The Future of Pierre Bourdieu’s Politics: Keeping the Promise of Reflexive Sociology by Michael B. Conlon B.A. University of Western Ontario M.A. Carleton University A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In the Department of English We accent this dissertaffôrhas conforming to the required standard Dr. Luke Carson, Supervisor (Department of English) Dr. Evelyn Cobley, Departmental^ember (Department of English) Dr. Patrick Grant, Department Member (Department of English) ____________________________________________ Dr. Douglas Baer, Outside Member (Department of Sociology) __________________________ Dr. Len Findlay, External Examiner (Department of English, University of Saskatchewan) © Michael B. Conlon University of Victoria All rights reserved. This dissertation may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopying or other means, with the permission of the author. Supervisor: Dr. Luke Carson ABSTRACT The novelty of Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of literature is a product of the ethical and political demands he makes of art and literature. Though Bourdieu’s work ranges from research in social housing to a book length study of Heidegger, this project makes the argument that his investment in aesthetic practice is the constant that holds his political project together. Bourdieu’s political reading of art and literature is, in turn, informed by a comprehensive theory of intellectual work. Bourdieu relentlessly demonstrates that intellectual work arbitrarily marks itself off from other work and constantly ratifies that privilege or distinction by monopolizing the tools needed to construct and justify a worldview. The measure for any intellectual or political project is determined by the degree to which that project works to universalize access to the social conditions necessary to produce and consume cultural capital. This is the political and ethical challenge that defines Bourdieu’s work and informs his theory of art. This study makes the case that the power of Bourdieu’s work can only be properly assessed when his theory of intellectual work is read in concert with his political and sociological interpretation of art and literature. These dual elements in Bourdieu’s thought are applied in a critical reading of the Charles Altieri’s work. This project culminates in a critical assessment of Bourdieu’s political thought in light of Jacques Derrida’s theories of ethics, politics, and justice. Derrida’s concept of undecibability and his theory of political and ethical decision as perpetually “to come” complicates Bourdieu’s political vision and offers a promising avenue for extending Bourdieu’s work in ways not inimical to his original project. Ill Dr. Luke Carson, Supervisor (Department of English) Dr. Evelyn Cobîey, DepartmenflVIember (Department of English) Dr. Patrick Grant, D^artment Member (Department of English) Dr. Doug , Outside Member (Department of Sociology) DepaDr. Len Findlay, External Examiner (DepartmentDepaDr. of English, University of Saskatchewan) IV LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Altieri, Charles SA - Subjective Agency Bourdieu, Pierre 1RS — An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology PM - Pascalian Meditations PR — Practical Reason RA - The Rules o f Art Derrida, Jacques SM - Specters of Marx Guillory, John BR - “Bourdieu’s Refusal” Acknowledgments A project of this size accrues many debts that are can never properly be honoured. I would like, however, to mention a few people who were instrumental in keeping me and this project together. First I would like to acknowledge the financial assistance provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council in the form of a two-year doctoral fellowship. Thank you to Dr. Luke Carson for his patient and supportive supervision of this dissertation. Dr. Carson’s own brilliant and rigourous work sets standards that I always attempt to emulate. Next I want to acknowledge the unstinting support and inspiration I drew from my colleagues at the Canadian Federation of Students. Their support sustained me personally and their political commitment is a reminder of why I find Bourdieu’s vision of social justice so inspiring and energizing. I remain forever grateful to Professor Larry MacDonald of Carleton University. Without Dr. MacDonald’s support and generosity during a difficult period, it is unlikely this project would have ever been started. David Cherepuschak suffered through several early versions of this project and offered incisive commentary as well scrupulous editing and grammatical advice. More importantly, however, his friendship, good humour, and kindness have been a constant source of strength. Finally I want to thank my parents Patricia and Leo. Their love and support has made this journey seem worthwhile. As a token of my gratitude for all they have done I dedicate this dissertation to them. VI TABLE OF CONTENTS Title Page i Abstract ii List of Abbreviations iv Acknowledgements V Table of Contents vi Epigraph vii Preface 1 Introduction 15 Chapter 1 38 Chapter 2 93 Chapter 3 144 Conclusion 189 Works Cited 225 Endnotes 235 vil The Future of Pierre Bourdieu’s Politics: Keeping the Promise of Reflexive Sociology To seek in the logic of the literary field or the artistic field - paradoxical worlds capable of inspiring or of imposing the most ‘disinterested’ interests - the principle of the work of art’s existence in what makes it historic, but also transhistoric, is to treat this work as an intentional sign haunted and regulated by something else of which it is also a symptom. It is to suppose that in it is enunciated an expressive impulse which the imposition of form required by the social necessity of the field tends to render unrecognizable. Renouncing the angelic belief in a pure interest in pure form is the price we must pay for understanding the logic of those social universes which, through the social alchemy of their historical laws of functioning, succeed in extracting from the often merciless clash of passions and selfish interests the sublimated essence of the universal. It is to offer a vision more true and, ultimately, more reassuring, because less superhuman, of the highest achievements of the human enterprise. Pierre Bourdieu The Rules o f Art PREFACE What I wanted to express, in any case, perhaps clumsily - and I apologize to those I may have shocked or bored - is a real solidarity with those who are now fighting to change society. I think that the only effective way of fighting against national and international technocracy is by confronting it on its own preferred terrain, in particular that of economics, and putting forward, in place of the abstract and limited knowledge which it regards as enough, a knowledge more respectful of human beings and of the realities which confront them. Pierre Bourdieu An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology The following study of Pierre Bourdieu’s work sets itself two distinct but related tasks: first, to establish the degree to which Bourdieu’s theory of intellectual work grounds his political project; second, and in light of that theory, to recast the terms upon which Bourdieu’s engagement with literature is understood. The terms upon which I engage Bourdieu in this study are largely abstract. However, one of the objectives of my inquiry is to measure the very specific contribution Bourdieu’s theory of intellectual work and symbolic capital makes to wedding academic reflection with the struggle for social and economic justice. Therefore, a substantial portion of my argument is devoted to explicating the concepts that define Bourdieu’s work in order to (re)contextualize those concepts in Bourdieu’s avowedly political project. Such a re-contextualization is, to my mind, pressing because Bourdieu is read, almost without exception, as if his activist political commitments were marginal to his academic, sociological enterprise. Bourdieu characterizes his work as an attempt to strike “an intellectual posture” that conceives of the “work of the researcher as an activist task” {1RS 58). However, as David Swartz puts it inCulture and Power, Bourdieu’s “normative vision for ... intellectual [work] and the critical practice of sociology ha[s] received almost no attention” (4). Indeed, the occasional writing and political organizing that Bourdieu undertook throughout his career is largely viewed as an embarrassment - when it is countenanced at all in secondary readings of Bourdieu.’ In this study, I want to make the case that Bourdieu’s scholarship cannot and must not be read in isolation from his political engagement. At every turn in this dissertation I will return to the point that Bourdieu’s sociological arguments mutually reinforce his political project. Indeed, one of the primary elements of Bourdieu’s political project is to demonstrate the ability of intellectual and scholarly work to perpetually domesticate the ethical and political stakes of its own operation. The political drive in Bourdieu’s work springs, no doubt, from his own marginal working class origins in the isolated Beam village of Lasseube. After a brief, compulsory tour of military duty in Algeria, Bourdieu began his intellectual career with an anthropological study (heavily influenced by the work of structuralist anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss) of mral Algeria (Kabylia). His first book. The Algerians (1958), charts the relationship between archaic social rituals and the political economy of social practice. In this early work Bourdieu stmggled to find ways of explaining social action that