32 Symbolic Violence Pierre Bourdieu and Lote Wacquant Dis exercised up nplicty." Now, this Js because it may open the doar scholastic discussions on whether p below,” or why the agent “desires” the dition imposed upon him ete. To say itmore ri ‘ously social agents are knowing agents who, even ute to producing the efficacy of that which deter mines them insofar as they structure what dletermines them. And itis almost always in the ants and the categories of such that the tally that you try to shink domination in germs. he fact oF recognizing a vi lence which is wielded precisely inasmuch as one oes nor perceive it as sich, What I pur under the term of then, is the set that the mete fact of taking the world for granted, of accepting the world asi finding it natural because th ring tcc " J. What understand by misrecognition reainly does not fall under the category of nfl mnie where some maki propaganda aimed at others that is operati that: being born ina social world, we accept ith ns, which go whole range of postulates, ax saying and require no inculcating.* This is why the analysis ofthe doxic acceptance of the world, due to the immediate agreement of objective sue tures and cognitive steuctures, is the true founds Of all forms of “hidden persuasion,” the most int nlacable is the one exerted, quite simply, by the fer of things. To try coum 1 paradigmatic form of ny ethnogeaphic research among the Kabyle of Algeria and this for two reasons. First, | wanted to avoid the empty speculation of theoretical dis gender and lle the power which have so far done more to mu issue than to clarify i. Secondly Huse this device € circumvent the evtical difficulty posed by the an ysis gender: we are dealing inthis case with an millennia in the subs institution har has heen inscribed fo nd of thought Knowledge categories of percep which he or she should trea ledge. This mountain society of North Africa is ‘eal repos has kept alive, through its Mediter entire an civilization, and whichactures. Thus, [trea che Kabyle case asa sort of “aggranglized picture” ‘phallonarcissstic” cosmology of which they give lective and public (re)presentation haunts our This reading shows, first of all, that male onder isso deeply grounded 2s to necd no justification it imposesitselfas self-evident, universal man, holds a monopoly aver the human, homo). Ietends co be taken for granted by virtue « the quasi-perfect and immediate agreement which rion of space and time and inthe sexual divisions inscribed in bodies and in minds. In effet dominated, that s, women, apply to every object of the natural and social) world and in particular of domination in which the ensnared, as wel asco the persons through which this relation realizes iselh amthought schemata of thought which duct of the embodiment are the pr of this relation of power in che form of paieed inside/outside, couples. (high/low, large/smal, oked, etc), and which therefore lead them to ¢ from the stand point of che dominant, ie, a8 natural The case of gender domination shows better than any other that symbolic violence accom plishes itself through an tion and of isrecognition that ies beyond ~ or beneath = ities of the schemata of habituy that ace at once And it and symbolic without forsaking gendered and. genderi that we cannot unde iolence andl ral Mfrer 200 ars of pervasive Platomism itis han for us to think char the body can “think itself” ch gue alien co that of theoretical reflection Sense, we ean say thar ensler domin. callin French a cont gerd wd ‘i the s wiouence 273 visions of the and, second, through the veritable embodied polities, in other words, male lowes its spec sa relation ing i in a biological which is itself a biologized ial construction This double wo ally differentiated and sexually differentiating im poses « women different sets of dispositions with regard to the social games tha are held to be crucial to society, such asthe games of honor and war (fit for the display of masculin ity, virility} of in advanced societies, all the mose alued games such as polities, business, science ct. The maseulinization of male bodies and fem nization of female hodies effec hich is the durable con strweti as. Having sh I shift from one extreme of cult he sion from the standpoint of the dominated 2s the cultural arbitrary 1 this, (the to explore this originary relation of exclu We find in this novel an extraotdin. pressed in Virginia Woolf’ 1927 novel T Lighth arly perce and one almost symbolic. domination, werlooked by the domination of the dominant by his domin ation: a feminine gaze upon the desperate and somewhat pathetic effort that make to live up to che dominant idea of man more, Virginia Wook in his triumphant unconsciousness, €9 try Further ke in the central games of society, id ape the libido dominandi that comes with this involvenient, and are therefore socially inclined 10 iain a relatively nid view of the male pames in which they ordinarily partake only by pros. NoTES 1 Bou religion, ass polis, an neh rent angles om the sa pasticarly stoby Tm alo you walk od mothe Sr idea Anheme Jourval of tal efor” an42 Gender and Symbolic Violence Pierre Bourdieupersuasivechan description Actions. Surveys show, for example, that a large najority of French women say they wanta hushand themselves; two-thirds of them even explicitly reject the idea of a husband shorter than them selves. What is the meaning of this refusal 10. ot the sion of sce the disappearance of the ordinaty sig hierarchy"? “Accepting an inve appearances, replies Michel Bazon, isto sugest man who dominates, which, para she feels diminished who, for their pat, prefer younger women} when d pos ition; in their representation of thei relation with they accept the external signs of a dominate the mar to which their socal entity i (or will he attached, they take account of the representation that men and women as a whole will inevitably him the schemes of jorm of him by applying within the Because mp in. question), mon principles acitlyand unarguably demand that, at east in appearances and seen from outside, the man should occupy the dominant position within che couple, it i for him, for the sake of the d icy that chey recognize priori iw him, but want and love a man whose di ested in and by the fact th them ulation, hrough the apparent arbcrariness This cakes place, of course, without of the desired, and also real, differen ionty of which age and height gjsttied as indices fof maturity and guarantees of security) ace the most indisputable and universally recognized w through the paradoxes that only a di men, shopkeepers, farmers and annual workers, which marriage remains, for women, the peime PIERRE BOURDIEU the product of an unconscious adjustment to the probabilities associated with an objective steucture nf domination, the submissive dispositions that ate expressed in these preferences prodhced the equiva lentof what eould be a calculation of enlightened sel imerest. By contrast, these dlispositions tend to weaken ~ with, no doubs, effets of Bysteresis which would emerge from analysis of variations in practices 1 only according to the position nveupied, bur ako according ro trajectory ~ with the objective depend. feney that helps fo produce and maintain then (the disp. we chanees also in thie accesso divorce). This tends to confiem that contrary 10 the semantic representation of love ‘choice of partner is nor exempt from form of ration ational calculation, of 0 Tove of one's social destin, way to understand ¢his particular domination isto move beyond the forced free sion, The effect of syimbolie domination (whether thie, gender cultural or linguistics ete) isexerted not in'the pure logie of ke hur ehrough thy schemes of perception, appreci constitutive of habitus nf con ess and the controls of the will, set up nnd which, helow the level of the decisic itive elationship that is profoundh itself. Th omination and feminine submissiveness, which ‘cam, without contradiction, be deseribed as both spontaneous and extorted, canner be unclerstood tuntl one takes agcount af the dirable effects that the social order exertson women (and men.that i tos positions spontaneously attuned to thar order which it imposes on them Symbolic force isa Form of power that is exerted ‘on bodies, directly and as if by magic, without any the basis ofthe: porited, like spr Ie can act like weak this is because it does no disposition the deepest level of the bond more than trigger the dispositions tha the work of has deposited inlar ced ol id awaken, tamboliallsstruccused physical world and earh, peeomgosl eSperienve oF interactions. inform The practical acts af knowledge and recognition {tc magical frontier between the dominant 3 he dominated that sre triggered by the magic of 1 disision of sell, of experiencing the insiints ity that a body shippiy fromm the control of AND SYMBOLIC VIOLENCE 341 ication? whieh “acts” ay much negatively + trom explicit exeluson: hich, whew itis the Kab marks that sloninasion drab prog them does wor mean thacone is offering support thae particulary vic thon which consists in making women responsible acknowsledued borh thae the “submissive” dispos342 PreARE BOURDIEU ecognition of domination always presupposes ar act of knowledge, this does not imply that one is entitled ro describe it in the language of conscious: ectualist and scholastic fallacy x (and above all, those who, Which, as in Mi from Lukas onwards, have spoken of ‘fase com- sciousness), leads one to expect che liberation of women t0 come through the immediate effect of the ‘raising of consciousness", Forgetting ~ for lack ff a dispositional theory of practices ~ the opacity andl inetia that stem from the embedding of social structures in bodies. [-..] These critical distinctions are not at all gratuitous: they imply that the sy tion called for by the feminist movement cannot bye reduced to a simple conversion of conscious nesses and wills, Because the foundation of symbolic violence lies not in mystified conscious: nesses that only need co be enlightened but in dispositions attuned to the structure of domin- ation of which they are the produce, the relation ‘of complicity that the victims of symbolic domin ation geant co the dominant caa only be broken through a radical transformation ofthe socal con ' of production of che dispositions thae lead f view of the dominant on the dominant and on themselves. Symi an iti the dominated 1 ake the point lic violence is exercised only thro act of Knowledge and practical recognition which takes place below the level of the consciousness and will and which gives all its manifestations ~ proaches, orders oF calls to order ~ their “hypnotic But a relation of domination that func power! fons only through the complicity of dispositions or its perpetuation or trans. Aepends profoundly. formation, on the perpetuation o transformation ff the structures of which those dispositions are the product (and in particular on the structure of a matket in symbolic goods whose fundamental Law is that women ae created there as objects which circulate upwards) NoTES 1 CEP. Bourdien, “Sur le powoir symbotique’ Annales, no} /May-hine 1977), pp. 405-11 2M. Boson, Les femmes et Pécart U'ige ente com joint: une domination consent’ Types qPunion eatentesen mative decart dpe, Population, 2 390), pp. 327-60; Hs “Modes d'entrée dans la vie Ade e representations dy sonioin’, Popalaton, 3 1990), pp. 35-6028 Apparence physique e choix INED Hlastitut National des Erudes ues, 7 (1991), di conjoin Demographigues), C pp. 91-110, Tris possible to understand in these terms che sym ages (Papal ball, ts Jo which ie lealy based on alization featechism, char immersion fom an early aBe Mose of Harlem sense of Their life and viole lives, be hood rer able forse car barg not until was expe deved di rape Vem managet Lived, 1 Las, wh ied, uses abandor Preparet violent pression voyeuti formed in respe betray tolike [Primo Mock; 1