Philosophy & Social Criticism http://psc.sagepub.com/ Bourdieu and Foucault on power and modernity Ciaran Cronin Philosophy Social Criticism 1996 22: 55 DOI: 10.1177/019145379602200603 The online version of this article can be found at: http://psc.sagepub.com/content/22/6/55 Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com Additional services and information for Philosophy & Social Criticism can be found at: Email Alerts: http://psc.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://psc.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav >> Version of Record - Nov 1, 1996 What is This? Downloaded from psc.sagepub.com at Ateneo de Manila University on November 5, 2012 Ciaran Cronin Bourdieu and Foucault power and modernity on Abstract Foucault’s theory of disciplinary power and Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic power are among the most innovative attempts in recent social thought to come to terms with the increasingly elusive character of power in modern society. Both theories are based on critiques of subject-centered analyses of power and offer original accounts of modern social institutions. But Foucault’s critique of the subject is so radical that it makes it impossible to identify any determinate social location of the exercise of power or of resistance to its operations. Bourdieu’s theory of practice in terms of the symbolically mediated interaction between the habitus and social structure avoids these problems by connecting relations of domination both to identifiable social agents and to the institutions of the modern state. However, Bourdieu’s strategic model of social action remains too narrow to allow for the possibility of autonomous agency and an emancipatory political praxis. The theory of symbolic power must be supplemented by a normative conception of practical reason if its emancipatory potential is to be realized. Key words The current are agency · habitus · modernity · power · resistance crises of legitimation besetting advanced capitalist sodue in part to the fact that operations of power have become detached from recognizable structures of political responsibility and accountability. It is not just that the institutions of representative democracy are increasingly circumvented by decentered, desubjectified and diffuse forms of power; these very institutions and the discourses of legitimation on which they are based seem to function as instruments of impersonal forms of power that resist straightforward cieties 55- Downloaded from psc.sagepub.com at Ateneo de Manila University on November 5, 2012 56 and escape political control. Part of our predicament is that lack an appropriate conceptual framework for analyzing how power functions in modern society. The extraordinary resonance of Michel Foucault’s genealogy of power is undoubtedly due to the fact that it promises to show us a way out of this predicament by challenging some of our most deeply held philosophical and empirical assumptions concerning modern social and political institutions and their history. Taking his orientation from Nietzsche’s conception of genealogy, Foucault argues that modern power can no longer be understood as something invested in subjects who exercise it over others with the sanction of right or law; on the contrary, since the 19th century power has increasingly operated through impersonal mechanisms of bodily discipline that escape the consciousness and will of individual and collective social agents. Foucault’s originality consists in his attempt to combine a relational analysis of power in terms of ceaseless social struggles with a theory of modernization as the emergence of a complex of disciplinary institutions which make possible the production of new forms of scientific knowledge concerning subjects. But as I will argue in the first part of this paper the reception of Foucault’s genealogical studies suggests that his critique of subjectcentered notions of power is so radical that it becomes impossible to identify any social location of the exercise of power or of resistance to power, and his notion of the ’disciplinary society’ is too monolithic to account for the diverse forms that power assumes in modern societies. In the main body of the paper I will argue that Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic power shares some of Foucault’s most valuable orientations, most notably his scepticism concerning subjectivistic theories of action and his emphasis on the role of bodily practices in mediating relations of domination. But Bourdieu avoids the problems that beset Foucault’s theory of disciplinary power by according a central explanatory role to a substantive conception of the subject as both essentially embodied and socially constituted. Bourdieu’s theory of practice in terms of the interaction between the habitus, the set of symbolically structured and socially inculcated dispositions of individual agents, and social fields structured by symbolically mediated relations of domination offers a more empirically sensitive analytical framework for decoding impersonal operations of power than does Foucault’s theory of disciplinary power. Thus the theory of symbolic power provides powerful analytical tools for understanding our contemporary situation and for orienting resistance to relations of domination. But, in conclusion, I will argue that Bourdieu’s tendency to analyze social interaction exclusively on the model of strategic conflict undermines the critical potential of his theory of practice and of analysis we Downloaded from psc.sagepub.com at Ateneo de Manila University on November 5, 2012 It must be supplemented by a normative account of discursively mediated consensual action if it is to provide effective orientation for an emancipatory political praxis. But modern. and exercised by and over. on this conception. (1) Foucault’s innovations along the first axis involve a shift from a substantive conception of power as invested in. it is exercised with the tacit consent of those over whom it is exercised. the discontinuity of events. In the first place. Foucault argues that the view that power involves one individual or group exercising control over another systematically misrepresents how power functions in modern society. 2012 .57 modernization. . familial. sexual.to form a field of force relations that Foucault’s Downloaded from psc. I Foucault’s genealogy of power and the disciplinary society genealogy of power and the modern subject combines an original philosophical conceptualization of power with a revisionist account of the genesis of modern society. for a rigorously nominalistic approach to history that emphasizes the lowliness of historical origins. and it operates in accordance with a shared conception of right which sets limits to its legitimate exercise. it functions in and through a multiplicity of social relations economic. and the contingency of identities subject to endless dissolution and reconfiguration. power is invested in certain individuals within a hierarchical structure of power relations. rather. is the discipline of thought by which metaphysical notions of originary meanings. ’disciplinary’ power does not involve a special relation of authority or control alongside other social relations. subjects to a relational view of power as a function of a network of relations between subjects.com at Ateneo de Manila University on November 5. While it is impossible to do justice to the complexity of Foucault’s genealogical works in a brief discussion. It reflects a ’juridical’ conception which links power to sovereignty and law.sagepub. enduring essences and an objective teleology in history can be overcome. etc. These tasks are essentially interconnected in Foucault’s conception of genealogy. this duality suggests that their significance for understanding modern power can be reconstructed along two main axes: (1) they seek to effect a radical shift in the conceptual framework in terms of which we generally think about power and (2) they present an original historical account of the genesis of modern institutions. This shift involves a number of displacements.2 Thus Foucault’s philosophy of power and his history of the genesis of modern social institutions and the modern subject are two integral parts of a single enterprise which aims at a thoroughgoing transformation of our understanding of ourselves and of the modern world. The discourses and experimental procedures of the emergent human sciences that explore this new domain of subjectivity first become possible as a result of the opportunities for surveillance. Thus in a second displacement Foucault shifts the focus of analysis from the conscious. Western philosophy has viewed power as antithetical to knowledge. Hence Foucault’s displacement of the practical subject goes hand in hand with a corresponding displacement of the knowing subject. as a result Downloaded from psc.disciplinary power is productive : through minute and exhaustive techniques of surveillance. habitual responses through which the modern subject is constituted as an effect and a vehicle of power. the modern subject is literally constituted as a vehicle of power and an object of knowledge. 2012 . Since Plato at least. who is denied the epistemic privilege that Greek philosophy associated with the activity of theoria and modern epistemology with the apodictic self-consciousness of the Cartesian ego. so that operations of power that frustrate these interests can be criticized as illegitimate and oppressive.4 Whereas sovereign power is negative .6 But with this another cherished assumption concerning power must be abandoned.com at Ateneo de Manila University on November 5. regulation and examination designed to control bodily behavior in a continuous manner. that which would enlist truth in the service of emancipation from domination. willing subject to the body: disciplinary power acts on the body to inculcate normalized. The implicit contract on which juridical power rests presupposes some shared conception of the human interests to be realized through the exercise of power. as something which distorts our perception of the truth.3 Disciplinary power produces its effects through ceaseless local struggles. which form strategic patterns that are not reducible to the intentions and purposes of individual agents and that crystallize into global mechanisms of domination. Thus the focus of analysis must shift from the subject of knowledge to constellations or regimes of ’power-knowledge relations’ and their historical transformations.58 encompasses the whole of society. namely. does not rest on a contract or on a shared conception of justice. nor any knowledge that does not constitute at the same time power relations. spatial and temporal regulation and examination of bodies afforded by modern disciplinary institutions such as the hospital. Foucault takes aim at this tradition with his provocative claim that ’there is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of power.it prohibits behavior that does not conform to the law . by contrast. the prison and the school.sagepub. It is concerned not with the legality of conduct and the punishment of transgressions but with the normalization of behavior designed to harness the productive and reproductive capacities of the body. Disciplinary power. 59 resistance can no longer be understood on the normative model of emancipation from unjust social and political relations. at least as these are traditionally understood. (2) Foucault’s innovation along the second axis consists in challenging Weberian accounts of modernization in terms of the functional differentiation of spheres of social action and their consolidation in the institutions of the modern state. We live neither in a Weberian society dominated by the state nor a Marxian society increasingly polarized into two antagonistic classes.sagepub.to which an emancipatory politics could appeal against the excesses of a power that has overstepped the limits of its legitimate exercise. and the design and operation of these institutions were in turn modified and rationalized in light of the criminological.and claims that they have in the meantime spread beyond the walls of these institutions and now shape every aspect of life in modern society. He treats the prison as emblematic of institutions in which new technologies of power were forged around the isolation of individuals and the exhaustive surveillance and regulation of their bodily behavior in both space and time. on the one hand. psychological. medical and pedagogical knowledge whose production they made possible.no ’real’ human interests or ’authentic’. the school. These institutions served at the same time as the ’laboratories’ of the emergent human sciences.8 but in a disciplinary society in which social relations are subject to an all-pervasive regime of normalizing discipline.the prison. the hospital. 2012 . the mental asylum.7 Thus the ultimate consequence of Foucault’s radical decentering of the knowing and willing subject is to sever the connection between resistance and normative conceptions of truth and justice. on the other. But Foucault’s thesis that there is an essential interconnection between power and knowledge makes an even more radical break with the traditional notion of emancipation in implying that there is no ’truth’ about human beings . In support of this radical thesis Foucault meticulously documents the development of techniques of discipline in a range of modern institutions . Thus to the extent that disciplinary power has disseminated throughout the social body. making it possible to observe inmates minutely and to register and codify the effects of regulations and coercive measures.9 The analysis of modernization as a transition from one global regime of power-knowledge to another reflects a Nietzschean conception of history which rejects the teleological assumption that Downloaded from psc. the factory and the military barracks . we are caught in a progressively more highly integrated feed-back mechanism of ’power-knowledge’ which is beyond the control of knowing and acting subjects. and Marxist accounts of modernization in terms of the unfolding of the inner logic of the capitalist economic system.com at Ateneo de Manila University on November 5. unrepressed sexual desires . lo . in the formulation of the law. it runs the risk of reducing power to a play of forces unconnected with recognizable human concerns.. by contrast... but we can plausibly claim that such consequences exhibit strategic patterns only if we can relate them to the conscious ends and purposes of identifiable social agents. I want to argue that the conceptual constraints imposed by his critique of subjectivism already restrict in problematic ways the explanatory potential of the model of disciplinary power. transforms. as the process which. cases where individual or collective actions have unintended consequences provide us with examples of purposefulness that cannot be reduced to the conscious motives. as Foucault seems to do when he says that power relations are ’intentional and nonsubjective’.sagepub. strengthens. through ceaseless struggles and confrontations. in the various social hegemonies. 11 As Charles Taylor has argued. Downloaded from psc. choices. or decisions of individuals or groups. Thus while his critique of subjectivism goes some way toward explaining why mechanisms of power in modern society seem to escape individual control. whose general design or institutional crystallization is embodied in the state apparatus. But setting aside for the moment the question of how much sense Foucault’s thesis of the disciplinary society makes of our contemporary situation. has paradoxical consequences because the notion of a ’strategy’ is essentially related to those of agency and social practices. In Foucault’s genealogical analyses the body seems to take over the role played by the subject in traditional analyses. 2012 . But the body. seem to crystallize spontaneously out of a chaos of shifting relations of force between interchangeable subjects and to float free of any specific social relations.60 there is some ultimate truth about human beings which is gradually being uncovered by science or that the history of political institutions represents a progress toward a more just social order. But divorcing the concept of a strategy from subjects altogether. or reverses them .com at Ateneo de Manila University on November 5.. Foucault analyzes contemporary power in terms of impersonal relations of force and strategies: power must be understood in the first instance as the multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate and which constitute their own organization.12 Foucault’s strategies. To focus the analysis of power on strategies rather than individuals or groups is potentially illuminating in suggesting that strategies have histories of their own that cannot be reduced to the intentionality of individual agents or to class interests at a particular moment. Instead of locating power in individual or collective social agents. [and] as the strategies in which they take effect. But without some account of how individual identity is constituted through the internalization of social schemes of interpretation and evaluation.. is neither a plausible target of power nor a possible source of resistance to its operations. 16 These problems are symptomatic of more deep-seated difficulties concerning the possibility. Foucault is in danger of undermining the essential reference of the concept of power to social relations altogether and assimilating it to notions of energy.’17 By treating ’right’ in general as an instrument of domination. for example. which he assimilates in a reductive manner to the legalism of the juridical model: to ’I then wanted to show . the role that Foucault assigns to the body renders the notion of resistance to power problematic because it is not clear how the body as such can function as a source of resistance to power.15 Moreover.sagepub. class. in describing power on the naturalistic model of relations of force between bodies.. As an empirical matter. or even generally. take the form of direct bodily constraint or coercion nor do they always involve surveillance. and the forms in which. often in an unconscious manner and by dominant and dominated agents alike. force and discharge that properly apply to physical nature On the other hand. the operations of power outside the confines of coercive institutions such as the prison and the asylum do not necessarily. Foucault tacitly denies any constitutive connection Downloaded from psc. this approach is in danger of reducing the subject to a mere reflex of bodily habits induced by external stimuli.com at Ateneo de Manila University on November 5. but of domination. it might be objected that Foucault’s goal is not to jettison the subject altogether but to challenge the assumption of the philosophy of consciousness that the subject is a self-originating source of meaning and by showing that the modern subject is. In certain places Foucault speaks of resistance in terms of the ’revolt of the body’. right (not simply the laws but the whole complex of apparatuses. or even the intelligibility. the extent to which. institutions and regulations responsible for their application) transmits and puts in motion relations that are not relations of sovereignty. to a certain degree at least.61 considered in abstraction from an embodied subject. of resistance occasioned by Foucault’s attempt to dissociate the concept of disciplinary power from normative conceptions of right and justice. 2012 . racial and gender domination are so insidious precisely because they function in large part through the internalization of repressive schemes of interpretation of self and world.13 And on a conceptual level. but the intensification of desire seems more like a causally induced effect of power than an instance of resistance action power.. citing as an example the intensification of sexual desire in response to the increased scrutiny of children’s sexuality by psychology and medicine. an effect of disciplinary power. 18 But while the norms of right and justice embodied in the laws and institutions of a particular state at a particular time may be repressive.com at Ateneo de Manila University on November 5. but that would be at odds with the subversive rhetoric of his own writings and sympathetic commentators have generally seen the value of his work to lie in part in its subversive political implications. the idea of resistance ceases to have any normative import. totalizing discourses of the human sciences. But what an anti-disciplinarian notion of right would involve he does not specify. for the latter can always be criticized as unjust. And without some notion of right and legitimacy that does not represent it merely as an instrument of power. and hence as instruments of domination. It is perhaps the realization that genealogy would thereby forfeit its potential to orient resistance to domination that led Foucault to speculate about the possibility of a ’new form of right’ which would be antidisciplinarian and liberated from the principle of sovereignty. For this thesis entails that there is no objective standpoint outside of relations of power from which the truth could be ascertained: discourses are neither true nor false in themselves but merely generate ’effects of truth’. and hence between resistance to power and the normative idea of liberation from domination. other than to say that it would break with the juridical conception of individual rights There would be no problem here if Foucault were willing to renounce any connection between genealogy and an oppositional politic.sagepub. which contradicts his thesis that power and knowledge are essentially interconnected. it would seem that resistance must be local and undirected and whatever ’effects of truth’ it might generate would be at best ephemeral.22 But then genealogy could only Downloaded from psc. the concept of ’right’ is not exhausted by any factually existing laws and institutions. Genealogy as anti-science would elaborate these ’popular knowledges’ into a historical knowledge of struggles that could be deployed tactically against the tyranny of organized scientific discourse and the centralizing powers associated with it.62 between power and discourses of legitimation. as Foucault seems to suggest in the passage just quoted. Perhaps this is what led Foucault to connect genealogical analysis with the revival of ’subjugated knowledges’ that preserve the memory of past social struggles but are disqualified as inadequate by the established canons of scientific rigor.2o The close interconnection that Foucault asserts between power and knowledge creates further problems concerning the possibility of resistance.21 With the idea of reviving suppressed knowledge Foucault seems to bring genealogy into contact with the critique of ideology. 2012 . If disciplinary power is an effect of the systematic. but then genealogy would have to lay claim to objectivity or truth in opposition to the established disciplines. 24 But the generalization of the model of disciplinary power from an institution such as the prison or the asylum to the social body as a whole is highly problematic because the disciplinary techniques Foucault so carefully describes seem capable of functioning effectively only within closed institutions.large-scale institutional techniques of surveillance and normalization grounded in the totalizing discourses of the human sciences on the other.sagepub. for example. This suggests that Foucault’s choice of the prison as the exemplary site of modern power may have prejudiced his analysis of modern society as a whole. While his account of the proliferation of techniques for disciplining bodies certainly highlights previously underappreciated aspects of modern history.the strategic play of domination and resistance in which subjects act on one another .26 Moreover. ground - Downloaded from psc.63 a counter-power and would become as totalitarian as the established sciences were it to prevail.23 This brings us finally to the question of the explanatory force of Foucault’s theory of disciplinary power and its empirical adequacy as a description of modern society.on the one hand. by contrast. His theory of modernity in terms of the ’disciplinary’ or ’carceral’ society turns on the claim that disciplinary techniques spread beyond the closed institutions in which they originated and gradually came to pervade modern society as a whole. 2012 . how the strategies and tactics of agents at the micro-level of local struggles are conditioned by.com at Ateneo de Manila University on November 5. But he offers no such account. and serve to reproduce. the largescale institutions of the disciplinary society. Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic power.25 The exercise of hierarchical surveillance. and the global constellations of power evoked by the image of the ’disciplinary society’ . As Foucault depicts it. coercive means of enforcing behavioral regulations. the exercise of power at the local level always potentially encounters resistance and relations of domination are inherently subject to reversal. while preserving Foucault’s emphasis on local struggles and bodily conditioning. More worrying is that he ultimately failed to establish a convincing connection between what he called the ’microphysics’ of power . But then he needs to explain how these shifting relations of power become stabilized into enduring strategic patterns and disciplinary mechanisms by showing. his rejection of explanations in terms of the state or class relations ultimately rings false because he does not explain how we moderns could have been so mistaken in the explanatory categories we apply to modern society both as theorists and as lay persons. normalizing judgment and systematic examination calls for organizational resources. this cannot be the full story. and instruments of data collection and analysis for which there are no obvious analogues in the case of interactions outside of institutional settings. e. and are generally differentiated terms Downloaded from psc. the behavioral and cognitive dispositions of individual agents. by which parents and teachers bring the child’s behavior into line with certain prevailing social expectations. 11 Symbolic power. which explain practices in terms of rules grounded in collective symbolic structures. practice. with what forms of expression. but without reinstating the discredited conception of the subject of the philosophy of consciousness. such as structuralism. class domination. cation Bourdieu’s 1 Bourdieu attempts to go beyond both subjectivist theories of action in of the intentions or rational calculations of individual subjects and objectivist theories. The habitus consists of a system of durably inculcated dispositions that structure both the agent’s behavior and her or his perceptions and representations of situations of action and of the social world in general.and assumes an implicit theory of modernization whose outlines have become clearer only in his recent work. These extend to such matters as physical deportment and posture.in terms of a dialectical interaction between the ’habitus’. and the modern state to analysis of modern forms of power is based on the applimodern societies of a theory of practice developed in anthropological studies of a tribal society . which also enables him to give a more plausible account of the role of the subject in the exercise of power and resistance.64 relates the analysis of local interactions in a convincing way to global relations of domination between social classes mediated by the institutions of the modern state.g.27 He analyzes practices in traditional societies . often indirectly communicated through gestures. The superiority of Bourdieu’s approach is due in part to his sensitivity to the symbolic aspects of power. and the objective structure of the social world in which actions unfold.28 It is inculcated through the everyday behavioral injunctions and petty disciplines. and social structure that underlie his theory of symbolic power (section 1) before turning to his analysis of modernization and modern structures of power (section 2) and describing how together they represent an advance over Foucault’s theory of power and modernity (section 3).sagepub. I will begin by examining the conceptions of agency. how food should be handled and consumed. the exchange of gifts . the place and time in which it is appropriate to speak. a Berber people of Algeria .com at Ateneo de Manila University on November 5. in what intonation. etc.that of the Kabyles. 2012 .. it is not a property or set of properties of an agent considered in isolation but a generative scheme of practices that functions only in relation to an appropriately structured social space. and hence the recognition. Symbolic power is the form material power relations assume when they are perceived through social categories that represent them as legitimate.com at Ateneo de Manila University on November 5. The structure of the social world of a traditional culture is determined both by relations between agents who occupy different positions in a hierarchical power structure and by a system of symbolic oppositions which shape agents’ perceptions of the social and natural worlds. age.sagepub. Systems of classification which reproduce. of the arbitrariness on which they are based. day/night. 2012 . in their own specific logic. by securing the misrecognition..31 Downloaded from psc. in the extreme case . the objective classes. In a traditional society economic and political power are inseparable from the operations of symbolic power that disguise the ’truth’ of social relations based on material dependence or on the implicit threat of force and thereby facilitate the general acceptance of such relations.65 In the course of this training a whole vision of the social world and of her or his position in it is communicated to the child in the form of implicit cultural schemes of classification. even/odd. the natural and social world appears as self-evident.e. but to view power in traditional societies in purely material terms would be to misrepresent their structure and mode of reproduction. etc. conspires to reinforce the individual’s view of the world and of her or his place in it. specifically. and to elicit behavior that is objectively attuned to the constraints of the prevailing relations of power without recourse to overt coercion..3° The shared schemes of perception and evaluation incorporated in the habitus mask the arbitrariness of social divisions by inculcating belief in their legitimacy or naturalness: along gender lines. from the actions and utterances of others to the disposition of domestic space in the traditional house. i. The whole social environment. the divisions by sex.29 Relations of power are determined in part by material resources. or position in the relations of production. Thus the habitus reflects the relations of power that structure the social world in which it is inculcated and the cultural understandings that shape social practices and are objectified in material culture. the wealth and the means of violence individuals can command. The habitus functions as a generative principle of actions only in relation to the structured social space in which it was constituted (or one sufficiently similar to it). such as dry/wet. right/left. make their specific contribution to the reproduction of the power relations of which they are the product. However. they are as much an ’objective’ part of the social world as are material power relations. secret. But this shared common-sense view of the world masks real differences in the interests of agents who occupy different positions in a hierarchy of power relations. since social reality is not independent of agents’ representations of it. 2012 . and the dispositions of different social agents ensure that their actions are harmonized in such a way as to reproduce relations of domination automatically. it underlies an immediate. bodily adherence to a commonsense view of the world which ensures that practices and the social divisions and relations of domination they reproduce are experienced as self-evident and hence are taken for granted.66 The shared cultural belief system on which symbolic power rests Bourdieu calls the doxa: as a structuring principle of the habitus. treacherous and magical makes it possible for women a secret domain of symbolic power of sorcery and magic opposition to the official. unreflective. Thus a scheme of classification which reinforces male domination by associating things female with what is sinister. public power of men. Both the habitus and social structure are shaped by the history of past struggles for material and symbolic power. the cultural homogeneity of traditional societies.agents can exploit existing relations of symbolic power in a strategic manner by manipulating accepted representations of the social world. bodily adherence to these same prin- ciples. mean that the scope for resistance to operations of domination in such societies is relatively limited. But the mutual reinforcement of subjective and objective structures is not a matter of mechanical determination. and the ubiquitous regulation of practices by the consensual schemes of the doxa and the habitus. which is reflected in the relative homogeneity of the habitus of different social agents and hence in the probability that their actions and experiences will be harmonized with one another. unreflective.sagepub. The doxic representation of the social world is embodied in the schemes incorporated in the habitus.32 The existence of a common-sense view of the world shared by all agents regardless of their social position is a function of the cultural homogeneity of traditional societies. symbolic power also depends on the complicity of the dominated in the form of an immediate. to cultivate in Downloaded from psc. Though the habitus functions primarily as a practical sense . Though relations of symbolic power depend on the doxa and collective ’misrecognition’.com at Ateneo de Manila University on November 5.an immediate bodily awareness of the potentialities and constraints of situations of action and an automatic adaptation to them . Thus while dominant agents have a vested interest in upholding the principles of ’vision and division’ of the social world that legitimate their position of dominance. The habitus is not a mere mechanical imprint of social structure in the body of the individual. and hence that they present the appearance of calculation and finality. one’s position in the family. The habitus ensures that an individual’s actions are attuned to the objective constraints of the social world in which it is constituted.33 Because the habitus encodes implicit cultural knowledge. 2012 . The social world in both its symbolic and material aspects is continually created and recreated by agents through their perceptions and actions. Actions generated by the habitus cannot be explained in terms of the conscious representations and calculations of the subject considered in isolation from the social world which shapes the subject’s behavioral and cognitive dispositions. but this appearance is the result of the operations of a practical sense whose operation does not depend on conscious reflection and rational calculation. though under the constraints of history embodied in the habitus. the actions it generates have a social meaning that transcends the conscious intentions of the agent and is inseparable from the structure of the social world and its history. homogeneity at the level of shared cultural schemes of interpretation is compatible with endless variations in individual dispositions resulting from differences in positions in the social hierarchy of power relations. The habitus encodes cultural background knowledge in the form of schematic oppositions that cannot be reduced to explicit conscious representations or rules of rational choice without distorting how practical sense shapes actions.67 Bourdieu’s analysis of agency as structured by relations of power and systems of cultural knowledge follows Foucault in breaking with conceptions of the subject rooted in the philosophy of consciousness. in which case actions would be just one moment in the functional circuit of self-reproducing social systems. 2 Both social structure and the habitus. Bourdieu subscribes to Max Weber’s general account of modernization as a process of rationalization through which forms of Downloaded from psc.com at Ateneo de Manila University on November 5. and hence the forms of symbolic power that rest on their interrelation. one’s position in the social field of class relations. and one’s trajectory through social space over time. On the other hand. the social context from which actions derive their meaning does not exist independently of the actions and perceptions of individual agents. One’s habitus is enduringly shaped by such socially marked factors as one’s sex. undergo fundamental transformations with the transition from traditional to modern forms of social life.sagepub. While Bourdieu stresses the homogeneity of the habitus of agents in traditional societies. Culture in non-literate societies is the shared possession of the whole group: all agents bring the same schemes of interpretation and classification to their interactions. the power to impose the legitimate vision of the social world. the common-sense view of the world. the relations of material power . But with the spread of writing and the resulting codification of cultural knowledge and practices. and thereby to reinforce . is collectively imposed. Codification makes possible a reflexive relation to practices that had previously been regulated by the practical sense of the habitus. codification also officializes practices and contributes to their recognition as legitimate.68 social action become differentiated into autonomous domains or ’fields’ of discourse and practice. by making them public. it objectifies them. legal interpretations and political Downloaded from psc. works of art.36 The resulting rationalization of practice gives rise to new forms of symbolic power.34 With the development of commodity and labor markets and the spread of money.com at Ateneo de Manila University on November 5. the practical relation of agents to their practices undergoes a profound transformation. and the doxa. It normalizes practices by minimizing vagueness and ambiguity in interactions.sagepub.underlying their exchanges. the scientific field. such as scientific theories. The cultural competence required to codify practices is not equally distributed among members of different social classes and its possession confers control over the ’legitimate’ representations of practices and of the social world in general. Thus cultural capital accumulated within the specialized fields translates into symbolic capital. it renders them calculable and predictable. 35 Economic differentiation goes hand in hand with the emergence of autonomous fields of cultural production .or to challenge . so that the different temporal phases of practices can be grasped simultaneously. 2012 .most importantly. the fields of art and literature.social divisions. economic exchanges become increasingly dissociated from symbolic relations between agents and wealth can function as economic capital in accordance with the logic of the market. When domains of practice are codified in systems of explicit rules.in which interactions also obey a broadly ’economic’ logic of capital accumulation. Money and the market function as instruments of objectification of economic capital that enable social agents to recognize and publicly acknowledge the economic ’truth’ that is. the field of law.37 Cultural differentiation goes hand in hand with the division of modern society into specialist producers of cultural ’goods’. and the political field . and by formalizing practices. specialist producers of symbolic goods emerge who claim a monopoly of the competence to produce legitimate culture and competition between rival producers opens up the dominant view of the world to contestation and struggle. sagepub. the structure of the social field. their relative amounts of economic and cultural capital. where the relations of power at a given time are the outcome of past struggles for cultural capital and for monopoly over the principles of classification and evaluation of works and competences. and the institutions of the modern state. cultural capital is closely related to inherited economic capital. such as farmers and unskilled laborers.g. Agents can be grouped into social classes according to their proximity in social space. executives) and those relatively rich in cultural capital (intellectuals. that is. Cultural producers raise claims to legitimacy for their sense Downloaded from psc. it is only through political mobilization that agents who are sufficiently close in social space can be galvanized into real political classes. by sending their children to university) and cultural consumption (e.38 This means that.g. and whether they are on an upward or downward social trajectory.69 discourses. and an encompassing social field of consumers who differ in their levels of cultural capital and hence in their ability to understand or ’consume’ cultural products. whereas the dominated class comprises those poor in both. Consequently. the dominant class comprising groups relatively rich in economic capital (professionals. through theater-going and museum visits). On the consumption side. modern societies can be represented as a space of social positions in which agents are distributed according to their total volume of capital. thereby instilling dispositions and attitudes that later translate into economic opportunities. collective agents who act on the basis of shared class interests. class domination is not a direct effect of the coercive actions of the dominant class but an indirect effect of the structure of the social field. The logic of capital accumulation and conversion ensures that ’capital goes to capital’ with the result that the social field becomes polarized into a dominant pole of those who are rich in economic and cultural capital and a dominated pole of those who are relatively poor in both forms.com at Ateneo de Manila University on November 5. with the different fractions of the middle class in between. The cultural fields are structured by relations of power between agents endowed in different degrees with the competence specific to the field (or cultural capital). academics and other cultural producers). while the divisions of the social field reflect enduring relations of domination.39 In order to understand how domination is mediated by social structure we must examine the relation between the internal structure of the specialized fields of cultural production. But social space in this is a theoretical construct and the classes that comprise it are ’classes on paper’. not ’real’ classes in the Marxist sense. since families seek to maintain and improve their social position by converting wealth into cultural capital through education (e. 2012 . Members of dominated classes. on the other hand. a belief in their importance that constitutes a shared doxa and is embodied in a fieldspecific habitus.) and to influschemes of interpretation and evaluations of the social world beyond the specialized field. etc. etc. based on an affinity between class habitus and scientific habitus. The complicity of scientists and other cultural producers in reproducing relations of domination is not a matter of a conscious decision to promote the interests of the dominant class. the class habitus that agent has internalized as a consequence of a position in the social field. ence Downloaded from psc. prestige and authority. are relatively weak in cultural capital since they are less likely to achieve educational honors. of the competences required for entry. and hence do not have equal access to the cultural and symbolic means to challenge the dominant view of the world. Thus the dominant class exercises domination indirectly in virtue of the structural homologies between the social and cultural fields without any need for direct acts of domination. such as economists and sociologists.com at Ateneo de Manila University on November 5.. an intuitive ’feel for the game’ that ensures an immediate identification with the stakes and an awareness of the prevailing power relations. The field-specific habitus. it is inculcated through training and participation in struggles within the field but it is deeply influenced by the agent’s prior social conditioning.70 products whose recognition reflects back on the producers in the form of honor. the convertibility of economic into cultural capital through the education system and cultural consumption ensures that most scientists and other cultural producers belong to the dominant social class and are disposed to advocate theories that reinforce the dominant view of the world in virtue of their affinity with the interests of the dominant class. 2012 .sagepub. juridical habitus. Thus there exist homologies between the structure of the social field and the relations of power within the cultural fields through which they mutually influence one another. wield symbolic power over how lay people and other professionals view the social world in virtue of the symbolic capital of reputation and personal authority they have acquired through symbolic struggles in the scientific field. At the same time. social scientists. it rests on the homology between the structures of the social and the cultural fields. that ensures that the aggregate effect of the ’disinterested’ pursuit of scientific truth or artistic excellence by different agents is to reinforce class divisions. is what separates the specialist from the non-specialist. For example. Symbolic struggles presuppose a shared interest or investment in the stakes of the struggle. Thus control of the principles of evaluation in terms of which claims to legitimacy are adjudicated represents the power to impose the recognized definition of the field (of who belongs. who provide grammarians with models of ’correct usage’. those who act in the name of the state becomes both the guarantor of an official. national culture by conferring academic degrees and official titles on cultural producers and is the means by which the norms of legitimate culture are inculcated in the habitus of individual agents. it favors both the monopolization of the universal by some and the dispossession of all others. In contrast to accounts of the constitution of the state that emphasize the centralization of the means of physical violence or the rationalization of fiscal administration. who are thereby mutilated.44 The unification of culture and language leads not only to the devaluation of minority cultures and dialects but also to the cultural and political disenfranchisement of members of dominated social classes. because the universalization of the exigencies thereby instituted is not accompanied by universalization of access to the means of satisfying them.sagepub. For children from different social backgrounds are not equally Downloaded from psc. a process which depends on the complicity of specialized cultural producers.com at Ateneo de Manila University on November 5. The accession of a particular language or culture to universality has the effect of relegating others to particularity.43 The emergence of a national language and culture sanctioned by the state reinforces the deepest and most enduring relations of domination in modern societies: Cultural and linguistic unification is accompanied by the imposition of the dominant language and culture as legitimate and by the rejection of all others as unworthy (patois).that is. who treat the unified language as a pregiven object of analysis. 2012 . moreover. Bourdieu underlines the importance of the unification of cultural fields through which the modern state gained a monopoly of the power to produce and impose the categories of thought that agents apply spontaneously to the social world. national culture which identifies itself with the general interest. and writers.41 Its primary agency is the education system which contributes to the transformation of the dominant culture into a legitimate.4° The state . and the supreme regulatory instance of the practices through which the behavioral and evaluative dispositions of the habitus are inculcated.42 Among the most important cultural developments in the emergence of the modern state is the institution of a single national language through the codification of grammar and norms of correct usage. in their humanity. in a certain sense. including linguists.71 The dialectical interrelation between class struggles in the social field and symbolic struggles in the specialized cultural fields which underlies relations of symbolic domination is closely bound up with the emergence of the modern state as the privileged locus of symbolic power. as Bourdieu construes it. the professional producers of political discourses.sagepub. Bourdieu views the state as a field of power in which agents who occupy dominant positions in the restricted cultural fields struggle for control over the power invested in the institutions of the state to impose the official representations of the social world.45 Writers. bureaucrats and jurists. the question of the legitimacy of the state is never posed. the field of power. Hence the power of the state cannot be analyzed exclusively in terms of the political process. compete with other cultural producers for control over the power invested in the state. scientists. the real problem of legitimacy for Bourdieu is that the established order is for the most part accepted as unproblematic and that. Hence all agents who want to partake in the power of the state must present at least the appearance of disinterestedness and adopt the language of neutrality and impartiality. thus in rewarding academic achievement. The processes of cultural and linguistic unification in which the state is constituted are also processes of universalization by which particular competences and views of the world are endowed with universal significance. It thereby allows for both the subjective and the a Downloaded from psc. Indeed. thereby contributing to the naturalization of arbitrary class divisions. predisposed by 3 Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic power provides a more fruitful basis for critical analysis of modern power than Foucault’s conception of disciplinary power. as this is understood by philosophical theories of political legitimation. the education system legitimizes the results of prior social conditioning by representing them as the expression of innate merit or intelligence. However.72 their family training to master the norms of official culture inculcated by the education system. the ’disinterested’ interest in the universal or the general interest. should not be confused with the political field. in particular by relations of domination between social classes and the institutions of the modern state. that is. It shows how impersonal operations of power are mediated both by the cognitive and behavioral dispositions of individual agents and by global features of social structure. with the exception of crisis situations. but only by identifying with the interests of the state. 2012 . can exert symbolic power over agents’ perceptions of the social world. as well as politicians. which is one of the specialized fields of cultural production: politicians.46 The dominant class is so successful in imposing its domination because it can count on the complicity of the dominated which is extorted through the state-sanctioned inculcation of the norms of the dominant culture.com at Ateneo de Manila University on November 5. ’correct’ pronunciation. but the forms that discipline assumes in their respective accounts are importantly different. is an important dimension of the habitus. objectification and formalization of practices through codification. etc. Bodily ’hexis’. Both thinkers accord a key role to bodily disciplines in the constitution of the subject. Foucault applies the model of disciplinary techniques. by which parents instil into their children behavioral dispositions and schemes of perception and evaluation. which are subsequently reinforced by the education system. but of everyday injunctions concerning posture. the product of the internalization of cultural schemes of interpretation and evaluation. At the same time.but of the normalization. the culturally constructed way of holding one’s body and the gestural and verbal style one uses. Thus the concept of the habitus allows for the inner. which ensure that the dominant classes enjoy a monopoly over the symbolic power to shape agents’ self-understandings. while Bourdieu’s agent is not a passive effect of disciplinary power. Bourdieu holds that structures of subjectivity are the result of the incorporation of practical and cognitive dispositions via the internalization of cultural schemes of interpretation and evaluation. symbolic dimensions of personal identity. neither is she or he the sovereign subject of the philosophy of consciousness. 2012 . The schemes of the habitus reflect the norms of the dominant culture legitimated by the state. is the result not of novel techniques of surveillance and normalization.sagepub. It also makes possible a more empirically nuanced description of the diverse forms power assumes in modern societies and opens the way to a more plaus-ible account of resistance. But it remains open to question whether Bourdieu breaks sufficiently with the Foucauldian view of the subject as an effect of the Downloaded from psc. The inculcation of the habitus.com at Ateneo de Manila University on November 5.. which developed in closed institutions such as the penitentiary and the asylum.though these undoubtedly play an important role in closed institutions.47 Modern forms of power are not the result of the emergence of new technologies for disciplining bodies . but the habitus is also a cognitive structure. to modern society as a whole. which lead to new forms of symbolic power connected with the institutions of the modern state. Whereas Foucault treats the subject as an effect of disciplinary technologies acting on a mute and malleable body. manners. by contrast. as Foucault amply demonstrated .73 social aspects of power without falling into the forms of subjectivism and economism rightly criticized by Foucault. Bourdieu’s theory of the habitus recognizes the importance of the bodily aspects of agency but avoids the problems besetting Foucault’s treatment of the body by integrating it into the circuit of symbolic power through which relations of domination are mediated. relational phenomenon that operates through ceaseless strategic confrontations and struggles. For the only principle of individuation it admits is the differentiation in the social positions of agents: differences in the habitus are a reflection of differences in the social conditionings of agents that result from the positions they occupy in social space (their family background. by contrast. social trajectory. Bourdieu allows that the individual can achieve some control in shaping her or his habitus in virtue of the ’awakenings of consciousness and socioanalysis’. as I will show. but it stops short of a genuine theory of individual identity. Only through critical practical discourses can agents liberate themselves from the facticity of social conditionings and constitute themselves as autonomous agents.48 Without some account of how the agent can come to reflect on and criticize the schemes of interpretation and evaluation she or he has internalized.sagepub. through the objectification of relations of domination in the social sciences that cuts through the mystifications of the doxa. 2012 .49 that is. the agent’s ’identity’ remains a mere effect of social conditioning. etc. Foucault’s treatment of the subject is problematic because it does not allow for the inner. But this would presuppose a richer understanding of the political process than Bourdieu’s position allows. But Foucault’s skepticism concerning explanations of power in terms of social classes and the institutions of the state leaves him at a loss to explain how local strategic struggles become stabilized into enduring relations of domination.74 operations of disciplinary power on the body. shows how local interactions are orchestrated by symbolic mechanisms via the inculcation of the habitus in such a way that agents are led to reproduce relations of domination even against their own interests. Bourdieu agrees with Foucault in viewing power as a dynamic.). But a theory of the differentiation of the dispositions of agents according to social conditions does not amount to a theory of individualization and hence of individual identity. Bourdieu’s account of the inculcation of the habitus through the internalization of symbolic schemes of classification and evaluation goes some way toward overcoming this limitation. But he goes beyond traditional Marxist analyses of class domination by linking the accumulation of economic wealth Downloaded from psc. Bourdieu’s model. but he does not explain how the results of such awakening could be integrated into an autonomous personal identity. reflective dimension of personal identity and thus seems to reduce the subject to a collection of acquired behavioral reflexes. In order to do this he would have to extend his conceptions of agency and rationality to include an account of how repressive schemes of interpretation of self and world can be opened up to discursive criticism in light of impartial norms of social justice.com at Ateneo de Manila University on November 5. Thus he avoids the economism which reduces all social relations to productive forces and voluntarist accounts of class struggles as involving direct conflicts between social groups mobilized around class interests. and hence as legitimate. and especially those who are culturally disenfranchised. he is skeptical about the possibility of overcoming relations of domination through the institutions of representative democracy. The dominant classes have no need to exercise power directly through actions motivated by class interests because they can count on the complicity of dominated agents in their own domination.75 cultural mechanisms that enable those who occupy a dominant social position to impose the vision of the world favorable to their interests as universal.com at Ateneo de Manila University on November 5. and whose political stances are determined more by the to Downloaded from psc. 2012 . But what scope. This is in part because political discourses of legitimation are open to manipulation by those who monopolize the symbolic power to represent particular interests as universal. can reflexively grasp and control only within limits. if any. does Bourdieu’s analysis leave for resistance to the operations of symbolic power? The problem of resistance is addressed in Bourdieu’s work at the level of the political field and at the level of the scientific representation of the social world.sagepub. so that revolutionary action can be precipitated by transforming the proletariat’s representations of its true interests. traditional Marxist theory of ideology and revolution remains trapped in the philosophy of consciousness: it assumes that domination is mediated by the ideological misrepresentation of the true interests of the proletariat. Hence. this goes a long way toward explaining why the hierarchical relations of privilege characteristic of capitalism have proved to be so resilient and why oppositional political energies have been consistently dissipated. but even more important is the fact that the internal logic of political struggles between politicians and parties within the political field tends to reproduce rather than to undermine relations of domination in the social field. As Foucault recognized. But Bourdieu’s theory of the habitus suggests that relations of domination are more deeply entrenched and resistant to change than the critique of ideology would suggest because they are based on bodily schemes that agents. As regards the political field. resistance to class domination cannot simply take the form of the political mobilization of the dominated class through the heightening of class consciousness. Dominated groups can gain political representation only by delegating authority to professional politicians who exercise a monopoly over the forms of political discourse that are socially recognized as legitimate. Taken together with his analysis of the modern state and of the cultural mechanisms underlying the mutual convertibility of economic and symbolic capital. the more likely a political party is to be organized as an authoritarian apparatus of mobilization that demands unquestioning allegiance to the official party representation of the group’s identity and interests.com at Ateneo de Manila University on November 5. tend to reproduce relations of domination by intensifying the disenfranchisement of dominated groups. the more struggles within the field conform to the intrinsic scientific logic of a competition for truth in which participants must ’fight’ with reasons and arguments.76 logic of struggles internal to the political field than by the interests of they claim to represent. 2012 . struggles within the scientific field are likely to contribute to the reproduction of relations of domination by reaffirming the dominant view of the world. in fact the representative creates the group by providing it with the symbolic means of understanding itself as a group. especially when its members are relatively deprived of the cultural means of publicly representing their own interests. scientists exercise symbolic power by shaping the categories through which agents perceive the social world. Like other cultural producers.51 But in contrast to the critique of ideology. since scientific representations of social practices can dispel the mystifications underlying symbolic domination by revealing the arbitrariness of the social divisions it serves to legitimate. but he goes beyond Foucault in showing how scientists exert symbolic power in virtue of the homology between the scientific field and the social field. Bourdieu does not view the critical potential of science as a straightforward matter Downloaded from psc.sagepub.so those As it transpires. the potential symbolic effects of scientific theories are all the greater because science claims to speak in the name of the universal (i. Bourdieu accords scientific discourse a qualified autonomy that enables it to play a role in facilitating resistance to power. Though ostensibly the representative is delegated by the group. But the subversive potential of science vis-a-vis existing relations of domination depends on the degree of autonomy enjoyed by the scientific field at a particular time. the primary locus of resistance to power on Bourdieu’s analysis is not the political field but the scientific field. with the exception of crisis situations in which the authority of established parties and representatives is challenged. indeed. Thus struggles within the political field. This means that the more culturally dispossessed those it claims to represent are. To the extent that the scientific field is subordinated to the logic of conversion of economic into cultural capital. The greater the autonomy enjoyed by the scientific field. Bourdieu agrees with Foucault that the social sciences are deeply implicated in modern forms of power. of reason) and to be neutral and impartial with respect to social struggles.e. and while Foucault’s claim that knowledge necessarily generates effects of power threatens to collapse the distinction between knowledge and power altogether. it is not clear that Bourdieu’s account of symbolic struggles in the scientific field supports his assumptions concerning the historical progress of reason and the emancipatory potential of scientific representations of the social world. scientific representations enable agents to recognize the arbitrariness of relations of domination by shattering the misrepresentations of symbolic power. the primary stake in the struggles in the scientific field. That being said. there independently is no reason to believe that it necessarily contributes to the progress of reason as opposed to a mere succession of equally arbitrary representations of the social world. he analyzes it in terms of a ’progress of reason’ which results from the fact that the internal logic of symbolic struggles within the scientific field compels scientists to advocate the interests of the universal.com at Ateneo de Manila University on November 5. it does not ultimately provide the Downloaded from psc. In this way. he attempts to break with metaphysical conceptions of reason as a transcendental faculty of the human mind in favor of a conception of reason as the product of historical struggles subject to the internal dynamics of the scientific field. it should also be emphasized that Bourdieu’s analysis of the structural homologies between the scientific and the social fields has the merit of showing how social science can contribute to the reproduction of relations of domination in spite of.53 But if the competition for symbolic power within the scientific field does not lead to the victory of positions that are justified in a sense that can be specified of the mere fact that they are socially recognized.52 However. However. is not the production of true statements or valid theories but the socially recognized authority to speak and act legitimately. and even in virtue of. Science is capable of transforming agents’ perceptions of social reality because it raises criticizable claims to truth.sagepub. III Symbolic power and discursively mediated power While Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic power points to the possibility of resistance to symbolic domination. Rather. 2012 . The progress of reason cannot be understood solely in terms of symbolic struggles among scientists independent of some account of how the internal logic of scientific research and argumentation leads to the ’victory’ of positions that are justified or true. its rhetoric of objectivity and disinterestedness. on Bourdieu’s account. The disenchanting sociological gaze that views the history of science in terms of struggles for dominance between advocates of competing positions cannot dispense with an internal analysis of the logic of scientific discourse.77 of advocating the truth in opposition to ideological distortions of social reality. Bourdieu assumes that all universal values are merely particular values that have been universalized through the mechanisms of symbolic power. specifically. While it leads to penetrating empirical analyses of mechanisms of symbolic power that function behind the backs of social agents. the universal is the shared possession of the group: it is embodied in the schemes of perception.54 But values which present themselves as universal are capable of mobilizing groups only because their members do not view them as embodying merely conceptual resources as Downloaded from psc. the fact that in all societies interests which are regarded as universal command social recognition.resistance can only lead to the substitution of one form of domination by another. In modern societies. classification and evaluation in terms of which the members recognize themselves as a group.sagepub.com at Ateneo de Manila University on November 5. one which could claim legitimacy and form the basis for consensual political action guided by shared interests . 2012 . it narrows the scope of possible resistance to relations of domination and thereby weakens the critical force of the theory of symbolic power. In traditional societies. For the only options it leaves open to dominated agents are to accumulate sufficient economic and cultural capital to attain a position of dominance (the strategy of the ’upwardly mobile’ classes) or to challenge the principles of perception and evaluation that legitimate existing relations of domination.78 in terms of which resistance can be understood and hence can take on a positive political significance. Without a more differentiated conception of practical reason that allows for the possibility of consensual political action. symbolic struggles may succeed in overthrowing arbitrary social divisions. but without an account of what would constitute a non-arbitrary social order that is. the symbols of national identity in terms of which citizens understand who they are. By challenging the dominant principles. the universal becomes the monopoly of the state and of those who can appropriate the power invested in the institutions of the state and its symbols. and individuals acquire the symbolic capital of honor and personal authority by giving at least the appearance that their actions conform to the publicly recognized norms and customs of the group. While Bourdieu breaks with the narrow individualism of rational choice and utilitarian conceptions of practical rationality in showing how the dispositions and preferences of agents are shaped by social forces. Bourdieu cannot account for the phenomenon on which symbolic power depends. by contrast. this represents an advance at the level of social explanation rather than at the level of the theory of action and political theory. emancipation Bourdieu’s theory of action limits the scope of practical reason to the strategic calculations of agents to maximize their share of the material or symbolic profits at stake in different fields of action. com at Ateneo de Manila University on November 5. the claim to universality.to what extent do Foucault’s genealogical writings provide a framework for analyzing and criticizing relations of domination in modern society? . a fact overlooked by those who argue for a greater unity and consistency in his thought as a whole than Foucault himself was wont to claim for it. and hence legitimacy. Bourdieu would have to extend his conception of practical reason to encompass non-strategic interaction based on a discursively achieved agreement concerning shared interests and values.55 The constitution of a just social order presupposes in turn that agents can adopt a reflexive. and whereas perceptions of legitimacy can be manipulated. NY: Cornell University Press. 1977). ’Nietzsche. 1990) and on related essays and interviews from the 1970s. Thus a genuine emancipatory politics calls for the cultivation of non-repressive structures of self-identity in dialectical interaction with discursively mediated structures of intersubjectivity. critical attitude toward their socially constructed identity by breaking the hold of repressive schemes of interpretation and evaluation internalized in the habitus. of values can also be based on reasons. York: Vintage. CounterMemory.and does not claim to do justice to his work as a whole. Genealogy. I (New .79 particular interests that have been arbitrarily universalized. 1 The following remarks will focus primarily on Discipline and Punish (New York: Vintage. In this way alone is it possible to conceive of the mobilization of resistance to relations of domination which is based not simply on the universalization of the interests of a particular social group but on interests that can claim more general validity. In order to allow for this possibility. 2012 .sagepub. USA Notes I would like to thank Thomas McCarthy for his comments on an earlier draft of this paper. 1979) and The History of Sexuality Vol. Downloaded from psc. in Language. Nevertheless I believe this narrowness of focus is justified by the fact that his genealogical writings mark a clear departure from his earlier work and are in important respects inconsistent with the ideas he was developing before his death. Practice (Ithaca. 2 Foucault. My reading is motivated by a limited concern . University of Illinois at Chicago. History’. 94. Discipline and Punish. Discipline and Punish. The individual which power has constituted is at the same time its vehicle. aims.’ Thus Foucault not only rejects the Marxist theory of class domination that locates power in a particular social class. he must also reject a Marxist revolutionary politics informed by an ideal of emancipated social relations in which the free exercise of human capacities would be possible. 28: ’it is not the activity of the subject of knowledge that produces a corpus of knowledge. On the affinities between Foucault’s model of the disciplinary society and systems theory see Axel Honneth. pp. 29. it is the element of its articulation. cf. he does acknowledge a historical link between bodily disciplines and the growth of capitalist modes of production and accumulation. Power/Knowledge. Discipline and Punish p.sagepub. I. 1991). I. On Foucault’s concept of ’genealogy’ see Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow. that the self is the result of traces inscribed in the body by contingent events. While Foucault is critical of the economistic assumptions of Marxist class theory. pp. 2012 . pp. Indeed the History of Sexuality.. 193-4.. IL: University of Chicago Press. p. 139-64.80 3 4 Drawing on Nietzsche. cf. pp. Foucault. I.’ Yet it is difficult to conceive of calculations. Downloaded from psc. and that history is an endless series of struggles for domination devoid of any teleological meaning. pp. cf. 98: ’The individual is an effect of power. pp. cf. 140-4. But this does not mean that it results from the choice or decision of an individual subject. that determines the forms and possible domains of knowledge. 104ff. p. 183-4. see ibid. pp. History of Sexuality. 84. p. Vol. 92-3. in David Couzens Hoy (ed. Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics (Chicago. 1980). Foucault goes on to say that power relations are imbued with ’calculation’ and that no power is exercised ’without a series of aims and objectives. The Critique of Power 10 11 (Cambridge. 27. ’Foucault on Freedom and Truth’. Power/Knowledge (New York: Pantheon. 52.) Foucault: A Critical Reader (Oxford: Blackwell. Vol. 168-9.’ Discipline and Punish. Foucault advocates a form of hiswriting which would overturn metaphysical conceptions of meaning and truth by showing that historical origins are irreducibly contingent and multiple. 1983). torical 5 6 7 8 9 and at the same time .. the processes and struggles that traverse it and of which it is made up. 1986).com at Ateneo de Manila University on November 5. p. . Vol. or objectives that are not tied to the choices and decisions of agents or groups. 26-7. 218-21 and History of Sexuality. but power-knowledge. Charles Taylor. p. Discipline and Punish. MA: MIT Press. p. useful or resistant to power. pp. pp.81 following passage suggests that Foucault’s main concern is to deny that strategies of power originate from above. Lawrence (Cambridge.the fact that individuation is inseparable from self-determination and self-realization .com at Ateneo de Manila University on November 5. pp. Dreyfus and Rabinow introduce a notion of ’social practices’ that plays no role in Foucault’s own discussions. in a ruling caste or those who control the state apparatus. in order for a power relationship to exist. 1987). 1991). Habermas argues that Foucault’s account of the constitution of the self through bodily conditioning does not allow for the individualizing effects of socialization .. pp. 95-6. No comparable assertions are to be found in the genealogical writings. 17 Power/Knowledge. ’Habitus and Body Language: Towards a Critical Theory of Symbolic Power’. pp.sagepub. p. Jurgen Habermas. p. On the problematic implications of Foucault’s rejection of hermeneutic approaches to social analysis see Thomas McCarthy. Ideals and Illusions (Cambridge. pp. ’the other’ over whom power is exercised must be recognized as a person who acts (’The Subject and Power’.because its objectifying perspective effaces the symbolically and linguistically structured nature of the medium in which socialization takes place.the cynics of what he calls the ’local cynicism of power’ . pp. 108-9). who argues that the central role Foucault accords the body cannot be reconciled with his general conception of power. in Dreyfus and Rabinow. Philosophy and Social Criticism 21(2) (1995): 23-34. 2012 . 220) and that ’[p]ower is exercised only over free subjects. cf. MA: MIT Press. 56-7. 86-7. ’Foucault on Freedom and Truth’. 16 Power/Knowledge. 221) read like a belated recognition of these conceptual constraints on the notion of power. and only insofar as they are free’ (ibid. 13 This is not rassment to deny the significance of such practices as police harof racial minorities and rape and wife-beating as exercises of domination. Downloaded from psc. This is confirmed by Foucault’s own later analysis of the concept of strategy in a text in which he clearly distances himself from some of the assumptions of his genealogical works: ’The Subject and Power’. 224-5. But then he owes us some account of who are the subjects of the local tactics of power . Kevin Olson. The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity Frederick G. 12 Taylor. but even they can be assimilated only with difficulty to Foucault’s model of disciplinary technologies. Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. It is significant that in explicating the idea of ’strategies without strategists’ in their study (cf. 14 Foucault’s later assertions that. 15 cf.and how these tactics become stabilized into ’comprehensive systems’. pp. MA: MIT Press. 287-8. 50-3. 1990). Taylor. for example. while his critique of objectivism is aimed primarily at Lé. 19 Power/Knowledge. 26 cf. principally Sartre. but especially to that which is defined by the normalized subject as otherness’. 72. Thus Connolly.sagepub. Schü. ’Foucault on Freedom and Truth’. remain unclear. Logic of Practice. Foucault. what is ’excluded’ or ’suppressed’ by discourse . William Connolly argues that Foucault 20 ’aspires to a conception of rights attached not merely to the self as subject.tz and Garfinkel.ois Ewald (ed. and Otherness’. but has no determinate empirical content or political impli- cations of its own. 2012 . 201-2. Critique of Power. cf. 21-30. argues that Foucault’s rhetorical devices are designed to ’incite the experience of discord or discrepancy between the social construction of self. among numerous accounts of this opposition in his writings. 72. 24 Discipline and Punish.82 18 cf. ’On Foucault’s Uses of the Notion "Biopower"’. The trouble with such readings. 23 cf. Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. and Otherness’. 124-5. p. 1992). 191-2. Power/Knowledge. Honneth.) Michel Foucault Philosopher (New York: Routledge. CA: Stanford University Press. 90-3. and rationality and that which does not fit neatly within their folds’ (’Taylor.viStrauss. pp. The Logic of Practice (Stanford. Bourdieu. 25-51. Political Theory 13(3) (1995): 371. 1-6. Philosophical Discourse of Modernity. pp. p. 22 ibid. In Other Words (Stanford. CA: Stanford University Press. 29 For a diagram of the symbolic scheme of oppositions which structure the Kabyle vision of the world (whose underlying principle is the Downloaded from psc. or what kinds of claims it would ground. 1977). is that the category of ’otherness’ by definition resists theoretical specification . whose right it would be.so that it all too easily serves as a generalized source of suspicion of any analytical framework or political program. 1990). pp. 28 Outline. p. it seems to me.it is. 72-8. pp. 53-4. 81-4. after all. in Franç. 27 See. pp. But what a right grounded in ’otherness’ would consist in.. Habermas. 25 The generalization of the disciplinary paradigm from closed institutions to society as a whole also marks a controversial methodological shift in Discipline and Punish from a descriptive history of institutions and a speculative theory of modernity. p. 118. pp. The main targets of his critique of subjectivism are thinkers in the phenomenological tradition. p. Michael Donnelly. pp. truth. 21 Power/Knowledge. Foucault. 281. 368). in ’Taylor. 108.com at Ateneo de Manila University on November 5. 211-12. p. pp. . pp. p. cf. and upper limits are set to accumulation by the fact that maintaining personal prestige demands heavy material expenditures on one’s ’clients’. 2012 . 1993). in addition to cultural knowledge. 54-9.sagepub. pp. 1990). the assimilation division of labor between the sexes). Bourdieu criticizes Marxist class theory for failing to take account of its own ’theory effect’. 191-4. pp. Logic of Prac- capital into the symbolic power to social facts and impose social divisions is particularly evident in the field of law. For an illuminating interpretation of the habitus as embodied social understanding see Charles Taylor. Bourdieu. p. pp. 34 cf.83 30 31 32 33 see Outline. p.coles et esprit de corps (Paris: Editions de Minuit. Berkeley Journal of Sociology 32 (1987): 1-17. pp. 116).. pp. 39 Bourdieu. (eds) Bourdieu Critical Perspectives (Chicago. p. p. 40 Raisons pratiques. in Craig : Calhoun et al. cf. Bourdieu argues that the concentration of symbolic capital in the state is the precondition of the consolidation of the other forms of capital into autonomous fields (ibid. of the habitus to the background knowledge of the lifeworld tends to obscure the fact that. 36 In Other Words. it also encodes relations of power. ’Modernization and Postmodernization in the Work of Pierre Bourdieu’. Sociology of Postmodernism (London: Routledge. 229-51. Elsewhere he describes the state as ’the central bank of symbolic credit’ ( Noblesse d’Etat. Bourdieu. 1991).. 57. Logic of Practice. pp. ibid. Language and Symbolic Power (Cambridge. 1994). 80-4. 112 ff. La create tice. 125-6. 554-5. Downloaded from psc. p. 101. of Practice. 80.com at Ateneo de Manila University on November 5. ’The Force of Law: Toward a Sociology of the Juridical Field’. the fact that in declaring the existence of classes and of class interests it contributes to their realization. Hastings Law Journal 38 (July 1987): 814-53. 1989). 164. 37 The transformation of cultural 41 Raisons pratiques. p. 123-9. Outline. 237-65. 117-18. in Lash. 35 In precapitalist societies the material ’truth’ of economic exchanges is systematically disguised by symbolic relations between agents: wealth can be put to work only by cultivating personal relations of dependence and obligation.orie de l’action (Paris: Seuil. pp. However. Raisons pratiques: Sur la thé.’. pp. IL: Chicago University Press. ’To Follow a Rule . Outline.. 157. MA: Harvard University Press. La Noblesse d’Etat: Grandes é. pp. and Logic 215. Scott Lash. 538). 38 In Other Words. ’What Makes a Social Class? On the Theoretical and Practical Existence of Groups’. p. depends on the practical recognition of those over whom it is exercised (La Noblesse Downloaded from psc. pp. 166. 116 (my translation). n. Raisons pratiques. 116. 109. The effectiveness of symbolic power depends on the fact that it ’goes without saying’. which entailed the devaluation of regional dialects and the cultural and political disenfranchisement of speakers of those dialects. p. 132-3. However. 50 See Language and Symbolic Power. 1992). 244. MA: MIT Press. 49 In Other Words.com at Ateneo de Manila University on November 5. La Noblesse d’Etat.rgen Habermas. 171-202. pp. p. 2012 . 53 cf. in contrast to naked force. pp. Thus I would question the claim that surveillance and normalizing judgment. 44-9. 165-6. as techniques of objectification. ’Habitus and Body Power’. cf. 48 On the distinction between ’differentiation’ and ’individualization’ see Jü.sagepub. the controversies unleashed by proposals to make English the official language of the USA and the forces ranged on either side of the dispute attest to the generalizability of Bourdieu’s model to other societies. Social Science Information 14(6) (1975): 19-47. pp. Language and Symbolic Power.. Olson. 55 Whereas Foucault effaces the connection between power and legitimation by analyzing power in naturalistic terms. 150-1. that it does not need to resort to the objectification of individuals through specific techniques of surveillance and judgment. p.84 42 See La Noblesse d’Etat for 43 44 45 46 47 a comprehensive analysis of the key role played by the education system in the reproduction of relations of domination in modern society. 52 Raisons pratiques. above. p. Bourdieu recognizes that all genuine power. ’Modernization and Postmodernization’. Raisons pratiques. ibid. 56. p. with particular reference to the French elite grandes é. Bourdieu has in mind specifically the political process by which the French language became the official national language of the French state. ’Individuation through Socialization’. 51 Bourdieu. 54 Raisons pratiques. ’The Specificity of the Scientific Field and the Social Conditions of the Progress of Reason’. where Bourdieu argues that the authoritarian tendencies of working-class parties are a reflection of the fact that both party officials and their clients are relatively deprived of the cultural means of representing their interests and hence are dependent on the party apparatus for the representation and confirmation of their social identity. cf. in Postmetaphysical Thinking (Cambridge. play a major role in the inculcation of the habitus (cf. 128. 234-5. pp.coles. 15. Lash. pp. 38-9). pp. 375 ff. the various symbolic strategies designed to dissimulate the arbitrariness of power. Downloaded from psc. p. 2012 . But he falls short of a normative conception of power that could form the basis of a critical social theory by assimilating legitimation to ’denegation’.sagepub.com at Ateneo de Manila University on November 5.85 d’Etat. 549).
Report "Bourdieu and Foucault on power and modernity.pdf"