Response to throop and murphy (Pierre Bourdieu)

Anthropological Theory http://ant.sagepub.com Response to Throop and Murphy Pierre Bourdieu Anthropological Theory 2002; 2; 209 DOI: 10.1177/14634990222228998 The online version of this article can be found at: http://ant.sagepub.com Published by: http://www.sagepublications.com Additional services and information for Anthropological Theory can be found at: Email Alerts: http://ant.sagepub.com/cgi/alerts Subscriptions: http://ant.sagepub.com/subscriptions Reprints: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsReprints.nav Permissions: http://www.sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav Downloaded from http://ant.sagepub.com at SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIV on February 19, 2008 © 2002 SAGE Publications All rights reserved Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution 05 Bourdieu (JB/D) 30/4/02 10:15 am Page 209 Anthropological Theory Copyright © 2002 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi) Vol 2(2): 209 [1463-4996(200206)2:2;209;024463] Response to Throop and Murphy Pierre Bourdieu Collège de France Editor’s Note This response was written by Pierre Bourdieu at the end of 2001, shortly before he passed away in January 2002 While thanking the authors for their very serious and thorough work, I would like to raise some questions as to their intentions themselves I see in fact a contradiction in reproaching me at once (1) for failing to justice to phenomenology, to which it would seem I am more beholden than I am willing to acknowledge (p 197: ‘Here, as elsewhere, Bourdieu seems to be merely rephrasing some of Schultz’s premises in his own idiosyncratic and overly deterministic vocabulary so as to make them sound new, when in reality they are not’; or p 203: ‘[Pierre Bourdieu] fails to acknowledge the positive influence that Husserl’s thinking has had upon his own theoretical formulations’), and (2) for having misunderstood, misinterpreted and misconstrued the ideas of Husserl and the phenomenologists (e.g p 198: ‘his very phenomenological naivety that has led him to mistakenly characterize all non-representational states as necessarily “non-conscious” ’ or p 203: ‘he often mischaracterizes Husserl’s ideas’) In short, it is not possible to claim, without serious inconsistencies, that what I say about Husserl is true and therefore that I am a quasi-plagiarist dissimulating his borrowings (whereas I have often declared my indebtedness to phenomenology, which I practiced for some time in my youth), and that what I say about Husserl is false and that my criticisms or reservations are unfair It seems to me that I indeed justice to Husserl, Schutz and a few more But it was not my intention either to rephrase them in one of those commentaries which, to sound like Mallarmé, ‘forms a pleonasm’ with the work, nor to refute them It is my aim to integrate phenomenological analysis into a global approach of which it is one phase (the first, subjective phase), the second being the objectivist analysis This integration is in no way an eclectic compilation since the effect is to pass beyond the limits (which I recall in my critique) inherent in each approach, while retaining their essential contributions But I think that the misreading of my ideas is rooted in the fact that the authors forget that, in my intent, the theoretical ideas which they treat in isolation, separately, in and for themselves, are designed to guide empirical research and to solve specific problems of anthropology and sociology such as the problem of gift-exchange or that of work, for which I proposed, in Pascalian Meditations, an analysis integrating the subjectivist and objectivist views, as well as many others over the course of my research career 209 Downloaded from http://ant.sagepub.com at SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIV on February 19, 2008 © 2002 SAGE Publications All rights reserved Not for commercial use or unauthorized distribution  ... [146 3-4 996(200206)2:2;209;024463] Response to Throop and Murphy Pierre Bourdieu Collège de France Editor’s Note This response was written by Pierre Bourdieu at the end of 2001, shortly before... isolation, separately, in and for themselves, are designed to guide empirical research and to solve specific problems of anthropology and sociology such as the problem of gift-exchange or that of... very serious and thorough work, I would like to raise some questions as to their intentions themselves I see in fact a contradiction in reproaching me at once (1) for failing to justice to phenomenology,