Bourdieu and Me

I'll try to walk hand-in-hand with Bourdieu in this blog, because somehow I've started getting intrigued by him. To get back to the story, I was and am reading "Pascalian Meditations". It's only natural that the walk will feature thoughts on that reading and today's theory class. Yeah, this blog does stand the chance of being boring, or what we in Bengali call "aantel", but I would try to relate my lived in experience with Bourdieu's thought as much as I can. And, write in Bourdieuan syntax.

Bourdieu's starts with rather an unusual point--with a self-reflective take on the celebrated scholastic disposition, that, he criticises, grows from a disjointed standpoint, disjointed from history and social conditions, and seeks to study people and its life, like an artist watches over its art, from a distance and being detached.

So this is what we heard in class. We= all the students in union, and heard it from the super A. Frank. He’s one of those persons you will remember all your life. Oh yeah, you do remember the nasty persons as well, all your life, but this gushing about the prof is said without any of my usual and characteristic cynicism. Art Frank does make you forget that you are in Calgary. I think he’s my second favourite teacher, after PR.

It’s not too bad to get carried away for the things and people you care….is it really??

As I was saying…these are the concepts we dealt with in class.
Habitus. Doxa. Illusio. Scholastic Disposition. And the so intriguing symbolic violence. Instantly and funnily it reminded me of Avik’s orkut profile. I think he carries out symbolic violence in some ways. Why and How? I’ll come to that later. Let me for the moment say that I’m not singling him out and drawing any qualitative judgement on this social fact. Huh…..that's so Un-Bourdieuan! Ah well…we CANNOT, for one moment in our lives be free without bias and subjectivity, but subjectivity and bias could emanate without any ulterior motives which are mostly thought about in a pejorative way.

We started with a brief recitation from Tolstoy’s “War and Peace”. And realized how Tolstoy compartmentalizes people whereby mutual understanding and intersubjectivity is radically limited. Reminded me of some orkut scrap exchanges with Arghya where I was exactly taking a Tolstoyan standpoint in emphasizing a key defining characteristic of the individual and he was arguing the opposite….of taking in, of noticing and accepting everything. And I still stand by my own standpoint. Someday I WILL elucidate in detail as to why.

To come back to the concepts….

Habitus: This is knowing what other people would do something for themselves. It’s about knowing beforehand, before another person has actually stated explicitly and done so, of what help one would get. It is about knowing who to stand near—where to put oneself and be durable and transposable. Habitus enables us to know who to stand near to…..When you think of habitus: you know “This was his way of thinking…” Not planning ahead: it’s letting one’s habitus guide them. Being reflexive appears as “epiphany” because we are as much automatic as we are intellectual (p. 12).

Hmmm…..explains why sometimes people complimented me in creating quality fakes. I was able to master a habitus. Good job…..**I pat myself**

Now comes the tricky and depressing part.

In order to know, we need the scholastic disposition.

Refer page 8 of Bourdieu book… “I do not forget all that was do to myself” -”less to do with the understanding as with the will” - less understanding, more the will to try and see. “Often surpised at the time it has taken me really to understand the things I have been saying for a long time” - “rework the same things… it is always in a spiralling movement…”

So we should be careful about what we do, as we might go back spiralling to where we started. **So true of me**

Only that with each start, we seem to lose a bit of ourselves. The point might be the same, but are the entities the same?? (I’m deeply intrigued, hence the double question marks. They are not just the product of careless and aggressive typing.)

The most unexpected relations of the least we want to know, about who we are… tell people the least they want to know. Hence we need the scholastic disposition, the leisure, which removes us from practical necessity.

At this point I identified the root cause of my academic and professional frustrations. I did identify it long back but not in this beautiful language and in such a blithe reasoning. (The adjective does not signify my disrespect for Bourdieu but rather an amazement in justificatory reasoning of ironically, pejorative and helpless academic practices.)

This is where patients / physicians are disconnected. The key thing for patients is that you are left alone with nothing to do but think. The whole act of thinking and reflection takes on different and hitherto unknown proportions. The absence of a certain waiting period enables one to detach oneself from practical necessities and practise philosophical perspectives. The leisure of waiting, no matter howsoever painful and apprehensive, emerge. Hidden selves emerge. The Doctor however is disjointed from this process, even though a part of it. And this is precisely where the break with reality occurs.

This also maps how scholastic disposition works in us. It develops, it is implied, as a characteristic feature of belonging and identifying with an academic discipline. Pretty much like playing a game by its rules. And then internalizing those rules.

The big question now is: do we acquire a habitus or become into a habitus? If it's both, when does the crossover happen?

Scholastic Bias thus leads to errors (It’s bound to, going with the logic.). We assume being “above the world” without being immersed in it. Without taking in and holding the considerations that once we were there. It’s only natural that fundamental ambiguity about concepts and processes would result in a discipline that’s heavily reliant on linguistic rules of everyday life and yet seek to get to a lofty tower high and above everyday life, without being founded on everyday life, but being theorized in them.

Can we get crasser than this?