Bourdieu et la littérature (review)

Jean-Pierre Martin, under whose direction the present volume of essays is published, claims that Pierre Bourdieu has been too often treated with hostility, as an intruder in literary-critical circles. Martin is undoubtedly right, and, whilst Bourdieu’s name will be well known to students of sociology and anthropology, few literary scholars will be familiar with his work, either in France or abroad. Certainly, Bourdieu lacks the standing of his contemporaries Derrida and Foucault, although his engagement with literature is in certain respects more direct and thoroughgoing. The essays collected here begin to redress this imbalance. In approach and tone they are as varied as the disciplinary backgrounds of their authors, whose ranks include literary critics, philosophers, sociologists, philologists, and novelists. The accounts they offer range from the personal reflections of the writer Annie Ernaux, who describes the role of Bourdieu’s thought in shaping her literary practice, to the measured critical evaluations of Dominique Rabaté and Jacques Dubois. The volume will be helpful both to newcomers and to those already acquainted with Bourdieu’s œuvre. Several of the essays provide overviews of important texts and concepts, but there are also detailed critical appraisals of, for example, Bourdieu’s understanding of style (Marielle Macé), his notion of autonomy (Gisèle Sapiro), and his failure to account for the need of contemporary writers to support themselves by entering into non-artistic fields of professional activity (Bernard Lahire). An interview — conducted by Pierre-Marc de Biasi in 1992 and published here in full for the first time — is revealing not only of ‘la voix, si caractéristique, de Pierre Bourdieu’ (p. 257), but also of his method of writing and research, and the origins of his interest in literature and art. An index of references to literary works in Bourdieu’s writings, compiled by Fatima Youcef, will be useful to future scholars. Bourdieu is renowned for what Rabaté calls ‘son goût pour le combat’ (p. 33). Each one of the essays attests the polemical character of Bourdieu’s approach, although not all recognize that his intention in publishing works such as Les Règles de l’art (1992) was to offer ‘une provocation au travail et un programme de recherche’ (p. 287) rather than a completed theoretical system. This leads, in the volume’s weaker moments, to defensive posturing, and to readings that doggedly pursue the internal contradictions of particular texts without considering the practical possibilities enabled by the model they propose. The best essays, in contrast, extend the scope and reveal the limitations of Bourdieu’s theory by putting it into practice. In this respect the essays of Anna Boschetti and Jérôme Meizoz are exemplary. Whilst Boschetti elaborates the effects of external processes on the differentiation of practices within the literary field, Meizoz offers a fascinating account of the transmission of symbolic capital, and of Bourdieu’s role in the promotion and dissemination of his theory. What both authors thereby acknowledge is that ‘Bourdieu était à l’affût de travaux qui pourraient apporter des éléments empiriques supplémentaires, de nature à faire progresser sa théorie, qu’il savait très généralisante’ (p. 204).