User:Laurier Rochon/readingnotes/bourdieu1/

Pierre Bourdieu > The Field of Cultural Production

Concepts

• Structure
• Structuralism
• Post-structuralism
• Subjectivism & Objectivism
• Kantianism & neo-Kantianism
• Formalism
• Discouse analysis
• Determinism
• New historicism

Notes & quotes : a primer

1. Bourdieu proposes a new model for critical study of cultural practices
2. He dissects the relationships between Systems of though <-> social institutions <-> material and symbolic power
3. Analysis usually comprises of empirical understanding & a rigid theoretical frame
4. He argues that art & cultural consumption legitimizes social differences (these differences are also accentuated by the academic institutions)
5. Challenges the Kantian notions of the universality of aesthetics and cultural autonomy (exclusiveness)
6. Bourdieu was a "blissful structuralist". He seemed to have hit a wall with structuralism.
7. Subjectivism is based on the primary experience, the perceptions while Objectivism focuses on "objective conditions which structure practice independent of human consciousness".
8. "Symbolic aspects of social life are inseparably intertwined with the material conditions of existence"
9. Notions of agent, habitus and field
10. The habitus is the intuitive "practical sense"
11. The field is a space with has its own laws of functioning
12. The agents are in the fields, (at different "positions") competing with each other
13. There are many types of 'capital' i.e. economic, political, cultural, linguistic, artistic, etc.
14. For cultural production, Symbolic capital and Cultural capital are very important. They are based on recognition and consecration more than anything else.
15. Agents in their respective fields enter to 'invest' their 'capital' (whatever it may be) in order to make a 'profit'
16. His study of cultural works takes the actual work into account (although finding meaning in only the work itself is absurd) as well as the producers and their 'strategies' (orientation of the practice) and 'trajectories' (series of successful (?) occupations in the same field by an agent)
17. He also wants to analyse the 'broader field of power' (another field) and the complete 'set of social conditions of the production, consumption of symbolic good'
18. 'The full explanation of the works (...) is found in the history and structure ((history of structure also, perhaprs?)) of the field itself'. The specific economy of the cultural field though, is somewhat different from most other fields.
19. The important question : what social preconditions make a text possible VS the meaning that is found in the text itself
20. 'The concept of the literary system is ultimately inadequate, for it fails to recognize that formal properties, both past and present, and themselves socially and historically constituted'
21. 'Discourse analysis' > internal analysis > find the meaning in the work itself
22. Production is not only material, but also symbolic
23. Artistic mediators = agents
24. Ultimately, the analysis of context if paramount. Formalistic analysis is too reductive.
25. Statistical methods fail just like reflective methods, to fully understand a cultural work. The reflective methods tend to transform the producer into a medium. It assumes many things, such as the fact that a given producer is even representative of its field.
26. 'Total context' > 'Only a method which retains a notion of intertextuality, seen as a system of different stances, and reintroduces a notion of agent, acting within a specific set of social relations, can transcend the seemingly irreconcilable differences between internet and external readings of artistic works.'
27. The field of cultural production is in opposition with restricted (high art) and mass (popular) production fields.
28. Interesting : the the mass cultural production field usually delves into the restricted field to renew itself
29. Again, the meaning of a certain text cannot be derived only by its content - rather it is more about the context and the field in question.
30. What is the meaning in Bourdieu's own work then? (If we can't extract it by solely analyzing the formality of it, but rather the field, etc. of it?) (while true ask question) ...
31. 'THe understanding of a work of art depends fully on the possession of the code into which it has been encoded, and this is neither a natural nor universally distributed capability.'
32. The essential explanation of each work lies outside each of them, in the objective relations which constitute this field
33. Every position in the field is a result of the determination it imposes on other fields - and is reflective of the structure of the distribution of capital (i.e. literary prestige) in the field. (complete relativity?)
34. The 'space of possibles' is objective (is it malleable?). Thus, every change in a field results in a change in other fields, even if the latter keep an identical position. (adaptive repositining?).
35. Parody is one very powerful repositioning force - it recontextualizes a 'classic work'
36. Literary and artistic fields are ones of position-takings. The 'unifying principle of this system is the struggle'.
37. What would a 'graphic' look like, representing the different fields in relation to each other?
38. What is the link between formalist approaches, art for art's sake (refers to itself only) and conceptual art (idea vs production)?
39. For a work of art to exist, it must my socially insituted and recognized as such by spectators
40. If a work = material AND symbolic value (the production of the value of the work), then critics, publishers, gallery directors, etc. (as they make the viewers capable of making the art exist -> recognizing them as such) contribute to the work (they transform the field of which meaning can be derived from)
41. The struggle in the field of cultural production over the imposition of the legitimate mode of cultural production -> The struggle within the dominant class (artists vs bourgeois) to impose the dominant principle of domination
42. 'The fundamental stake in literary struggles is the monopoly of literacy legitimacy'. 'The power to say with authority who are authorized to call themselves writers'.
43. The cultural producers, who occupy the economically dominated and symbolically dominant position within the field of cultural production, tend to feel solidarity with the occupants of the economically and culturally dominated positions within the field of class relations. They are able to mobilize the potential strength of the dominant classes to undermine the order of the field of power.
44. The literary field is itself defined by its position in the hierarchy of the arts
45. There are three competing principles of legitimacy : 1) from within the art world (art for art's sake) 2) coming from the dominant classes (power of consecration) 3) coming from the mass population (power of the number)