Cultural imperialism rests on the power to universalize particularisms linked to a singular historical tradition by causing them to be misrecognized as such. (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1999, p. 41)

If the social sciences are Eurocentric, does this also mean that they are imperialist?

Where Immanuel Wallerstein finds liberalism as the underpinning of the geoculture of the capitalist world-system, rooted in Eurocentrism, Bourdieu and Wacquant (1999) find their counterparts in the hegemonic theories current in academia. They speak of commonplace notions and theses with which one thinks, but about which one does not think (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1999, p. 41). And why not?

these presuppositions of discussion which remain undiscussed, owe much of their power to convince to the fact that, circulating from academic conferences to bestselling books, from semi-scholarly journals to expert’s evaluations, from commission reports to magazine covers, they are present everywhere simultaneously, from Berlin to Tokyo and from Milan to Mexico, and are powerfully supported and relayed by those allegedly neutral channels that are international organizations…and public policy think tanks. (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1999, p. 41)

The work of “theorization” not only abets but furthers the universalization of certain texts, while obscuring their historical origins. Bourdieu and Wacquant are here essentially in agreement with what Wallerstein argued in terms of the Eurocentrism of the social sciences, taking it deeper and linking it to a form of epistemic colonialism. As they explain it,

these commonplaces of the great new global vulgate that endless media repetition progressively transforms into universal common sense manage in the end to make one forget that they have their roots in the complex and controversial realities of a particular historical society, now tacitly constituted as model for every other and as yardstick for all things. (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1999, p. 42)

It’s not just the theories, or philosophical fashions that are globalized, as the origins of these are fairly easy to spot. Instead, what Bourdieu and Wacquant note really escapes scrutiny is the sudden, apparent globalization of seemingly technical terms and single concepts such as “multiculturalism.” We all end up on the same page either way, speaking an international lingua franca that is historically and ideologically situated within the authorized mindsets of a dominant world power (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1999, pp. 43-44). Here they move us from Eurocentrism to its more contemporary and specifically American variant.

The American Mecca (“By the way, will you be in Philadelphia?”)

Innocently and just out of curiosity, I was asked by a colleague if I would be in Philadelphia. I asked in return: “Why? What’s in Philadelphia that should interest me?” Of course my colleague was simply referring to the upcoming annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, when whole departments in Canada lose their faculty to this annual pilgrimage to the centre of anthropological power, to catch some of the light of the American luminaries, and (unintentionally?) massaging the ego of the monster. When I try to reverse the question, for fun, with American colleagues – “Will you be at CASCA this year?” – I get mild expressions of surprise at the question. We all travel to the AAA, it’s the centre; we don’t all go to CASCA, it’s the periphery. If one does not see the geoculture of the world-system at work in the political economy of academia, then one is just not looking.

Turning their attention specifically to the United States, and dominant theories there for discussing race and ethnicity, Bourdieu and Wacquant find the emergence of a globalized sociological orthodoxy, “one of the most striking proofs of the symbolic dominion and influence exercised by the USA over every kind of scholarly and, especially, semi-scholarly production, notably through the power of consecration they possess and through the material and symbolic profits that researchers in the dominated countries reap from a more or less assumed or ashamed adherence to the model derived from the USA” (1999, pp. 45-46). Where Wallerstein spoke of the original Eurocentrism of the social sciences, Bourdieu and Wacquant find this has particularly developed into contemporary Americanization, the Americanization of the Western world, and the Americanization of the universal. The products of American research, they say (quoting Thomas Bender), acquire “‘an international stature and a power of attraction’ comparable with those of ‘American cinema, pop music, computer software and basketball’” (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1999, p. 46). If the analysis of this as a simplistic form of imperialism, of violent imposition, does not work, it does not mean that a more subtle, more “collaborative” form of imperialism is not at work:

Symbolic violence is indeed never wielded but with a form of (extorted) complicity on the part of those who submit to it: the ‘globalization’ of the themes of American social doxa, or of its more or less sublimated transcription in semi-scholarly discourse, would not be possible without the collaboration, conscious or unconscious, directly or indirectly interested, of all the passeurs, ‘carriers’ and importers of designer or counterfeit cultural products (publishers, directors of cultural institutions such as museums, operas, galleries, journals, etc.) who, in the country itself or in target countries, propound and propagate, often in good faith, American cultural products, and all the American cultural authorities which, without being explicitly concerted, accompany, orchestrate and sometimes even organize the process of collective conversion to the new symbolic Mecca. (Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1999, p. 46)

However, that is not sufficient for explaining the domination of American academic research products. What we need to pay attention to, Bourdieu and Wacquant argue, is the role of research granting agencies and philanthropic foundations, such as the Rockefeller Foundation (1999, p. 46). We could go further and point to a bevy of other granting foundations, from the Ford Foundation, to the Fullbright Scholar Program, and Wenner-Gren, all of which could be seen as performing the academic equivalent of the U.S. military’s former School of the Americas (known now as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation). Aside from these foundations, internationally scholarly publishing tends to reinforce the conceptual priorities of the dominant (Anglo-)American centre, and here Bourdieu and Wacquant single out Basil Blackwell in particular, for imposing titles that are more in accord with “planetary common sense” (such as the existence of an “underclass”), even with texts that not only debunk the concept, but whose authors and editors vigorously protest the imposition. Similarly, though “cultural studies” does not exist as an entity in French universities, this did not stop Routledge from publishing a compendium on French Cultural Studies (1999, p. 47).

Back to Anthropology and Imperialism

As has been set forth so far, the imperialism of anthropology is not simply based on the role of anthropologists in the service of this or that colonial administration. If that was the mere extent of the relationship, then that would be good news. Instead the relationship goes much deeper, one that is more structural, and less a collection of individual tales from the field. Anthropology was born in the Western world and institutionalized in a specific manner, in particular universities, at a critical point in capitalist world history. Interestingly, for those who study imperialism in the media, and the rise of visual anthropology, this was the same period that marked, as Shohat and Stam (2002, p. 117) put it, “the giddy heights of the imperial project, with an epoch where Europe held sway over vast tracts of alien territory and hosts of subjugated peoples.” Like cinema, institutionalized anthropology also emerged at the end of the 1800s, as the U.S. conquered the Philippines in a bloody war that some say killed at least 200,000 people in outright fighting, and as many 1.5 million people in the first four years of occupation; born around the same time as the American massacre of the Sioux at Wounded Knee in 1890; at roughly the same time as the 1884 Berlin Conference, when European powers agreed on the division of Africa into colonial possessions; again, in the same period as the British occupation of Egypt in 1882, and the Battle of Rorke’s Drift between the British and Zulus in 1879. The leading cinema-producing countries, were also the leading imperialist countries, and the leading seats of anthropology: Britain, France, Germany, and the U.S. Imperialism provided the subject matter, the supporting structures, the dominant conceptual concerns, and the motive for anthropology.

Institutional anthropology has been located within one particular centre, specifically a North American and northwestern European one. In terms of the continued dominance of American anthropology in particular, one has to bear in mind the sheer quantitative dominance in terms of number of scholars, number of university departments, associations, conferences, journals and research funds, a dominance that is so massive in quantitative terms that it acquires a qualitative value.

The very fact of “world anthropologies” makes reference to this domination, and is supposedly, presumably, an answer to it. More on that in later posts.

References:

Bourdieu, Pierre, and Loïc Wacquant. 1999. “On the Cunning of Imperialist Reason.” Theory, Culture & Society 16 (1): 41-58.

Shohat, Ella, and Robert Stam. 2002. “The Imperial Imaginary.” In Kelly Askew and Richard R. Wilk, editors, The Anthropology of Media: A Reader, pp. 117-147. Oxford: Blackwell.

So this year is my final and I get to do the fun Final Major Project.  This is exciting due to the fact that I get to a) do whatever the hell takes my little fancy and b) have approximately 3 months in which to do this.  Yikes.  This means that I can be full-on and ‘go deep’ with regards to my project – get ready for some heavy philosophical theories my friends.  Well, be aware when I finally manage to decipher the work of Pierre Bourdieu….little bastard and your extravagant literature.  It is nice when that sentence I’ve been labouring over for hours actually makes sense.  Now, that’s exciting.

So right now (with regards to artists) I’ve been looking at these bad boys:

Trish Morrissey

Martina Mullaney

Miranda July:

Richard Billingham:

Louise Bourgeois:

So yes, basically I am going to be exploring identity with regards to my Mother.  I am going to be creating a set of images and short film that will essentially create an overall self-portrait at 15;  a time when photographs were not taken in my family.  I still have some clarification to get to…but that’s the idea in progress.

x

[Thanks Jess for the link]

An interesting, if a little obtuse piece in The Chronicle of Higher Education this week about the fractious relationship between philosophy and journalism. I was struck most immediately by this paragraph, which IMHO sums up the situation reasonably well:

Still, broadly speaking, we need philosophers who understand how epistemology and the establishment of truth claims function in the real world outside seminars and journals—the role of recognized authorities, of decision, of conscious intersubjective setting of standards. And we need journalists who scrutinize and question not just government officials, PR releases, and leaked documents, but their own preconceptions about every aspect of their business. We need journalists who think about how many examples are required to assert a generalization, what the role of the press ought to be in the state, how the boundaries of words are fixed or indeterminate in Wittgensteinian ways, and how their daily practice does or does not resemble art or science.

Carlin Romano, We need ‘Philosophy of Journalism’

There’s another key statement in Carlin’s piece that I also identify with quite strongly. Here he’s talking about the insoluble and necessary link between journalistic and philosophical modes of thinking:

I’ve always insisted to the philosophy students that journalistic thinking enhances philosophical work by connecting it to a less artificial method of establishing truth claims than exists in philosophical literature. I’ve always stressed to journalism students that a philosophical angle of mind—strictness in relating evidence and argument to claims, respectful skepticism toward tradition and belief, sensitivity to tautology, synoptic judgment—makes one a better reporter.

There is no doubt for me that journalism is — at it’s core — an intellectual pursuit that has a high public interest attached to it. There is a necessary couplet between journalism as a practice and theories of democratic public discourse. It is an imperfect linkage — one that’s distorted by the ideological contortions of logic necessary to justify capitalism as a social formation and the dismal science of economics as some sort of rational explanation for human behaviour and human nature (both of which I utterly reject).

This is a long post, so you might want to print it off and read at your leisure. I am keen to discuss Carlin Romano’s timely essay, but also to further explore my own thinking in relation to what I regard as a core philosophical approach to journalism scholarship — the use of the dialectic as an organising and analytical tool to understand the social relations of news production in the widest sense.

Carlin’s essay is timely because of the contemporaneous crisis in both journalism and the news industry. At conference after conference over the past two years these themes have been dominant. So far, no lasting, sustainable or even solid answers have been put forward; there’s a lot of scrambling about and some good experimental work being done, but to some extent it is excavating only a few layers down from the surface. There are few real attempts to overturn a flawed epistemology, or to construct a new paradigm for journalism scholarship. That’s where the real intersection of journalism and philosophy must lie.

The real question must be: How do we construct a new paradigm; a new philosophical foundation for the study and the practice of journalism? Obviously, teaching some aspects of history, sociology, economics, political economy, cultural and media studies, law and ethics provides some intellectual props to claim a kind of inter-disciplinary “philosophy” of journalism. But, it is not enough to pull together elements from different parts of the academy; there is a burning need for journalists and journalism scholars to solve their own problems. As a doctor of journalism I believe whole-heartedly in the adage: “Physician heal thyself!”

Where I do beg to differ is with Carlin’s prescription for what might be in a course of philosophy for journalism students. His outlined curriculum  doesn’t really seem all that exciting or different and much of it is really a course in ethics, rather than broader philosophical questions:

So I constructed a basic course that examines journalism in the light of philosophical thinking in epistemology, political theory, ethics, and aesthetics, mixing philosophical and journalistic materials and vocabularies. In Part 1, we scrutinize “truth,” “objectivity,” and “fact.” In Part 2, we explore how journalism might fit classic modern theories of the state, including that tradition from Locke to Rawls that largely ignores the “Fourth Estate.” In Part 3, we ponder how what practitioners call “journalistic ethics” fits with broader moral theories such as utilitarianism. In Part 4, we investigate whether journalism can be art or science without overstepping its conceptual bounds. The guiding principle was a variant of Browning: One’s reach should exceed one’s grasp, or what’s a syllabus for?

Most of this – certainly parts 1-3 are consistently taught in most journalism ethics courses in some form or another. My ethics text, Journalism Ethics: Arguments & Cases (co-authored with Professor Roger Patching of Bond University) is founded on these topics and it takes basically a philosophical approach. Arguments & Cases also examines the premise of Part 4 as well; particularly in terms of the problematic construction of journalism as a profession.

So, while I have no real argument with the suggestion that journalism education should have a philosophical component, I do question two aspects:

• Should ‘philosophy of journalism’ be taught by philosophers or doctors of journalism?

I have no hesitation in suggesting that the best people to teach this stuff are the qualified former practitioners who have had time to reflect on their own practice and to absorb some of the best thinking. I don’t necessarily agree that classically-trained philosophers are the best to do this important work. In my experience those outside the community of journalistic practice bring too many intellectual prejudices and pre-c0nceptions to the table.

• What philosophical ideas, approaches and theories are of most value in a journalism curriculum?

Here’s a first take on a ‘Baker’s Dozen’: some quick notes on what I think should be included in any philosophy of journalism discourse:

1. Critical thinking skills: The most important item in a journalist’s toolkit is a functioning and lively brain.
2. Political economy of news production: This is a neglected, but powerful intellectual tradition in journalism studies with real global significance and explanatory power.
3. A critique of professionalism and the sociology of journalism as a form of labour. On any consistent political economy model of journalism it is not a profession — because of the relationship between media labour and media capital. But journalists occupy a contradictory class location which we call “professionalism”.
4. The role of journalists as the “quotidian intellectual” – the intellectual of the everyday and the populariser of arcane ideas (including philosophy): Journalists play a significant role in the explanation of the everyday and the circulation of ideological memes of power, control and resistance.
5. The dialectic of journalism: Moving on from Merrill’s important work on this topic to clearly articulate a material dialectic of journalism that accounts for social relations of news production and the power of social forces (re-focusing on Raymond Williams for example)
6. Critique of the Fourth Estate model: the Fourth Estate is a bastion of bourgeois philosophy — a world view that supports the inequality of class relations in capitalist society. How do we move beyond it?
7. Journalism of engagement: the stand-off observer, versus the committed and activist journalist.
8. The heroes of journalism: Who are they and why? This relates neatly to the previous point. For example John Pilger, Martha Gelhorn, etc, including modern writers and journalists from Hunter Thompson to Robert Fisk.
9. Digital dilemmas: the role of “citizen journalism” (and a solid definition); the tensions between journalism and social media. This would cover the techno-legal and techno-ethical time gap and critique digital determinism as an explanatory method for the current malaise in journalism and the news industry.
10. Ethics: objectivity, balance and bias. Despite 20 years of critical discussion and attempts to bury the curse of objectivity, this debate is not yet resolved and needs to be fully addressed in any philosophical discussion of journalism. The answers are, IMHO, related to the dialectic and particularly the material dialectic that drives social formations in their interactions with the real (natural) world.
11. Ethics: What is the continued relevance of 18th and 19th century philosophers? Seriously, the world is not the 19th century any more and the continued valorisation of Locke, Hume, Mill (both of them), etc is boring, pointless and out-of-date. What the fcuk is a “Wittgenstinian way” of looking at language in the news and why is it still relevant?
12. The epistemology of truth and the relativity of postmodernism: There is a need to actually take on critically all ideas associated with postmodernism and the cultural studies approach to journalism and media studies. This is related to my point about materialist dialectics.If there is a definitive and objective version of truth, it is found in the materiality of social relation and in society’s relationship with the physical world; it is not found in relative perceptions of the truth that have any sort of equal validity.
13. The power and politics of journalism: This has to be more than looking descriptively at the relationship between journalism and the State. it has to unpick and critique this relationship through framing and discourse analysis; political economy etc. The relationship between journalism and centres of political, economic and social power is a key issue for the philosophy of journalism, but it is a material, not an ideal question. The relationship is grounded in political economy and existing/flawed social institutions. To fully explore this we have to start from a very basic question: What is the real nature of democracy and why is it flawed in practice?

There’s perhaps other stuff too to go into this list, but I always have a penchant for the symmetry of 13 items in a list; it gives you more room than in a “Top 10″ and it’s not “round” like a straight dozen. Also, it gives you a good outline for a semester’s worth of study – given that most academic terms are around 12-15 weeks in duration. But again, this is no more than a list of topics to be discussed. What is needed at this point is some organising principle(s) that can unite these problems and issues, or at least suggest a cogent and more philosophical approach.

Some might react by just poking a bit more of the old-school theory in here; a bit more Wittgenstien, perhaps some existentialism, or more on deontology and teleology. That’s what I’ve done in the past, but in rethinking my approach to teaching a course on journalism law and ethics at AUT next year, I have finally realised that I need to move away from this model and go where my instincts have always led me — towards a more holistic approach based on a coherent philosophical approach — the materialist dialectic.

Faultines, philosophy and the material dialectic

In relation to my “9″ above — Digital dilemmas, I rather like this observation from Carlin, which echoes some of my own thinking about those who “breathlessly” imagine a brave new world of social media sans journalists:

We still need our colleges and universities to provide a more classical, full-bloodedly philosophical approach to journalism. If that’s to happen, the welcome move by august universities and media-minded foundations to rethink and reshape journalism education must resist its own faddishness and lack of vision. Too many foundations and universities breathlessly fasten on the bells and whistles of new technology, as if tweets shall save us all, rather than attending to longstanding gaps in journalism education.

But what is a “more classical, full-bloodedly philosophical approach to journalism”? As Carlin suggests at an earlier point in his essay, classical philosophy in the academy is moribund. Carlin writes that philosophy as a discipline is overcome by “historic insularity and inflexibility” and that it “remains less diverse and intellectually adventurous than any of the other humanities”. As I’ve suggested, to fall back on Locke and the bourgeois philosophers would be a huge and limiting mistake. Rather than reproduce these (now ancient) memes, we need to thoroughly critique them and put in their place some new and original thinking.

I always return to the dialectic in these circumstances and I am currently in the process of revising and extending my use of the concept in News 2.0: Can journalism survive the Internet? I have been working on this now for some 12 years, perhaps even a little longer and I’m confident that I’m making some headway.

I’ve touched on the dialectic in journalism as a foundation theoretical/philosophical device  in both Arguments and Cases and Broadcast to Narrowcast. I use it often to talk about “fault lines”, “gaps”, “continua” (continuums?), combined and uneven development and the key contradictions — such as between public and private interests in the news media. It is also a useful way of dealing with technology, without falling back onto determinist arguments.

The foundation document for my work in this area is still John Merrill’s The Dialectic in Journalism. Merrill is an American of libertarian persuasion and his use of the dialectic really begins and ends with Hegel, but this book is perhaps still one of the most philosophical texts about journalism. Merrill is right to speak of “antinomes” in journalism which are really antagonistic couplets; such as “freedom” and “responsibility”, which exist as competing organising principles within the epistemology of journalism.

However, in a materialist sense they are more than just clashing ideals, they are manifest in the social relations that pertain to the organisation of journalism as a labour process and as a set of cultural practices with some significance in bourgeois-liberal social formations.

In other words, not only do “freedom” and “responsibility” clash inside the heads of journalists faced with dilemmas of ethical decision-making; they are also manifest institutionally, economically and politically and embody a range of concrete and unequal power relationships that determine what Bourdieu calls the journalistic field***.

The same is true of the “public” and the “private”, which are not only antinomes (clashing theses) in relation to “public interest” and the ethico-legal paradox of “privacy”, but also in relation to the central economic contradiction expressed in the news commodity form between use value (public interest) and exchange value (expressed in money), which is a private concern within a capitalist political economy.

But this viewpoint is not readily available to an idealistic accounting of the dialectic; it is really only revealed – philosophically speaking – when meshed with materialism and theories of the field:

The field of journalism has a particularity: It is much more dependent on the external forces than any other field of cultural production, such as the field of mathematics, the field of literature, the field of judiciary, the field of science and so forth. It directly depends on the demands of actors outside of the journalistic fields. It is more dependent on the sanction of market and to popularity, probably, than the field of politics. (Bourdieu 1996: 61)

The sanctions of the market are not central to an idealistic account, which sees the issue only in terms of a moot philosophical internal dialogue within the journalist’s brain. It is, however, a concrete and very real situation in which the materiality of social relations — as relations of unequal power between social actors — are very important:

Journalists—I should say the field of journalism—owe their importance in the social world to the fact that they actually monopolize the instruments of production and diffusion of information to a large degree, and through instruments, they also monopolize the access of ordinary people as well as other cultural producers including servants, artists and writers to what was once called “public space”, that is, the ground of diffusion. (Bourdieu 1996: 52)

Thus the monopoly of the instruments of journalistic production (the boundaries of the professional reportorial community) creates the social power of journalists and journalism. But obviously, we have to account for the fact that this monopoly is now breaking down thanks to the rise of what I call “user-generated news-like content”, which includes citizen journalism, blogs, and some social media functions. Thus the dialectic becomes instantly important: How can we understand the shifting balance of power and the dynamic of changing social relations of news production without first understanding the process of combined and uneven development that creates contradictions within the field?

In this case of course, one aspect of the dialectic (as a constellation of social forces acting on each other [combined and uneven development]) is obviously the technologies and platforms that create the social conditions for user-generated content to become influential and to have social power that tends to breakdown the traditional journalistic monopoly over the means of production.

There’s  a further contradiction here too that both field theory and the dialectic of journalism can usefully address: the monopoly over the means of journalistic production (even if under threat/pressure from UGC and social media) is actually shared (unequally) between media practitioners (labourers) and media capital (which owns the actual means of production in a Marxist schema).

The analytical tools to address, understand and move beyond this are not present in formal and traditional philosophy which, IMHO, is no more than a rehashing of bourgeois ideology and apologetics. This inability to move beyond the power relations pertaining to the field of academic philosophy is one reason why it is so rigid, hidebound and unable to meet the tasks set by the digital contradictions of the twenty-first century.

I have no real issue with Carlin’s prescription that “every journalism student” should undertake several courses in journalism theory. Carlin’s suggestions are eminently sensible and go some way to engaging with my Baker’s Dozen:

Every journalism student should be required to take a course in journalism history. It’s essential for young journalists to understand how our peculiar institution developed, and that it is not a natural kind—it can be changed and reformed. Every journalism student should also be required to take a course in “Comparative Journalism,” a flagrant lacuna in the field, to understand that the American model and its issues, which predominate in all American journalism programs, is not the world. Most important, every journalism student should be required to take a course in “Philosophy of Journalism,” to develop the intellectual instincts and reflexes that will make the approach to truth of both practices a permanent part of his or her intellectual makeup.

Now we’ve moved on from one paper to possibly three; maybe they should be sequential through three years of an undergraduate programme. But at the grad school level, if you’re trying to teach non-journalists enough of the basics (from reporting, to shorthand to digital production techniques and some legal/ethical principles) where do you find the room for three philosophy papers?

The problem that I wrestle with in the face of such obviously sensible advice is what do we leave out, or replace? More importantly, at an institutional level I struggle to convince some of my non-journalism colleagues that we need to be given the curriculum space and resources to develop papers in history, comparative journalism and philosophy. Each university school of communication studies and/or journalism is different, but in each case other academics (from various communication disciplines) and administrators are unwilling to make the bold moves that will actually generate the potential for a better journalism curriculum.

You see, there’s even a dialectic in play here — the process of combined and uneven curriculum development, linked to the intertia of the academic field and its inherent resistance to change that might threaten entrenched interests. The third leg of this “triadic movement” as Merrill calls it, is the reluctance of industry to challenge its own preconceptions about what makes a good journalism education.

Why do some senior editors and industry officials continue to priviledge shorthand over philosophy? I think I know the answers, but I am not prepared to commit them to published form; let’s just say, perhaps some old inky-fingered hacks just don’t get it.

*** I am currently revising the manuscript for News 2.0 and it contains a significant section outlining my approach to Bourdieu and field theory. In general I can say that I think it is important and worthy of serious study. It perhaps comes closest to developing the outlines of a new paradigm and epistemology for journalism scholarship. The following would certainly be on my list of recommended reading for anyone serious about this topic:

Benson and Neveu (2004) : Bourdieu and the Journalistic Field

Pierre Bourdieu (1996): On Television and Journalism

Here’s an older post from the Savage Minds anthropology blog about Mary Douglas’s grid-group typology (the basis of the four cultures explored on this site). It’s basically a mashup of that typology and an alternative scheme deriving from Pierre Bourdieu (if he wrote for the New York Magazine, that is): highbrow/lowbrow; brilliant/despicable.

I like it because I’ve been very interested in the proliferation of fourfold schemes in the social sciences – and here’s another one. In particular I’m interested in whether these schemes are each as radically new as the author or creator always seems to think, or whether there’s some kind of underlying structure that makes superficially different formulations somehow connect.

This particular juxtaposition reminds me of Arthur Koestler’s understanding of creativity, which comes about where

‘a single situation or idea is perceived in two self-consistent but mutually incompatible frames of reference’.

If you’re interested, the approval matrix has been re-purposed and applied to Twitter posts at O’Reilly Radar.

Koestler, Arthur (1964) The Act of Creation. London: Pan. Quoted in William Byers (2007) How Mathematicians Think. Using Ambiguity, Contradiction and Paradox to Create Mathematics. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 28.

Fiz minha primeira visita à Feira do Livro em 1992, acompanhado do meu pai e do meu irmão. Lembro do meu fascínio no meio de todos aqueles livros. Mas a opção minha e do meu irmão foi “conservadora”: compramos um grande gibi, de faroeste… E olha que eu já tinha lido livros inteiros, histórias fascinantes como Robinson Crusoe, Moby Dick, Vinte Mil Léguas Submarinas, Cinco Semanas num Balão, etc.

Não lembro de ter ido à Feira em 1993, e tenho a impressão de que fui em 1994. Mas de 1995 em diante, aí sim, posso dizer que fui a todas. Jamais passara um ano sem passear pelas bancas.

Bom, fui a todas, menos à de 2009, que acabou domingo. Pode parecer uma contradição, já que terça-feira passada, comprei um livro na… Feira! Mas porque simplesmente passei por lá e decidi dar uma olhada na banca da Editora da UFRGS. E só. Comprei um livrinho sobre o nazi-fascismo na América Latina, do Hélgio Trindade. Paguei, guardei na mochila e segui meu caminho, sem sequer parar nas outras bancas.

Dizer que não fui por causa do TCC não explicaria tudo. Claro que tendo um trabalhão desses, não me sentia muito disposto a passar horas na Feira do Livro, que eu poderia usar para tocar em frente o trabalho. Mas, eu pensava seriamente em algumas pausas para ir à Feira.

Porém, razões climáticas impediram minha ida à Feira. Não foram as chuvas que têm caído constantemente – tempo que considero ideal para ir à Feira, pois assim vai menos gente e fica melhor de se caminhar pelos corredores. O problema é o calor insuportável que anda fazendo em Porto Alegre, que me desestimulou a inclusive fazer tais pausas no trabalho. Preferia me estressar na frente do computador a ter de sair para a rua por qualquer motivo, de modo a suar o mínimo possível.

Sem contar que certamente eu não encontraria o livro que pensava em comprar, do Bourdieu, na Feira. Melhor ir a uma livraria, onde há menos atrolho e o calor é expulso pelos poluidores aparelhos de ar condicionado (mais um motivo para preferir o inverno: não gosto de ar condicionado ligado no quente).

Ännu ett tecken på att en av oss i kollektivet är mer tantig än den andra är att hon som inte är jag nyss glömde bort vad Tony heter. Efter att ha bott ihop sen augusti. Efter att ha bestämt sig för att bo ihop sen juni. Är inte demens ett väldigt stort tecken på hur mycket mer tantig än andra hon är?

Dessutom drömmer hon snusk om den franska socialteoretikern Pierre Bourdieu. Orka det!

Es una serie de charlas que se dan en la Universidad de Melbourne y sí, hay algunas sobre sociólogos.

Key Thinkers: Peter Beilharz on Zygmunt Bauman

parte 1 / parte 2

Key Thinkers: Ken Gelder on Emile Durkheim

parte 1 / parte 2

Key Thinkers: Ghassan Hage on Pierre Bourdieu

parte 1 / parte 2

Antonio Gramsci:

A short excerpt from a post from my blog The Excerpt Mill:

In Bourdieu’s early work with Jean-Claude Passeron, we find the term “the cultural arbitrary” used in a way which seems quite similar to Gramsci’s concept of normative grammar: “In any given social formation the cultural arbitrary which the power relations between the groups or classes making up that social formation put into the dominant position within the system of cultural arbitraries is the one which most fully, though always indirectly, expresses the objective interests (material and symbolic) of the dominant groups or classes.” In developing this concept, Bourdieu draws upon William Labov’s early work which showed that “members of a speech community can share allegiance to the same standard, despite differences in the (nonstandard) varieties they themselves speak.”

Gramsci’s historical method serves to highlight the cross-class alliances that stabilize in any given “historical bloc”-a phrase that refers to the “complex, contradictory and discordant ensemble of the superstructures” and corresponding “relations of production.” The hegemonic ideology of any given bloc does not simply reflect the interests of only the ruling elite, but also those of the other classes with whom they have entered into alliances and even the very process by which that alliance took shape.  While Bourdieu may tacitly acknowledge the importance of such processes, his theory of the “cultural arbitrary” retains its structuralist roots.

Antonio Gramsci

P. Kerim Friedman reviews Peter Ives‘ book Gramsci’s Politics of Language and the connections between Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002) and Antonio Gramsci:

In Bourdieu’s early work with Jean-Claude Passeron, we find the term “the cultural arbitrary” used in a way which seems quite similar to Gramsci’s concept of normative grammar: “In any given social formation the cultural arbitrary which the power relations between the groups or classes making up that social formation put into the dominant position within the system of cultural arbitraries is the one which most fully, though always indirectly, expresses the objective interests (material and symbolic) of the dominant groups or classes.” In developing this concept, Bourdieu draws upon William Labov’s early work which showed that “members of a speech community can share allegiance to the same standard, despite differences in the (nonstandard) varieties they themselves speak.” Bourdieu’s work with Passeron serves to highlight how the educational system institutionalizes these arbitrary standards; thus naturalizing the success of the elite who are socialized into these norms before they ever set foot in school. Unlike normative grammar, however, the phrase “cultural arbitraries” reveals a lingering Saussurian structuralism. The specific content of the dominant cultural or linguistic form is less important for Bourdieu’s theory than the mere existence of an arbitrary standard which is recognized as legitimate even by those unable to perform it.

…

Gramsci’s historical method serves to highlight the cross-class alliances that stabilize in any given “historical bloc”-a phrase that refers to the “complex, contradictory and discordant ensemble of the superstructures” and corresponding “relations of production.” The hegemonic ideology of any given bloc does not simply reflect the interests of only the ruling elite, but also those of the other classes with whom they have entered into alliances and even the very process by which that alliance took shape. For instance, even though America’s financial elite share a generally secular libertarian ideology, the conservative movement was able to succeed by combining elite interests with those of evangelical southern white Christians. This has its roots in post-Civil War Reconstruction and in the “Southern strategy” adopted by Nixon’s Republican party in the wake of the civil rights movement. Choices regarding hegemonic cultural forms are not arbitrary nor do they simply reflect the cultural forms of the elite. They are the product of the “complex, contradictory and discordant ensemble” of a given historical bloc. While Bourdieu may tacitly acknowledge the importance of such processes, his theory of the “cultural arbitrary” retains its structuralist roots. (Friedman, 361-363)

Source

Friedman, P. Kerim.  “Ethical Hegemony.”  Rethinking Marxism 21, no. 3 (July 2009): 355-365.

Not only do we find in the uneasy transitions of organisms engaged in reproduction the same basic violence which in physical eroticism leaves us gasping, but we also catch the inner meaning of that violence.

Georges Bataille,
Death and Sensuality

The news of students and faculty in 10 University of California campuses coming out in huge protests cheered me up, coming as I am from a university that is victim to the same neoliberal policies of budget cuts and fee increases. These cuts, Judith Butler writes,

eliminated 2,000 positions, gutted programmes that train high school teachers in science education, closed courses in East Asian languages and advanced Arabic, overburdened classrooms, shut students out of their majors, let scores of lecturers go and closed the university library on Saturday. In addition, the administration demanded of students tuition and fee increases of nearly 40%, imperilling the very notion of an affordable public university and forcing many students to leave the university or scramble for full-time jobs.

Meanwhile: “Annually the state pays $49,000 per prison inmate and less than $14,000 per UC student. If the state can lock us up, it can invest in our education for one-third of the cost,” The Guardian quoted one of the protesting student’s leaflet.

University of California Berkeley students and faculty protest against fee increases and budget cuts. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty

Sounds familiar? In the Philippines, the government has been annually decreasing the budget for education services in favor of foreign debt servicing. Of course, why should the state provide quality and accessible education if what’s in demand by the global market is cheap and docile labor?

Perhaps this is one face of what Bourdieu describes as the “contribution that the educational system makes to the reproduction of the social structure”? Think of how certain competencies are restricted to the dominant groups in the social order. [1]

The University of the Philippines will be allotted only P5.3 billion pesos by the government next year. Not only is this figure way lower than the current year’s P7.06 billion budget, it is P13 billion less than the P18 billion originally proposed by the university.

This will certainly mean another round of increases in tuition and other fees as the university struggles to cope with the budgetary lack for its continued existence: a travesty that, in the Philippine context, runs in accordance with International Monetary Fund prescriptions that is restructuring the educational system to cater to the needs of the global market (the following of which is a precondition for further World Bank loans by the government).

Education for all!

It is precisely because of this adherence that the government implemented the Long-Term Higher Education Development Plan for 2001-2010, a plan which particularly reduces the number of state universities and colleges and transforms the remaining ones into semi-corporations that generate their own income.

Although I am skeptical of Althusser’s theory that the educational institution is still the principal apparatus for conveying the dominant ideology among the masses (so pervasive is the effect of popular culture and the media these days; and yes, my professors are my pets in facebook), it cannot be denied that education is still a powerful instrument for molding minds.

As the neocolonial and semi-feudal social formation in the country persists, the educational system will remain to be colonial (because it is geared to serving what Negri and Hardt call Empire), commercialized (because it is profit-oriented), and repressive (because it denies the youth access to education). The struggle for a nationalist, scientific, and mass-oriented education and culture, likewise, continues. ■

[1] Or how not all sperms are allowed to fertilize the egg in human reproduction? Whatever!

Reality

Before I dive into any more long-winded exegesis, here are a few more fun things I’ve observed over the past few days (in digestible bullet point form!):

• Many of the musicians who play in the subway cars for money rely on some sort of pre-recorded musical back-up these days.  Case in point:  a violinist who wore a backpack with a giant hole where the speaker poked out.

• Americans are treated far better by Germans now that Obama is president.  No B.S.

• If an American walks into a German Starbucks, they put on some hits from back home… from about 2-3 years ago.  But most Germans don’t go to Starbucks because it’s too expensive and the coffee’s not that great.

• If you’re in you’re a male teenager, it’s your God-given right, even duty, to horse around dangerously close to the edge of the S-Bahn tracks.  Just observing.

I took several important steps within the past several days that make me feel more like a real citizen of Berlin rather than some weirdo pretender (though I am admittedly a weirdo).  One was to get a library account – took 3 minutes and was totally painless except for the 25 euros I shelled out for the year…  The second was to actually think about the menu for the week, make a list, and go grocery shopping at the Turkish open-air market on Großgörschenstrasse, Lidl and Netto for the things I will need to eat later on.  I will be baking myself a cake on Friday, because it happens to be my birthday, and I can’t get good donuts here.  The third was to have my semester ticket start, which means I can use the buses, S-Bahn and subway as much as I want without having to continuously count up the change in my pocket or put it on my bank card.  What a relief to be able to decide to go somewhere and not have to debate with my sore-ass legs about whether it was really within walking distance from my apartment!  Borrowing books, finding some order in one’s eating habits, and being pre-paid to travel around on a whim – I guess that’s citizenship to me, no thanks to the Ausländerbehörde!

Fulbrighter and filmmaker Luisa Greenfield was to join me at the Berlin screening of Ulrike Ottinger’s The Korean Wedding Chest at the Akademie der Künste am Hanseatenweg last night, so I showed up unreasonably early (as is my wont) and plopped down in front of the theater.  An older couple sat near me and smiled at me, which of course prompted a conversation about who I was, etc.  Then after the man had left to get her a tea, the woman asked me if, as a German film scholar, I knew a director named Hans Jürgen Pohland.  It turns out I did:  he made the jazz drummer semi-documentary/feature film Tobby (1961), which I watched in order to be remotely informed about a paper on a panel I chaired earlier this year.  Anyway, she revealed that her husband, Siegfried Hofbauer, wrote the screenplay that Pohland barely used anyway.  Hofbauer then went on to work as a production designer on Volker Schlöndorff’s Academy-Award winning The Tin Drum (1979) and still worked as a jazz musician and painter in Berlin.  I thought it was amazing that I was one of the few people from the U.S. who’d likely seen the film and was sitting across from its screenwriter!  So he came back with the tea and we talked film for awhile, particularly about how Tobby (the drummer) then got into some major-league drugs and the film was likely the high point of his career.  Then Luisa showed up and we talked more film before, during and after the screening.  Ottinger’s comments about her own film were incredibly insightful, and I’m now determined to see that which I haven’t seen of her oeuvre.  She’s way better than Herzog, and for good reason:  she took courses from the likes of Pierre Bourdieu, Louis “I Accidentally Strangled My Wife” Althusser, and Claude Lévi-Strauss.  Her films are symbolically anthropological, for lack of a better description.  More below.

Anne Hector and I met up the next morning to go to the big Bauhaus exhibit at the Martin-Gropius-Bau, which was jam-packed with tourists of all ages.  Squeezing through loud tourist groups while trying not to knock over valuable pieces of early 20^th Century art, Anne and I managed to have a good time looking at some of the original Walter Gropius pieces as well as Paul Klee, Oskar Schlemmer and the rest of the Bauhaus scene.  I’m convinced I would’ve either gotten along great at the Bauhaus academies, or I would’ve hated it the first day and thrown a fuzzy amorphous shape at their form/color studies!  My trail then led me once again to the HFF, because it was October 1^st.  Why October 1^st, you ask?  Well, I’ve decided in October – December to devote each month to a particular genre I’m researching for my dissertation:  October’s for westerns, November’s for science fiction, December’s for musicals (since, heck, it’s Christmas Time!).  So I easily picked up several western DVDs to take home and watch, surprised at how little of a hassle it was to do so.  I think I’m going to like it at my host institution; it seems designed around film geeks.

Fantasy

The Korean Wedding Chest (dir. Ulrike Ottinger, Germany 2009)

Ottinger’s previous films, particularly Johanna d’Arc of Mongolia and her China series, explore encounters between our so-called “modern” world and more traditional ways of life.  Her latest film (NOT her upcoming vampire comedy with Elfriede Jelinek Die Blutgräfin (2010)) does exactly that:  nestled in the mega-city of Seoul lies a wedding industry so seemingly “traditional” it boggles the mind.  Seoul quite literally opened itself up to her so she could document one family’s journey through the engagement process to the wedding.  As one would expect, there’s a lot of coaching by women who work in bridal shops, who seem to be the real keepers of this tradition.  A married man myself, I asked myself where Kat and I might’ve gotten the money together to have even a remotely “Korean” wedding (actually, I also cried part way through because of recollections of our own wedding — I’m presently a lonely husband waiting until the end of the month…)  No answers present themselves:  these events offer none of the flexible glamour of the American wedding.  Like any wedding, all of what transpires is carefully scripted to pull off exactly the right photo/video documentation of the event.  That being said, Ottinger’s film succeeds in defying this convention and instead showing all the human bits of imperfection at the seams of these highly traditional, scripted affairs.  You should see it for the colors alone.

White Wolves (dir. Konrad Petzold, GDR 1969)

A proper Gojko Mitic Indianerfilm, White Wolves is a fantastic mess of celluloid best watched by either a crowd of very cynical people or 5 year-olds.  Here’s the plot:  the Dakotas have been driven from their lands by General Mining Industries run by the evil capitalist Mr. Harrington.  Harrington’s so evil that he hires bandits to steal his own money from himself so he doesn’t have to pay his miners, and then continuously blames the attacks on the renegade Dakotas.  Mitic’s happy Dakota wife is, of course, melodramatically killed by the bandits, and so he takes merciless revenge on the bandits.  Now on to the important aspects like…

The Cool Gojko Mitic Shtick: At one point, he gets a hold of a box full of dynamite sticks, which he uses in combat by throwing them at people and shooting them in the air with his rifle.

The Strong Woman Scene: Most of these Indianerfilme have at least one scene to show they’re not totally misogynistic, and White Wolves is no exception.  The sheriff’s wife manages to trick a guard holding her captive into going into the saloon, at which point she steals his wagon.

The Heavy-Handed Communist Scene: The workers flat-out don’t believe the Dakotas stealing their money nonsense – in fact, no one but the villains believe it throughout the film – and demand their fair wages.  When the villain tries to ply them with cheap liquor, they turn it down outright.

p. 112

It seems to amount to that, for the field of cultural studies, objectiveness for people’s behaviors is constituted of subjectiveness – society operates according to the representations, which are made by its subjects, of both those subjects themselves and the objects that they valorize. And this seems to me as both a denial and a confirmation of human agency. This however, is the common misunderstanding of Pierre Bourdieu, an inclination to subjectivism. Representations are made possible only through the collaboration between objective social conditions and human agents. That is to say, subjectiveness and objectiveness both participate in shaping the cultural field.

p. 123

Despite the social representation of, or commentaries on any particular art, it all boils down to the differentiation by nature between an aesthetic activity – painting, and a social activity – manufacturing and usage. The coarseness and simplicity of the tools of painting permits the soloistic performance of the artist, while the sophistication of camera/lens manufacturing separates the photographic practitioners from the manufacturers, at least in terms of space and time – it is by no means impossible for photographers to be camera manufacturers. This can bring a new form of aesthetic, which resembles industrial music in the field of music, though there must be something intrinsically different.

p. 131-132

The ambiguity of photographic art and the ambivalence of feminism are never without reference to their social conditions. An those conditions are more often than not similar. For instance, women and photography are both, intentionally or incidentally, closely associated with their functions of reproduction.

p. 143

Photography is said to capture a moment that does not reoccur. However, single pointillist moment does not confer upon anything any meaning. Therefore, photographic artists (experienced photographers) always put photographs organized in a sequence or a series, only which can establish one confined meaning. Photography is a modern invention. This strikes me with Bauman’s commentary on modern society, which is a pointillist, episodic, imperceptible society. However, at best, meaningless episodes put together still do not make any sense. The worse follows that the ambiguity of meaning or intention multiplies.

p. 146

Lucien Clergue’s female nude photographs indicate that female body has been legitimized (for hundreds years) as noble subjects of artistic practice.

p. 147

Fashions, styles and pop music rapidly change. Is this because they are constantly in search for certainty and cultural legitimacy. Great artists always come from a great time. Or ultimate democracy means the death of classics? (ORIGIN late 16th cent. (in the sense [outstanding for its kind] ): from Latin classicus ‘belonging to a class’ (see classic ) + -al.)

Loïc Wacquant (coord.) y otros

El misterio del ministerio. Pierre Bourdieu y la política democrática

Este libro es un compendio de ensayos organizados por Loïc Wacquant (predilecto discípulo de Bourdieu) que intenta explicitar, ilustrar y ampliar las teorías de y para una producción social de la política democrática en el pensamiento del sociólogo francés.

Es evidente que la extensa obra de Bourdieu ha contribuido notablemente al establecimiento de relaciones más democráticas en la sociedad. Sin embargo, hablar de una postura política en Bourdieu (en el sentido convencional) resulta difícil. Bourdieu siempre guardó una posición sociológicamente política, en otras palabras, en todo momento procuró “pensar la política sin pensar políticamente”.

Además de dos artículos de la pluma de Bourdieu, y el famoso manifiesto Sobre las astucias de la razón imperialista (escrito a cuatro manos), este volumen recopila una variedad de textos de Loïc Wacquant, Frank Poupeau, Patrick Champagne, Thierry Discepolo, Olivier Chistin y Gil Eyal.

[Comentario tomado de los amigos y amigas de Sociología Contemporánea]

·

CONTENIDO (no se pierdan De la casa del rey a la razón de Estado y El misterio del ministerio)

• Loïc Wacquant – Prefacio: Poder simbólico y práctica democrática
• Loïc Wacquant – Indicaciones sobre Pierre Bourdieu y la política democrática
• Pierre Bourdieu – De la casa del rey a la razón de Estado. Un modelo de la génesis del campo burocrático
• Pierre Bourdieu – El misterio del ministerio. De las voluntades particulares a la «voluntad general»
• Franck Poupeau y Thierry Discepolo – Investigación y compromiso. La dimensión política de la sociología de Pierre Bourdieu
• Patrick Champagne – Hacer hablar a la gente. El uso social de las encuestas de opinion pública en democracia
• Olivier Christin – Las votaciones bajo el Antiguo Régimen: una doble historización de las prácticas electorales
• Loïc Wacquant – Tras las huellas del poder simbólico. La disección de la «nobleza de Estado»
• Gil Eyal – La construcción y la destrucción del campo político checoslovaco
• Pierre Bourdieu y Loïc Wacquant – Sobre las astucias de la razón imperialista

·

Ed. Gedisa, 2009

pdf de imágenes, 15 MB

descargar

continuing from

>

non c’è modo di vedere la strada: pioggia a fiotti, mista a grandine. la macchina ha scarso controllo e mi duole la testa, gli occhi ipnotizzati dal tergicristallo.

l’appuntamento è saltato da un pezzo. son le 19, perché rischiare?

meglio fermarsi. aspetto solo di essere in una zona dove radio e telefono abbiano copertura.

spengo il motore, tiro giù il sedile e ascolto il rombo della natura. la macchina è così malmessa che temo possa filtrarci dentro l’acqua che il cielo ci scaglia contro. vedo il mio respiro appannare il vetro, stratificandoci sopra vapore ed umidità. ma non sono veramente spaventato. intanto, a nicola farà bene prendere possesso, anche verbale, del progetto.

se riusciamo, ne verrà fuori un libro corredato da fotografie. forse una mostra. sicuramente una mostra, caro – mi direbbe nicola se sentisse questi miei pensieri. sarebbe il caso di mettere tutto in rete. ecco, questo può essere uno strumento per provare a raggiungere più persone e stabilire con loro un dialogo. potremmo costruire un sito, un blog, una pagina su flickr… e vedere e sentire gli umori. io, di sicuro, devo cambiare modo di scrivere. devo cercare un linguaggio meno raffinato e più aperto. non solo devo farmi capire, ma devo anche abbracciare le fotografie senza soffocarle e, soprattutto, contenere, nel mio, i linguaggi dei nostri intervistati. non tutti parlano un italiano forbito, ad esempio.

la pioggia continua, radiotre m’inonda di musica classica, il mio sigaro evapora nei cerchietti che non sono mai riuscito a fare e il mio cervello pensa a ritratta: obiettivi, stile e rischi. secondo me, il razzismo oggi non può essere scisso dal fenomeno migratorio. certo, la mobilità umana non lo spiega, ma ne costituisce alcune delle principali possibilità di esercizio. basta concentrarsi su un tg per capire ciò di cui sto parlando. ma se analizzare razzismo e migrazione è il nostro cammino, allora quel che ne caveremo, qualunque cosa sia, rientrerà, in qualche modo, nella letteratura e nei prodotti della scienza della migrazione.

questa mi riporta ad abdelmalek sayad, autore de la doppia assenza, e uno dei più grandi esperti di sempre in materia, essendo stato lui stesso un migrante. significativo ed ironico anche che questo lavoro sia stato composto postumo, a partire da una raccolta di articoli e appunti, da uno dei suoi migliori amici: pierre bourdieu.

sayad ammoniva sempre dal rischio di essere coinvolti nella logica normalizzante del committente di questa scienza: lo stato che, nell’affermazione di una propria forma di dominio, ancora legata ai valori ed alle retoriche dello stato-nazione, avrebbe da sempre orientato la scienza della migrazione.

da un lato, le considerazioni circa l’emigrazione e le ragioni che motivano lo spostamento e la mobilitazione di centinaia di migliaia di persone – i migranti, insomma – sarebbero visti sempre e solo dal punto di vista razzizzante di coloro che sono cittadini dello stato che accoglie.

dall’altro, questo punto di vista e questo orientare, avrebbero un doppio intento: classificare il migrante come estraneo e diverso, e spiarlo per sapere come meglio controllarlo, sfruttarlo e disfarsene celermente, se dovesse diventare superfluo o scomodo. di qui, chi aiuta queste persone, questi esseri umani, marchiati e macchiati, si trova in una posizione quantomeno scomoda: rischia di passare per sospetto e trafficante.

l’immagine di me e nicola come sospetti e trafficanti è quasi divertente.

la pioggia è diventata tollerabile. si son fatte le 21. il sigaro ha bruciato per metà e io rischio l’asfissia. non mi rimane che accendere il condizionatore per disappannare il parabrezza e ripartire.

se tutto va bene, sarò a casa prima di mezzanotte.

e invece non va bene nulla, porca puttana. il condizionatore non funziona. esce solo aria gelida! mi devo togliere un calzino, usarlo per asciugare il parabrezza, fare il resto del viaggio con un finestrino semiaperto nella pioggia, per evitare che si appanni di nuovo.

ora sì, penso, che sembro sospetto. sospetto e pronto per l’ospedale psichiatrico.

ci mancava pure il telefono.

chi sarà mai?

to be continued

>

Cuarta y última parte dedicada al análisis del papel de “la otra teoría”, en estrecha vinculación con los movimientos sociales emergentes y como crítica y desenmascaramiento de los “intelectuales de arriba”, al servicio del Poder. Rsulta un interesante contrapunto con la sociología de Pierre Bourdieu.