Torgeir,
I blush. My ears are turning a pretty pink. My vanity is mightily tickled. If
others here are tempted by Bourdieu, I will be happy to join in.
I must say, however, that Bourdieu, for all his merits, strikes me as very 20th
century. If I might propose an alternative, I would suggest Isabel Stenger and,
in particular,
Stenger, Isabel. 2011. Thinking with Whitehead: A Free and Wild Creation of
Concepts. Translated by Michael Chase. Harvard University Press.
Here is a taste, from page 18.
Where polemic unmasks, Whitehead addresses adventures. In Process and
Reality, he speaks of rationalism as an “experimental adventure” (PR, 9) and
of metaphysics as “an adventure of hope” (PR, 42), but he also defines, in a
speculative mode, all continuity as an “adventure in change” (PR,35). For
him, then, the term “adventure” is valid simultaneously, both on an empirical
level—to characterize what we are dealing with, but which also situates
us—and on a speculative level. And the choice of this term accentuates a
question that polemical constructivisms render secondary. There is no
adventure without a risky relation to an environment that has the power to
complicate this adventure, or even to doom it to failure. Likewise, there is
no construction that does not raise the question of “how it holds together,”
or how it is affected by its environment and how it affects it.<<
On Mar 23, 2019, at 20:33, Torgeir Fjeld <t.fjeld1@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear all,
As someone who was informed of the existence of then-phillit by John
McCreery (this was back in 2001) it is interesting and slightly
exhilarating to read his personal if still somewhat painful rendition
of his academic path and its interaction with electronic
communication. It is good and right to note some lessons we have
learned from these listservs: the ABC of Buddhism; the basics of
Heidegger's phenomenology; the distinction of Grice's subjectivism in
relation to Popper's objectivism; etc. However, we should also make a
note of the rigorous, if yet personal, application of anthropological
knowledge by McCreery himself throughout the history of these
scholastic endeavours.
The point of this post is nevertheless somewhat different: would it
not be that there is a shared interest in the work of Pierre Bourdieu
here? It is not merely his anthropology (nor his political
engagement), but also his sociological approach that attracts us. Yes,
we should read the academic enterprise as a field of practice, and,
yes, we should look for analogies between a variety of scholarly
platforms. However, should we not also turn to the notion of
distinction here, and ask what it is that makes lit-ideas distinct in
our field work?
To all those devoted Heidegger readers out there, please know that
Bourdieu published a book on Heidegger prior to the whole Victor
Farias debacle; everyone knew Heidegger was a fascist back then, but
should we not nevertheless acknowledge that even his operations were
delimited by his particular situation in the academic knowledge
economy? What Bourdieu borrowed from Heidegger was exactly the notion
of distinction, or, more precisely, what Heidegger would call the
thingness of things: what is it that turns the hammer into a hammer, a
pen into a pen, a listserv into a listserv?
Let's not reduce ourselves to chickens: they should know their place,
and so should we.
Take care.
Mvh. / Yours sincerely,
Torgeir Fjeld
https://torgeirfjeld.com/
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