I, too, am doing a seminar on Bourdieu (and Latour, and some of
my own work) this term, and also planning a review of
one of B's books (_Language & Symbolic Power_), a follow-up to
an earlier review of his work (B & Wacquant, _Invitation to
reflexive sociology_). I am well aware of B's efforts to get
reflexive, though he quite explicitly believes that as a
sociologist (vs. psychologist?) he should do so at the 'class'
level (his notion is a bit like my 'caste', and more assembled
from patterns of behavior, habitus etc. rather than a simple
intentional category). So his work, like _Homo Academicus_ and
the work on the Grands Ecoles (he is a 'normalien') seeks to
understand the general patterns and trajectories of academics,
elite intellectuals, etc., including those (very few) with
less elite family backgrounds. I know from reading him that
he is a Bearnais (no culinary jokes, please!), but not what
the positioning of his family was. Nor how he would specify
to the level of his own individual trajectory, the analyses
he makes about social types like his.
I also note, and if anyone can offer even gossip on this,
I'm interested, that he clearly seems to regard Foucault
as his nearest peer in his own generation, but that (even
before F's death) he seems not to have offered much in
the way of critique of F's work -- whereas he offers
critiques of just about everyone else imaginable. Pourquoi?
JAY.
JAY LEMKE.
City University of New York.
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