Pierre Bourdieu on Art As Social Practice. The Defence of the Concept of the Autonomous Field of Cultural Production

Abstract

The article’s aim is to reflect on the late poststructuralist conceptualisations of social practices and autonomous fields of cultural production by Pierre Bourdieu in order to distin­guish the specificity of the autonomous field of art and to grasp the author’s attitudes to these theoretical constructions. The autonomous field of art is being drawn in the late thought of the French thinker as one of the still existing structures of historical character enabling cultural production and reproduction that is relatively free from external pressures, favours the accu­mulation of knowledge and enhances reflection. As such – it is diagnosed as a contemporary value in need of defence. The author of these considerations tries to extract this diagnosis, with which she agrees, form Bourdieu’s thought. She also attempts to point out the most important, according to her, humanistic traditions which enabled some selected approaches to the theory of practice of modernity and late modernity, and thus the development of Bourdieu’s ideas towards emancipation.