstices of these
> overlappings. Otherwise, I consider that the previous email to Paul Kala (in
> short:) about the difference between Deleuze and Bourdieu was not read
> carefully as (perhaps) your concern for the overlappings was stronger. Your
> expression is too general to provide with a motivation to respond more in
> details about the object of concern.  

I fear that you and I are both operating on a different rhythm from that
of the general list; less quick-fire, and more promising to go into things
that eventually pass us by.  That, at least, is how I feel all too often.

I indeed read--and have just reread--your post to Paul Kala with some
care.  You say there, for instance, that "Habitus shield off any
meaningless, undetermined, valueless, arbitrary positive event."  I would
suggest rather that Bourdieu sees the habitus as incorporating and thus
rationalizing such events; indeed, that habitus in Bourdieu's
understanding functions to enable us to deal with events.  Bourdieu is
interested in this process (as is Deleuze), but he is equally interested
in the event in itself--even if he says less about it--for him typified in
the events of May 68.

As for your other points in that email, which follow from the first, I am
not so sure what to say.  As you stated then, you did not have time to go
into details.  Your points are rather dense, and read more like shorthand
to yourself.  I'd like them expanded.  In any event, as you don't mention
Deleuze in that post, you don't explain exactly how those four points
function as faultlines to distinguish Bourdieu from D&G.  I still don't
see it yet.  This is in part what I mean by asking what is meant by
Deleuze's concept of structure.  I will however follow up your
references--and I haven't read the essay in Charlie's book. 

As for your comments on doxa and image of thought... again, what I
understand you to be saying in shorthand I don't think I would disagree
with.  Perhaps it's simply a question that for me the two concepts are
sufficiently similar to be productively put together, while for you they
are sufficiently different that they are not.

> sense. This 'thought without an image' is not existing in Bourdieu though he
> ironically always seems to bounce on it. 

I guess I am interested in this bouncing, and in what were to happen if a
Deleuzian conception of thought without an image were introduced to
Bourdieu's sociologism and vice versa.  I think this might make (for me)
noology more of a practical proposition.  It might certainly help (me)
connect to the kind of concretion Paul (Bains) is asking for.  And my
sentiments are with Paul's in this.

> amd

Take care

Jon

Jon Beasley-Murray
Hispanic Studies
University of Aberdeen
jbmurray-AT-abdn.ac.uk