Real Art for Real People?: Bourdieu on Taste
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 มิ.ย. 2016
- In which Jedd talks about Bourdieu’s social theory of taste and how weaponized metaphors give way to the industrialization of culture. (heavy stuff)
For more on the debate over gentrification of Cincinnati’s Over-the-Rhine district, here are a couple articles:
- CityBeat: www.citybeat.com/news/article/...
- Cincinnati Magazine: www.cincinnatimagazine.com/cit...
This article is also pretty useful in thinking about class in the U.S.: lithub.com/america-was-never-c...
Also...
**Go check out my wife’s Super Short Science Songs:**
/ @supershortsciencesong...
###
Electric Didact is on:
Twitter: / electricdidact
Reddit: / electricdidact
Blog/Author Site: electricdidact.wordpress.com/
###
WORKS CITED:
Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction (1979)
Douglas E. Allen and Paul F. Anderson,"Consumption and Social Stratification: Bourdieu's Distinction," (1994), Association for Consumer Research (acrwebsite.org/volumes/7565/vo...)
Louise Adams, “Is ‘devouring’ books a sign of superficiality in a reader?,” June 21, 2016, Aeon (aeon.co/ideas/is-devouring-bo...)
Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, Dialectic of Enlightenment (1944)
###
ASSETS:
Frame 16 - Ornate Gold, Stephen, CC-BY (www.flickr.com/photos/3465167...)
Pierre Bourdieu, Sipa (bibliobs.nouvelobs.com/essais/...)
Adorno & Horkheimer (theimmaterial.net/research/int...)
James Garner 1988 Beef Real Food For Real People Commercial ( • James Garner 1988 Beef... )
###
MUSIC:
John Garner, J.S. Bach’s Partita No. 1, BWV 1002, III. Corrente, CC-BY (musopen.org/music/2105/johann...)
Here's an apt quote from P.B's Distinction: "Paradoxically, the games of culture are protected against objectification by all the partial objectifications which the actors involved in the game perform on each other: scholarly critics cannot grasp the objective reality of society aesthetes without abandoning their grasp of the true nature of their own activity; and the same is true of their opponents. The same law of mutual lucidity and reflexive blindness governs the antagonism between 'intellectuals' and 'bourgeois' (or their spokesmen in the field of production). And even when bearing in mind the function which legitimate culture performs in class relations, one is still liable to be led into accepting one or the other of the self-interested representations of culture which 'intellectuals' and 'bourgeois' endlessly fling at each other."
Nice! I love the phrase "endlessly fling at each other"
It's a fascinating and provocative statement. I had heard of P.B. but hadn't looked into him until recently and, ironically because I stumbled over a dismissive comment about Distinction from Camille Paglia who has what strikes me as a kind of insecurity when it comes to the French intellectuals of the "May '68" generation (I'm using that title loosely). I used P.B. as a sort of fulcrum for the following (link below) and at the end there's another quote from Distinction which I think is fascinating as he genuinely cuts to the structure in which both "left" and "right" operate often, if not consistently, without any sense of self-awareness and offers an exegesis of the "culture industry." .
And thanks for the video! Nicely done, clever in a positive way, and informative.
theviolentink.blog/2018/10/11/about-that-future-islands-article-or-how-many-metamodernists-can-dance-on-foucaults-head/
Thanks for the compliment! I've added your piece to my kindle to read when I get a chance. Thanks for sharing! ^_^
Cheers!:-)
Brilliant video, I like that you made it a vlog too. Love man
As a person of subaltern status I've always been less interested in high culture and more in the transformation of low to high through the process of appropriation. Growing up and living in a city where, until it's economic transformation in the aughts was majority minority I witnessed first hand the slow evolution of Black and Latino cultural objects and practice particular to my region into cultural capital for newly arrived outsiders. To eat mumbo sauce or pupusas, dance to GoGo, go to the drum circles or just to have knowledge of those things has become a signifier amongst gentrifiers of having lots of regional cultural capital. To be a local, they would say. It's an odd thing to see objects that are central to ones identity, objects that not long ago were seen as low, outsider and ridiculed, now dislocated and traded and used for purpose of gatekeeping. I am not offended by appropriation, I think it as hollow and superficial and it never truly subjugates a living culture. But it is jarring to see odes to grecian urns written in local food blogs about horchata. Not because these things aren't worthy of that form of attention but because of all the new unspoken meanings and values that spiced rice milk has for an upper middle class recent transplant showing off on instagram.
Bourdiue has a particular resonance to Americans and our class anxieties, just read the Great Gatsby. But his critique is most useful (and finds its limitations) when we examine how outsider art becomes canon. I mean, K Dot won a Pulitzer, but he won it for DAMN and not TPAB, which just shows the arbitrariness of "aesthetics". Beauty is just what those with power call beautiful.
The question of taste in the first instance lies in the singers’ vocal vibrato, which (to the delectation of these al fresco philistines) is slathered onto the music like whipped cream on sponge cake.
I'm referencing Bourdieu in a study. This was a big help. Thanks.
right on ... i did my thesis in architecture making heavy use of his book 'distinction' - if you read the intro to that book there's a fantastic quote on taste there.
Would love to see you discuss some Baudrillard. Going through System of Objects atm
Actually, I (super briefly) talk about Baudrillard in a more recent video: th-cam.com/video/SRiCUqi-4Y4/w-d-xo.html
But yeah, I'll keep that in mind. Maybe there's a chance to talk about that down the line. :)
Nice video! Do any current theorists discuss "cultural omnivores" or "high-low"/"low/high" culture, like rap operas, cellists who sample themselves to be one-person rock bands and people who pair their fanciest designer frocks with thrifted finery? What about DIY and Maker types and generally groups or individuals that seem to embody different classes and habitus at the same time?
I don't know maybe look up PBS Idea Channel. I feel like maybe they talked about that at some point...
You're very good, I get you. I guess I'm part of the code club.
Sociologists aren't allowed to like country. I'm glad you were joking.
Well presented but I disagree with Bourdieu on a number of points. I think Bourdieu ties artist taste to economic and social status far too closely. The economic mobility people experienced during the 16th and 17th centuries in Europe is case and point. What did the growing middle class spend its extra leisure time and finances on? It was on the classical music of the aristocrats. How can Bourdieu explain this? You literal have individuals being raised in one class but climbing the economic ladder to the middle class. According to Bourdieu, these new members of the middle class shouldn't posses the "code" to decipher "high brow" music. But they did. And they loved it.
Well in the case you mentioned, Bourdieu would explain it in terms of the social fields as fields of struggle for capital, cultural and symbolic capital inclusive. In general we aspire those cultural codes which present the most value, which present themselves as hegemonic in our society. So clearly would the middle class copycat the aristocrats in trying to attain more of that cultural capital, which is based on "la distinction", the value which emerges from distancing oneself from lower class cultural codes.
Eitherway, I would still agree with your refutation. Bourdieu tries to dismiss philosophical reflection of aesthetic reflection by reducing to it the social conditions of taste. But the human capacity of aesthetic judgement, theorized by Kant and Schiller, can still be posited as universal, which would refute the stubborn hypotheses that you only like what you were born to like. Therefore recognizing our capability of apreciating art, music, dance, even if we dont posses the cultural code to comment on it.
"The economic mobility people experienced during the 16th and 17th centuries in Europe is case and point" Do you have some stats and examples that can define "economic mobility" in the 16th and 17th centuries?