Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002)
Our colleague Pierre Bourdieu passed away on January 23 of this year, just a few months after leaving his position as Professor in this house, so in a way, neither the tireless fighter nor the professor ever really knew retirement. Pierre Bourdieu was born on August 1, 1930 in Denguin, Pyrénées Atlantiques. He completed his secondary education at the Lycée de Pau, in conditions about which the "Esquisse de socio-analyse", which he was preparing for publication during the last months of his life, provides information of far from merely anecdotal interest. "The boarding school experience", he says, "undoubtedly played a decisive role in the formation of my dispositions; in particular, by inciting me to a realistic (Flaubertian) and combative vision of social relations which, already present from my childhood upbringing, contrasts with the irenic, moralizing and neutralized vision encouraged, it seems to me, by the sheltered experience of bourgeois existences (especially when they are mingled with Christian religiosity and moralism – as, for example, in the USA)." As one of Brecht's characters says in The Threepenny Opera, "We'd like to live in peace and harmony, but things aren't that way.
Unfortunately, some people find themselves in such conditions that they quickly learn what others never learn, namely that things aren't like that. The press, which has regularly accused Bourdieu of believing in an absurd form of sociological determinism or fatalism, has not failed, of course, to use his description of his boarding-school years in support of an attempt to explain his life and work by a form of social resentment that his subsequent successes have unfortunately failed to assuage, just as they failed to teach him the manners he was expected to adopt in his new environment and in general. Those who knew Bourdieu and had read his works know, however, what he thought of the idea of treating a theoretical work, in philosophy or sociology, as nothing more than a substitute for an autobiography or a disguised confession by its author.
Bourdieu also spoke of "an irrepressible Gascon impulse", which was easily attributed to him and which was undoubtedly present in some of his remarks, which were often a little played out. But the references to his native Béarn and this Gascon side, which he did indeed sometimes like to adopt as a role, were certainly not, in his mind, an attempt at explanation, this time of the regionalist type. What is certain, however, is that he was always particularly sensitive to the difference between the Gascon sense of honor and what he calls "the masculine fantasy of the vigilante", which easily turns into a warlike pantalonnade. More than any other fighting intellectual, Bourdieu was wary of the miles gloriosus posture of comedy, which for him was that of a good number of philosophers and also, even if they should in principle be a little more protected against this risk, of sociologists. He wanted to act for real, whether directly or through knowledge, and not be like all those intellectuals who simply produce a theatrical imitation of action, a bit, he says, quoting Schopenhauer, like a stage horse making droppings.
After the hard experience of "social difference" and real and symbolic violence in a provincial lycée, Bourdieu experienced that of the complexed provincial who, as they say, "lands" in a great Parisian lycée, in this case Louis-le-Grand, to prepare for the École Normale Supérieure, where he entered in 1951 and was a student until954. After graduating from the École Normale Supérieure, he taught at the Lycée de Moulins (1954-1955), was assistant professor at the Faculté des Lettres in Algiers (1958-1960), then at the Faculté des Lettres in Paris (1960-1961), lecturer at the Faculté des Lettres in Lille (1961-1964), director of studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (1964-2001) and full professor of sociology at the Collège de France (1982-2001). Initially destined for a career as a philosophy professor, he wrote an annotated translation of Leibniz's Animadversiones for his DES and, in 1956, submitted a doctoral thesis under the supervision of Canguilhem. From a philosophical point of view, the tradition to which he always felt closest was that of epistemologists and historians of science, which seemed to him to represent what contemporary French philosophy had ultimately produced most respectably. In any case, to use an oft-used distinction, he felt much closer to the tradition of the "philosophy of the concept" than to that of the "philosophy of consciousness". Indeed, his last lecture at the Collège de France began with a eulogy of Jules Vuillemin, who was surely one of the philosophers he most admired. But for reasons he has often explained, and which include both his disappointment with the discipline of philosophy in general and the field experiences he had in Algeria, he chose to abandon philosophy for a discipline that was both more concrete and more action-oriented, namely sociology.
I shall not dwell on the many other positions he has held at one time or another, in addition to those I have indicated, in some of the most prestigious teaching and research institutions, nor on the scientific distinctions that have accumulated over the years, in France and abroad, on his person. For the second, I'll just mention that he was awarded the CNRS Gold Medal (1993), the Erving Goffman Prize from the University of California at Berkeley (1996), the Ernst-BlochPreis from the city of Ludwigshafen (1997), the Huxley Memorial Medal (2000), and a corresponding member of the British Academy (since 2001).
Bourdieu is the author of a considerable body of work, including almost forty books, most of which have been translated into numerous languages, and several hundred articles. The first of his works, Sociologie de l'Algérie, appeared in 1958, the last two, Le Bal des célibataires, and Interventions ( 1961-2001), were published this year, after his death. Between these two dates, a whole series of books appeared, most of them milestones that have become classics of sociology to a greater or lesser extent. I'll just mention, for the record, Les Héritiers (1964), Le Métier de sociologue (1968), La Reproduction (1970), La Distinction (1979), Le Sens pratique (1980), Ce que parler veut dire (1982), Homo Academicus (1984), L'ontologie politique de Martin Heidegger (1988), La Noblesse d'État. Grandes écoles et esprit de corps (1989), Les Règles de l'art. Genèse et structure du champ littéraire (1992), La Misère du monde (1993), Méditations pascaliennes (1997), Les Structures sociales de l'économie (2000), Langage et pouvoir symbolique (2001), Science de la science et réflexivité (2001).
For the sake of completeness, we should also mention Bourdieu's activities as collection director, journal editor and, finally, publisher. He directed the "Le sens commun" collection at Éditions de Minuit, was director of Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales and of the international book review Liber. He was creator and director of Éditions Raisons d'agir and director of the Liber collection at Éditions du Seuil.
After all the intelligent, banal and absurd things that have been written on this subject, I won't dwell on the reasons that have made Bourdieu probably the most widely read, important and influential sociologist of our time. I can best characterize the present situation of his work by quoting one of his best students, Loïc Wacquant: "Today, there is no practice, no zone of social space, sub-proletariat or intelligentsia, peasant or teacher, marriage or unemployment, school or church, state or market, science, art, sport, body, media, politics, ethics, relations between genders, ages, ethnic groups or classes, whose study has not been profoundly transformed by his work. For Bourdieu combined the rigor of the scientific method with the inventiveness of the artist, an incomparable theoretical culture combining authors whom the canonical tradition likes to oppose - Durkheim and Weber, Marx and Mauss, Cassirer and Wittgenstein, Husserl and Lévi Strauss, Bachelard and Panofsky – with a tireless practice of research in which he invested a libido sciendi without end or bottom."
Since the Bourdieu whose memory we honor today is essentially a man of science, I won't say anything about the activist and his struggles, even if, for him, the two aspects were never really separate or separable. A philosopher recently dedicated a book to him entitled "Célébration du génie colérique". It should be remembered, however, that Bourdieu was first and foremost a scholar, who was particularly wary, in his work, of reactions of legitimate indignation and the outbursts of righteous anger, and that he did not confuse the demands of objective and even, if possible, scientific knowledge with those of morality and action. He always insisted that, to be capable of liberating action, science must begin by demanding the right to direct itself solely according to its own rules. His last lecture at the Collège de France can in many ways be seen as a plea for the autonomy of science and the learned city, and a call to defend it against the dangers that increasingly threaten it today. There's a singular irony in the fact that he, who has regularly been accused of practicing a form of sociologizing and even sociologistic reductionism, ended his teaching with a reaffirmation of his long-held belief in the capacity of the world of science to self-regulate according to its own principles, which are not reducible to economic, social and cultural determinations imposed on it from outside. Yet it is precisely this kind of reduction that he believes is probably taking place insidiously in the current period, as always without the knowledge or collaboration of many of those who would have the best reasons to oppose it.
i believe," he says, "that the world of science today is threatened by a formidable regression. The autonomy that science had gradually conquered against religious, political or even economic powers, and, at least in part, against the state bureaucracies that ensured the minimal conditions of its independence, is very much weakened. The social mechanisms that were put in place as it asserted itself, such as the logic of competition between peers, are in danger of being put at the service of ends imposed from outside; submission to economic interests and media seduction threatens to combine with external criticism and internal denigration, of which certain "postmodern" delusions are the latest manifestation, to undermine confidence in science and especially social science. In short, science is in danger and, as a result, it is becoming dangerous [1]."
The Collège de France was surely one of the few institutions in which Bourdieu deeply believed, one of those which, in his eyes, still had the means and should also have the will to resist the pressure of economic interests and media solicitations; and he clearly assigned it a special responsibility and mission in the defense and illustration of the autonomy of science and the community of scholars. As I am convinced that the threat he warns of is neither imaginary nor exaggerated, I think this is an aspect of his message and legacy that we should keep in mind. The realistic and often disenchanted vision that historians and sociologists have taken of the realities of the scientific world has often led them to adopt relativistic, even nihilistic positions, which run counter to the official, highly idealized and sublimated representation of science. Bourdieu believed that it is possible to combine a realistic vision of the scientific world with a realistic theory of knowledge. And he also believed that it is essential to succeed in doing so, if we are not to run the risk of seeing science itself progressively subjugated to the simple logic of power and competition. But I think it's also important to remember the second part of his message. If science is to be autonomous, it is not to remain locked up in its own house, but to be truly at the service of everyone: "I'm not saying I've thought it all through, but I've said to myself that, given everything that's going on in the world at the moment, and which is so serious, it's not possible, when you're paid to look after the social world, and you're even remotely responsible, to keep silent, not to try to tell everyone a little of what you think you've learned, at everyone's expense, about this world... [2]"
Jacques Bouveresse, 2003.
