A Feel for the Game: Bourdieu, Source Study, and the Legend

Abstract

A Feel for the Game: Bourdieu, Source Study, and the Legend Betsy McCormick Mount San Antonio College Since chaucer invariably transforms his literary sources as part of his ‘‘makyng,’’ our reception history of those sources is as necessary to consider as is that of Chaucer and his audience. Do we as contemporary readers, or as critics, have the kind of knowledge and ease with Chaucer’s sources to fully grasp the rhetorical play invoked in his ‘‘makyng’’? Such ease lies in the realm Pierre Bourdieu has termed cultural capital, a form of intellectual currency that underwrites our habitus, which he defines as the ability to effectively (or one could say affectively) function within any given field—in this instance the literary/cultural field. Bourdieu’s theory has been described as one of ‘‘radical contextualization ,’’ which seems a particularly apt way to approach source studies.1 To apply Bourdieu’s ideas to source study would allow us to go beyond the matter of ‘‘what a source is’’ to the question of ‘‘how a source does.’’ How does the cultural capital underlying any source interact and play with the main text? How do we as contemporary readers differentiate between ‘‘how the source did’’ in the habitus of the medieval reader and in our own: How did a source make meaning then and how does it make meaning now? Source study approached as a recuperation of cultural capital would allow for a more expansive—and self-reflexive— understanding of Chaucer’s ‘‘makyng’’ and its participation in the cultural fields of the late fourteenth century. I first came to Bourdieu through my interest in game theory, since the analogy of game underlies his theories, particularly descriptions of central concepts like field, habitus, and capital. A field (champ)— 1 Randall Johnson, ‘‘Editor’s Introduction,’’ pp. 1–25 in Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature, ed. Randall Johnson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), p. 9. PAGE 257 257 ................. 16094$ CH15 11-01-10 14:04:45 PS STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER comprising any spectrum of human experience, from the political and economic to the cultural and the literary—is a structured space with its own fundamental laws and relations; in simpler terms, we could say that it constitutes a game space. Entering into any field requires habitus (or sens pratique), which Bourdieu describes as a ‘‘kind of practical sense for what is to be done in any given situation—what is called in sport a ‘feel’ for the game.’’2 This feel for the game emerges via the acquisition of capital, the specialized knowledge of a field. Possession of capital means knowing the rules of the game and acquiring such knowledge is a lifelong process, derived from a matrix of familial, educational, and social structures and institutions. Bourdieu defines cultural capital as an internalized code that enables the deciphering of cultural fields, relations, and objects. While all forms of capital are individually internalized, cultural capital itself is both multivalent and dynamic.3 Consequently, ‘‘a work of art has meaning and interest only for someone who possesses the cultural competence, that is the code, into which it is encoded.’’4 Cultural capital is the knowledge necessary to play the game of culture, and without it the game loses all meaning. Perhaps the most significant aspect of Bourdieu’s theory within the context of source study is his notion of ‘‘interest.’’ In this adaptation of Johann Huizinga’s illusio, Bourdieu argues that those entering into a field are required not only to have the cultural capital necessary to play, but they must take the game seriously—in his terminology, they must be ‘‘interested’’ rather than ‘‘disinterested.’’5 As he explains it, ‘‘games which matter to you are important and interesting because they have been imposed and introduced in your mind, in your body, in a form called the feel for the game.’’6 If ‘‘your mind is structured according to the structures of the world in which you play, everything will seem 2 Pierre Bourdieu, Practical Reason: On the Theory of Action (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), p. 25. 3 The dynamic character of cultural capital is readily apparent...