[Critical-Realism] Bourdieu & Bhaskar's writing style

["Brian Dick" <briandick51@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi all,



I think that the Bourdieu quote that Karl was referring to can be found on
page 121 of *Homo Academicus*:



"What one might call the *scientific syndrome*, typical of most semiological
work and of all the more or less phantasmagorical combinations of the
different lexicons of the social sciences, linguistics and psychoanalysis
and economics, etc., which proliferated in the seventies, can be understood
as an attempt by disciplines defined as doubly negative (neither arts nor
science) to reverse the situation by inverting the signs, and to aggregate
the prestige and profits of literary (or philosophical) avant-gardism with
those of scientific avant-gardism, although these had long been considered
incompatible, through the miraculous conjunction of the appearance of
scientific rigour with the appearance of literary elegance or philosophical
profundity."



In terms of Bourdieu's writing style, David Swartz in his book on Bourdieu,
*Culture and Power* (p. 13), justifies, or at least explains Bourdieu's
verbose writing style, noting that "Bourdieu [like Bhaskar] can never be
read casually."



Swartz offers three observations to help clarify his writing style: 1.)
"Bourdieu consciously employs rhetorical techniques for gaining distance
from the taken-for-granted world."  2.) "his style is a calculated challenge
to the stylistic conventions of orthodox academic discourse in France.  3.)
"Bourdieu's writing style undoubtedly represents an intellectual strategy to
demarcate his distinctive product on the French intellectual market just as
Barthes, Foucault, and Lacan have invented their respective writing styles."
 However, Swartz writes in a footnote that this style leaves Bourdieu "open
to C. Wright Mills's (1959: 219) familiar admonition: "To overcome the
academic prose you have first to overcome the academic pose.""



I think that it was the 3rd point that Karl was hitting on.  How closely
these points might also apply to Bhaskar, I leave up to the list-serve to
decide.


Best,
Brian
_______________________________________________
Critical-Realism mailing list
Critical-Realism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/critical-realism