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Chapter 2:

1. As the editor of Bourdieu notes, the artistic fields autonomy can be measured
precisely by its ability to refract external demands into its own logic (p. 14).
2. A field is characterized by the distribution of available positions and by the
objective characteristics of the agents occupying them. For instance in My Name
is RedThe dynamics of the field is shaped by the conflicts in these positions
which ___ labels as a struggle expressed in the conflict between the orthodoxy of
established traditions and the heteronomous challenge of the new modes of
cultural practice, manifested as prises de position or position-takings (pp. 16-17).
3. As the crime has been resolved, one can observe how the prevalent relationship of
artist-patron from artist-guild remains. This is because in a society that is yet to
modernize, there is no distinct separation of structures that could lay down
autonomy for the artistic field. This dependence, as the novel points out, renders
the artistic vision of the artist like Olive in futility.
4. The resolution of the crime is what Bourdieu believes is in part a struggle for the
monopoly of legitimate discourse about the work of art, and consequently in the
production of the value of the work of art (editor, p. 20).
5. The reading of the novel My Name is Red is to problematize the characteristics of
the artistic field at a given moment, its relationship to the field of power, the
heretical challenge of a specific artist, and the consequential transformation of the
artistic field in terms of the aesthetic appropriation of the artistic work as
propagated by the crime (Note: rephrase).
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6. Olives refusal to abide by the aesthetics by the impositions of Enishte and his
rejection of the norms in Ottoman miniature painting initiated the demise of the
Ottoman miniature painting and introduced a new way of seeing the world.
7. Olive is supposedly the emerging idea of the artist who is motivated by the
desire in finding the importance of form over function, in emphasizing the
individuality of the artist which he will in the end realize is but an illusion
because art is again a struggle for legitimacy, an artist cannot legitimize his own
work as art because the artistic field in this historical time is largely dependent on
the field of power.
8. Through drawing his portrait at the center, Olive rejected the tradition
steeped in classical Ottoman culture where a painting is expected to have a
narrative content, or be an accompaniment to a classical piece of work. Through
situating his own image at the center of the work, he attempts to legitimize the
individuals artistic vision but the tradition lead by Master Osman and the
sanction given by the Sultan only highlights the system of struggle in the claims
of legitimacy in an artistic field. Hence, the scandal caused by the book of
illuminations for the Sultan becomes a heretical challenge to the institutions,
which still has the capacity to reject this challenge due to their domination in the
field of power.
9. The Book commissioned by the Sultan, narrative and drama lost their
privileged position and the illustrations cease to refer to anything but itself. The
transgression of the book lead to the breakdown of the sacred convictions of Olive
and Elegant which later on produced a different kind of transgression where Olive
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reiterates that art should celebrate the genius of the artist, which undermines the
book as a complement to the power held by the Sultan. The image is an attempt of
challenging the emerging monolithic authority of the Sultan in shaping the
characteristics of the artistic field---a cry for autonomy, as desperate it may seem
in the case of Olive.
10. The struggle for legitimation in the novel can only be understood if one
analyses the situation in and against which it is developed, that is the classic
tradition lead by Master Osman and then the hybrid aesthetics of Enishte Effendi
which is commissioned by the Sultan.
11. According to Bourdieu, the social construction of an autonomous field of
production is only possible if it goes hand in hand with an aesthetic mode of
perception, which places the source of artistic creation in the representation and
not in the thing represented (Bourdieu, p. 239). In addition, an autonomous field
is characterized by its capacity to define and impose specific principles of
perception and judgment of the natural and social world as well as of literary and
artistic representations of this world (ibid.).
12. By using Bourdieus idea of the artistic field as a site of struggle for
cultural legitimacy, one could understand this further by analyzing what he calls
as the space of positions and the space of position-takings [prises de position] in
which they are expressed (Bourdieu, p. 30). One should note that every
position, even the dominant one, depends for its very existence, and for the
determinations it imposes on its occupants, on the other positions constituting the
field; and that the structure of the distribution of the capital of specific properties
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which governs success in the field and the winning of the external or specific
profits which are at stake in the field (Bourdieu, p. 30).
13. As Bourdieu discusses, the artistic field is considered as a field of
struggles where there are different positions with strategies that they implement to
defend or improve their positions (i.e. their position-takings), strategies which
depend for their dorce and form on the position each agent occupies in the power
relations [rapports de force] (Bourdieu, p. 30). In other words, it is both a field of
positions and a field of position-takings.
14. The drawing of the image is an attempt to shift the power relations, which
constitute the space of positions Olive finds himself in. But the problem is that he
was unsuccessful in transforming the field because the dominant production still
lies in the hands of the Sultan.
15. In understanding the history and present state of the artistic field such as the one
found in My Name is Red, one could see that in the production of the book project
commissioned for the Sultan that paves the path for a new way of seeing things is
considered as a struggle between the established figures and the young challenger
that is found in the character of Olive. As elaborated in the parables, what they
know as art is far from being a, in Bourdieus words, the product of a
mechanical, chronological slide into the past; it results from the struggle between
those who have made their mark (fait date---made an epoch) and who are
fighting to persist and those who cannot make their own mark without pushing
into the past those who have in an interest in stopping the clock, eternalizing the
present stage of things (Bourdieu, p. 60). Master Osman and Bihzad and the
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masters in the parables are the institutions that Olive has to grapple with but his
portrait is his attempt to supersede the epoch that the Sultan is trying to introduce
with the book of illustrations.
16. In Olives attempt to make his mark, he in the process is involved with the
displacement of other generations of writers who are also vying for consecration.
17. As Bourdieu notes, for the artists like the ones found in My Name is Red, the
space of available positions for the artists help determine the properties exerted
and even demanded of possible candidates, and therefore the categories of agents
they can attract and above all retain; but the perception of the space of possible
positions and trajectories and the appreciation of the value of each of them derive
from its location in the space depend on these dispositions (Bourdieu, p. 65).
18. The death of Olive makes one ask: who is the true producer of the value of
the work or even labeling them as art? In his death, we could understand the
ideology of creation which assumes the artist as the first and last source of the
value of his work (Note: rephrase). By having the artwork commissioned by the
artist, he is the one who consecrates the work and has the power to devalue it. We
could see that the death of the artist in the novel provides an insight to the
different modes of consecration in the production of autonomy of art.
19. Given that it is Master Osman and Enishte are the ones who supervise the
work, it shows that they are the ones who show the cultural competence needed to
understand the work.
20. As Bourdieu explains in Distinction, when we encounter a work of art, it
is an act of cognition, a decoding operation, which implies the implementation of
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a cognitive acquirement, a cultural code (Distinction, p. 3). The cultural code
involved in My Name is Red is the question between the permissible and
impermissible in terms of religious standards.
21. The training of Master Osman and the artists are what Bourdieu considers
an eye [that] is a product of history reproduced by education. Education for
these Ottoman miniature artists is to replicate the masters and leave no trace of
their identity which thereby in the process immortalizing or freezing time for that
matter. The eye in other words is called the aesthetic disposition which is the
capacity to consider in and for themselves as form rather than function, not only
the works designated for such apprehension, i.e., legitimate works of art, but
everything in the world, including cultural objects which are not yet consecrated
(Distinction, p. 3).
22. The difference with the understanding of art in Snow is that as the field is
more autonomous, the field of artistic production, it is capable of imposing its
own norms on both the production and the consumption of its products. An art,
which like all Post-Impressionist painting, is the product of an artistic intention
which asserts the primacy of the mode of representation over the object of
representation demands categorically an attention to form which previous art only
demanded conditionally (Distinction, p. 3). This explains why Ka had the liberty
to read a secular work without necessarily offending a crowd of fundamentalists.
23. The field of artistic production is said to be autonomous if it is to give
primacy to that of which the artist is master, i.e., the form, manner, style, rather
than the subject, the external referent which involves subordinations to
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functions---even if only the most elementary one, that of representing, signifying,
saying something. It also means a refusal to recognize any necessity other than
that inscribed in the specific tradition of the artistic discipline in question: the
shift from an art which imitates nature to an art which imitates __ (Distinction, p.
___).
24. What shapes their position takings in the novels and then set to
differentiate them?
25. Definition of habitus: is both the generative principle of objectively
classifiable judgments and the system of classification (principium divisionis) of
these practices. It is in the relationship between two capacities which define the
habitus, the capacity to produce classifiable practices and works, and the capacity
to differentiate and appreciate these practices and products (tases), that the
represented social world, i.e., the space of life-styles, is constituted (Bourdieu
Distinction, p. 170).
26. The habitus is not only a structuring structure, which organizes practices
and the perception of practices, but also a structured structure: the principle of
division into logical classes which organizes the perception of the social world is
itself the product of internalization of the division into social classes. Each class
condition is defined, simultaneously, but it intrinsic properties and by the
relational properties which it derives from its position in the system of class
conditions, which is also a system of differences, [end of p. 170, beginning of p.
172] differential positions, i.e., by everything which distinguishes it from what it
is not and especially from everything it is opposed to; social identity is defined
and asserted through difference. This means that inevitably inscribed within the
dispositions of the habitus is the whole structure of the system of conditions, as it
presents itself in the experience of a life-condition occupying a particular position
within that structure. The most fundamental oppositions in the structure
(high/low, rich/poor etc.) tend to establish themselves as the fundamental
structuring principles of practices and the perception of practices. As a system of
practice-generating schemes which expresses systematically the necessity and
freedom inherent in its class condition and the difference constituting that
position, the habitus apprehends differences between conditions, which its grasps
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in the form of differences between classified, classifying practices (products of
other habitus), in accordance with principles of differentiation which, being
themselves the product of these differences, are objectively attuned to them and
therefore tend to perceive them as natural (pp. 170-172)


Chapter 1:

1. (Theoretical Framework) Following Bourdieus idea of habitus and field, the method
of reading the novels involve the incorporation of three levels of social reality depicted in
the text:
(1) the position of the literary or artistic field within what he calls the field of power (i.e. the set of
dominant power relations in society, or, in other words, the ruling of the ___ective positions occupied
by agents competing for legitimacy in the field as well as the objective characteristics of the agents
themselves); (3) the genesis of the producers habitus (i.e. the structured and structuring dispositions
which generate practices). (p. 14)
2. Bourdieu attempts to understand the degree of autonomy of a field in the following
illustration:

The illustration involves three important factors: (3) the artistic field, (2) the field of
power, and (1) the field of class relations. The illustration shows that there are two
principles that could characterize the degree of autonomy by a field, the heteronomous
principle and the autonomous principle. The heteronomous principle means while the
autonomous principle of hierarchization pertains to the total autonomy of a field of
production from the laws of the market or when a field fulfills its own logic as a
fieldThe more autonomous the field becomes, the more favourable the symbolic power
balance is to the most autonomous producers and the more clearcut is the division
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between the field of restricted production, in which the producers produce for other
producers (Bourdieu, pp. 37-39).
***
What characterize the struggle in a field of production are the two principles of
hierarchization: the heteronomous principle and the autonomous principle. As Bourdieu
notes, the state of the power relations in this struggle depends on the overall degree of
autonomy possessed by the field, that is, the extent to which it manages to impose its own
norms and sanctions on the whole set of producers, including those who are closest to the
dominant pole of the field of power and therefore most responsive to external demands
(i.e. the most heteronomous) (Bourdieu, p. 40).




Clarify:

1. Heteronomous and Autonomous Principle of Hierarchization