Binaries

Abstract

Abstract Taste is expressed in daily life as a preference for this and not that: this is tasty, that is disgusting. Bourdieu emphasized that the vocabulary of such binary oppositional judgements is similar in all different domains in which taste is exercised, because all domains are ultimately ordered by the relationship between dominant and dominated classes, each of which develops a ‘practical mastery’ of the tastes that allow them to flourish in their own social setting. In Bourdieu’s analysis, this social binary dismantles traditional oppositions between body/soul; matter/spirit; object/subject, etc. This chapter shows how Clement too inculcates a ‘practical mastery’ of day-to-day binary oppositions, but unlike Bourdieu’s, his trains people in a ‘practical mastery’ of the overarching dualistic structure of salvation. This may be analysed through the philosophical/theological opposition contrasting kata physin and para physin; or by religious oppositions such as God vs. demons/idols; or by personally involving soteriological pairs of life/death.