Bourdieu's Reflexive Politics

Abstract

Starting from the controversies surrounding Bourdieu's political involvement, this article investigates the form of ethico-political involvement consistent with Bourdieu's notion of reflexivity. The argument begins by drawing the ethico-political dimensions of Bourdieu's methodology, especially his notions of socio-analysis and reflexivity. These latter emerge as the counterparts of Bourdieu's politics of the field, grounding the `conversion of the gaze' required for political action and presenting possibilities for social agents to comprehend, accept and even re-create their selves. Applying a `dispositional reading' to some of Bourdieu's texts, the article proposes a new interpretation of the tense relation between Bourdieu's biography and writings, consistent with the ethico-political reading of socio-analysis and reflexivity. Bourdieu's texts can be read as an example of a socio-analysis, a rhetorical strategy devised to enlist individuals into the painful exercise of rewriting their social biographies.