The overview of Bourdieu's literary field theory

Abstract

The 1960s - 1970s were marked by the dynamism of the Western intellectual milieu, especially with the flourishing of new theoretical trends in the social sciences and humanities. Pierre Bourdieu's field theory appeared as an intellectual response to pre-existing theoretical trends, including Structuralism, Marxism, or Émile Durkheim's concept of collective consciousness, etc. Starting from the theoretical principle of social cognition, considered as an authentic form of non-consciousness, Bourdieu dealt with the social relationships established between social conditions and positions. Accordingly, the social relationships are more realistic than the subjects participating in those ones. Thereby, he proposed structural mechanisms of dominance and competition to prove the existence of the social game. The space of the social game is what Bourdieu calls "field". There are different fields corresponding to different social sectors. This article outlines in general the process of forming the literary field theory. It aims to show the relationships between the literary field and others in Bourdieu’s sociological system as well as his contributions to the landscape of the contemporary literary theory.