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chapter 5 What is Literature? Notes on The Rules of Art by Pierre Bourdieu

Jacques Leenhardt

When Pierre Bourdieu’s book The Rules of Art (1992) was first published in its original , it carried a promotional strip with the alluring title “ ­Bourdieu’s Flaubert.” The promoter’s intent was clearly to prompt readers to recall all the existing works on Flaubert and to evoke, no doubt, The Family Idiot by Jean-Paul Sartre (Sartre 1991), the most important in terms of its cel- ebrated author and the magnitude of the enterprise. Likewise, we have every reason to conceive of The Rules of Art as a sort of rejoinder to the work by Sartre, although Bourdieu hardly refers to it at all. The degree to which he does borrow from it as a basis for an historical and literary analysis of Flaubert, how- ever, still leaves the question open as to the nature of the opposition between the two works. But instead of channeling my remarks to focus on his approach to Flaubert’s work, I would like to explore The Rules of Art as if it were answer- ing a question, an altogether Sartrean question: what is literature? The Rules of Art, which comprises almost 500 pages, is in fact rather dispa- rate in its ensemble. There are several polemical attacks on various enemies whose theoretical assumptions range from to , essentialism to . Determined to counter them all, Bourdieu sets out to be the champion of scientific rigor, a rigor he strives to illustrate through an analysis of art and literature that he terms alternately “science,” “,” or the “so- ciology of literature.” The subtitle of his book, as it turns out, reminds us that the author is drawing from his earlier works on the social field, a theoretical ensemble to which he adds nuance without, however, changing its general scope. What is at stake here, then, is that for the first time Bourdieu attempts to go beyond the sociology of the strategies of actors and professions constituted in the “field,” and focuses, through the elaboration of the “rules of art” that impose themselves on the writer (or painter), upon a definition of literature itself (or of art). The author’s aim then, in describing the dominant logic at play in the literary field – considering that the field had autonomized itself by the middle of the nineteenth century – is to show how the writer, here the writer being Flaubert, presents himself as the creator, that is, the subject of his own

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What is Literature? 113 creation, within the framework of an historical and social development that defines him and which he in turn defines. The ambition of the book, the diversity of the schemes it embraces, com- plete with its pamphleteering jabs and occasional injustices levied at his pre- decessors, would require an entire volume if one were to discuss everything worth discussing. Considering the concurrent polemics and theoretical base (the theory of the field) – familiar to us all – I would like to concentrate on the single question: in this book, what idea does Bourdieu develop and adopt of literature? The Rules of Art is undeniably addressed to literary circles, with critics, theo- rists of interpretation, and lovers of literature being its primary target. Consid- ering that for many of them the social sciences was anathema, Bourdieu felt it his duty to take on the challenge. But in all honesty, his choice of targeting such a remark as “Are we to allow the social sciences to reduce the literary ­experience – the most exalted that man may have, along with love – to surveys about our leisure activities, when it concerns the very meaning of our life?” (Bourdieu 1992:9) is surely doing too great an honor to someone who merely demonstrates his ignorance of the social sciences, here reduced to surveys, rather than really threatening the edifice. Does such impertinence even merit the trouble of a response? It is true that for more than a decade now the social sciences have been marking time, yet this is surely not only because obscurantism raised its ugly head after the glorious 1960s. Sociology is going through a crisis, questioning its paradigms, tending to redefine its methods at a time when its objects no lon- ger seem to offer the theoretical stability that the discipline once envisioned. And hence necessary questions have arisen about its ambitions (Foucault), about how to analyze its concepts and language (Brown), and about the de- monstrative process itself (Greimas). As a result, the discursive nature of these ­disciplines – their ambiguity – and the interchange between statistical dia- grams and demonstrative conclusions have again launched the question of the scientificity of these “sciences.” The Rules of Art enters this debate on its own terms. Here it is a question of reaffirming the rigorous nature of sociological science in its application to the literary field, pitting itself against the “Heideggerian–Hölderlinian” gibberish of the critics. Since Bourdieu considers he is witnessing the selling out of the rational spirit, he sets out to prove the validity of his sociological concepts. What more pertinent demonstration than poaching on the territory of literary analysis itself, a preserve, when it comes to theory, occupied by his adversaries? The stakes in this fight for reason are not, however, strictly methodological. We could assume that Bourdieu simply resents all those who accept and even