Bourdieu`s reflexive sociology and `spaces of points of view`: whose reflexivity, which perspective?

This paper considers Bourdieu's concepts of perspectivism and reflexivity, looking particularly at how he develops arguments about these in his recent work, The Weight of the World (1999) and Pascalian Meditations (2000b). We explicate Bourdieu's distinctive purposes and deployment of these terms and approaches, and discuss how this compares with related methodological and theoretical approaches currently found in social and feminist theory. We begin by considering three main ways in which 'reflexivity' is deployed in current sociological writing, distinguishing between reflexive sociology and a sociology of reflexivity. This is followed by a discussion of the main aspects of Bourdieu's approach to 'reflexive sociology' and its relation to his concepts of social field, perspectivism and spaces of point of view. He argues that we need to interrogate the idea of a single 'perspective' and account especially for the particularity and influence of the 'scholastic' point of view. He characterizes this latter point of view as unaware of its own historicity and as largely concerned with contemplation and with treating ideas primarily as abstractions (Bourdieu, 2000b). Bourdieu's intervention is to argue, as he has throughout his work, for a more reflexive account of one's location and habitus, and for sustained engagement with ideas and social issues as practical problems. Bourdieu exhorts researchers to work with 'multiple perspectives' (Bourdieu et al., 1999, p. 3), the various competing 'spaces of points of view', without collapsing into subjectivism or relativism. We then consider recent feminist engagements with and critiques of Bourdieu's notion of reflexivity and chart some of the main points of contention regarding its relevance and conceptual potential for theorizing gender identities and transformations in current times. We conclude with a brief outline of how we are working with a reflexive sociological approach in a cross-generational study of young women in difficult circumstances, 'on the margins' of education and work.

Poly-Articulate

Poly-Articulate was a series of meditations around the paradoxes of articulation, considered in the heterogeneity of its material, visual, aural and conceptual aspects. Taking form through a collaborative working group of four artists/ designers/writers, the project used different technologies from the most ancient (the voice-box) to the most current (real-time rendering engines). With the utilisation of laser sensors crossing the gallery spaces, 20 digital monitors accompanied by vocal syllables would respond to the viewers? movement. Another piece of technology?a theramin installed below the sculpture of a trachea (inner ear)?mutated the vocal sounds upon its engagement along with a microphone suspended in one of the galleries. The visual and sound aspects of this project made it a compelling spatial experience.

An interactive CDRom accompanied with a text by Justin Clemens was published with this project.

Each doppelganger love

A diverse and hybrid text which interweaves poetry and prose to form a series of meditations on the theme of the hidden stories which lurk behind literary masks. It proposes: If fiction has a nature, then its nature is to hide just as soon as it utters the words we cannot speak. This composition also explicates the hidden stories that have brought this text to fruition.

Stuck inside a mobile

A diverse, hybrid text which interweaves poetry and prose to form a series of meditations on the theme of ‘art and lies’, specifically lies of connection and the pervasiveness of mobile phone use and the way that phone conversations act as temporary rooms for voices which are lifted out of bodies (and out of countries). In the disembodiment of the voice our unconscious fictions are revealed.

Cafe urgency

The idea of Cafe urgency was to create a loose and social atmosphere in which performers, audience and everyone present explored the ideas of the evening together. What Urgency do we have in our lives? Which pressing ideas, compelling needs, burning desires fill a day? Which insistent thoughts, driving wishes, forceful longings span a lifetime? Our delectable menu of musings, meditations and magnificent imaginations will provide bite-sized morsels and overlapping slabs of creative sustenance to suit all tastes: song, sound, spoken word, dance, music, live art, installation.

Something like an emergency

‘Something like an emergency’ is a collaborative project between Josephine Scicluna (words) and Tom Kazas (music). It was performed at ‘The Hunger Artist: Food and the Arts’, 2010 Double Dialogues conference in Toronto. This entry presents the performance text and exegetical responses from the writer and musician, providing both a theoretical context, in the philosophies of Gilles Deleuze and Gaston Bachelard, and a discussion of the improvisational basis of the project.

The poem investigates the hunger of writing as a desire to break through impasses of language: in love and in the writer’s translation of vision. The difficulties of ordering food in different languages and countries become a metaphor for breaking communication and the writer’s (often frustrated) desire to deliver the right words onto her plate. From countless bowls of lentil soup (which were never vegetarian) on overnight bus trips in Turkey to Venice and Vegas Live on Birrarung Mar, this work forms a series of meditations on hunger - presenting the troubled body of the writer, troubled images of the body and conversations and places which have gone awry.

Online mindfulness-based intervention for late-stage bipolar disorder: pilot evidence for feasibility and effectiveness

OBJECTIVES: People in the late stage of bipolar disorder (BD) experience elevated relapse rates and poorer quality of life (QoL) compared with those in the early stages. Existing psychological interventions also appear less effective in this group. To address this need, we developed a new online mindfulness-based intervention targeting quality of life (QoL) in late stage BD. Here, we report on an open pilot trial of ORBIT (online, recovery-focused, bipolar individual therapy). METHODS: Inclusion criteria were: self-reported primary diagnosis of BD, six or more episodes of BD, under the care of a medical practitioner, access to the internet, proficient in English, 18-65 years of age. Primary outcome was change (baseline - post-treatment) on the Brief QoL.BD (Michalak and Murray, 2010). Secondary outcomes were depression, anxiety, and stress measured on the DASS scales (Lovibond and Lovibond, 1993). RESULTS: Twenty-six people consented to participate (Age M=46.6 years, SD=12.9, and 75% female). Ten participants were lost to follow-up (38.5% attrition). Statistically significant improvement in QoL was found for the completers, t(15)=2.88, 95% CI:.89-5.98, p=.011, (Cohen׳s dz=.72, partial η(2)=.36), and the intent-to-treat sample t(25)=2.65, 95% CI:.47-3.76, (Cohen׳s dz=.52; partial η(2)=.22). A non-significant trend towards improvement was found on the DASS anxiety scale (p=.06) in both completer and intent-to-treat samples, but change on depression and stress did not approach significance. LIMITATIONS: This was an open trial with no comparison group, so measured improvements may not be due to specific elements of the intervention. Structured diagnostic assessments were not conducted, and interpretation of effectiveness was limited by substantial attrition. CONCLUSION: Online delivery of mindfulness-based psychological therapy for late stage BD appears feasible and effective, and ORBIT warrants full development. Modifications suggested by the pilot study include increasing the 3 weeks duration of the intervention, adding cautions about the impact of extended meditations, and addition of coaching support/monitoring to optimise engagement.

Killing the father, Parmenides: on Lacan’s anti-philosophy

This paper examines the historical claims about philosophy, dating back to Parmenides, that we argue underlie Jacques Lacan’s polemical provocations in the mid-1970s that his position was an “anti-philosophie”. Following an introduction surveying the existing literature on the subject, in part ii, we systematically present the account of classical philosophy Lacan has in mind when he declares psychoanalysis to be an antiphilosophy after 1975, assembling his claims about the history of ideas in Seminars XVII and XX in ways earlier contributions of this subject have not systematically done. In part iii, focusing upon Lacan’s remarkable reading of Descartes’ break with premodern philosophy—but touching on Lacan’s readings of Hegel and (in a remarkable confirmation of Lacan’s “Parmenidean” conception of philosophy) the early Wittgenstein—we examine Lacan’s positioning of psychoanalysis as a legatee of the Cartesian moment in the history of western ideas, nearly-contemporary with Galileo’s mathematization of physics and carried forwards by Kant’s critical philosophy and account of the substanceless subject of apperception. In different terms than Slavoj Žižek, we propose that it is Lacan’s famous avowal that the subject of the psychoanalysis is the subject first essayed by Descartes in The Meditations on First Philosophy as confronting an other capable of deceit (as against mere illusion or falsity) that decisively measures the distance between Lacan’s unique “antiphilosophy” and the forms of later modern linguistic and cultural relativism whose hegemony Alain Badiou has decried, at the same time as it sets Lacan’s antiphilosophy apart from the Parmenidean legacy for which thinking and being could be the same.

‘In joy we prepare our lessons’: Reading Camus’ Noces via their reception of the Eleusinian mysteries

Nobel Prize winning author Albert Camus situates his meditations in both the opening and closing essays in his 1937 collection Noces by referring to the classical Eleusinian mysteries centring around the myths of Dionysus and the goddesses Demeter and Persephone. Noces’ closing piece ‘The Desert’ directly evokes the two levels of initiation involved in the classical Eleusinian cult in a way which prompts us to reframe the preceding essays beginning at Tipasa as akin to a single, initiatory trajectory. The kind of ‘love of life’ the opening ‘Nuptials at Tipasa’ had so marvellously celebrated, we are now informed, is not sufficient by itself. The entire round of these four essays, whose framing suggest four seasons (Spring in Tipasa, Summer at Algiers, then Autumn in Florence), are intended by Camus to enact just what the title, Noces, suggests in the context of the mysteries: namely, that hieros gamos or sacred union of man with nature or the gods at the heart of the ancient cults, tied very closely at Eleusis with reverence for the fecundity of nature, reborn each year with the return of Persephone from Hades to her grieving mother Demeter.