Fuer Kai - Bourdieu Reductif?

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

On 30.09.2010 22:08, Matthew Cissell wrote:
> Hallo Kai,
>      Danke für deine Antwort. Es freut mich dass Du meine theoretische 
> Ausrichtung interessant gefunden hast. However, it seems that we 
> differ in regard to Bourdieu's works' usefullness or limitations.

Hi Matthew,

thanks for keeping the ball bouncing! Our difference is  probably based 
primarily in the fact that
I'm these years not working as a scientist and, thus, became kinda 
ambivalent about any scientific approach towards the arts. RE our 
different views on Bourdieu it might also be useful to mention
that I - though me once absolved a Pynchon seminar where we read V and 
GR - never studied literature science academically.  I'm a learned 
sociologist and had as side-subjects philosophy, history and Sozial- und 
Wirtschaftsgeschichte. And though I did read a lot of sociological, 
philosophical, psychological and historical stuff on literature, film, 
music etc, I sometimes wish I hadn't ... My association machine running 
on too many levels (connecting, cutting and reconnecting things), 
thereby getting in between me and the concrete work of art in question. 
And I know some literature scientists who -  blinded by their models - 
lost their sense of beauty. Probably their déformation professionelle. 
That being said, I should add that IF one treats art with scientific 
theories, sociologically accentuated theories still appear to me much 
more interesting than, say, art theories from analytical philosophers. 
But of course I could be biased ...

>     First, I think a Bourdieusian approach to literature (this must 
> include lectors, reading practices, and a host of other factors)

Point taken. There can hardly be any doubt that Bourdieu's work is 
illuminating the RECEPTION of
literature to a very high degree!

 >is much more illuminating than the psychoanalytic approachs engendered 
by Freud's work. Here at the outset of the 21st century it is easy to 
see why Deleuze and Guatarri rebelled against the tyranny of the Oedipus 
complex (whether one supports their ideas or not). Recent advances in 
technology and neuroscience have not sustained Freud's theories. In fact 
Emil Kraeplin's own work (which was done at about the same time as Freud 
but was not picked up by artists and intellectuals or the wider society) 
is now seen to provide a more accurate picture of mental activity and 
the psychological dynamics that come with it. Or to paraphrase a friend, 
"Freud was a bit of a genius, but his psychoanalytic theory is not genius."<

(Freud was a hell of a genius, since he wrote the best German scientific 
prose ever. But of course I
see your point. To change Dostojewskij's epileptic seizures to mere 
hysterical ones in order to make
them fit into the psychoanalytic theory is exactly the kind of 
reductionism I was talking about. Well, to discuss this issue in full 
length would take a whole lot of mails, but let me say just this: 
Psychoanalytic
theory did develop after Freud: Klein, Lacan, Kernberg, Morgenthaler, 
Parin, to name just a few. And Heinz Kohut's work on Thomas Mann - 
"Thomas Manns 'Tod in Venedig'. Zerfall einer kuenstlerischen 
Sublimierung", pp. 173-194, in "Introspektion, Empathie und 
Psychoanalyse" - is in my opinion a gem of literature-psychology, which 
is why I mentioned it explicitly. Perhaps it works there so well, 
because Mann's philosophical homebase was the "Dreigestirn"  
Schopenhauer - Nietzsche - Wagner, and after Mann read "Totem und Tabu" 
he wrote to Freud and they exchanged some letters. Shall say: Mann's 
thinking and creating was also shaped by para/psychoanalytic motives.  
And Freud was a - largely: secret - Nietzsche reader.)

>     I wont bother to try convince anyone of the usefullness 
> of Bourdieu's work since i think it can speak for itself.
>

Yes he man! Over here it's kinda consensus that among the more 
contemporary macro-sociologies
only the theories of Habermas and of Luhmann do play in the same league. 
That's not the point. And Bourdieu's tight coupling of ethnology and 
sociology - standing in the French tradition of Durkheim and Mauss - is 
definitely a plus in comparison to the named German theories. But 
regarding modern world-society at the outset of the 21st century I 
really think that the 'habitus'-concept, though it works pretty well in 
the overall model of Field--> Habitus--> Practise--> Field usw, is (and 
that's my point!) empirically too deterministic. Not only in case of 
artists.

>   I will briefly address the charges of reductiveness and 
> overdetermination. First, i don't think Bourdieu tried 'to play down' 
> determinism or reductiveness, rather he answered his critics and left 
> their claims ringing hollow. In Pascalian Meditations Bourdieu 
> includes a section called "Digression: A critique of my critics".  In 
> that section he writes: "The critique of my critics reveals in any 
> case how difficult it is to discern, in the misunderstandings one 
> observes, the part that is attributable to intentional malevolence, 
> which a superficial look would no doubt lead one to overestimate, and 
> the part that is due to the tendencies inherent in the logic of 
> competition within the field, or, still more strongly, to the 
> tendencies inscribed in the scholastic situation and in the deeply 
> buried dispositions of the scholastic worldview. One might conclude 
> from this that critical reflexivity can, here too, bring not only 
> additional knowledge, but also something like a beginning of wisdom." 
> (PM 64)
>      Later in the same book he writes, while dealing with habitus, 
> "Dispositions do not lead in a determinate way to a determinate 
> action; they are revealed and fulfilled only in appropriate 
> circumstances and in the relationship with a situation" (PM 149).
>     Additionally the collection of Bourdieu's essays called In Other 
> Words also addresses these claims.
>     Finally, since it may seem questionable to some to cite Bourdieu 
> in the defence of Bourdieu's work, I will point out here how his ideas 
> have been employed. Perhaps most notably John Guillory drew heavily on 
> Bourdieu when he wrote Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon 
> Formation. In the field of history Roger Chartier has drawn on 
> Bourdieu to study a number of things (French Revolution to reading 
> practices). I won't even try to list sociological or anthropological 
> studies that have drawn on Bourdieu.

Me neither, that would take weeks ....

And please (I mean this!), Matthew, don't let me be misunderstood:

If you can get something new out of Pynchon's books through the 
Bourdieusian approach, you should
really go for it!

And don't let yourself get turned off by me ... I mean, who the fuck am 
I? No Bourdieu or Pynchon, that's for sure ... Just saying what's the 
weak point about Pierre's theory ... You don't have to be a malevolent 
critic to recognize this ... You never see smoke without fire ... While 
'Rational Choice' theory (Bourdieu's favourite enemy!) is indeed a very 
gross social theory lacking any kind of sophistication, and while 
Luhmann kinda mystifies the problem away (according to him "only 
communication communicates"), at least Habermas has a theory of social 
action which is neither trivial (like RC) nor deterministic. In THIS 
regard Habermas is a better follower of Max Weber than Bourdieu (who - 
in general: correctly so - always claimed to unify the classical 
traditions of Durkheim, Marx and Weber) was one. Habermas' theory is 
pretty idealistic, though.

>     I know that numbers don't make for greatness, so i will end this 
> response to doubts about Bourdieu with some questions. Why is that so 
> many of Bourdieu's contemporaries (Foucault, Derrida, etc) were 
> quickly and readily adopted by and adapted to the humanities/ human 
> sciences (literary studies, history, psychology, etc) and Bourdieu was 
> not and is still not?

In this country it was different. Not that Foucault and Derrida - this 
was related to the crisis of 'Freudomarxism' - wouldn't have been the 
"new hot shit" since the beginning of the 1970s. But so was, at least 
among social scientists, Bourdieu! His article-collection "Zur 
Soziologie der symbolischen Formen" was published in 1970. And after the 
German edition of "La distinction" got published in 1982, there was a 
real Bourdieu boom in German sociology which went all through the rest 
of the century. When I got my first shot in 1987, it was - interesting 
enough in our context - a seminar (I recall the title as something to 
the effect of "Strukturale Soziologie") where we read both, Foucault and 
Bourdieu. In another one from that time ("Psychoanalyse und Soziologie") 
I heard first about Deleuze/Guattari and bought my copy of 
'Anti-Oedipus' which fitted well my starting interest in Pynchon. The 
hyping of Derrida me never understood, too. As Odo Marquard has it: "Of 
course Derrida is very famous, but in case of emergency ... in case of 
emergency you can also read Heidegger himself."

> What is about Bourdieu's work that is so unacceptable or problematic? 
> Or, from another view, why do some reject it so? Was it his use of 
> empirical data to guide and support his work?

Not in sociology or ethnology, but perhaps in literature studies, yes.

> Was it his mingling of 'analytic' philosophers (Wittgenstein, Searle, 
> etc) and 'continental' philosophers (Husserl, Merleau-Ponty, 
> Cassirrer, etc) that is objectionable to some?

Since this seems to be one of the problems with the philosophical 
reception of Badiou, the answer might also be: yes.

Let me now, before I come to an end for today, focus on something you 
wrote in your previous mail (which motivated me, when I read it in the 
archives, to resubscribe to the p-list):

 > We can contrast Pynchon to a writer like John Grisham who has 
economic capital but little in the
 > way of cultural capital.

Though I only know some movies based on his novels and have no reading 
experience with Grisham's books (which wouldn't take Bourdieu wonder), I 
kept thinking about that and, because of this, read last weekend my 
first Grisham interview. There he said that he indeed (also) wanted to 
make money with his books, since there wasn't much money where he came 
from. And I think I do get your point:
Grisham is no cult-author, and - except perhaps for law & literature 
studies (I'll come back to that) -
probably not a writer who - like Pynchon - can nourish a whole branch of 
literature-science-industry. And if you see people in the subway reading 
Grisham, they mostly look not exactly like literature freaks. So Pynchon 
is a highly canonized author and Grisham isn't. In Bourdieusian terms: 
Pynchon has a lot of "ascribed cultural capital" and Grisham hasn't. But 
cultural capital in Bourdieu has, if I remember this right (if not, 
please correct me, Matthew!), three dimensions. Ascribed cultural 
capital, objectified cultural capital (which is in our case the books 
themselves) and internalized cultural capital. Regarding the last one, I 
don't see a real difference. Grisham studied the law, Pynchon 
engineering (plus literature). Pynchon worked at Boeing, Grisham as a 
lawyer. Both turned their professional experience in those fields into 
literature. And as there are many Pynchon readers coming from technical 
professions, the jurists might be overrepresented among Grisham's 
readers. And perhaps (anyone?) his books are a fruitful source for the 
sociology of law. Or - for that matter - law & literature studies. At 
least I got the impression from the movies that to read Grisham under 
that perspective could be rather interesting. What do you think?

Have a nice weekend!

Tschues,

Kai

> Answering these questions may help us understand why Bourdieu has been 
> so infrequently used in literary studies.
> Of course, Kai, I don't mean to convince you of anything, just 
> question the questioning.
> Tchuss
> Matthew Cissell
>

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