Autonomy Revisited: The Question of Mediations and its Methodological Implications

Abstract

Bourdieu's concept of the literary field aimed to overcome the opposition between internal and external analysis of literary works. This paper examines its theoretical and methodological implications by exploring the notion of mediations between text and context at three different levels: the material conditions of production and circulation of literary works; the modalities of their production by their authors; their critical reception. It is through these mediations that the key concept of autonomy becomes operational for empirical research and that it displays its heuristic power, as illustrated by works using Bourdieu's theory of the literary field produced over the last two decades.