Pierre Bourdieu’s Political Turn?

Abstract

This contribution has two main goals. First, Pierre Bourdieu’s later work is critically reviewed. The question is posed whether or not his recent critical work has to be interpreted as the result of what might be called a ‘political turn’. Second, in reviewing the critical content of this recent work, a clarification of the critical potential present in Bourdieu’s general methodological and theoretical presuppositions is given. It can thus be seen that Bourdieu’s analyses have always been critical, because of their anti-essentialist relational logic, and that there is a definite continuity between his ‘older’ work and his more recent work. However, his analyses have become more harsh in tone. To conclude, then, the foundations of Bourdieu’s critique are critically examined. First, it is noted that his recent change in tone reveals a theoretical inconsistency between his earlier work and his recent writings. Second, a critique is given of the theoretical basis of all of Bourdieu’s work: relational logic. It is argued that his anti-essentialism is founded on – in Putnam’s words – a ‘God’s eye point of view’, which seems to be incompatible (if it were ever obtainable) with precisely this anti-essentialist analysis.