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Introduction: Bourdieu and the Literary Field

Introduction: Bourdieu and the Literary Field : Bourdieu and the Literary Field JEREMY AHEARNE AND J OHN SPELLER Pierre Bourdieu’s range as a thinker was extremely wide, and it would be misleading to present him primarily as a literary theorist. Trained as a philosopher, he became the leading French sociologist of his generation, and brought under the spotlight of his ‘critical sociology’ a whole series of institutional and discursive universes (education, art, linguistics, public administration, politics, philosophy, journalism, economics and others).1 Far from representing an intellectual dispersal, these manifold objects of enquiry allowed him to develop and refine a comprehensive theory of social process and power-relations based on distinctive concepts such as ‘field’, ‘habitus’, variously conceived notions of ‘capital’, and ‘illusio’ (all these concepts and others will be explicated and assessed in this issue). Yet Bourdieu’s analyses were scarcely ever received as neutral descriptions within the fields which he analysed. Bourdieu’s abiding agenda was to show how the discursive presuppositions and institutional logics at work in such fields carried but also masked certain social logics that a ‘critical sociology’ could disclose. Coupled with the inveterately combative drive seldom absent from Bourdieu’s objectifying analyses — and even setting aside the misprisions to which an external http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Paragraph Edinburgh University Press

Introduction: Bourdieu and the Literary Field

Ahearne, Jeremy; Speller, John
Paragraph , Volume 35 (1): 1 – Mar 1, 2012
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References (3)

Publisher
Edinburgh University Press
Copyright
© Edinburgh University Press 2012
Subject
Literary Studies
ISSN
0264-8334
eISSN
1750-0176
DOI
10.3366/para.2012.0038
Publisher site
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Abstract

: Bourdieu and the Literary Field JEREMY AHEARNE AND J OHN SPELLER Pierre Bourdieu’s range as a thinker was extremely wide, and it would be misleading to present him primarily as a literary theorist. Trained as a philosopher, he became the leading French sociologist of his generation, and brought under the spotlight of his ‘critical sociology’ a whole series of institutional and discursive universes (education, art, linguistics, public administration, politics, philosophy, journalism, economics and others).1 Far from representing an intellectual dispersal, these manifold objects of enquiry allowed him to develop and refine a comprehensive theory of social process and power-relations based on distinctive concepts such as ‘field’, ‘habitus’, variously conceived notions of ‘capital’, and ‘illusio’ (all these concepts and others will be explicated and assessed in this issue). Yet Bourdieu’s analyses were scarcely ever received as neutral descriptions within the fields which he analysed. Bourdieu’s abiding agenda was to show how the discursive presuppositions and institutional logics at work in such fields carried but also masked certain social logics that a ‘critical sociology’ could disclose. Coupled with the inveterately combative drive seldom absent from Bourdieu’s objectifying analyses — and even setting aside the misprisions to which an external

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Paragraph – Edinburgh University Press

Published: Mar 1, 2012

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