The oral tradition of Pierre Bourdieu:Classification Struggles, On the State, andManet

Abstract

This essay discusses the three most recent posthumous publications of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. With the 2019 release of Classification Struggles, coming after On the State (2014) and Manet (2017), and covering Bourdieu’s first lectures as the Chair in Sociology at the Collège de France from 1981 to 1982, this emerging oral tradition marks an opportune moment to re-examine Bourdieu’s oeuvre in light of a mode of presentation and knowledge transference that is unprecedented in scope within the sociological canon. Taken together, these series of lectures, but also notes, essays by his collaborators, and even an unfinished book length manuscript, constitute a fascinating process of analysis of the wide range of topics that Bourdieu tackled throughout his career. As such, these works lend important insights that should aid readers in re-evaluating Bourdieu’s more polished works. However, beyond the additional insights that may lead international sociologists to a more thorough understanding of Bourdieu’s best-known theories, one finds, when examined chronologically, the slow march of Bourdieu’s progress towards a fully-fledged theory of the state, a topic that he did not begin to formally analyze until he began lecturing at the Collège de France.