Perreau 2019 Bourdieu Et La Phénoménologie ENGLISH

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Publisher's presentation
Bourdieu's relationship to phenomenology may

seem, at first glance, purely critical. But his
sociology of practices also owes something to
phenomenology, to Husserl, to Schütz or even to
Merleau-Ponty. The first intention of this
investigation is thus to examine the consequences
of the reconversion of phenomenological concepts
and analyzes in the theory and practice of
sociology. The second intention that animates
this study is to rectify certain purely determinist or
objectivist presentations of Bourdieu's work, by showing that he gradually
elaborates a renewed conception of the “subject”. The relationship to
phenomenology functions as a matrix of questions: this is the case with
reflections relating to normativity (under the heading of habitus), to
temporality and finally to reflexivity, which are methodically examined
here and make up a real theory of the social subject.
Laurent Perreau is Professor of Contemporary Philosophy at the

University of Bourgogne Franche-Comté, member of the Laboratory of
the Logics of Action (EA 2274) and associate member of the Husserl
Archives in Paris (UMR 8547).
Work financed with the assistance of the University of Picardie Jules Verne
Jan Groneberg,
Two wealthy Families at strife, 2007.
© Bridgeman Images.
Layout: © SYLVAIN COLLET
© CNRS Editions, Paris, 2019
ISBN : 978-2-271-12586-6
This digital document was produced by PCA

To my parents
Summary
Publisher's presentation
Abreviations list
Introduction
Part I: On a ritual opposition in the social sciences
Chapter 1. The perspective of the anthropology of practice
The problem of objectification
The problem of “the” practice
Replaying the cut: the double objectification
The anthropology of practices program
Chapter 2. Subjectivism: social phenomenology and existentialism
Elements of a critique of social phenomenology
The Sartre case
Chapter 3. Rethinking the subject beyond subjectivism
Critique and Integrate
strength and meaning
Part II: Normativities

Chapter 4. The “meaning” of the practice
make sense
The problem of the anteriority of meaning
Mode of operation
Sense of practice, sense of practicality and sense of play
The practical-social order of meaning
Chapter 5. The presupposition: the doxa
The experience of naturalness
From the natural attitude (phenomenological) to the doxa (sociological)
Chapter 6. The principle: the habitus
Presentations of the habitus
Regularities, adjustments and sociality
A phenomenological contribution?
Chapter 7. The genesis: the incorporation of the provisions
L'hexis
The body, from Merleau-Ponty to Bourdieu
From objectification to pre-objective
Part III: Temporalities
Chapter 8. The Critique of the Philosophies of the Time
The scholastic conception of time
Heidegger's criticism
Chapter 9. Temporal Awareness, Economic Practices, and Alienation in Algerian Studies
The temporalization of practices

The depoliticization of the “to come”
Chapter 10. The Temporal Dynamics of Habitus
Retentions and retentions
L'hysteresis de l'habitus
Part IV: Reflexivities
Chapter 11. From reflection as self-position to sociological reflexivity
A critique of “self-knowledge”
The counter-program of a sociological reflexivity
From Kant to Freud
Chapter 12. The social unconscious
The epistemological critique of the concept of the unconscious
The (Durkheimian) rehabilitation of the unconscious
Reflexivity in front of the cognitive “unconscious”
Chapter 13. Theories and practices of socio-analysis
Socio-analysis as objectification of the field and restitution of the "transcendental

history »
Socio-analysis as objectification of the scientific field: sociological reflexivity as the sociology of

sociology
Socio-analysis as self-analysis
Conclusion
Annex
Bibliography
Thanks
CNRS Philosophy
Find all the works of CNRS Editions

ABREVIATIONS LIST
Algeria 60. Economic structures and structures

A 60
temporal [1977].
The Bachelors Ball. Crisis of society in Béarn
BC
[2002].
CD Things Said [1987].
What talking means. The economics of trade
CQPVD
linguistics [1982].
DCSJ The distinction. Social Critique of Judgment [1979].
DM La domination masculine [1998].
EA Algerian sketches [2008].
WATER Sketch for a self-analysis [2004].
ETP Outline of a theory of practice [1972].
HA Academic Man [1984].
I Interventions 1961-2001 [2002].
ISR Invitation to reflexive sociology [1992].
LL Lesson on lesson [1982].
LPS Language and symbolic power [2001].
MP Pascalian Meditations [1995].
MS The Profession of Sociology [1968].
OPMH The political ontology of Martin Heidegger [1975].
Afterword, Erwin Panofsky. Gothic architecture and
P AG
scholastic thought [1967].
QS Questions of sociology [2006].
R Reproduction [1970].
The rules of art. Genesis and structure of the field
DA
literary [1992].
RP Practical reasons [1994].
on Sociology of Algeria [1958/1961].
SP The Practical Sense [1980].
SSR
Science of science and reflexivity [2001].

TTA Work and workers in Algeria [1963].
Other texts:
E. Husserl, Guiding ideas for a pure phenomenological
ID I
phenomenology and philosophy [1913].
E. Husserl, Cartesian Meditations and the Paris Conferences
MC
[1929].
M. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of perception [1945].
PP
F. Héran, “The second nature of the habitus. Phenomenological

tradition and common sense in sociological language”, Revue
SNH
française de sociologie, XXVIII 3, CNRS Éditions [1987].
INTRODUCTION
To read and comment on Bourdieu is to accept taking a position in a", that is to

1
certain “space of viewpoints field made say, in this case, in the
up of a secondary literature. Every point of view owes its own situation in space to its
relativity to other points of view. But the fact is that every point of view also has its own
resources to say what makes it unique. Thus we will try to specify, by way of preamble,
what is at the root of the specific “point of view” that the author of these lines has on
Bourdieu's work. It will not be a question of engaging in a long “self-analysis” but, more
simply, of assuming what we are and this, in two respects. On the one hand, we will
read Bourdieu as a philosopher, that is to say from philosophy and with the means of
philosophy. We are going to come back immediately to the difficulties which may arise
from such an approach. On the other hand, we will read Bourdieu through the prism of
phenomenology, that is to say by being equipped with a certain knowledge of the
phenomenological corpus, its fundamental issues, its concepts and its analyses.
Indeed, the reading of Bourdieu imposed itself on us because it allowed us to prolong
a reflection led, from phenomenology itself, on the capacity of the latter to say and to
think the social
2
.
Let us point out from the outset that two intentions are at the origin of this study.
The first is to analyze the complex relationship that Bourdieu maintains with regard to
what he calls "social phenomenology", to establish what he
owes him and to return the criticism he addresses to him. The second is to show
that there exists in Bourdieu a certain theory of the “subject” or, at the very least,
that this question constitutes a determining problematic of his anthropology of
practice and, consequently, of his sociology of practices.
In what follows, we will specify one and the other of these two intentions.
1. The reference to phenomenology in Bourdieusian

discourse: demarcation, conversion,
reversal
The reference to phenomenology appears with a certain insistence in the

work of Bourdieu. Before studying it for itself with a view to identifying its different
modes of mobilization, it is worth recalling some of the "principles" which
determine the relationship of Bourdieusian sociology to philosophy in general and
to phenomenology in particular. . From the identification of these different
structuring features follow some rules of reading, both simple and demanding, as
well as some introductory remarks
3
.
1. In the first place, the relation of Bourdieusian sociology to phenomenology

will always, necessarily, be that of a demarcation. The principle of this demarcation
is well known and it does not relate to phenomenology itself since it results from
the disciplinary division established between philosophy and sociology.
In this regard, we can recall some elements of Bourdieu's biographical career,

a career that consummated and cultivated the break with initial philosophical
training. Bourdieu was trained in philosophy. He successfully passed the
competition for the Agrégation de philosophie, then he enrolled in a thesis under
the supervision of Georges Canguilhem, before giving up pursuing his intellectual
career in the field of the discipline then considered dominant. During his stay in
Algeria between 1958 and 1961, he turned to ethnology, then to sociology A large part of
4
his work .
was then determined in relation to . This criticism of

5
the heritage of philosophy, if not against it philosophy has
sometimes expressed itself frankly and without concession, via the consideration of
particular philosophical works or texts, as was the case with the devastating examination
of Political Ontology of
6
Martin Heidegger or on the occasion of the acerbic commentary (by Pierre
Bourdieu) of the commentary (by Étienne Balibar), held to be an example of the "discourse
of importance", of the commentary (by Louis Althusser) of Marx's Capital
7
.
More generally, Bourdieu questioned the claims of philosophy by theorizing what he

calls, following John Langshaw Austin, “the scholastic point of view”. This “point of view” or
8
this “posture” results from the fact that the philosopher grants himself or is granted a
freedom of reflection which finds its condition of possibility in a detachment vis-à-vis the
urgencies of practice. This particular position induces a form of disinterestedness with
regard to the things that surround us and the practices that are current in the social world:
the scholastic position "encloses [the philosophers] in the presuppositions inscribed in the
posture and the post of the philosopher" . The philosophical gaze would thus necessarily
operate in abstraction, by apprehending any object in an eternalizing, neutralizing and
9
generalizing way, that is to say by freeing things and practices from their temporal,
axiological and historical determinations. But this posture has implications for the theory
itself, in that it falsifies in advance the perception that we have of things, beings and the
world. The consequence from the scholastic point of view is therefore a derealization which
prevents, in particular, any correct grasp of everything that has to do with the social, the
historical and the cultural. This would explain the forgetting, even the denial, of philosophy
with regard to everything closely related
10
or from afar, to a balance of power case . More specifically, and to return to
of social science, sometimes contaminated by its philosophical heritage, the scholastic posture
is this epistemological obstacle which no longer allows us to conceive the concrete practice of
agents, which must nevertheless be
11
its main object In a .
sense, Bourdieu has thereby built a veritable mechanism for the defense of sociology
against philosophy. This defense is reactive when it fights against the implicit presuppositions
that the heritage of philosophy can impose on the sociological gaze. The sociologist can only
distrust a philosophy which will always be suspected of neglecting the historicity of practices,
of constantly trying to bring the social sciences back to the question of their foundation, of
universalizing and formalizing social experiences by stripping them of their peculiarities.
Philosophy, according to Bourdieu, dissociates theoretical reflections from the consideration
of actual practices, while the sociologist, on the other hand, will have a fair game of pretending
to link them and think them through one another. But this defense of sociology is also
preventive in that it condemns in advance any reappropriation, or even quite simply any
discussion, by philosophy of its discourse and its practice. The criticism of the “scholastic
posture” makes it possible to prevent any philosophical recovery or more precisely, any
philosophical commentary which would be satisfied with discussing the sociological discourse
on the sole ground of philosophy. Whoever tries to comment on sociological practice as a
philosopher exposes himself to the risk of a derealizing position of reader typical of the
philosophical attitude
12
.
Beyond the particular case of philosophy, we should also mention the more general
denunciation of “intellectualism”. Indeed, the disciplinary demarcation between philosophy and
sociology itself finds its principle there, since it rests ultimately on a certain distinction between
theory and practice, more precisely between a forgetful theory of
practice and a restorative theory of practice. As we will see later, it is

ultimately a certain idea of practice that informs the disciplinary division,
apparently so strict in certain statements by Bourdieu, between sociology
and philosophy. It is also on this point that sociology discovers its
specific task, since it will have to account for “social practices”, in a
sense that remains to be clarified.
Does this mean, therefore, that we should no longer take an interest
as a philosopher who takes responsibility for Bourdieu's sociology? We
do not believe this and believe, on the contrary, that full consideration of
the specifically philosophical dimension of Bourdieu's sociology, if it is
properly captured, is effectively at the service of this sociology. Because
the work of Bourdieu, whatever he says about it elsewhere, also presents
an authentic philosophical dimension. Some of his works are addressed
directly to philosophers, whether it is a question, in a provocative mode,
of his reading of Heidegger or of the Pascalian Meditations. The
interpretation of a work such as that of Bourdieu is enriched by the
diversity of the perspectives which approach it and it should not have to
fear, as long as they are well intentioned, the philosophical readings
which are likely to better entitled to the properly philosophical dimension
of his work and to serve, by this detour, its properly sociological scope.
However, taking into account the demarcation established between
philosophy and sociology requires a first rule of reading: we cannot treat
Bourdieu as a philosopher among others, namely as a philosopher
solving philosophical problems with the traditional means of philosophical
discourse. (i.e., concepts and arguments for taking a position on
philosophical issues). If Bourdieu had to confront philosophy, it was
indeed – and he must be taken at his word here – as a sociologist, a
sociologist who tackled sociological issues that philosophy dealt with in
an improper way or that it simply did not deal with. . The beginning of
the “Introduction” to the Pascalian Meditations is unambiguous on this point:
If I have resolved to ask a few questions that I would have preferred to leave to philosophy, it is because it appeared to me that,
despite being so questioning, it did not ask them; and that she never ceased to raise, in particular with regard to the social sciences,
questions which did not seem to me to be essential – while being careful not to wonder about the reasons and especially the causes,
often quite
13
not very philosophical, of these questions .
What must therefore be considered is what the point of view and the practice of
sociology do to philosophy. Or, to put it differently, with Bruno Karsenti, it is a question
of considering an altered philosophy, not however in the sense that this alteration
would proceed, in a general way, from the long-range event that could constitute the
rise of the social sciences during the nineteenth
It is
14 century , but much rather from
the specific logic of Bourdieusian work. We will therefore not seek to "save" Bourdieu
philosophically, nor to make him a full-fledged philosopher to reintegrate him at a
forced march into the field of philosophy: this is of no interest. Rather, it is a question
of taking note of the inaugural break with philosophy and of the disciplinary difference
cultivated in order to discover in it a given opportunity for the transformation of
philosophy itself.
A second rule of reading will consist, as much as possible, in not losing sight of
the fact that theoretical reflections, in Bourdieu, are inseparable from the actual
practice of sociological research. As he recalls at the beginning of the preface to Le
Sens pratique, the essence of his remarks loses "its meaning and its effectiveness if,
by letting it dissociate itself from the practice from which it started and to which it
should return , it was allowed to exist from this unreal and neutralized existence
which is that of theoretical “theses” or epistemological discourses on numerous
15
occasions, as soon as it is a question of specifying the ". Bourdieu insists on it
relationship of theory to practice. In these various reminders, it is not only a question
of
find, as we sometimes read in sociological literature, with the almost

incantatory evocation of the “field”, a guarantee of empiricality which
would miraculously ward off the risk of derealization and philosophical
abstraction. Conversely, the practice of the profession of sociologist
should not be understood either as the application or the implementation
of a theory which owes its autonomy only to itself.
On the contrary, it is the very construction of the object of sociology and
more particularly of the object of sociological inquiry that must directly
and concretely associate theory and practice. The concepts, arguments
and reasoning, the overall logic of sociological discourse proceed from
continuous reflection on what can be the “object”, strictly speaking, of
sociological discourse. Thus he can recall, in Practical Reasons, with
regard to Distinction :
The notions of social space, symbolic space or social class are never examined in themselves and
for themselves; they are put to work and put to the test in an inseparably theoretical and empirical
research which, concerning an object well situated in space and time, the French society of the 1970s,
mobilizes a plurality of methods of research. observation and quantitative and qualitative, statistical
and ethnographic, macrosociological and
16
microsociological […].
Hence, this second rule of reading: if our commentary on Bourdieu's

work will focus on its most “theoretical” aspects, this selective view
should not be understood as an abstraction that overlooks the realities
of practice. On the contrary, as we will see for example with regard to
reflections on temporality, it will be a question of showing that it is the
very practice of ethnology and then of sociology (in this case, with
studies on the Algeria) and the consideration of the practices they
initiate which modify the whole of the conceptual situation, well beyond
the simple change of "point of view" caused by the conversion to
another discipline. In general, it will be necessary to remember,
by way of example, the ethnological or sociological use that Bourdieu

makes of his concepts.
2. Secondly, it will be argued that the principled demarcation between
philosophy and sociology cannot in itself summarize the relationship of
Bourdieu's sociology to philosophy . In particular, it does not allow us to
understand Bourdieu's relationship to philosophies, which is sometimes
purely critical, but also, in many cases, made up of multiple borrowings
and reappropriations, of various and varied reinvestments. These are
clearly part of an undertaking to convert philosophical discourse, the
specific resources of which (arguments, concepts, lexicons, problems)
become specific components of sociological discourse, however there
17
was no fear . Bourdieu thus proceeds with what one could call, if
of the barbarism of expression, a " sociologization” of philosophical
discourse. Bourdieu indeed considered that he could authorize borrowings,
quotations, resumptions of concepts and arguments while saving himself
from global confrontations with the theories thus mobilized. There is, in
his eyes, a kind of interested desacralization of philosophical discourse:
"We take our property where we find it", as common sense says, but, obviously, we are not going to ask just anyone for anything...
It is the role of culture to designate the authors from whom there is a chance of finding help. There is a philosophical meaning
which is a bit like a political meaning… […] This “pragmatic” vision may seem a little shocking, so much culture is associated with
the idea of gratuitousness, of endless purpose. And you probably had to have a somewhat barbaric relationship to culture – at the
same time more “serious”, more “interested” and less fascinated, less
18
religious – to treat it this way, especially the culture par excellence, the philosophy .
This sociological conversion of the elements of philosophical discourse

is, as we shall see, particularly efficient in the case of phenomenology.
Anyone who reads Bourdieu having frequented more or less
phenomenological literature cannot fail to be struck by two things.
On the one hand, Bourdieu addressed sharp criticisms to phenomenology,
sometimes formulating them in a pithy manner: if one reads these
scathing reproaches, there may not seem to be much to recover from the
side of phenomenology. But, on the other hand, an impression of familiarity
arises from reading some of Bourdieu's most theoretical developments:
we then observe rhetorical, conceptual and argumentative persistence,
which attest to a serious association with certain phenomenologists and
the presence of a real phenomenological "heritage".
This double relationship of open criticism and more or less recognized

debt imposes a difficulty which relates to the exact appreciation of what
Bourdieu owes to phenomenology. However, there is a short text in English
where Bourdieu is explicit on this point, a one-page text written in 2001,
shortly before his death, in response to the article by C. Jason Throop and
19
Kevin Miles Murphy entitled "Bourdieu and phenomenology: a critical ».
assessment Responding to an accusation that made him a "quasi plagiarist

concealing his borrowings", Bourdieu insisted on the fact that he had
"often declared [his] debt towards phenomenology, [that he had] practiced
20
[his] youth for some time. He went on to say that he had never sought or
"reformulate" or "refute" Husserl, Schütz and a few others, and that his
goal was rather:
to integrate phenomenological analysis into a global approach of which it is one of the phases (the first, subjective), the
second being objectivist analysis. This integration is in no way an eclectic compilation because it has the effect of going
beyond the limits (which I recall in my
21
critical) inherent in each approach, while retaining their essential contributions .
Bourdieu concluded his response by charitably assuming that the

authors had misread him because they failed to understand that his
investigations "aimed to guide empirical research and to solve specific
problems of anthropology and sociology" and because they had reacted
philosophically to a work that deliberately viewed philosophy as an
instrument for solving the problems of empirical research.
It therefore happens that Bourdieu retains the “assets” of certain

phenomenological analyzes by considering precisely that they are assets and that
there is hardly any need to return to them at greater length. He recognizes this
again in the “answers” he gave to Loïc Wacquant in 1987: “Social science […]
must make room for a sociologically based phenomenology of the primary
experience of the field, or, to be more precise, invariants and variations in the
relationships between different types of fields and different types of habitus a point
22
of view integrated into the .
But if phenomenology is therefore worth as
sociological approach, the question that then arises is to know how this integration
operates, how the legacy of phenomenology is found digested and then converted
into a real sociology.
This question therefore defines a task in which it will be a question of
disentangling the part of the legacy from that of criticism. However, it will not be a
question of remaining at a punctilious exegesis which would strive to restore the
supposed “true” paternity of such and such a concept to such and such a
representative of the phenomenological tradition, genealogical research of filiations
23
considered it a purely academic exercise to consider such as Bourdieu. We would rather try
the different methods of integrating phenomenological analyzes to see how the
relationship to “the” phenomenology constitutes a critical reference that Bourdieu
will have cultivated throughout his work. This survey therefore follows a few rules.
First of all, it will be a matter of considering the references that Bourdieu designates
himself, without seeking to develop comparisons that would not correspond to his
own theoretical space. Then, it will be necessary to show how such a reference,
such a concept, such an argument or such a description can be mobilized and
undergo a sociological “conversion” which will redefine its meaning and decide on
a new use. Finally, the systematicity and coherence of Bourdieu's approach should
not be overestimated: if the manifest work of
remarkable continuities, it also presents evolutions and, in the detail of certain

theorizations, subtle inflections.
Let us specify again: if our intention is indeed to read Bourdieu from

the “integrated” point of view of phenomenology, it is not to make Bourdieu
a phenomenologist who would be ignored or who would not have completely
assumed himself. Let us repeat it, our intention is not to make of Bourdieu
a phenomenologist who would somehow have misunderstood or denied
himself: the interest of such a recuperation, if it were possible, would remain
very doubtful. Similarly, we will not look to Bourdieu for the principles of a
"phenomenological sociology" which would constitute a kind of happy
synthesis, to tell the truth quite improbable, between phenomenology and
sociology: we do phenomenology or sociology, but not both at the same
time. Instead of looking at all costs for conciliatory syntheses that can only
be fictitious, we must on the contrary bring into play a disciplinary difference
that we must not seek to reduce. It is therefore advisable to stick to a
rigorous and strict definition of what phenomenology is, namely a description
of "phenomena" or of what appears to consciousness, that is to say a
descriptive analysis of the experiences or acts of intentional consciousness.
In this sense, phenomenology can be interested in the experience we have
of the social, without however being able to claim to directly inform a
phenomenological sociology which would come to supplant the other
currents of sociology.
Let us also note that the objective of an examination of Bourdieu's

relationship to "the" phenomenology, understood as a relatively
homogeneous philosophical movement (without even speaking, for the
moment, of the very broad definition that Bourdieu gives of "phenomenology
social”), is in itself problematic. In fact, Bourdieu's relationship to what is
sometimes hastily called “the” phenomenology does not easily accommodate
a summary and expeditious examination. It presents a plurality of
components where different forms of reappropriation and criticism are
played out. In the register of "inspirations", it will thus be necessary to make nuanced dis
for example, the selective borrowings from Husserlian phenomenology and the
implicit affinity one can discover between some of Bourdieu's theoretical views
and the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty. Likewise, it is obvious that one cannot
reasonably put on the same plane the lively denunciation of Heideggerian
ontology, the resolute rejection of Sartre's philosophy of the subject and the
critique of the limits and relative contributions of social phenomenology. The
relationship to phenomenology is therefore complex and composite.
Correlatively, it is necessary to properly measure the scope and limits of the

enterprise. We will not claim to account for all of the relationships that Bourdieu
24
was able to establish with philosophy in general. The investigation is . OUR
both more modest and more circumscribed, since it is a question of exploring the
particular case of the sociological conversion of the phenomenological discourse.
Therefore, there is a great risk of sticking to an approach that only focuses on
certain aspects of the work. We will therefore keep in mind the warnings that
have denounced the dangers of a "fragmentary partial absorption of this rich
body of theory and empirical investigations that cross many fields of study […],
which can lead to serious misinterpretations . In our view, a selective reading
remains possible and enlightening if one does not lose sight of its relativity to the
rest of the work, the reference to phenomenology often playing its role among
other references .
26
.
3. However, the relationship to phenomenology is further complicated by a

third, quite specific characteristic. Indeed, if the principle of a disciplinary
demarcation and the practice of a sociological conversion of elements of
philosophical discourse are valid for phenomenology as for so many other
philosophical references mobilized by Bourdieu, one last very specific aspect
must also be noted. which concerns, this time, only phenomenology.
As we will see, phenomenology (and its existentialist declination)

represents, along with structuralism, one of the two “movements” that
constitute the philosophical “deal” with which Bourdieu composes. In
this regard, it is appropriate to understand the Bourdieusian text, in its
strictly philosophical reality, in relation to these two “movements” which
have to varying degrees animated contemporary philosophy and the
history of the social sciences. On this point, one may be tempted to
take inspiration from the principles of reading that Bourdieu was able to
state and recommend, since it so happens that he wondered about
what it is to speak of27an author
. We will not claim to engage in a "sociological"
reading of Bourdieu which would be beyond our competence, but to
take into account the fact that Bourdieu's work is situated and is situated
itself in relation to what must be called a "field », that is to say a
structured and hierarchical space of positions. This is indeed how
Bourdieu himself presents things in the retrospection he delivers in the
28
Sketch for a self-analysis of . But a field is never a set
blind forces: it is a space of objective relations, even instituted , but
which also harbors real possibilities for transformation.
These can sometimes give rise to innovations, subversions or even
revolutions: thus, Baudelaire, in the field of literature or Manet, in the
field of painting, are good examples.
Now it seems, in this respect, that Bourdieu's relationship to the
philosophical “field” and to phenomenology is ultimately one of
subversion or reversal, in a way that is not without evoking Marx's
relationship to Hegel. Indeed, we remember that Marxian philosophy
takes off from a critique of Hegelian philosophy to then broaden it to a
critique of philosophy in general. But, at the same time, we also know
that this Marxian Aufhebung of Hegelian philosophy is not a pure and
simple renunciation. According to Marx, dialectics, as a fundamental
method of speculative philosophy, remains a valuable
an instrument for investigating reality, as long as it is freed from its idealistic

presuppositions. This is the whole meaning of this famous comment from
Capital :
I criticized the mystifying side of the Hegelian dialectic nearly thirty years ago, when it was still fashionable. […] The
mystification that the dialectic undergoes in the hands of Hegel in no way prevents him from being the first to expose its
general forms of movement in a global and conscious way. At home, it is on the head. You have to return it to
29
discover the rational core under the mystical envelope .
Bourdieu's relationship to phenomenology could thus be conceived, at

first approach, under this subversive modality, that of "reversal" which
works to overthrow what was established, with a view to restoring a more
appropriate, more relevant functioning of thought. .
Let us therefore consider this hypothesis: the praxeology developed from
the fundamental concepts of habitus, field and social space straightens out
or puts back on its feet a phenomenology which could only offer, in
Bourdieu's eyes, a deficient conception of practical, unable to meet the
demands of social science.
This hypothesis is interesting in that it does not settle in advance the
question of the exact nature of Bourdieu's relationship to phenomenology.
On the contrary, it establishes a regime of ambiguity which has heuristic
value. For the "reversal" of phenomenology can be interpreted in two ways.
On the one hand, this reversal operates as a going beyond that is ordered
to new objects – social practices, to put it briefly – and to new sociological
resources employed to explain them. On the other hand, reversal is also
reappropriation and, in a sense, conservation : Bourdieu clearly retains,
for example, with the theory of habitus, a certain consideration of "lived
experience" and we find this, moreover, is one of the major motives of his
critique of structuralism. This "experience" is no longer analyzed on the
basis of intentional aims alone and from the ego conceived as
as a principle instance of subjective life: the theory of habitus discovers

the principle of action in a set of incorporated dispositions which are
the product of objective social structures and of the trajectory of the
individual in a certain social space. The “subject” – if there is still a
subject – can no longer be a substantial unity, it can no longer discover
its unity in the “intentional life” dear to
phenomenology: he receives it from the habitus, which contributes to
the production of his social identity, not in the sense of a transhistorical
invariant, but indeed as an invariant relating to certain contexts and to
certain fields, an invariant which is moreover not final, itself subject to
transformation. In this regard, putting phenomenology back on its feet
is not only turning its head right side up: it must also be deprived of its
head, practice a form of decapitation to better restore all that a man can
and knows. body, and all that it owes to society and to history.
2. The question of the “subject” in

Bourdieu’s sociology
The second thing that strikes the phenomenologist who reads
Bourdieu is the insistence on a problematic that may seem inherited,
directly if not indirectly, from phenomenology. This problematic is that
of the (philosophical) anthropology of the social “subject” whose
contours we will try to define.
1. This is a problem that is sometimes neglected by commentators,
in whose eyes it may appear as a badly digested residue of philosophy
or as the persistence of a subjectivist obstacle to the consideration of
the objectivity of practices. Bourdieu himself does not put it at the
forefront of his epistemological and anthropological reflections, since
he claims above all a new mode of knowledge, praxeological knowledge.
This last theme
scientifically the practical sense that subjectivist and objectivist modes of knowing both
fail to think and promotes a "double objectification", defined as an "objectification of the
subject of objectification, of the analysing subject", in the words of the reception discourse
of the Huxley Medal
30
.
31
However, as Catherine Colliot-Thélène has shown the philosophical heritage of ,
phenomenology, if it is attested through the recurrence of references, explicit or not, made

to the phenomenological movement or to one of its representatives, proves even more if
we consider the tenor of the philosophical problems and the "questions
32
fundamentals” that haunt the reflections of Bourdieu Thélène . Catherine Colliot
thus underlined the importance of the question of the temporality of the practice, directly
inherited from the first purely “philosophical” works of Bourdieu, to which we will return.
Following it, we would like to show that the question of the "subject", more precisely that
33
of this “socially situated social subject” evoked by the Lesson on the lesson so present ,
in Bourdieu's last works relating to the question of reflexivity, also gains in intelligence
when it is instructed from this perspective.
Our intention is in no way to suggest that Bourdieu's philosophy conceals a philosophy

of the "subject" not assumed for itself (it is, in reality), as if there were a ruse of the
philosophy of the subject working secretly Bourdieu's reflection. What is worth reconsidering
in Bourdieu's relationship to phenomenology is above all a certain problematic deal with
which he had to come to terms. Beneath the guise of criticism, a certain form of
reappropriation is at work, which redefines the coordinates of a philosophical problem to
which Bourdieu provides an unprecedented sociological response. From this point of view,
there is good reason to re-examine the question of the "subject" from phenomenology,
both to appreciate the originality
answers that Bourdieu brings to it and to question the persistence of a

difficulty which takes on considerable importance in the work of
maturity, relative to the problematic of reflexivity.
2. However, at first glance, one might think that the question of the
“subject” is not really one or that it can easily be resolved. Indeed, we
can consider that the concept of “subject” is that of a traditional
philosophy which cannot satisfy the expectations of a sociology
dedicated to the objectification of social reality. There is therefore an
expeditious way to settle the question of the subject: it suffices quite
simply to declare it out of date or obsolete. Thus, in Practical Reasons,
Bourdieu affirms that the inauguration of a new theory of practice
requires a frank break with a conceptuality that is certainly well
established, but which conveys erroneous conceptions of what, according to him, pr
This philosophy of action is affirmed from the outset by breaking with the number of patented notions that have been
introduced without examination into scholarly discourse (“subject”, “motivation”, “actor”, “role”, etc.) and with a whole
series of very powerful social oppositions, individual/society, individual/collective, conscious/unconscious, interested/
disinterested, objective/subjective, etc., which
34
seem constitutive of any normally constituted mind .
There would therefore be neither conversion nor reversal here, but

a pure exercise in conceptual demarcation. This can therefore only
lead to a substitution procedure which will make it possible to definitively
dismiss a concept that is too philosophically determined, by filling the
space left empty with a clearer and simpler concept, sociologically
more acceptable. For this complementary operation, the category of
“agent” seems to be a good candidate. The theory of practice, refocused
on the “agent” and freed from the concept of “subject” can thus present
itself as the sociological remedy that should be administered to cure a
purely philosophical conceptuality that would be failing. In Practical
Reasons, Bourdieu actually advocates such a substitution:
The “subjects” are in reality acting and knowing agents endowed with a practical sense (this is the title I gave to the
work in which I develop these analyses), an acquired system of preferences, principles of vision and division (which
is usually called a taste), of enduring cognitive structures (which are essentially the product of the incorporation of
objective structures)
35
and action plans that guide the perception of the situation and the appropriate response .
However, as we can already see, the whole difficulty comes from the fact
that the agent is not only the “acting agent”, but also everything that follows
in the above-mentioned statement, that is to say a being. knower endowed
with a "practical sense". The category of the agent can therefore be conceived
as the direct product of sociological objectification and of the anthropological
reflection on which it is based, but it is also up to it to perform functions that
were well assumed by the concept of “subject”. In this sense, recourse to the
category of the agent is not a simple demarcation, but the title given to a
sociological reversal, complex and profound, which must subvert the legacy
of the philosophy of the subject.
However, the void left by the philosophy of the subject is probably not so
easily filled, and it is for this reason that, in L'invitation à la sociologie reflexive,
in response to a question from Loïc Wacquant who questions him on the
“double history”, individual and social, of the habitus, Bourdieu has a very
twisted answer. At first glance, the theory of habitus appears, as in the
previous extract, as a direct opposition to any philosophy of the “subject”:
In short, the theory of habitus aims to exclude the "subjects" (which are always possible as a sort of ideal borderline
case) dear to the tradition of philosophies of consciousness, without however annihilating the agents for the benefit
of a hypostasized structure, as some structuralist Marxists do. And this even if the agents are themselves the product
of structures that they contribute to creating and redoing, and which can even radically transform certain well-defined
structural conditions.
The theory of habitus is presented as a healthy measure of exclusion

from the philosophy of the subject, with this consequence: the agent therefore,
rather than the subject. But, immediately after making this statement, Bourdieu
seems to regret having allowed himself to be drawn into this field and having had
recourse to a language which only improperly says what is at stake:
But I am not satisfied with this answer because I am well aware that, despite all the corrections that I have been
able to make, either verbally or mentally […], I have allowed myself to be carried away by simplifications which
are the inevitable counterpart, I fear, of "talking
36
theoretical ».
And Bourdieu then refers to the reading of La noblesse d'Etat, so that the reader
can discover there the concrete description of the "system of relations between mental
structures and social structures 37
". What
these lines indicate is that the real place of the theoretical reversal is sociological
analysis itself, which alone is able to show the reality of the new "subject", the
singularized conjunction of the mental and the social, by objectifying its existence to
make it a position in a system of relationships. So we should perhaps not exclude the
category of the “subject” too quickly, even if certain statements by Bourdieu sometimes
invite us to do so.
38
.
3. There is another reason why one cannot purely and simply get rid of a concept
whose philosophical burden seems too heavy with regard to the demands of sociological
work. The concept of “subject” is not only cumbersome in itself: it is also cumbersome
because it carries within it a whole philosophy of consciousness, if not the whole
philosophy itself. In Practical Reasons, there is another passage where Bourdieu
concentrates his remarks on the concept of “subject” and declares to see there a
powerful reason for philosophical or scholastic opposition to sociological knowledge.
From the point of view of philosophy, the belief in the sovereignty of the subject is what
must be preserved against the various dismissals and relativizations that social science
would cause:
It seems to me that the resistance that so many intellectuals oppose to sociological analysis, always suspected
of reductionist coarseness, and particularly odious when it is applied directly to their own universe, is rooted […]
in a very totally inadequate of their
dignity of "subject", which makes them see in the scientific analysis of practices an attack on their
39
“freedom” or their “disinterestedness”.
This evocation by Bourdieu of resistance to social science organized

around the defense of a certain conception of the subject is not an
abstract view: it corresponds to a polemical reality and to the attacks
deployed by a "philosophy of the subject" sometimes quick to declare
the "return" of the latter. On the other hand, the sociology of practices
and the anthropology of the "agent" that accompanies it appear as a
defense device that should protect us against all those "nostalgic for the
'return of the subject' and the long-awaited end of the “social” and social
40
sciences”. In the Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, Bourdieu returned at
greater length to this polemical point which makes the question of the
“subject” the essential site of the crystallization of the struggle between
philosophy and social sciences:
There are people who, ever since there have been sciences of man, in France since Durkheim, have never ceased to
announce the "return of the subject", the resurrection of the person, savagely crucified by the sciences of the society.
And they are always heard and applauded. […] In fact, the debate between the “philosophy of the subject” and the
“philosophy without a subject” (as the “philosophers of the subject”, Ricœur and others, said in the 1960s) is one of the
forms that the struggle between the social sciences and philosophy which, all tendencies taken together, has always had
great difficulty supporting the existence of the human sciences, perceived as a threat to its hegemony, and accepting the
fundamental principles of scientific knowledge of the social world – and in particular the “right to objectification” that the
sociologist or the worthy historian assumes
41
of this name .
This aspect of the question has been present since the 1960s in the
work of Bourdieu, particularly in an article co-written in English with Jean-
Claude Passeron, published in 1967 under the title “Sociology and
Philosophy in France since 1945: Death and Resurrection of a
42
Philosophy without Subject”. This little-read text, to this day still
unavailable in French, is undoubtedly, for Bourdieu, the matrix of a
lasting appreciation of the philosophy of the subject. It is a step
in the elaboration of the critique of “subjectivism” formulated later in the

Sketch. In the 1967 article, Bourdieu and Passeron paint a sociological
picture of the “main sociological tendencies” in France after 1945, linking
them to the “implicit or explicit philosophical attitudes thus distinguished.
43
The first is that of a ". Briefly, two major trends are
"philosophy without a subject", driven by Lévi-Strauss, illustrated in
particular by Foucault's Words and Things and conceived as a revival
of the Durkheimian heritage. The second tendency is that of a philosophy
of the subject, defended by various authors and which constitutes a real
philosophical reaction which strives to maintain “scientific practices at
the lowest level of intellectual prestige”. Sartre's existentialism, if it is not
44
yet presented as the perfect illustration of "subjectivism" already plays a
particular role in this defense of the philosophy of the subject and in the
organization of philosophical resistance to the social sciences authors
45
of the article therefore devotes an in-depth examination to it. . THE
However, Bourdieu and Passeron are not content to note a

divergence, which has become a reason for disciplinary opposition,
between philosophy and the social sciences around the question of the
"subject" (a question which is, in fact, never really examined for itself). ).
The objective of the article is also to try to overcome this double
theoretical and disciplinary divide, by suggesting that a new configuration
makes it possible to do better justice to the "philosophy without subject",
by showing above all how the social sciences realize this philosophy.
without a subject and thus remedying the misunderstandings that have
arisen between philosophy and the social sciences. This new deal is
due to the considerable development, after the war, of empirical
sociology, to new philosophical possibilities pioneered by authors
anxious to take into account the reality of scientific work and its history
(Bachelard, Piaget, Gueroult, Vuillemin , Canguilhem are quoted by the authors of th
much of a sociological theory which must resolve the question of the subject by the very
development of social science. Indeed, according to the authors of the article, the social
sciences apply a philosophy without a subject, "at least implicitly, when they refuse to treat
their object, by omission or negligence, as a subject who would like, more or less, avoid
scientific investigation, whether through the transcendence of its
logical categories or by the freedom of its ultimate choices of the 46 ”. While doing
question of the subject the expression of dissensions between two types of philosophy
(with and without subject) and between philosophy and social sciences, the article of
Bourdieu and Passeron also constitutes an invitation, for the social sciences, to explain
themselves on this point, by demonstrating what the perspective of an "objectivation" of
the subject brings: how not to read there, in hollow, the program of the later reflections of
Bourdieu 47 ?
4. For if the question of the "subject" poses a problem in Bourdieu's work, it is not only
because it is necessary to get rid of a cumbersome and outdated conceptuality or because
it is necessary to reaffirm the rights of sociology as the conservatism of a certain philosophy.
Indeed, Bourdieu, on numerous occasions, emphasizes the fact that the sociological
enterprise he has undertaken involves a certain conception of subjectivity, or at the very
least that it has a necessary impact on the classical philosophy of the subject, understood
as an instance that thinks and acts in the first person. It would therefore seem that despite
everything that has been said so far, there is indeed a positive use of the idea of “subject”
in Bourdieu. In fact, the reference to the “subject” is far from always being critical in
Bourdieu and one can without difficulty multiply the mentions relating to the “subject” which
point to a refounded use of the concept.
Thus, at the beginning of the Pascalian Meditations, Bourdieu underlines that he

learned a lot from two researches (in the village of his childhood and in the Parisian
universities) which, he says, "allowed him to explore, as an objectivist observer, some of
the more obscure regions of [his]
48
subjectivity ". Things are even more precise in the Lesson on the lesson,
the inaugural lesson at the College de France, where Bourdieu evokes the
"socially situated social subject".
49
". Finally, there is this very striking passage at the
end of the “Preface” to Le Sens pratique :
By forcing the discovery of exteriority at the heart of interiority, banality in the illusion of rarity, the common in the search for the unique, sociology
not only has the effect of denouncing all the impostures of narcissistic egotism; it offers a means, perhaps the only one, of contributing, if only
through the awareness of determinations, to the construction, otherwise
50
.
abandoned to the forces of the world, of something like a subject
Bourdieu therefore persists in thinking of the agent and the sociologist as

subjects , even if this designation is often used with cautious quotation marks.
Indeed, with Bourdieu, it is always a question of the subject, in this very precise
sense, when it is a question of knowing what each can know of the social world
and according to what modality. It is therefore always as an instance of
knowledge that the subject is understood. Except that this subject of knowledge,
or more precisely this subjectivity (because the metaphysical charge of this
concept is less), is always already necessarily a social subject : the knowledge
(as well as all the misunderstandings) by which we relate to the world social is
necessarily relative to the situation experienced and to our position in the social
space. It does not find its seat in a pure social interiority” or “social subject” also
51
refers, explicitly, to the way we have . Therefore, the concept of "subjectivity
to compose, each time singularly, with our knowledge and our misunderstandings
of the social world, to work there . practically with more or less success. What
is to be reflected here is therefore no longer the subject itself as reflective
consciousness, but its own social determinations and its socially constructed
identity. Bourdieu's sociology thus assumes the challenge of knowing the social
self, "the singularity of the 'self' being forged in and through social relations
52
».
The question of the subject is the one where the reversal of

phenomenology is condensed and realized. If we take note of Bourdieu's
various declarations, which are often declarations of intent, we must
recognize that Bourdieu's sociology is as it were underpinned by the
project of an anthropological theory of social subjectivity. Bringing to light
this anthropology of social subjectivity does not mean denying the
sociological consideration of practices and the project of a “double
objectification”. It is an attempt to do justice to a significant dimension of
Bourdieu's work, which perhaps has the defect of not always being fully
assumed. And recognizing that this ambition inhabits Bourdieu's work
also means giving oneself the means to better understand what it can do.
3. Inventory moments
What we have therefore sought to do is a sort of inventory of

Bourdieu's critical relationships to phenomenology, taking the question
of the social subject as a guiding thread.
The subject of this study will be developed in four stages. Initially, we
wanted to do justice to what seemed the most explicit, namely the
criticism of "social phenomenology", as Bourdieu taught it in many places,
parallel to that of structuralism from which it remains inseparable. . This
is the subject of the first chapter of this work, which returns to what
Bourdieu often presents as a “ritual alternative in the social sciences”.
We will therefore return to the
Bourdieu's relationship to social phenomenology, distinguishing its
different components and reinscribing the critique of subjectivism in the
more general project of a new anthropology of practice (Part I).
Then, we will show how the anthropology of the "social subject" is
constituted and declined in Bourdieu, according to three registers
distinct. These mobilize each time a critical reference to phenomenology

to put it to work in an unprecedented way. These three registers are
those of normativity (Part II), temporality (Part III) and reflexivity (Part
IV). These themes are not so much “objects” of sociological research
strictly speaking as questions or problems which find sociological or
philosophical answers in Bourdieu, but which also sometimes persist as
problems, returning insistently in the texts.
Under each of these different headings, the rupture with

phenomenology and its “reversal” are replayed each time. The common
feature of these approaches to the “social subject” is that the questions
they cover all have a proven phenomenological dimension.
Bourdieu composes each time with a phenomenological "deal", to
assume it in a more or less avowed way, to radically transform it by
putting it at the service of his praxeology or even to make it a sort of
counter-model in relation to which he will define its own position. For
each of the headings concerned, it seemed obvious to us that the
reference to phenomenology fully played its role, even if this role was
not the same each time. However, we never make this reference an
exclusive reference. It goes without saying that the various themes
addressed could be addressed from other points of view.
At the end of this examination, we hope to show that Bourdieu's
relationship to social phenomenology cannot be reduced to what he
says about it explicitly and that it is not unequivocal. The relationship to
phenomenology is not pure criticism, nor is it that of wise borrowing,
duly referenced, assumed and cultivated in accordance with the rules of
the academic and scholastic spirit. It is definitively complex, plural,
diffracted according to the requirements of the specific logic of building
the sociology of practices and the anthropology of practice.
1. RA, p. 318 sq.
2. Allow us to refer the reader to our work: L. Perreau, The social world according to Husserl, Dordrecht/Boston/
London/New York, Springer, 2013.
3. This identification distinguishing the different gestures of demarcation, conversion and reversal to think about
Bourdieu's relationship to phenomenology is partly inspired by the article by C. Lemieux, “Philosophy and
sociology: the price of passage” , Sociology, 2, 3, 2012, p. 199-209. If we take up this distinction, we do not
however attribute the same meaning to it.
4. On the whole of this route, see EAU, in particular p. 15 sq.
5. “What I have done in sociology and ethnology, I have done at least as much against my training as thanks to
my training”, ISR, p. 261. It will also be recalled that the initial subtitle of the Pascalian Meditations was “Elements
for a Negative Philosophy” (ISR, p. 210; see also MP, p. 17).
6. OPMH.
7. “The speech of importance. Some sociological reflections on “Some critical remarks about Reading capital” ”,
in CQPVD, p. 207-226.
8. Cf. : J. L. Austin, Sense and Sensibilia, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1962 [trad. fr. de P.
Gochet, reviewed by B. Ambroise, The language of perception, Paris, Vrin, 2007].
9. MP, p. 39.
10. There are of course some notable exceptions, such as Hobbes, Spinoza, Marx or Nietzsche.
11. ETP, p. 225-226.
12. In The Rules of the Art, Bourdieu is even more incisive, when he opposes the creative and inventive reuse of
traditional concepts to the “ derealizing commentary of the reader, impotent and sterilizing metadiscourse” (RA, p.
297).
13. MP, p. 9.
14. B. Karsenti, From one philosophy to another. The social sciences and the politics of the moderns, Paris,
Gallimard, 2013, p. 26 sq.
15. PS, p. 7. This declared lack of taste for theory can be found at the beginning of “Questions of method” in The
Rules of the Art : “I have never had much taste for 'great theory', and, when I read works that can fall into this
category, I cannot help but feel a certain irritation in front of this combination, typically school, of false audacity
and real caution.
[…] And, when it happens that the relentless mechanics of academic demand forces me to consider for a moment
writing one of these so-called summary texts on this or that aspect of my previous work, I suddenly find myself
reminded of the darkest evenings of my adolescence when, forced to dissertate on the imposed subjects of school
routine, in the midst of classmates harnessed to the same task, I had the feeling of being chained to the bench of
the eternal galley where copyists and compilers endlessly reproduce the instruments of school repetition, courses,
theses or textbooks” (RA, p. 291-292).
16.RP , p. 16.
17. It can be noted that this conversion operating at the level of the instituted disciplines is based on the experience of a
personal conversion. When he evokes his own "conversion" to sociology, it also happens that Bourdieu still does so by
mobilizing the lexicon of phenomenology, as in this excerpt from the Introduction to the Bachelors' Ball : "The word conversion
is not probably not too strong to designate the transformation both intellectual and affective that led me from the phenomenology
of affective life (perhaps also coming from the affections and afflictions of life, it was a question of designating skilfully) , to a
vision of the social world and of practice that is both more distanced and more realistic, thanks to a real experimental device
intended to promote the transformation of Erlebnis into Erfahrung ” (BC, p. 9-10).
18. CD, p. 41.
19. C. J. Throop et K. Murphy, « Bourdieu and phenomenology : a critical assessment », Anthropological Theory, 2002, 2, 2,
p. 185-207.
20. P. Bourdieu, « Response to Throop and Murphy », Anthropological Theory, 2002, 2, 2, p. 209.
21. Ibid.
22. ISR, p. 176.
23. CD, p. 48.
24. See in this sense, more broadly, the explorations of this collective work: A.-M. Lescourret (dir.), Pierre Bourdieu. A
philosopher in sociology, Paris, PUF, 2009.
25. R. Garnham et R. Williams, « Pierre Bourdieu and the sociology of culture », Media, Culture & Society, 2, 3, p. 209.
26. The case of the theory of habitus, where the reference to phenomenology plays a crucial but not exclusive role, is a good
example.
27. See P. Bourdieu, “How to read an author? », in MP, p. 122 sq. and "What is it to make an author speak?" About Michel
Foucault”, Societies and Representations, 1996, 3, p. 13-18.
28. WATER, p. 15 sq.
29. K. Marx, Le Capital, Book I, Afterword to the second German edition, Paris, PUF, 1993, p. 17-18.
We follow L. Pinto, Pierre Bourdieu and the theory of the social world, Paris, Albin Michel, 2002, p. 65-66: “By bringing together
the possible and the probable, the subjective hope and the objective probability, through the notion of habitus, the scientific
path proposed by Bourdieu operated on the phenomenological-existentialist culture a reversal which bears a strong
resemblance to that that the young Marx intended to operate in relation to Hegel: in both cases, philosophy tends to be put
back on its feet, right side up, brought back to earth, and not dismissed. »
30. P. Bourdieu, “Participatory objectification”, Proceedings of social science research, 150, 2003, p. 43.
31. C. Colliot-Thélène, "The German roots of Bourdieu's theory", in Pierre Bourdieu, theory and practice. Franco-
German Perspectives, La Découverte, Paris, 2006, p. 23-46. This is the place to say all we owe to this stimulating
article.
32. C. Colliot-Thélène, op. cit., p. 27.
33. LL, p. 29.
34.RP , p. 10.
35.RP , p. 45.
36. ISR, p. 191.
37. Ibid.
38. We therefore cannot subscribe to the expeditious interpretation proposed by A. Lentacker: “History, for
Bourdieu, is the science of what has no foundation. The theory of the subject of history cannot therefore resort to
a subjectivist theory of practice. This is why he substitutes the term “agent” for that of “subject”” (A. Lentacker, La
science des institutions impures. Bourdieu critique de Lévi-Strauss, Paris, Reasons for acting, 2010, p.67).
39.RP , p. 11.
40. MP, p. 275.
41. ISR, p. 234-235.
42. P. Bourdieu and J.-C. Passeron, “Sociology and Philosophy in France since 1945: Death and Resurrection of
a Philosophy without Subject”, Social Research, 34, 1, 1967, p. 162-212. We will also read what Bourdieu says
about it in EAU, p. 26-28.
43. Ibid., p. 162.
44. Ibid., p. 179.
45. Ibid., p. 177.
46. Ibid., p. 211.
47. It is also quite interesting to note the singular place that belongs to Merleau-Ponty in the table of sociological
and philosophical trends of the time. Indeed, he is presented as a “heroic mediator” who operates the transition
“between an agonizing phenomenology (a dying phenomenology) and a resurgent anthropology”, ibid., p. 166-167.
48. MP, p. 14.
49. LL, p. 29.
50. SP, p. 41.
51. In the Pascalian Meditations, Bourdieu evokes a “subjective” disposition, but specifies in brackets “what does
not mean interior, mental” (MP, p. 302).
52. MP, p. 161.

PART I
On a ritual opposition in the social sciences
“Practice is always underestimated and under-analyzed, whereas to understand it, a lot of

theoretical skills are needed, much more, paradoxically, than to understand a theory. We must
avoid reducing practices to the idea we have of them when we only have logical experience of
them. ( CRDD, p. 81)
“It is not easy to talk about the practice other than in a negative way […]. ( SP, p. 135)
Chapter 1
The perspective of the

anthropology of practice
The reader of Bourdieu's writings who wonders about the role

that the reference to social phenomenology can play in them will
quickly formulate two basic observations. On the one hand, the
mention that is made of it is most often critical, since social
phenomenology is regularly presented as being the perfect example
of a ruinous “subjectivism” for the social sciences. On the other
hand, this critique of phenomenology finds its place and its
justification within an ambitious theory of practice, that is to say within
a "praxeology" which aims to establish the theoretical foundations of
the sociology of practices. This is elaborated and re-elaborated in
various major texts, which will constitute, at first, a privileged corpus:
the Outline of a theory of practice of 1972, The practical sense of
1980, the Pascalian meditations of 1995.
THE PROBLEM OF OBJECTIVATION

Before examining the critique of social phenomenology for itself, it is

appropriate to resituate it from the particular perspective of the anthropology of
practice as Bourdieu conceives it, by restoring the intentions and principles of
his praxeology. Because if it is necessary to summon phenomenology, this can
only be understood first of all from this ambivalence of the work, which makes it
oscillate between sociology and anthropology, one of these two perspectives
always justifying and defining itself in relation to the other. It is this same
fundamental ambivalence of Bourdieu's discourse, moreover willingly freed from
traditional disciplinary boundaries, which makes it possible to circumscribe the
“philosophical” space in which Bourdieu's work is inscribed. And, we believe,
we must hold on and maintain ourselves in this ambivalence between sociology
and anthropology, however uncomfortable it may be: this interdisciplinary
ambivalence is at the root, as we will see, of the very ambivalence of Bourdieu's
relationship to phenomenology, between legacy and criticism.
According to Bourdieu, the concrete exercise of the sociology of practices

is coupled with and supported by an anthropology of practice or, as he says
himself, by a "general anthropology based on a historical analysis of the specific
1
characteristics of contemporary societies Bourdieu thus places himself in ».
the wake of social science practitioners, such as Durkheim and Lévi-Strauss,

who assume an anthropological ambition which is also that of traditional
philosophy. The intention of this anthropology is to arrive at a total explanation
of man, to develop a reflection on the human "condition", or even to provide an
answer to the famous Kantian question, the true guiding principle of anthropology
conceived in its strictly philosophical sense : “what is man? ". This anthropological
ambition drives, we believe, all of Bourdieu's work. It is assumed and claimed
2
as such. It is moreover often by reference to anthropology that Bourdieu
designates the fundamental unity of all of his works, much more
than by the contested designation of “critical sociology”. Thus, in the

Pascalian Meditations, Bourdieu presents the guiding intention of his work
by defining the project of a “differential anthropology of the symbolic forms
3
of the variations of ". This would consist, he says, of an "analysis
cognitive dispositions with regard to the world according to social conditions
4
and historical situations”. It would go beyond the philosophy of symbolic
forms developed by Cassirer, no doubt still held to be too general and too
abstract, and would prolong Durkheim's analysis of the genesis of "forms
5
of thought". ».
Let us remember, however: is it said that things go without saying?

Examination of Bourdieu's first theoretical essays, from the 1972 Sketch to
the Practical Sense, rather suggests that anthropological reflection is
"above all imposed by the scientific practice that it inhabits and orients"
and that it is not not the product of an autonomous project, thought for and
6
by itself. One cannot therefore see in it the effect of the hysteresis of a

philosophical habitus leading to abstraction and generalization: that would
be to misunderstand or rather refuse to be able to recognize the problem
which is at the root of this philosophical ambition, if it is one. We must start
from there: the register of anthropology imposes itself for reasons that are
linked to the very practice of sociology and, before it, of ethnology. In other
words, the reasons for resorting to the register of anthropology find their
primary origin in an epistemological problem and their secondary origins in
a series of dissatisfactions with regard to theoretical devices which claim
to solve this problem without however succeeding.
Let us begin by specifying the tenor of the epistemological problem.
This problem, in its general formulation, is as simple as it is classic: it is
that of the objectivity of scientific discourse and, in this case, that of the
objectivity of sociological knowledge of the social world. But, as we will
see, this question of the objectivity of scientific discourse can no longer be
posed, according to Bourdieu, in the usual terms. She does not
can no longer be gained by the implementation of relevant, methodologically

regulated procedures, since scholarly knowledge of the social world must first be
considered in relation to ordinary, implicit knowledge, which orients and animates
social practices. It is therefore a certain idea of "practice", truly functioning in the
manner of a Kantian "Idea" in the theory of practice, that will have to be clarified
in order to adequately understand this problem of the objectification of discourse.
sociological, rethought from the double dimension, objective and subjective, of the
logic of practice, that is to say of the ordinary, non-sociological knowledge of the
social world.
If the problem of the objectification of scientific discourse takes such a singular

turn with Bourdieu, it is because it finds its origin in the very practice of social
science and in a “scientific experiment which […] owes much to the particularities
7
of a biographical itinerary marked by ethnological and sociological ", experience
studies devoted, at the turn of the 1960s, to Algerian society and the peasant
world of Béarn. It is these two experiences, both social and sociological, that will
define the fundamental coordinates of what Bourdieu calls an “epistemological
experiment, reflexive comparison centered on the status of the “participating
8
observer”, bringing together two different ". This consists of a
practices: that of an observation which takes advantage of the point of view of the
foreigner (and of the ethnological perspective) to analyze the Algerian society,
then that of an observation of the country Béarn which was also that of the
childhood of Bourdieu, observation which is the occasion of a “transformation of a
relationship of familiarity into knowledge”. Epistemological experimentation is
played out in these two concrete practices of social science, in these investigations
9 learned of “the” practices which make the relationship to “the” practice
problematic.
If there is therefore a need for a theory of practice, it is because we can no

longer content ourselves with practicing sociology without thinking about it further and
that we must go beyond the satisfactions of what Bourdieu already calls a

"learned ignorance", that is to say a non-reflective mode of knowledge where
10
sociology operates without thinking far enough about what it is . We hold
doing there first form of dissatisfaction which immediately encounters another,
since Bourdieu maintains that the epistemological problem of the objectification
of the gaze and of scientific discourse cannot await its solution from
epistemology alone . The beginning of the Sketch admits: "specialists in
epistemological or methodological reflection are necessarily condemned to
consider the opus operatum rather than the modus operandi, which implies, in
addition to a certain delay, a systematic bias" in other words, the epistemological
11
or methodological perspective is not able to recapture all the stakes of the
.
“epistemological experimentation” that the ethnological and sociological studies

carried out in Algeria and in Béarn may have represented. There is something
surprising here, since, when he published the Outline of a Theory of Practice
in 1972, Bourdieu himself had already largely contributed to this “epistemological
and methodological reflection”. He has behind him the methodological and
epistemological achievements of the Profession of sociology co-written with
Jean-Claude Chamboredon and Jean-Claude Passeron in 1968. This "manual"
places Bourdieu in a tradition
French epistemology, which goes from Bachelard to Canguilhem via Koyré

and Cavaillès, united by a certain methodological style and a common
adherence to "historical rationalism". Bourdieu, in Le Métier de sociologue,
insisted in particular on the need for an epistemological break with common
sense and “pre-notions”. From there, he went into great detail about how the
object was constructed. We must therefore ask ourselves why the
epistemological problem of the objectivity of social science does not find its
solution there. Why is epistemology alone, supplemented by the methodology
of the construction of the sociological object, not able to resolve what
nevertheless presents itself,
at first glance, as a pure epistemological problem? So why do we have to look

elsewhere for an answer to these questions, that is to say on the side of the
“theory of practice”, or even of the anthropology of practice?
It is well known that there was a turning point in Bourdieu's work at the
end of the 1970s which led him to abandon an “epistemological” perspective
which ultimately proved to be too limited. The reason for this reorientation of
theoretical reflection stems from the fact that the practice of sociology exposes
itself to “errors” if it does not first question its relationship to practices in order
to flush out the “foundations” of these errors. But one of these
12
Anthropological and sociological
"foundations" concerns the very distinction of theory and practice.
Thus the problem of the objectification of scientific discourse finds its origin in
the “cut” instituted between theory and practice by the very project of a
sociological knowledge of practices. And if the epistemological problem is not
only epistemological, it is because "[...] any theoretical activity [...] presupposes
a cut
13
epistemological, but also social […]”. The prerequisite for any theory of
practice is the taking into account of this double "break", epistemological and
social: it is necessary both to reflect on the conditions of objectification and on
14
the "social conditions of possibility of the theory. We therefore see that if ».
this double reflection must be accomplished in a register characterized as

being that of anthropology, it is because the latter will relate to man as a being
of knowledge and as a social being. The question of the object of anthropology
is thus settled as in advance, but this resolution also opens up a new
ambivalence where it is a question of thinking together, one by the other, the
question of the modalities of knowledge. and that of its social conditions of
knowledge. As
we will see, it is by taking up the concept of practice, by assigning it a certain
definition which will manage and requalify this ambivalence, that the
double reflection, gnoseological and sociological, will be made possible and

that the double “cut” will again become thinkable.
But before getting there, we must also account for another “dissatisfaction”
evoked by Bourdieu, relative to the epistemological problem of the objectivity of
sociological discourse. This other dissatisfaction is presented and staged by Le
sens pratique .
Admittedly, the intentions of the Sketch of 1972 and of the Practical sense of
1980 are, more or less, the same: it is always a question of defining a new
"theory of practice" capable of settling the question of the "presuppositions »
15
sociological work . But the “Foreword” to Le Sens
pratique introduces the problem of the objectification of sociological discourse
in a very different way from that of the Sketch. Indeed, it is not a question of
starting from the general problem of the "cut" between theory and practice, but
of returning to what we could for a time consider as an immediate resolution of
this problem and beyond, of the problem of the objectivity of scientific discourse,
namely this "turnkey" solution proposed by structuralism. What Bourdieu then
narrates is, like Descartes at the beginning of the Discourse on Method, the
experience of disappointment.
There is disappointment because the structuralist promise was beautiful

and its novelty was real. The originality of the approach consisted in "introducing
into the social the structural method or, more simply, the relational mode of
thought which, breaking with the substantialist mode of thought, leads to
characterize any element by the relations which unite it to the others into a
system, and from which it derives its meaning and its function . However, this
promise is not, in fact, that is to say in the practice of ethnology and sociology
during studies in Algeria, entirely kept and this, no doubt, because it is not was
not entirely tenable. Even if he already outlines the critique of structuralism
which he will redevelop later to illustrate the problems of objectivism, Bourdieu
evokes above all, in the "Avant-
about" Le Sens pratique, the concrete difficulties of his ethnological and

sociological research and the limits presented by structuralist constructions
and models. The latter simply do not render. They do not confer the desired
17
not fully aware of what the agents are doing intelligibility on the
practices considered. Such, then, is the disappointment: Bourdieu has ceased
18
to be a “happy structuralist; the means offered to him by " because
structuralism have turned out to be inadequate for conferring sociological
intelligibility on practices. Here again, it turns out that the epistemological
problem of objectification is not only methodological (and epistemological) but
that it must be grasped again in its “anthropological” dimension:
[…] it is above all the ambiguities and contradictions that the very effort to push the application of the structural
method to its final consequences never ceased to bring to light that led me to question myself less about the
method itself. same as on the anthropological theses which were tacitly posed in the very fact of its application
19
consequent to practices .
From the Sketch to the Practical Sense, the problem of objectification is

therefore not posed in quite the same way. In the Sketch, it is a question of
returning after the fact to research already carried out and which consequently
precedes, in the order of their presentation, the theoretical reflections: it is
necessary to read first of all the studies of Kabyle ethnology to understand,
then and only then, the need for a theory of practice. In The Practical Sense,
we see rather that it is necessary to go beyond the false solution that
structuralism had been able to constitute, to denounce its excessive objectivism
in order to rediscover the paths of a true scientific objectification of practices.
In both cases, all the same, the problem of objectification remains (even if he
finds a more precise definition in Le sens pratique , since what has to be
objectified is henceforth "the relation "). The outline of his solution is emerging,
20
objective and subjective to the
object each time, in the register of anthropology.
Now the whole question is then to know what is to be understood by this.

How, then, does Bourdieu understand this “anthropology”? Obviously, it is
no longer a question of anthropology in the sense in which ethnologists have
sometimes been able to conceive of it, that is to say as a general reflection
on the variability of cultural practices based on the ethnographic collection
of data and on their ethnological analysis. In the Sketch, the irruption of the
epistemological problem of objectification comes precisely to break this
supposed continuity between ethnography, ethnology and anthropology.
More precisely, it disturbs and diverts it. Where one might have expected a
more general reflection, of an anthropological order, generalizing the results
of ethnological studies, Bourdieu confronts us with the requirement of a
redefinition of anthropological discourse. We must therefore look for another
form of anthropology, but this reorientation does not imply that we
immediately find the path already traced elsewhere by philosophical
anthropology. Indeed, the anthropology that Bourdieu calls for is not
conceived from the outset, a priori, as a general questioning of an improbable
and mysterious “human nature”.
We can also spare ourselves the laborious search for distinctive definitional
criteria that would explain what man is (reason, language, politics, etc.).
Anthropological investigation, as Bourdieu envisages it, is therefore not
anthropology in the sense of the social sciences, nor "philosophical"
anthropology, in the sense understood by traditional philosophy, because it
is directly ordered to the problem of the objectification of sociological
discourse: it must justify the theoretical “foundations” that have become
problematic with the renunciation of the false solutions of a structuralism that
has become impracticable.
THE PROBLEM OF “THE” PRACTICE

Investigating the problem of objectification as Bourdieu does supposes

that we agree to make a detour and that we suspend the questioning that
we can nourish with regard to scientific practice itself. We must suspend
the purely epistemological problem and accept the principle of its
decentering: “anthropology” is the name of this decentering. This amounts
to asking, on the one hand, what is "the" practice starting from what are
the practices and, on the other hand and correlatively, what is the nature
of the break established between theory and practice? . Let us examine
these two questions in turn.
So what is “the” practice? The answer to this first question may seem
easy even though it conceals major difficulties.
In a sense, we always already know what “practices” are: they are the
very objects of ethnological and sociological research. These are, if one
reads the studies of Kabyle ethnology, the ways of acting that refer to the
"sense of honor", the ways of organizing and living in the house, the
matrimonial strategies
21
. Practices are therefore, very generally, ways of acting in
society or in relation to society. Consequently, what the point of view of
anthropology demands is to recapture the point of view of “the” practice
and to think about it in its generality, even in its universality.
Yet this definition of "the" practice that we expect to see emerge rapidly
in the exposition of Bourdieu's anthropological project is in reality quite
simply absent, at least initially, in the Sketch as in Le sens . convenient.
Bourdieu is not concerned with producing a general definition of the
practice. In the Sketch, he seems to concentrate more willingly on the
problem of the methods and foundations of “participant observation”, a
point of view which is already that of the practitioner of the social sciences.
In The Practical Sense, the "Foreword" discusses structuralism, then the
first chapter engages the "critique of theoretical reason", that is to say of
subjectivism and objectivism, without ever taking the time to specify what
"the" practice is.
How can this absence be justified? A first reading hypothesis could

support that we do not have to define the practice because we always
already know very well what it is all about. Everything would therefore
happen as if the meaning of what is to be understood by practice were self-
evident. This is valid for the agent taken in the practice: the principle of
practice is to know itself or to experience itself as practice. This also applies
to the ethnologist or the sociologist who has circumscribed the object of his
research and who knows, for reasons linked to the very constitution of these
disciplines, what deserves to be regarded as “practical”. So we know what it is all about.
However, this reading hypothesis is not really tenable. For Bourdieu
actually mobilizes a well-determined concept of practice, a concept that
functions like a preliminary, implicit concept, gradually finding its
determination. It is this other reading hypothesis that we want to privilege:
the concept of “practice”, not explicitly defined, acts in Bourdieusian
discourse as a presupposition which gradually gains in operativeness. It is
not a question of a kind of petition of principle which would give as in
advance the object to reflect, but well of a preliminary conceptual acquisition
whose content is not so much thematic as problematic. Now it is this hollow
definition of "practice", a veritable "theory of practice" already at work
without declaring itself as such, which decides on the particular reformulation
of the problem of objectification, as on the status of anthropology”.
If we take the joint reading of The Sketch and The Practical Sense, it
appears that “practice” is implicitly defined by four complementary
presuppositions:
1. According to a first presupposition, “practical” is any way of acting
that shows a certain regularity. Practice is the action that we observe and
which presents a character of repetition, a kind of internal necessity. This
regularity can be objectified by the statistical survey, even if the statistics
cannot account for all the regularities of the practice.
This regularity corresponds to an internal logic of the practice and should not
be understood as an obedience to rules (which the praxeological point of
view will strive to confirm from the theory of habitus).
Thus, in the Sketch, with regard to conduct of honour:
[…] the behaviors of honor actually observed (or potentially observable) […] are striking both by their inexhaustible diversity
and by their almost mechanical necessity; this without the need to build at great expense "mechanical" models which, in the
best of cases, would be to the regulated improvisation of the man of honor what a manual of etiquette is to the art of live
22
or what a treatise on harmony is to musical invention .
Practice is first and foremost actions, ways of doing, saying and thinking
governed by an internal "necessity", by reasons which may pass for arbitrary
but whose mysterious coherence, sense of this one is not immediately
23
obvious. .
The practice therefore has its own logic, even if the
2. A second presupposition, concerning practice, maintains that it is

intelligible only by the “practical sense” that it manifests.
This thesis is, in fact, as we can clearly see, an evasion or a substitution .
Thus, in the Sketch, Bourdieu quickly comes to speak, no longer of practice,
but rather of "practical mastery" and even more precisely of "the practical
mastery which makes possible an action objectively intelligible by Bourdieu
25
at the ". We then remember the curious quote highlighted
beginning of the Sketch, taken from Robert de la langue française, which
restored the third meaning of the word "meaning": meaning is then defined as
a "faculty of knowing in an immediate and
intuition”. Bourdieu designates in advance the real object of the reflection:
not the practice but a certain "faculty of knowing" which is revealed in it and
which invites us to think of the practice from the angle of its "mastery". Things
are even clearer in The Practical Sense, which is no longer presented from
the perspective of a theory of "the" practice but
well as a study in practicality. This finds a first definition in the “Foreword”:
The coherence without apparent intention and the unity without an immediately visible unifying principle of all
cultural realities which are empowered by a quasi-natural logic (isn't this what makes the "eternal charm of
Greek art" of which Marx?) are the product of the thousand-year-old application of the same schemes of
perception and action which, never being constituted in explicit principles, can only produce an undesired
necessity, therefore necessarily imperfect, but also a little miraculous , is very close in this respect to that of
the work of art. […] This practical sense has nothing more or less mysterious, when you think about it, than
that which confers their unity of style on all the choices that the same person, that is to say a same taste, can
operate in the most different domains of practice, or that which makes it possible to apply a scheme of
appreciation such as the opposition between bland and tasty or flat and spicy, tasteless and pungent,
sweetish and salty, to a dish, a color, a person (and more precisely in his eyes, his features,
26
its beauty), and also to remarks, jokes, a style, a play or a painting .
And the definition of this "practical sense" goes so far that it already
seems to anticipate the positive results of "praxeology", since Bourdieu
immediately evokes the existence of an "ordering principle [...] capable of
27
directing practices in a way that is both unconscious and systematic, a »,
formula which is reminiscent of the definition of habitus which will be given

later. Let us therefore retain, for the moment, that practice finds its
guarantee of intelligibility in this supposition according to which there would
exist a "practical sense" situated at its principle, a practical sense which
appears as an immediate and intuitive knowledge of what is to be done. .
3. A third presupposition suggests that pure “practice”, in the sense of
a practice that would only be action or actions, does not exist. In any case,
it does not exist in the eyes of the ethnologist, the sociologist or the
anthropologist who adopts the Bourdieusian perspective: if practices are
the object of social science, it is because they have a meaning. , and if they
have a meaning, it is because they mobilize a certain practical knowledge.
Now, to speak of knowledge is to go even further than the mere reference
to “meaning” as the principle of intelligibility of the practice. But it is a step
that Bourdieu does not hesitate to take since it gives him the benefit
immediate comparison between theoretical knowledge and practical knowledge.

From there, this direct affirmation, in the Outline of a theory of practice, which will
truly open the register of “praxeology”:
The social world can be the object of three modes of theoretical knowledge which imply in each case a set of
anthropological theses, most often tacit, and which, although they are by no means exclusive, at least in principle,
have no in common than to oppose the mode of
28
practical knowledge .
The practical knowledge evoked by Bourdieu will not be the subject of an

examination for itself, since the Sketch immediately devotes itself to the discussion
of the three modes of theoretical knowledge. Here, however, we have the real
driving force behind the possible reorientation of the epistemological question of
objectification.
Indeed, the specificity of practical knowledge is to be structured according to
distinctions which are often oppositions. The logic of this practical knowledge, “wild”
logic at the very heart of the familiar world
is fundamentally dual and powerfully opposed. Practical knowledge
therefore already carries within it a certain theory of practice and it is this presence
at work of a certain unformulated theory of practice (in the sense of an objective
genitive), coming from practice itself, which renders uncertain the claims of the
one who wants to produce a theory of practice (in the sense of a subjective
genitive). Thus, in The Practical Sense, we must start from this observation:
[…] in many of these operations, ordinary thought, guided, like all so-called “prelogical” that is to say practical
thoughts, by a simple “feeling to the contrary”, proceeds by oppositions, elementary forms of specifications which
leads it, for example, to give the same terms as many opposites as there are practical relationships into which it can
enter with
30
what is not him […] .
But that's not all. Indeed, the most powerful of these oppositions is, according
to Bourdieu, that of the subjective and the objective, an opposition constitutive of the
relationship of knowledge: it is thus on the basis of this fundamental

opposition, division between the subject and the object, a correlative
institution of one and the other, that one can and must question oneself
about the nature of knowledge in general and in particular on the relationship
between theoretical knowledge and practical knowledge. The concept of
practice presupposes this sharing, within it, of a subject of the practice and
an object on which the action is focused.
4. Finally, a last presupposition can be formulated by this statement:
practice is social. This is self-evident, in appearance. The practice in
question up to this point is necessarily “social”, to such an extent that it is
not even a question of speaking of “social practice”. It is so for disciplinary
reasons: if sociology must be a science of the social and if we consider that
sociology must be a sociology of practices, then it must take as its theme
the social dimension of practices. And this evidence translates into a relative
lack of definition of the “social”: if the concept of “practice”, although central,
is not formally defined by Bourdieu, what should be understood by “social”
is even less so.
There again, it must be understood that it is not a question of giving
oneself in advance what remains to be demonstrated. If we cannot define
a priori what the social is, it is precisely because the beginning and the end
of sociology are not and cannot be a social ontology, that is to say a
general, abstract theory of what the social is. This intention can of course
be that of philosophy, but it is precisely what sociology must forbid itself: it
is sociology itself which must reveal the social for what it is, in and through
practices. The social is both acted and acting, cause and effect, present
everywhere without it being possible, a priori, to assign it its own site.
Admittedly, in an attempt to better understand what is in question, one can
always mobilize provisional, partial definitions (but one can only do so, and
Bourdieu is careful not to do so) which would refer to "others", to the
institution, to the experience of a normativity,
the hierarchy of social relations, their inequalities, etc. But these lexical
definitions do not measure up to what must be grasped, revealed, by
the sole exercise of sociology and which does its specific task well:
only the sociological analysis of practices reveals the social as such.
This presupposition, in Bourdieu, has a particular impact on the
question of practice, as it has been defined until now, and more
particularly on the question of the objectivity to which one can claim
when discussing practices and the practice. Because if practice is
necessarily practical sense and consequently practical knowledge , it
is also social: the theory which claims to take an "objective" view must
therefore not simply take account of these different dimensions of
practice, it must also question on how she actually broke up with them.
Here we find the theme of the double "cut", both epistemological and
social: the theory of practice which claims to take it as its "object"
necessarily cuts itself off from its logic and its gnoseological functioning
since it claims to be distinguished from it theoretically, but it also
necessarily cuts itself off from its social dimension and comes to ignore
or misunderstand, as Bourdieu says, its “social conditions of possibility”.
We are therefore witnessing, through the successive adoption of

these four presuppositions or theses about practice, a true definition of
practice, certainly not explicitly presented as such, but progressively
elaborated and, in the end, consistent and operative. This progressive
definition of the practice is also the occasion for constructing the object
of "anthropological" reflection as Bourdieu conceives it: what
anthropology must take into consideration is first and foremost not
practice in its generality and in all its extension, but indeed the
fundamental dualism which is that of practical knowledge, if not of all
knowledge: the division between the subjective and the objective, such as it is
determines in acts of knowledge and in practices that are characterized

by a certain "sociality".
REPLAYING THE CUT: THE DOUBLE OBJECTIVATION
What has been called the "problem" of the practice is not a problem
for the practice itself. It is only one from the point of view of the theory
which intends to say the practice as it is, which claims a certain
objectivity and which is therefore interested in the nature of the practice
in order to know what it is. is possible to say and under what conditions.
But it now appears that the program of the anthropology of practice

stems, essentially, from a theoretical shift brought about by Bourdieu.
This displacement is due to the fact that it is not only a question of
reflecting on the objectivity of scientific discourse (that is to say on the
respect of formal or practical norms which will guarantee this objectivity),
but on the objectification itself, that is to say to the very fact of taking
an object into consideration. “Objectifying objectification” presupposes
that we take “objectification” as our object and that the definition of
science can be traced back to that of “objectification”. It is therefore as
an objectifying practice that scientific activity is itself considered. This
decentering has the first effect of making theory appear as one type of
practice among others. It is no longer a question of defining, in the
manner of the epistemologist, the norms of objective discourse, but of
objectifying objectification, of taking a theoretical point of view from the
theoretical point of view.
So how will it be possible to achieve this? How to objectify
objectification? The task is not only theoretical: it implies that one
effectively manages, in practice, to objectify objectification. To
understand this, let's reread the Sketch. Bourdieu reformulates the program of
anthropology in the following way, emphasizing the fact that anthropology

implies a praxeology and that this requires:
[…] to construct the theory of practice or, more precisely, of the mode of generation of practices, which is the condition
for the construction of an experimental science of the dialectic of interiority
31
and exteriority […] .
There will therefore be two complementary aspects to achieve “objectification

of objectification”. On the one hand, it is necessary to produce a theory of the
practice, which will become, in the long term, a “theory of the mode of generation
of the practices”, whose concepts of field and habitus will deliver the conceptual
keys. But on the other hand - and the thing is little noticed by the - we must also
commentators –, develop an " experimental science" of the relationship
between interiority and exteriority, between the subjective and the objective,
between the mental and the social. This last aspect deserves our full attention.
From what experimentation can this science of the relationship between
interiority and exteriority claim to be? Obviously, it is about the “epistemological
experimentation” that Bourdieu proposed to practice by analyzing, from an
ethnological point of view, the Algerian society, then by returning, as a
sociologist, to Béarn. To successively develop the ethnology of a foreign world
and then the sociology of a familiar world is to give oneself a double opportunity
to reflect on the nature of
the objectification practiced by the social sciences. What is given over to
experimentation are practices, practical experiences of scientific activity bearing
on the social world. It was necessary, in Bourdieu's eyes, to complete the
experience from the ethnological point of view, operating in principle in a
situation of strangeness with regard to social practices, with another experience,
operated from the sociological point of view, by seeking this time to put at a
distance what we held to be the most familiar. It was the experience of the
ethnological break, at the time of the studies on Algeria, which prompted
Bourdieu to this "experimentation" which stems from the project of analyzing
what we consider to be the most familiar, the world
of childhood and adolescence, namely Béarn. The conversion to

sociology is a reversal of the ethnological perspective, the experimentation
of a point of view which is in a way “inverse” to it.
Bourdieu explains this in the Invitation to Reflexive Sociology :
Having worked in Kabylie, that is to say in a fundamentally foreign world, I thought it would be interesting to do a kind of upside-
down Sad Tropics – this book was one of the great models we had. all in mind at the time: observe the effects that could produce
32
in me the objectification of the indigenous world .
Bourdieu's project cannot therefore be understood only in relation to

structuralism, from which we must free ourselves because we no longer
find our happiness as a scientist there. It is a question of observing “on
oneself” the effects of sociological objectification in order to be able to
compare them with the effects of the objectification of the foreign world.
Now, what epistemological experimentation which consists in comparing
the ethnology of the foreign world and the sociology of the familiar
reveals is the fact that there is, in both cases, a part of subjectivity which
is involved in the act of knowing. It is for this reason that we must
“observe the effects” that the ethnological or sociological objectification
of the social world can produce in us . Making the social world an object
of knowledge is a decision that has implications for the subject of
knowledge itself. We cannot therefore immediately trust science, which
claims to be objective, for the simple and good reason that the scientist
is not a being absolutely detached from the social life that he leads
elsewhere. The problem is not purely epistemological, it is no longer just
that of the objectivity of scientific discourse: it becomes that of
objectification which is the very practice of the ethnological or sociological gaze on the
Let's go further: the experimentation undertaken by Bourdieu clearly
identifies two subjective “effects” of scientific objectification, which leads
him to formulate two decisive observations.
1. What is first of all “objectified” in objectification is the gnoseological

and social break. The gnoseological and social cut is not a problem as
such: our experience of the social world is also made up of these cuts
because it is not completely homogeneous. It is problematic because it is
at the origin of the institution of a “point of view” which tends in principle
to misunderstand the reality of the double break and its implications. The
establishment of a point of view, of a theoretical perspective on the social
world always implies such a break, the very condition of the objectification
of practice.
So what is a point of view? In Practical Reasons, Bourdieu gives the
following answer to this question:
To sum up this complex relationship between objective structures and subjective constructions,
which lies beyond the ordinary alternatives of objectivism to subjectivism, structuralism and
constructivism and even materialism to idealism, I usually to quote, with a little distortion, a famous
phrase from Pascal: "The world understands me and swallows me up like a point, but I understand
it." The social space encompasses me like a point.
But this point is a point of view, the principle of a view taken from a point situated in social space,
from a perspective defined in its form and content by the objective position at
33
from which it is taken .
The point of view is the position from which knowledge becomes

possible, authorized or justified, a position which is always a social
position, but which can also be misunderstood as a social position. In this
sense, the point of view always implies a relativity: it is nothing in itself
because it owes its specificity to the relations that are tied in the social
space. But the point of view is not necessarily reduced to the position occupied in spac
It is not to be confused, purely and simply, with it. The point of view is
also what allows me to put the world in perspective, from the position
occupied. In him are therefore articulated the “objective structures” of the
social world and the “subjective constructions” which allow me to gain a
singular relationship to the world around me.
Consequently, the gnoseological and social break which is at the

principle of the point of view on the practice is modalized in different ways
and it gives rise to recompositions of the relationship between the subjective
and the objective which can go unnoticed. The point of view also tends to
misunderstand itself as relativity. To objectify objectification is to attempt to
identify this misunderstanding that the point of view can induce. To put it
another way, this amounts to drawing up a critical inventory of our legitimate
knowledge and misunderstandings of which we are no longer even aware.
We will have to come back to this crucial issue for the understanding of
Bourdieu's praxeology.
2. Let us therefore return to the particular case of the double
objectification which Bourdieu was able to experience, by comparing the
effects of the stay in Algeria and then of the return to Béarn. This other
aspect appears: to think of scientific activity as a practice, which allows the
point of view of the experimentation carried out with regard to the practices
of objectification, it is also to think of what unites it to all the other practices
for then try to specify what can distinguish it. Therefore, to objectify
objectification is to make it possible to question the “presuppositions” which
are at the basis of the adoption of a particular point of view on the social world.
In the Outline of a Theory of Practice, Bourdieu formulates in these terms
what appears to him to be the fundamental problem of social science:
[…] Anthropology must not only break with the native experience and the native representation of this
experience, by a second break, it must question the presuppositions inherent in the position of foreign
observer who, preoccupied with interpret
34 practices, tends to import into the object the principles of its relation to the object […].
The project of a theory of practice requires “to objectify more completely

the objective and subjective relation to the object”. The problem is therefore,
first and foremost, that of knowledge which risks being corrupted or
compromised, as in advance, by ignorance about
which it is based. It is because objectification is a break and because it proceeds

from a double gnoseological and social break that it cannot confront its object
directly and immediately. Since social science must and can only be a theory, it
must first lose the practice and admit that it has lost it, in order to then give itself
the means to recover it.
However, for Bourdieu, the break is never absolute: between theory and
practice, there is a fundamental continuity which is due to the fact that practice
always involves a division between the objective and the subjective. Such is the
risk that scholarly thought runs, tempted by a theory of practice that does not
reflect sufficiently on its status as “theory”: renewing categories, an implicit
philosophy of practice and above all a sharing of points of view that does not is
not questioned for itself. Thus Bourdieu can underline, in the Sketch :
As long as he is unaware of the limits inherent in the point of view he takes on the object, the ethnologist condemns himself to
unconsciously taking up the representation of the action as his own 35 […].
which imposes itself on an agent
In this same work, Bourdieu also notes the fact that the epistemological field
of social science is "an epistemological field organized around a set of pairs of
36
parallel oppositions. The principle of this dualism is located in ordinary ». Or le
practical knowledge, which is -even distributed according to a division of the
objective and the subjective. Where it turns out that the concept of practice, at
first indefinite then gradually defined, also has the function of making thinkable a
fundamental continuity between theory and practice, insofar as the distinction
between the subjective and the objective is always renewed , still at work. It is
because we have already acquired a certain characterization of the practice that
the break with it can be thought of as a redistribution, often misunderstood, even
denied, of the division between the objective and the subjective. .
At this point, then, we see that the program of an anthropology of

practice does not just imply a certain idea of practice. It also involves a
redefinition of the initial epistemological problem, that of the objectivity of
scientific discourse, towards that of the objectification of scientific practice,
then towards that of an objectification of objectification.
It is thus manifest that the program of double objectification is not a simple
theory: it must be seen as a set of rules for the direction of the sociological
mind. Bourdieu does not intend to produce a theory of the scientific mind
which would have all its autonomy, which would be valid in some way for
itself and which one could then leave behind. This theory must not content
itself with bringing together a series of abstract generalities.
It must serve the analysis of the relative position of the subject of
knowledge. The double objectification must be applied by the subject of
knowledge himself to what he is, that is to say a being of socialized
knowledge. In this sense, it is the principle of a sociological reflexivity that
is crucial for understanding the specificities of Bourdieu's sociology, and to
which we will return. Before arriving there, let us note again that the double
objectification supposes that the subject submits to the requirement of
understanding what are the social conditions of possibilities of knowledge,
no longer in a strictly philosophical mode, but in a sociological way . The
program of the anthropology of practice, driven by the ambition to objectify
objectification, is thus the place where the overcoming of philosophy is
achieved and where sociology is both required and justified.
THE ANTHROPOLOGY OF PRACTICES PROGRAM
The experimentation of points of view carried out by Bourdieu therefore

highlights two aspects of scientific objectification: the gnoseological and
social break which is at the root of any point of view taken on the practice
and the persistence of the subject/object division within from this point of view.
Identifying these first aspects of objectification determines the tasks of

anthropology as Bourdieu conceives it. First of all, it is realized by
means of a sociology of the forms of knowledge which is its critical
prerequisite (1). Then, the anthropology of practice requires the
implementation of a reflexive critique of the discourses and theories
that are current in the field of anthropology (via the joint critique of
subjectivism and objectivism) (2). Finally, it implies the elaboration of a
new theory of practice: this will be the objective of praxeology, in the
strict sense, in its positive and determined dimension (3). Ultimately,
but we then go beyond the limits of what amounts to the anthropology
of practice understood in the strict sense, it finds its extension in its
methodological and epistemological application: we must develop an
epistemology and a methodology for the "construction of object”, which
will be supported by constant epistemological vigilance (4). For the
purposes of our discussion, we are going to come back, first of all, to
the first two moments of this program. The next part of this work will
allow us to approach praxeology itself from a particular angle (that of
the question of normativity, that is to say of the relationship of the
subject to the norms of practice), in emphasizing the importance of the
concept of habitus. In the last part of this book, we will also have the
opportunity to return, via the question of reflexivity, to the epistemological
vigilance implied by the Bourdieusian anthropology of practice.
1. First of all, we must start from the gnoseological and social break
instituted by the practice of theoretical activity, of scientific activity. It is
necessary to restore the cut for what it is, but also to understand the
institution of its ignorance. In other words, it is necessary to say the
reality of objectification, or again, according to the formula that Bourdieu
is fond of, “to objectify objectification”. This program is most often
expressed in Bourdieu in the terms of a critique of objectification, in the
Kantian sense of the term: one must measure its scope and its limits, what it can
legitimately and what it cannot, by identifying its conditions of possibility. But

these are gnoseological and social. The anthropology of practices therefore has
as a prerequisite the sociological critique of forms of knowledge. Bourdieu often
presents this sociological critique of forms of knowledge by authorizing himself
with a reference to Kant. This
"Kantian" presentation of Bourdieusian anthropology is present from the Sketch
and The Practical Sense, but it gains in power in the rest of the work
37
.
In a very general way, we can say that Bourdieu subscribes to the Kantian
project of a critique of the uses of reason and that his anthropology of practice
38
is situated in the wake of criticism to celebrate the . If the Enlightenment could
demystifying powers of reason, it amounts to Kant for having turned these
powers against reason itself by establishing the famous "tribunal of reason"
where the latter is both judge and judged.
Reason, reflecting on itself, can then measure its metaphysical and practical
pretensions. Bourdieu's project extends this perspective while respecificing it in
the direction of a critique of scholastic reason, that is to say of reason working
from this particular situation which is that of the skhole, this "time freed from
occupations". and concerns”. The first chapter of the Pascalian Meditations is
39
practice thus presented as a "Critique of scholastic reason" where it is a
question of identifying the gaps and the illusions of a reason which has cut itself
off from practice and no longer thinks it adequately, for reasons that are specific
to the very functioning of reason. Consequently, criticism, in its negative
dimension, will have the effect of denouncing erroneous or limited conceptions
of practice (such as structuralism, the theory of rational action, the universal
pragmatics of Habermas).
However, this criticism of scholastic reason is only admissible on condition

that it is justified by a positive conception of the relationship of reason to
practice, which the anthropology of practice must precisely assume. Gold
Bourdieu authorizes himself, here again, with a reference to Kant. It is then no

longer just a question of designating the kinship of two projects (critique of the
theoretical, practical and aesthetic uses of reason in Kant; critique of scholastic
reason in Bourdieu), but of bringing to light a common problem, that of the nature
of the conditions for the possibility of the exercise of reason. The Pascalian
Meditations are explicit on the meaning, properly problematic, that should be given
to this reference to Kant:
It is however in a Kantian perspective, but totally excluded by Kant, in the name of the break between the transcendental and
the empirical, that I placed myself, by giving myself as object the research of the socio-transcendental conditions of knowledge,
that is to say of the social or socio-cognitive (and not only cognitive), empirically observable structure (the field, etc.), which
makes possible the phenomena as apprehended by the different sciences or, more
40
precisely, the construction of the scientific object and the scientific fact .
The continuity is clear: the Kantian perspective that deserves to be taken up is

that which is based on the distinction between the transcendental and the empirical.
In other words, Bourdieu shares the idea that forms of knowledge must be
considered from their conditions of possibility, designated by the mention of the
transcendental. However, it is also immediately clear that Bourdieu does not share
the Kantian solution, which consists in understanding the problem of the nature of
the conditions of possibility of knowledge from "pure" reason alone, that is, by
leaving side everything that can come from an empirical genesis of the faculties to
keep only a purified transcendental where reason reflects itself by itself. From this
point of view, the Kantian critique of pure reason remains that of a scholastic reason
which ignores its practical reality by denying its own practical conditions of
possibility. It is based on a "forgetting of history " which spares it the consideration
of its historical and social conditions of possibility, empirical in short.
To remedy this, it is therefore necessary, as Bourdieu maintains, to set out "in

search of the socio-transcendental conditions of knowledge", that is to say
that is to say, by carrying out "to the end the analysis that the most intrepid of
philosophers often stop on the way, that is to say at the moment when it would
encounter the social 42 ". Transcendental inquiry (the inquiry into the
conditions of possibility of forms of knowledge) must accept the impurity of
the social conditions of possibility. On the basis of a continuation of the critical
project, Bourdieu operates a decisive break: the realization of this "Kantian"
program now passes through the historicization from the point of view of
43 . Return the
knowledge, gnoseological and social conditions of possibility,
it is to do right to the part of historical arbitrariness which is at the foundation
of the institution of the point of view. The theory of practice is therefore not
valid for itself and by itself. It cannot be self-sufficient, be dissociated from a
sociology of forms of knowledge and thus "exist from this unreal and
neutralized which is that of theoretical “theses” or discourses”, among which

44
Kantian is the critical philosophy
epistemologies.
2. On the other hand, anthropology, in order to carry out the program
assigned to it of the objectification of the relationship between the subjective
and the objective, must first reflect on itself and develop the critique of
"tendencies." theoretical ideas that are likely to surreptitiously renew the sharing of
45
subject and object . Anthropology is therefore inaugurated by the critique of
“anthropological” discourses and theories that ignore the reality of the
gnoseological and social break and thus import the subject/object dualism in
force in practice in the field of theory. This unconscious contribution is
expressed through the competition of two “tendencies” which work
surreptitiously on the ordinary anthropology of practice. These tendencies are
those of subjectivism and objectivism, which Bourdieu holds responsible for
most of the theoretical difficulties encountered by the social sciences: "Of all
the oppositions which divide
artificially the social science, the most fundamental, and the most ruinous, is that which is
46
established between subjectivism and objectivism . »
The program of anthropology which is given here as an outline is therefore a program

which can be said to be contrary and thwarted. It is contrary to the sense that it is defined as
a necessary reaction that follows the identification of "foundations" or anthropological
"presuppositions" that hinder the approach of the practitioner of science because they skew
as It is characterized by its negative dimension,
47
in advance its reactive and .
prophylactic point of view. But it is also “thwarted”, without affective connotation, in the sense
that it is governed by a fundamental opposition, that of subjectivism and objectivism, which
itself finds its origin in the oppositions which structure practical knowledge.
We thus arrive, at the end of this brief exploration of the program of the anthropology of
practice, at the point where it becomes possible to define the role assigned to the critique of
phenomenology. It is from the fundamental opposition of subject and object, an opposition
already present in ordinary practical knowledge and which science renews, that Bourdieu
instructs the critique of subjectivism. This will be illustrated by the example of what he calls
“social phenomenology”. This critique of subjectivism is only rarely conducted for itself and
only for itself. It is inseparable from the critique of objectivism, these two epistemological
tendencies constituting, in Bourdieu's eyes, an alternative
48
as “ritual” as it is sterile for the social sciences According to . What does that mean?
Bourdieu, subjectivism and objectivism appear as “mode[s] of theoretical knowledge which
imply[s] in each case a set of anthropological theses”. These two anthropological options, if
49
we make them the presuppositions of sociological work, turn out to be equally unsatisfactory.
Thus, by substituting a theory of the subject for an authentic theory of practice, the subjectivism
which is illustrated through phenomenology reduces the social to lived experience, which
forbidden to understand what comes to structure the latter. Conversely, the

objectivism in force in Saussurian linguistics or the structuralism of Lévi-
Strauss does more justice to the objective relations which condition social
practices, but it always runs the risk of treating social structures as autonomous
entities by reducing THE
practices to a simple execution of the model.
The apparent interest of such a characterization stems in particular from
the fact that comparing these two forms of anthropology clearly reveals their
respective limits. The criticisms that the subjectivist and objectivist positions
address to each other according to their own presuppositions thus reveal their
respective deficiencies "opposition between two theories of
50
. In this
51
practice third theoretical possibility which could » emerges in hollow a
fill the respective insufficiencies of subjectivism and objectivism and which

would account for objective legalities of the social world, without hypostasizing
them. The primary function of this double critique is thus to conveniently
present the originality of his theory of practice, for a time called “praxeology”.
Its specific project will be precisely to study, according to the terms of the
1972 Sketch , the " dialectical relations" which are established between the
52
"objective structures" and the " structured ».
dispositions . The joint critique of objectivism and subjectivism constitutes

a necessary prerequisite for any consistent theory of practice. From then on,
Bourdieu very often mobilizes this well-rehearsed argumentative sequence,
for example in the interviews he was able to deliver, by frequently referring to
the two texts where this criticism is deployed extensively, in the Sketch on the
one hand ( especially in the part entitled “The three modes of theoretical
knowledge”) and in the first two chapters of the Practical sense of 1980
(entitled “Objectivizing objectification” and “The imaginary anthropology of
subjectivism”). Let us now analyze this
critique of subjectivism and see what fate is reserved for social

phenomenology.
1. ISR, p. 212.
2. We will see later that there is reason to qualify things, because Bourdieu is not content to work in the field of
traditional philosophical anthropology: he is reforming its definition.
3. MP, p. 32.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. ETP, p. 221.
7. ETP, p. 221.
8. ETP, p. 222.
9. ETP, p. 222.
10. FTE, p. 221. This designation is often taken up by Bourdieu, in other texts, to characterize some of the cognitive
specificities of habitus.
11. FTE, p. 221. This critique of epistemology, an afterthought discourse that would only consider the works done
and not the sociological work in progress, is subsequently frequent in Bourdieu.
In the course at the Collège de France Science de la science et reflexivité, Bourdieu even suspects epistemology
of being reduced to a simple normative expression of the dominant conception of science. Thus, "[...] what is called
epistemology is always threatened with being only a form of discourse justifying science or a position in the scientific
field or even a falsely neutralized resumption of the dominant discourse of science on itself” (SSR, p. 19). Or again:
"Science works, in large part, because we manage to believe and make people believe that it works as we say it
works, especially in books on epistemology, and because this collective fiction collectively nurtured continues to
constitute the ideal standard of practice” (SSR, p. 153).
12. ETP, p. 225.
13. ETP, p. 227.
14. ETP, p. 227.
15. SP, p. 7: “The progress of knowledge […] requires obstinate returns to the same objects (here, those of the
Outline of a Theory of Practice and secondarily, of The Distinction), which are so many opportunities to objectify
more completely the subjective and objective relationship to the object. »
16. PS, p. 11. We will return later to the importance attached by Bourdieu to the relational way of thinking.
17. SP, p. 25: “[…] these models become false and dangerous as soon as they are treated as the real principles of the
practices, which amounts, inseparably, to overestimating the logic of the practices and to overlooking what makes them
the true principle. »
18. SP, p. 22.
19. SP, p. 22.
20. SP, p. 7.
21. We will have recognized the three “objects” of the three studies of Kabyle ethnology.
22. ETP, p. 230.
23. In The Practical Sense, Bourdieu also emphasizes, more than in the Sketch, the importance of the diversity of
practices.
24. This is no doubt why the dictionaries devoted to the work of Bourdieu avoid the heading of practice (this is the case
of the Bourdieu Dictionary edited by S. Chevallier and C. Chauviré, Paris, Ellipses, 2010) or dissertate on about practical
meaning where one would expect to see them deal with practice (this is the case of Pierre Bourdieu's Abécédaire, edited
by J.-P. Cazier, Paris, Éditions Sils Maria, 2006, pp. 149-152).
25. ETP, p. 236.
26. SP, p. 28
27. SP, p. 22.
28. ETP, p. 234.
29. SP, p. 39.
30. SP, p. 39.
31. ETP, p. 256.
32. ISR, p. 216.
33.RP , p. 28.
34. ETP, p. 228.
35. ETP, p. 227.
36. ETP, p. 225.
37. Bourdieu's relationship to Kant is well analyzed by C. Gautier, La force du social. Philosophical inquiry into the
sociology of practices by Pierre Bourdieu, op. cit., p. 42 sq.
38. On this continuity, see T. Bénatouïl, “Critique et pragmatique en sociologie. A few principles of reading”, Annales.
History, Social Sciences, 54, 2, 1999, p. 281-317 and more particularly p. 282
sq.
39. MP, p.
40. SSR, p. 155.
41. See in particular the second postscript to the first chapter of the Pascalian Meditations, which is precisely
entitled “The forgetting of history” (MP, p. 66-72).
42. MP, p. 76.
43. “All my scientific enterprise is in fact inspired by the conviction that one can grasp the deepest logic of the
social world only on condition of immersing oneself in the particularity of an empirical reality, historically situated
and dated, but to construct it as a “particular case of the possible”, in the words of Gaston Bachelard, that is to say
as a scenario in a finite universe of possible configurations. ( RP, p. 16). We will come back in the last part of this
book to the question of reflexivity, which ultimately constitutes the most successful answer to this problem of the
historicization of the point of view.
44. SP, p. 7.
45. In the more general framework of the critique of scholastic reason deployed by the Pascalian Meditations, an
equivalent can be found in the denunciation of the “three forms of scholastic error”, in the second chapter of the
work, p. 74 sq.
46. SP, p. 43.
47. It goes without saying that this Bourdieusian anthropology is also necessarily “contrary” to any anthropology
which would claim to deny social science its quality as a science, its usefulness and its objectivity, like that of
Heidegger, “philosophical anthropology which can be understood as a veritable rite of expulsion from evil, that is
to say from the social and from sociology” (MP, p. 44).
48. P. Bourdieu, ETP, p. 236.
49. P. Bourdieu, ETP, p. 234. The opposition between subjectivism and objectivism is more clearly determined in
The Practical Sense. In the 1972 Sketch , Bourdieu speaks more willingly of a “phenomenological knowledge”.
50. This comparison of available theories perfectly illustrates Bourdieu's relationship to the history of philosophy or
more broadly to the history of ideas: in Choses dits, he thus claimed a very free relationship to philosophy and
underlined that you always had to ask yourself “how and why a thinker allows you to see the truth of the other and
vice versa”, CD, p. 48.
51. ETP, p. 225.
52. ETP, p. 235.

Chapter 2
Subjectivism: social phenomenology

and existentialism
We can now examine the critique of social phenomenology for itself.

The realization of this intention is not without difficulty. It is clear that
Bourdieu rarely takes the trouble to examine "social phenomenology"
for itself by discussing the details of its theoretical propositions. It does
not apparently constitute, in this sense, a decisive theoretical relay
where Bourdieu would come, as usual, to freely draw some contribution
to his own reflections.
Let us also concede that, most often, the evocation of social
phenomenology, expeditious and allusive, fulfills a purely denunciatory function.
For Bourdieu, it is enough, in a way, to restore in broad strokes the
project which is his to discover there the exemplary illustration of an
unfortunate epistemological drift, that of subjectivism.
ELEMENTS OF A CRITICISM OF SOCIAL PHENOMENOLOGY
Bourdieu, as we have said, was well acquainted with phenomenology.

As we have already noted, he chose to devote his philosophy thesis to
"temporal structures of affective life in Husserl" and he had read closely

the fundamental texts of the phenomenological tradition. However, it
should be noted that by choosing Georges Canguilhem as thesis
supervisor, while taking as the object of research a question that was not
at that time unraveled from the Husserlian corpus, Bourdieu immediately
placed himself in a position of deviation from the tradition phenomenology
understood in the strict sense. Indeed, it is from the tradition of historical
rationalism associated with the work of Gaston Bachelard, Jean Cavaillès,
Alexandre Koyré and of course Georges Canguilhem, that phenomenology
is approached. Bourdieu's relationship to phenomenology is immediately
marked by a form of distancing.
We also know that the development of ethnological and sociological
research led Bourdieu to abandon his initial philosophical project. At the
same time, there are many references to phenomenology when it comes
to bringing together the theoretical results of ethnological and sociological
investigations of the 1950s and 1960s, with a view to writing the Sketch .
Bourdieu therefore went from a philosophical choice made in favor of
phenomenology to its critique, developed under the heading of
“subjectivism”.
What Bourdieu designates under the heading of "social phenomenology"
covers both the transcendental phenomenology of Husserl (considered in
the effort made to find the Lebenswelt, the world of life), what is called for
convenience the "phenomenological sociology" of Alfred Schütz and
finally, the ethnomethodology of Harold Garfinkel (to which Bourdieu
1
sometimes adds interactionism ). Social phenomenology, beyond
this diversity, is presented here as the illustration or even the exemplary
case of a tendency which would sometimes work less openly in the social
sciences. The "subjectivism" denounced by Bourdieu is therefore, in part
at least, a theoretical construction, the product of a typification which
seeks to distinguish a certain number of characteristic features which will each

be the subject of a specific criticism.
Certainly, the different authors and the different approaches considered
are not unrelated. Husserl's phenomenology presents a number of consistent
descriptions of the social world and even initiates the project of a “transcendental
2
sociology”. The phenomenological description of the structures of the world of
life conducted by Alfred Schütz proceeds from a certain interpretation of the
philosophy of the last Husserl
3
. Similarly, the ethnomethodology promoted by Harold Garfinkel is
initially understood as a sociological application of . The links between
4
philosophy of Alfred Schütz phenomenology understood
in the strict sense and interactionism (and still it is necessary to know which
interactionism it is exactly question) are not non-existent, even if they can
5
appear more distended .
Let us return to the terms of the Sketch to recapture what Bourdieu

designates by the expression “social phenomenology”:
The knowledge that we will call phenomenological (or if we want to speak in terms of currently existing schools, "interactionist" or "ethnomethodological")
makes explicit the truth of the primary experience of the social world, that is, say the relationship of familiarity with the familiar environment, apprehension
of the social world as a natural and self-evident world, which, by definition, does not
6
is not reflected and which excludes the question of its own conditions of possibility .
The critique of subjectivism, in the case of social phenomenology, ultimately

focuses on the illusion of immediate knowledge of the
social world defined from the resources of the single subject. This immediacy
of subjective knowledge is characterized by the familiarity under which the
experience of the social world is given to us, that is to say over everything that
goes without saying in our relationship to practice and in the accomplishment
of our practices.
Bourdieu's first criticism of “phenomenological knowledge” concerns the
restriction of its domain of object. In
Indeed, social phenomenology is content to explain “the truth of the first

7
experience of the social world, the ". It is thus fully entitled to
relationship of familiarity that we develop with the social world that surrounds
us. It is able to restore the genesis of the structures of the everyday world,
8
the lived . However, taking into account exclusively
or doxic experience of the social world, it refrains from thematizing the social
and economic conditions of "naturalness", of the evidence under which the
social world appears. The phenomenological approach, and more particularly
here ethnomethodology, is content to record the "given as it is given
9
».
A correlative reproach concerns the methodological aspects of the

phenomenological approach to the social world. By vowing to stick to lived
experience, social phenomenology would condemn itself to a simple
description that would never manage to engage in a genuine critique of
common sense representations. What objectivism, and Bourdieu with it,
rightly rejects is this “project of identifying the science of the social world with
a scientific description of the prescientific experience of this world on the fact
10
that phenomenology ". Bourdieu extends this argument by insisting
reduces the constructions from sociology to secondary constructions or,
11
from the perspective of ethnomethodology, to accounts of accounts. Note
that this criticism, in its generality, is more difficult to accept than the first:
the constructivists emphasize above all the fact that the explanation of the
social world by the actors must be taken as the primary object of consideration,
without reducing to this the whole intelligence of the sociologist.
It is quite pungent to note that Bourdieu, again on a methodological level,

authorizes himself to criticize phenomenology for its inability to take into
account the "practical epokhe " which is at the principle of the institution from
the theoretical point of view on the practice :
It is also, more profoundly, that, as practical knowledge takes as its object, [the phenomenological mode of knowledge]
excludes any questioning about its own social conditions of possibility and more precisely about the social meaning of the
practical epoche which is necessary to reach the intention to understand the first comprehension or, if you will, on the relation
12
completely paradoxical social aspect that the reflexive return to the doxic experience supposes. .
However, Husserlian phenomenology, as we know, nevertheless made a

point of renewing the skeptical concept of epokhè to make it the first of the
stages of the process of reduction, which is a renewal of the "sense of being"
of phenomena. . The epokhè is thus this bracketing of the thesis of the
natural attitude, of this spontaneous and immediate relationship that we adopt
with regard to the world around us. It is "suspended" from the claims to
validity that unfold in the natural attitude. It thus opens the way to an alteration
of this attitude.
and discovering the transcendental attitude. This enhancement of
the epokhè is further reinforced in Schütz, who redoubles it to see in the

epokhè of the epokhè, bracketed by the phenomenological epokhè , the
operating principle of the natural attitude:
We can venture to suggest that man in the natural attitude also uses a specific epochè , which is of course quite different from
that of the phenomenologist. It does not suspend its belief in the external world and its objects, but on the contrary, it suspends
all doubt as to its existence. What he brackets is the doubt that the world and its objects can be other than it appears to him.
We propose to call this epokhè the epokhè of the attitude
13
natural .
Even though it never ceases to theorize the practice of epokhè,

phenomenology nevertheless proves incapable, in Bourdieu's eyes, of
thinking about practical epokhè , epokhè of practice which is nevertheless at
the principle of its institution as theory.
These first reproaches are accompanied by a third grievance, formulated
on the basis of the demand for a sociological critique of the structures of the
social world. This critical perspective seems forbidden to phenomenology, for
reasons that relate both to the definition of its subject area and to its
methodology, which relies more on description than on critical
evaluation. Supporting a social order that responds to the interests of
specific social groups, it would only maintain a form of misunderstanding
of the social world. Social phenomenology does not succeed in seeing
the arbitrariness of the social order for reasons which are due to the
very nature of its approach, because it begins with the consideration
of what is valid for granted and not therefore does not truly operate
an epistemological break with ordinary knowledge of the social world.
Epistemological continuity is not only a fault in relation to the
requirements which must be those of a social science. It is interpreted
by Bourdieu as a form of political complicity which is not known as
such, but which only scientifically validates established relations of
domination. Social phenomenology would thus contribute to the
reproduction of dominations. Thus Bourdieu can write, in the Sketch,
about politeness which supposes the implicit mastery of oppositions
constitutive of a social and political order:
This shows how naive and fallacious it is to reduce the field of what is “taken for granted” (taken for granted), in the manner of
Schütz and, after him, the ethnomethodologists, to a set of presuppositions formal and universal […]. In fact, through the
influence that politeness exerts on the most seemingly insignificant acts of everyday life, what education makes it possible to
reduce to a state of automatisms are the most fundamentals of a cultural arbitrariness and a political order which impose
themselves on the mode of blinding evidence and
14
unnoticed .
For social phenomenology, if we follow Bourdieu's presentation of

it, the description of experiences is therefore enough to say the
subject's relationship to the social world. Phenomenology, in this
sense, had at least the merit of recognizing that it could only work
from what was given in lived experience. It offered a simple version
of the institution of subjectivity by relying on the cognitive resources that it was abl
to mobilize and implement. This apparent simplicity of the enterprise (in

reality staged by the presentation given by Bourdieu) contrasts with the
high demands displayed by Bourdieusian praxeology. By seeking to
establish a subject of knowledge freed from the illusion of an immediate
understanding of the social, Bourdieu imposed on himself a challenge
that phenomenology had spared itself, since it was a question of knowing
under what conditions cognitive and social the subject of knowledge
could tell the "truth" of the social world.
What is most remarkable here is that Bourdieu persists in thinking of
the agent and the sociologist as subjects , even if this designation is
often used with careful quotation marks. Indeed, with Bourdieu, it is
always a question of the subject, in this very precise sense, when it is a
question of knowing what each can know of the social world and
according to what modality. It is therefore always as an instance of
knowledge that the subject is understood. Except that this subject of
knowledge is always already necessarily a social subject: knowledge, as
well as all the misunderstandings, by which we relate to the social world
are necessarily relative to the situation that we occupy there, to our
position in a field. determined. Therefore, the concept of “subject” also
refers, explicitly, to the way we have to compose, each time singularly,
with our knowledge and our misunderstandings of the social world.
Thus the contribution of social phenomenology appears first of all, if
we follow Bourdieu in Le sens pratique, as purely negative: the
examination of phenomenology appears above all as an invitation to
conduct a rigorous sociological critique of the concept of subject. The
gain that can be drawn from it will lie elsewhere, no longer in the theory
of the subject conducted for its own sake, but in the very practice of
social science, which must not show itself oblivious to what the learned
subject must on the empirical subject:
One can therefore go beyond the apparent antinomy of the two modes of knowledge and integrate their achievements only
on condition of subordinating scientific practice to knowledge of the "subject of knowledge", essentially critical knowledge
of the limits inherent in all theoretical, subjectivist knowledge. as well as objectivist, which would have all the appearances
of a negative theory, were it not for the properly scientific effects produced by forcing us to pose
15
questions concealed by all scholarly knowledge .
We can then indicate more clearly, even if we will come back to it at greater
length later, what will be, in the rest of the work, the positive counterpart of the
“negative theory” that the sociological critique of the philosophical concept of the
“subject” develops. This will take the name of reflexivity.
Bourdieu defines the project concisely in his interview with Loïc Wacquant, in the
Invitation to reflexive sociology :
To adopt the point of view of reflexivity, […], [is] to work to account for the empirical “subject” in the very terms of the
objectivity constructed by the scientific subject – in particular by situating it in a determined place of social space-time –
and, thereby, to become aware of and (possible) mastery of the constraints that can be exerted on the scientific subject
through all the links that he attaches to the empirical subject, to his interests, to his impulses, to his presuppositions, and
that he
16
must break in order to fully constitute itself .
THE SARTRE CASE
Behind these criticisms, there is finally and above all, more dramatically, the
need to avoid a philosophy of the subject that would make the agent an autonomous,
free and responsible subject. As Bourdieu reminds us in the Sketch for a self-
17
analysis, the antinomy of subjectivism and objectivism is not only a convenient
,
artifice that would allow the praxeological approach to be presented as a successful

overcoming of a dialectic that has finally become fruitful. . The opposition between
subjectivism and objectivism also corresponds, in his view, to a major division in the
epistemological field of the 1950s and 1960s, which saw the structuralism of Lévi-
Strauss and the Marxist theories (of Maurice
Godelier, Louis Althusser, Nicos Poulantzas) and on the other a Sartrean

existentialism which tended to make society the product of a multitude of free
acts.
In the Sketch for a self-analysis, Bourdieu recalls the fascination that the
figure of Sartre could exert at the time of his entry to the ENS
. But this fascination was ambiguous and also played the role of
dominant reference from which it was necessary to detach. The need to
Freeing oneself from the grip of the dominant position of the intellectual field
does not only concern Bourdieu in this respect:
I feel that many of the characteristics shared by the "structuralist" generation of Althusser, Foucault, etc. […] derive from
their effort to distinguish themselves from existentialism and all that it represented in their eyes: the vapid humanism that
prevailed, the preference for
19
“lived experience” and that form of political moralism that survives in the pages of Esprit .
Bourdieu also recognizes in Sartre the merit of a break with the themes
and rules of university philosophy. He is, to a certain extent, the one who will
have shown that the most ordinary situations of daily life could be analyzed
and described by phenomenology.
Sartre thus gave a new philosophical dignity to subjects hitherto considered
trivial. This open-mindedness is consistent with the claim of social science to
account for all social phenomena.
In the same way that the characterization of social phenomenology is, to

a certain extent, a theoretical construction, the presentation of the double
polarization of the intellectual field around the masterful figures of Lévi-
Strauss and Sartre proceeds from a retrospective reconstruction. For Bourdieu
does not set out to restore, as a good historian of philosophical ideas would
do, the controversy that may have developed between Lévi Strauss and
Sartre, in particular from chapter IX of The wild thought ("History and
dialectic") which frontally criticized Sartre's critique of dialectical reason He
20
actually relies on a series of criticisms .
already developed by Lévi-Strauss with regard to Sartre. The latter defended,

in his Critique, a conception of the subject free and transparent to itself. He
intended to show that any analysis of historical and social realities (including
that of the practico-inert, that is to say of materialized history) was intelligible in
terms of individual praxis. Free and autonomous subjects were the principle of
the "transcendental genesis of society and history
21
". From this perspective, to criticize “dialectical reason” is to
attempt to understand men as they produce their history.
Now, this principle led Sartre to a critique of positivism and of the social
sciences insofar as they strive to grant intelligibility to social realities without
showing themselves capable of recapturing the free action of subjects. Lévi-
Strauss could thus reproach Sartre for a reduction of history to historical
consciousness and a blinding ethnocentrism, which did not allow him to
recognize the existence of a "wild thought", which was certainly not formulated
in the terms Western reason, but should not lead us to believe that the societies
studied by the ethnologist are "ahistorical".
Bourdieu, for his part, shifts the focus of the controversy, which no longer
bears on the capacity of the social sciences to confer intelligibility on the social
realities studied. It is more precisely the Sartrean philosophy of practice that is
in question. Bourdieu takes a position in relation to the developments in Being
and Nothingness relating to revolutionary consciousness in which his "activist
voluntarism" is expressed: "Sartre makes each action a kind of confrontation
without antecedent of the subject and the world
22
.
The action, in the Sartrean perspective, proceeds from the sovereign
decisions of the subject, they are the expressions of his freedom. And all
aspects of existence can be chosen, right down to the emotions one feels. The
existentialist alternative lies in our ability to be true to our own freedom and in
the experience of resignation,
inauthentic relationship to freedom which is that of bad faith, when we

agree to play social roles.
Sartre's conception of society is marked by a lack of objectivity which
is the direct consequence of the boundless empire of free subjectivity.
The transcendental genesis of history and society then appears as a
23
"desperate project", a true theoretical denial of what the social world is in
reality, which cannot be reduced to a sum of voluntary projects decided
in full consciousness. Sartre consecrates the absolute initiative of agents,
without succeeding in taking into account the reality of “objective
meaning” and without taking into account the limits of the objective
potentialities of a situation. Society, in Sartre, is either thought of in the
contractualist mode of a product of a multitude of voluntary and conscious
actions, or in the mode of the opaque thing, the fallback into the practico-
inert being its highest risk. Between the two, there is nothing thinkable,
precisely because Sartre neglects the role of the body to conceive
differently the relationship between praxis and the practical field, between
dispositions and structures.
It should be noted that Bourdieu does not rank Sartre among the
partisans of "social phenomenology" and that he generally takes care to
treat his case separately, whether through the remarks of the Sketch for
a Theory of practice or by criticism as a rule conducted in the second
chapter of Practical Sense. This is somewhat surprising insofar as
Bourdieu sees Sartre's philosophy as another exemplary case of the
excesses of subjectivism. The reason for this state of affairs is no doubt
due to the fact that it is not a question, in one case as in the other, of the
same subjectivism and this remark is valuable in clarifying what
constitutes the substance of the reproaches that Bourdieu addresses. to
social phenomenology. Indeed, the subjectivism that Bourdieu denounces
in Sartre concerns above all the idea that we have of the practical subject.
By naively considering that the social world is something we do, by making the agent
ultimate explanatory of the strategies by which it relates to the social world, Sartrean
philosophy magnifies the spontaneity, freedom and responsibility of the subject, but it
remains blind to the social conditions of practice. What is more, it forbids their scientific
thematization: “Sartre rebels, not without reason, against 'objective' sociology (I would
say objectivist) which can only grasp a 'sociality of inertia
24
”. »
What is required here to remedy the shortcomings of such a position is a theory of

action which no longer considers the agent to be a simple actor but which also makes
him a being acted upon by society. The reproaches which Bourdieu addresses to social
phenomenology, we see, are not of this order since what is in question is the fact that
the subject of knowledge is thought of only in relation to lived experience and not in
terms of the social conditions of its knowledge activity, as well as in the specific effort
made to produce a true sociological science.
1. ETP, p. 234.
2. We refer to our study: L. Perreau, The social world according to Husserl, Dordrecht/Boston/London/New York,
Springer, 2013.
3. D. Cefaï, Phenomenology and social sciences. Alfred Schutz. Birth of a philosophical anthropology, Geneva,
Librairie Droz, 1998.
4. On this filiation: D. Cefaï and N. Depraz, “From the phenomenological method to the ethnomethodological
approach”, in M. de Fornel, A. Ogien and L. Quéré (eds.), L'ethnomethodologie. A radical sociology. Colloquium of
Cerisy, Paris, La Découverte, 2001, p. 99-123. See also L. Perreau, “From phenomenology to ethnomethodology:
varieties of social ontology among Husserl, Schütz and Garfinkel”, in Phenomenology 2005, edited by T. Nennon
and HR Sepp, Zeta Books, 2007, p. 453-477.
5. On Goffman's relationship to phenomenology: “Defining situations. The report of the sociology of Erving Goffman
to the phenomenology of Alfred Schütz”, in Gof man and the order of the interaction, under the dir. by D. Cefaï and
L. Perreau, Amiens, CURAPP-ESS/PUF, 2012, p. 139-162.
6. ETP, p. 234.
7. ETP, p. 234 and SP, p. 44
8. See in particular B. Bégou, La Découverte du Jour, Paris, Allia, 2005.

9. ETP, p. 238.
10. SP, p. 45.
11. FTE, p. 23 and PS, p. 44-45. See also CDs, p. 149: “[The subjectivist vision] is in continuity with common-sense knowledge,
since it is only construction of constructions. »
12. SP, p. 44
13. A. Schütz, Le chercheur et le quotidien, Paris, Klincksieck, 1987, p. 127. See also the beautiful article by B. Bégout, " The era
of natural attitude according to Schütz", Alter, 11, 2003, p. 165-192.
14. ETP, p. 300.
15. SP, p. 45.
16. ISR, p. 272.
17. WATER, p. 37 sq.
18. WATER, p. 21.
19. CD, p. 14.
20. C. Lévi-Strauss, The Wild Thought, Paris, Plon, 1962; J.-P. Sartre, La critique de la raison dialectique, Paris, Gallimard, 1960.
Sartre gave an answer to the attacks of Lévi-Strauss in the article "Anthropologie", published in the Cahiers de Philosophie, 2,
1966, taken up in Situations IX, Paris, Gallimard, 1972.
21. J.-P. Sartre, The Critique of Dialectical Reason, op. cit., p. 74.
22. SP, p. 71.
23. SP, p. 74.
24. SP, p. 73.

Chapter 3
Rethinking the subject beyond subjectivism
CRITICIZE AND INTEGRATE
One of the ambitions that drive Bourdieu's praxeology is to

demonstrate that it is possible to produce a “unified political economy
1
of practice”. Joint criticisms of phenomenological and structuralist
approaches have no value in themselves. In any case, it is certainly not
a question of indulging in the purely scholastic exercise of commentary,
discussion and criticism of the opposing theses. Indeed, the methodical
confrontation of phenomenological and structuralist approaches has no
other purpose than to outline the contours of an “integrated” mode of
investigation. This must present a solid epistemological coherence, in
principle exempt from the reproaches addressed to phenomenological
and structuralist approaches. It is also a question of doing justice to the
logics of practical sense from a general point of view, while accounting
for their relativization and social particularization. It is not a question,
however, of universalizing at a forced march the determined exercise,
socially and historically situated, of the practical sense, but rather of
exhibiting constants. These constants clearly belong to the level of an
anthropology, in the sense that Kant could understand it, that is to say
say of a philosophical anthropology that strives to account for the constants

of life in society.
Once we have taken note of the various documents that Bourdieu adds
to the file of social phenomenology with a view to instructing his trial, it is
appropriate to ask ourselves what exactly he retains from them. Let us give
him credit for the soundness of his approach: for him it is not a question of
rejecting back to back the objectivism of the theoretical models of action
and the impressionism of the subjectivist approach to the social world but
rather to reveal their respective limits in order to justify the necessity and the
possibility of a new mode of knowledge, that of praxeological knowledge.
The praxeological theory of action, which develops from the concepts of
field and habitus, can be read as a median solution that allows us to think
about the status of the social agent from new angles. At the end of a
considerable work of conceptual re-elaboration, social praxeology thus
works in a double direction. According to a first direction, it restores the
objective structures, that is to say the inequalities in the distribution of
resources which define a space of possibilities and constraints.
At the same time, social praxeology thinks about the effects of these
structures at the level of the categories of perception that structure
representations and positions. Thus the "subjectivist" understanding retains
some of its rights, but it loses its epistemological priority to give way to an
epistemological break in the "objectivist" style which alone will be able to
allow us to agree on what makes reality . social relationships.
In the 1972 Sketch, Bourdieu very clearly stipulates that this

"praxeological knowledge" "does not annul the achievements" of subjectivism.
2
and objectivism, but “retains them and surpasses them ". Overtaking
with subjectivism and objectivism would therefore operate in the mode of
fruitful dialectics, one that knows how to retain the share of truth in
contradictory positions. One of the most remarkable consequences of what we
3
has been able to call a "theoretical ni- of this in-between situation
ni program, is the relative ambiguity of some of Bourdieu's concepts. By
introducing his theory of practice beyond the duly staged alternative of
subjectivism and objectivism, Bourdieu produces major concepts that
often present a double face. It is as if these concepts took up the
decried alternative in their own constitution. Thus the so decisive
concept of habitus must be conceived both as a sedimented experience
and as a principle that generates practice. More precisely, the habitus
is this paradoxical instance which allows that “behaviors [can] be
oriented in relation to ends without being consciously directed towards
4
these ends, directed by these ends”. Such a formulation, among all
those proposed by Bourdieu, retains something of objectivism
(structuralism here), with the idea that regularities can be exercised
without obedience to ends, like subjectivism, with the idea that we can
achieve some ends, even unconsciously.
In these reinvestments, it remains to know what are the persistent

positive aspects of subjectivism and objectivism and in what way the
new praxeology assumes them. There are two ways to understand what
is at work here.
A first interpretation of these reinvestments consists in attempting to
measure what Bourdieusian theory of practice owes to the respective
contributions of objectivism and subjectivism. Obviously, by undertaking
such a reading, one runs the risk, often denounced by Bourdieu, of
missing what makes the originality of his conceptions, in good or bad
faith. But while taking note of their innovative aspects, we might also
gain from rethinking some of the fundamental concepts of the theory of
action by re-establishing the phenomenological perspective as a point
of view integrated into the constitution of Bourdieusian conceptuality.
There is therefore undoubtedly something to be gained from a rereading tendentially
but moderately "subjectivist" of the concept of habitus, by restoring for

example certain proposals of Husserlian phenomenology, particularly in
the reflections it leads on passive syntheses and the constitution of
everyday life, in order to do better justice to discontinuities, to the
pluralities that affect the life of the individual . Indeed,
one of the merits of phenomenology is also to have considerably
renewed the classical philosophy of the subject by thinking first of the
subject as a relation to the world, well before thinking of it as a relation
to itself, as the product of a self positionning. There is also a whole
section of Husserl's reflections which invites us to take into account the
social dimension of subjective life, with great analytical and descriptive
acuity, particularly with regard to the question of passivity. Furthermore,
we can also expect significant gains in intelligibility from a rereading of
the theory of habitus undertaken on the basis of the work of Merleau-
Ponty, in particular on the question of the incorporation of schemes of
perception and appreciation. We will come back to it.
However, there is also another way of re-reading Bourdieu's lasting
reappropriation of the "acquis" of subjectivism. Indeed, what Bourdieu
retains from social phenomenology and the attention it pays to lived
experience is above all the need to rethink the “subject of knowledge”.
We have already said that this is a sufficient reason to distinguish the
criticisms addressed to Sartre from those formulated against
phenomenology, even if it means casting doubt on the supposed
homogeneity of “subjectivism”. We must now insist on the fact that there
is a decisive legacy with which Bourdieu must come to terms. We must
be attentive to the reasons for a positive evaluation of the contribution
of social phenomenology: these always refer to the analysis of the
nature and modalities of familiar, “doxic” and ordinary knowledge of the
social world.
Thus, in the Sketch as in the Practical Sense, Bourdieu underlines that

one could reorient the considerations developed by social phenomenology
in the perspective of a critical analysis of the
Company :
We see what the analysis thus understood of the naive experience of the social world can bring to a sociology of
knowledge which is, inseparably, a sociology of politics by manifesting
6
the gnoseological mechanisms that contribute to the maintenance of the established order .
It is nevertheless clear that Bourdieu will not have sought to manage a

real rearticulation between sociological criticism and social phenomenology,
thus leaving the latter to his work. At the same time, these remarks by
Bourdieu attest to the fact that he was not content to restore the primacy of
practice by dismissing a theoretical authority blind to its own determinations.
What needs to be remedied is indeed this relatively relevant and also
relatively deficient conception of the “subject of knowledge”.
STRENGTH AND SENSE
It is thus necessary, durably, to thwart the powerful objectivist tendency

which operates in the social sciences. The social world cannot be reduced
to a collection of “social facts”. Or else, if it is – and it is, in a certain sense
–, we must recognize that social facts can no longer be defined or rather
apprehended according to the precepts of Durkheimian sociological
methodology. In The Practical Sense, Bourdieu is very clear on this point:
Social science cannot "treat social facts as things", according to the Durkheimian precept, without escaping all that
they owe to the fact that they are objects of
7
knowledge (would it be a lack of knowledge) in the very objectivity of social existence .
Social facts therefore cannot be treated as things, because they are objects
of knowledge, that is to say also symbolic realities. The social world is not a sum
of “things”, it cannot be reduced to a play of physical forces acting on each other.
Or at least, it cannot be reduced to that, for the simple reason that it is also a world
that makes sense. The "agents" of the social world are not content to act or be
"acted" in it: they grant meanings to the world and its objects and this attribution
of meaning, this constitution of the world as a symbolic reality decides of the world
that does them in return. “Social facts” are not things done or facts apprehended
as things, but facts pertaining to the order of meaning: they are “done” because
something, in them, “makes sense”.
If it is true that the social world is a set of "relations of one must

8
forces”, according to the point of view which is that of social physics, ,
also upholding the fact that these relations of forces are composed and
recomposed in the order of meaning. There is therefore in Bourdieu, on the one
hand, an objectivist physics of material and symbolic forces which constrain and
determine the individual. But it is also necessary, on the other hand, to allow for a
phenomenology of cognitive forms and practical skills. Society is therefore a
“system of relations of force and meaning between groups and classes.
9
Bourdieusian ontology ».
is dyadic: there is in it an ontology of force and an ontology of meaning.

Bourdieu recognizes this when evoking his theory of practice in Practical Reasons :
This [dispositional] philosophy, which is condensed in a small number of fundamental concepts,

habitus, field, capital, […] has as its keystone the two-way relationship between the objective
structures (those of the social fields) and the structures incorporated (that of
10
l'habitus ) […]
If, according to Bourdieu, the task of sociology is to “bring to light the most
deeply buried structures of the various social worlds which
constitute the social universe as well as the “mechanisms” which tend

to ensure its reproduction or transformation11 ”, it must be recognized
that the structures in question belong to two distinct orders. A first
"structural" order concerns the modes of distribution and distribution of
the different "species of capital", that is to say of socially rare goods and
values: these modes of distribution and distribution define the field as a
set of balance of power. A second “structural” order is constituted by
the systems of appreciation and classification which decide on the
effectiveness of the practical sense. They are incorporated schemes
which are at the root of our perceptions, our judgments and our actions
and which determine the practical and social constitution of the order of meaning.
1. L. Wacquant, ISR, p. 41.
2. ETP, p. 236.
3. A. Dewerpe, “Strategy at Pierre Bourdieu”, Survey, sociology, anthropology, history,

n
_ 3, 1996, p. 196.
4. CD, p. 20.
5. We refer here to the rich article by S. Haber, “Contemporary French sociology before the Bourdieusian concept
O
of habitus”, in Alter. Journal of Phenomenology, n 12, 2004, p. 191-216.
6. P. Bourdieu, Outline of a theory of practice, Droz, Paris, 1972 (republished by Seuil, Paris, 2000), p. 241.
7. SP, p. 233.
8. “In an old article [P. Bourdieu, “The specificity of the scientific field and the social conditions of the progress of
reason”, Sociologie et Sociétés, 7, 1, p. 91-118], I had proposed the idea that the scientific field, like other fields, is
a field of forces endowed with a structure, and also a field of struggles to preserve or transform this field of forces.
The first part of the definition (field of forces) corresponds to the physicalist moment of sociology conceived as
social physics”, SSR, p. 69.
9. R, p. 20.
10.RP , p. 9.
11. NE, p. 7.
PART II
Normativities
Once we have restored and resituated the critique of "social

phenomenology" from the perspective of "praxeology" and the
anthropology of practice placed at the service of the sociology of
practices, we must show how this critique informs, more positively, the
work of Bourdieu. It is still necessary, to return to the hypotheses of
reading that we proposed in the Introduction, to show how some of the
questions inherited from phenomenology work the reflections of Bourdieu
and this, quite particularly when it is a question of elaborating and re-
elaborating the new praxeology, that is to say the theory of practice
which should make it possible to account for the generation of practices.
This project is not the expression of a principle of charity which should
animate a critical re-reading of the critique of phenomenology, as if its
underlying intention were to relativize it: it is rather a matter of seeing
concretely how the reversal or subversion of social phenomenology, by
declining the elements of its criticism but also by identifying more
precisely those of its reinvestment.
The next three parts of this study will thus attempt to analyze three
aspects of what clearly appears, thanks to their complementarity, as an
anthropology of the social “subject”. We argue that this anthropology
unfolds on the basis of certain particular grounds for criticism addressed
to social phenomenology understood in the broad sense. We will thus
successively explore the different themes of social normativity (that is
to say the constraints and norms that govern the constitution of the
meaning associated with the practice), of the temporalization of the
practice, and, finally, of the singular reflexivity that sociology is able to
provide.
Chapter 4
The “meaning” of the practice
We suggested, in the previous chapter, that the Bourdieusian

conception of practice presupposed a double definition, where practice
was both the product of power relations (which are largely due to the
objective structures of the social, to inequalities and to social relations).
of domination) and the place of a certain experience of "meaning". Let
us now clarify this point: how does Bourdieu conceive of the “meaning” of practice?
What is the concept of “meaning” that is determined by the praxeology
developed from the fundamental concepts of field and habitus? How
does this determination of meaning depend on a certain conception of
social normativity?
MAKE SENSE
These questions can only be stated on the condition of assuming

that the practice is endowed with meaning and that it therefore presents
a certain intelligibility. Practice is therefore not, as we have already said,
pure action, physical movement perceptible in its own effectuation or
visible in its effects. Practice is action endowed with meaning or more
precisely action that “makes sense”. It is from this "fact", that is to say from the fact
that practice "makes sense" that you have to leave. As Bourdieu points out in Le
Sens pratique, one should not assume "of a ritual gesture or act that it expresses
something", but "to say, quite simply, that it is sensible or, like the English, that it
1
makes sense". One of the stakes of Bourdieusian praxeology is therefore to challenge
an expressivist conception of meaning in order to uphold the idea that meaning is
what is made by the practice itself, that nothing happens to it. outside.
This presupposition is, moreover, for Bourdieu, the very condition of any
anthropological reflection on practice and, consequently, of any sociological analysis
of practice. We must assume, if we want to make it the subject of a science, that
what agents do does have some "meaning", even if this meaning is not obvious to
the observer. who does not share the doxa to which the agents adhere. But, for
sociological analysis to be not only possible, but also justified, we must also assume
that the meaning of what agents do is sometimes quite different from that which they
assign to their action. The sociologist who puts the world that is familiar to him at a
distance experiences precisely this dissociation of lived meaning and objectively
intended meaning. We must admit the principle of a disjunction between the
significant intention of a behavior and the sociological significance of this same
behavior. There is therefore a primary intelligibility of the practice, "given", which
depends on the point of view of the agent on his own practice and a secondary
intelligibility, which remains to be conquered or constructed and which comes from
the strictly sociological point of view. . In any case, it is necessary that the practice
has meaning, makes sense, and admit that there is first and foremost a "tacit and
practical thought which is inherent in any sensible practice
2 ».
However, to pose the problem of meaning in these terms is already to recognize

that it is necessarily defined in terms of anteriority (which is that from the point of
view of the agents) and posteriority (which is that of the point of view). of scholarly
view). But it is above all to apprehend it from the outset since
a properly epistemological questioning, that is to say from the problem of

the objectifying rupture and its consequences, from the double relationship
of distance and familiarity, in short, from the problem of the foundations of
sociological "objectivation" as we have seen above. Now, to bring the
question of the "meaning" of what is done back to the problem of
objectification is to risk missing it as such.
And, in fact, if this question is so little apparent, on first examination, in
Bourdieu's texts, it is also because of the epistemological and
anthropological priority which is granted to the problem of scientific
objectification: the question of meaning” of the practice thus seems
secondary, as of lesser importance or even as settled in fact once the
problem of objectification is itself overcome with the advent of the new
praxeology.
However, to re-enter the question of the meaning of the practice in its
specificity, it is also quite possible to start from the problematic of
objectification and the particular way that Bourdieu has of instructing it, via
the double critique of the subjectivism and objectivism. Because, if the
difficulty posed by one or the other of these two anthropological tendencies
is essentially due to the "point of view" that they adopt on the practice and
to the implicit renewal that they operate, due to the scholastic situation, of
the division, at the level of the fundamental categories of the theory,
between the subjective and the objective, it is also possible to re-read this
fundamental difficulty from the problematic of the meaning of practice.
Admittedly, the critical diagnosis formulated by Bourdieu, because it takes
as an almost exclusive criterion the gnoseological division subject/object,
clearly tends to make the question of the meaning of the practice a question
of second rank. However, this does not amount to making it a minor or
minor issue, far from it. It is even possible to restore the philosophies of
the meaning of practice that mobilize the subjectivist tendency and the
objectivist tendency, that is to say social phenomenology and structuralism. In fact, the d
social phenomenology and structuralism proves itself and reveals itself on

this question of the "meaning" of the practice: both have an already
constituted philosophy of meaning, which is enough for them in a way to
“apply” to the case of practice and which predetermines what to think under
the concept of practice.
1. From the subjectivist point of view of “social phenomenology” – if the
we follow Bourdieu's presentation of what is –, meaning of what is done or
done is always, primarily, understood in terms of the “meaning” of the lived
experience. Phenomenology has in fact been understood, if we come back
to the famous motif of the “return to things themselves”, as a way of
reappropriating the meaning of phenomena. As Husserl puts it:
Meanings that would be vivified only by remote and imprecise, inauthentic intuitions – if
indeed by any intuitions whatsoever – could not
3
satisfy. We want to return to “things themselves” (zur Sache selbst ).
Let us also recall that with Ideas I, Husserl took advantage of the theory
of phenomenological reduction, which "takes us back" (this is the meaning of
the term "reduction") to phenomena, that is to say to what appears to
consciousness. More precisely, the reduction has made possible a
thematization of the world as a transcendent real world: consciousness is not
no longer a natural consciousness included in the world, but a transcendental
consciousness which no longer relates to reality (the Realität in the sense of
what is worldly and naturally real) but to phenomena and the meaning they
have for us. Husserl consequently introduces the distinction between the
noesis as an act of positing being and founding meaning and the noema as
"sense of being", that is to say as an identifiable unity of meaning, as identical
meaning. various intentional acts. The object of the intentional relation is
indeed still the Gegenstand, in the sense of the Latin objectum , of what is
"posed" before consciousness, but we relate to it only through the noema,
that is that is to say the object identified in its unitary identity
persistent, in the synthetic coordination of the different actual and

potential experiences that refer to it. The phenomenological concept of
“constitution” corresponds precisely to the domain of this noetic-noematic
correlation and thus designates the synthetic activity of producing a unit
of meaning.
The constitution is thus this “function” of consciousness which
operates a synthesis of diversity and noetic multiplicities to release a
clearly identifiable and identifiable “sense of being”. Correlatively,
phenomenology can then be defined as constitutive analysis. In this
regime of analysis, the phenomenologist must disentangle the intentional
complication of aiming at the object by distinguishing between different
levels, different strata of constitution. Indeed, to say that the object
(Gegenstand) is a constituted unit of meaning is also to say that its
objectivity (Gegenständlichkeit) is only reached by the subsumption of
inferior objectities, implied in it. Husserl often thinks of this complexity of
consciousness according to the geological metaphor of a structuring by
layers: what needs to be described is therefore a certain “layering” of
meaning in consciousness. In this understanding, the idea of constitution
must not be understood as a creation of being: the process of constitution
is a differentiation of meaning between the different kinds of objects that
present themselves in the field of experience, it does not is in no way a
sort of creation ex nihilo which would proceed from a singular power of
which consciousness would be the seat.
But this stratification of consciousness cannot be discovered
means of a simple "division" of Platonic inspiration. For the geological
order of consciousness is not a simple superposition, but rather the
result of a multitude of complications and intentional implications.
To designate this characteristic of consciousness, Husserl most often
resorts to the idea of intertwining (Verflechtung). The strata of
consciousness oriented by the aim of a sense of being interpenetrate and
closely depend on each other. In this sense, we can say that the constitutive
analysis intends to lead the exploration of the differential solidarities which link
the experiences of consciousness to each other by ultimately arriving at the
identification of the invariants by means of imaginative or eidetic variations. If
you read Husserl carefully, the constitution is in short the unitary process, the
set of joint operations by virtue of which the object appears to me as an object
and takes on meaning in my eyes.
Now, this conception of the “meaning” of phenomena is also obviously valid
for everything relating to practice, insofar as the latter also appears as an object
of consciousness. Bourdieu's criticism of phenomenology therefore seems
justified, since in Husserl's case it is indeed a question of bringing the question
of meaning back to that of lived experience, even if Bourdieu does not uphold
all the specificities of the phenomenological conception of meaning.
2. From the objectivist point of view which is that of structuralism – there

again, if we follow the presentation given by Bourdieu, the –, the sense of
practice is worth consideration only if we manage to restore its “objective

meaning”. Structuralism thus claims to say what agents do, much better than
they can. The whole difficulty stems from the fact that structuralism, in particular
in its linguistic version proposed by Saussure, substitutes a “logical order of
intelligibility” for the practical social order of meaning:
Saussure, who elsewhere professes that "the point of view creates the object", designates here very clearly the point of view at which one must situate
oneself in order to produce "the proper object" of the new structural science: one cannot make speech the product of language only if and only if we are in
the logical order of intelligibility
4
.
The point of view thus adopted implies a form of closure which consecrates
the autonomy of the object studied: the meaning is already there, it is
presupposed. This is the principle of any “hermeneutical” approach, which
claims to be satisfied with the continuous explanation of meaning by itself and from itself:
To situate oneself in the order of intelligibility as Saussure does, is to adopt the point of view of the "impartial
spectator" who, attached to understanding in order to understand, is inclined to put this hermeneutic intention
at the principle of the practice of agents. , to act as if they were asking
5
questions they ask about them .
The objectivist conception of meaning therefore goes so far that it

presupposes an activity of comprehension which could ultimately be
attributed to the agents themselves. But in reality, it is based on a
conception of intelligibility which is truly accessible only from the scholarly point of view.
The logical order of intelligibility seems indifferent to agents, it unfolds
completely autonomously.
We can consider that going beyond, through a praxeology refocused
on the concepts of field and habitus, subjectivist and objectivist approaches
situated in ritual opposition will make it possible to resolve the question of
the meaning of the practice. Getting rid of subjectivism and objectivism
involves giving up the philosophies of meaning of lived experience and
objective meaning. But the question arises as to what should be retained
from one or the other of these two approaches. How to mark the difference
between a sociological analysis of practices and abstract philosophies of
meaning, which always tend to think about it in its generality and to
dehistoricize it? Is it certain that we can completely evacuate this question
by reaffirming the primacy of practice and by considering that meaning is
"made" by practice itself, as if it were no longer necessary to explain and
to justify, on an anthropological or philosophical level, what must still be
understood under the concept of “meaning”?
THE PROBLEM OF THE PRIORITY OF SENSE
To understand the sociological reversal proposed by Bourdieu, we

must start from the fact that the "meaning" of practices is distinguished by
its anteriority: it is always already there, in the practice that is accomplished and
sociology, in a sense, always comes as an afterthought. But this also

means that the agents always "know" in a certain way what they are doing
and they willingly give meaning to what they are doing: the meaning of
what is done can be the object of a reflection and an explanation, even
being augmented by a discursive production which will "justify",
"demonstrate", etc. However, the sense of practice is unique in that it most
often dispenses with explanation, description and justification: it is implicit
and does not have to produce its reasons. And this implicit is not an
absence of meaning or lesser meaning: there is something implicit because
one does things in a "natural" way, naive or thoughtless, in short by
abandoning oneself to a thought in action that It is not necessary to bring
it to the level of a thought of action or even to a discursive or rational
thought. The meaning of the practice inhabits the practice which is its
place of exercise, in a tacit and implicit mode. This is the fact from which
we must start in order to pose afresh the problem of social normativity, the
problem of the relation of practices to social norms:
If it is true that the practices produced by habitus, ways of walking, speaking, eating, likes and dislikes, etc., present
all the properties of instinctive behavior, and in particular automatism, there remains that a form of partial, incomplete,
discontinuous consciousness always accompanies the practice, whether in the form of this minimum of vigilance
which is essential to control the functioning of automatisms or in the form of discourse
6
intended to rationalize them (in the double sense of the term ).
Now, this anteriority of meaning poses a problem which is indissolubly

philosophical and epistemological. The conception that we have of this
anteriority conditions the possibility of social science and its exercise.
To determine too quickly or from the aftermath of scholarly knowledge
what the meaning of practice is, is to condemn, in its very principle, the
social science of practice. Or again, it comes down to leading him down a
path that will not allow him to grasp his reality and restore his objectivity.
In this respect, one can reconstruct without great difficulty, and without seeking not
more to systematize their presentation, different approaches to the meaning

of the practice which can appear as so many preconstituted but also
misleading solutions. They have in common to deploy strategies that try to
reabsorb the difference between the anteriority of the meaning of the practice
and the posteriority of the scholarly point of view on the practice.
The first temptation that should be renounced is that of immediate
understanding, which intends to grasp on the spot and through “empathy”
the meaning of what is being done. From this perspective, scholarly
understanding would operate retrospectively, but by managing to rediscover
the very understanding that the agent has of his own practice: it therefore
cancels out the difference between scholarly understanding and practical understanding.
For Bourdieu, this model of intelligibility cannot be sociologically viable for
two main reasons. On the one hand, instead of rediscovering the meaning
that the practice takes on in the eyes of the agent, we are content above all
to renew "the illusion of immediate understanding, characteristic of the
7
practical experience of the familiar universe », that of a self-transparency
which implies number of misunderstandings. On the other hand, by taking
pleasure in this type of immediacy, we forbid ourselves in advance of any
questioning about the social conditions of the possibility of knowledge. In the
model of immediate comprehension, the meaning of the practice is recognized
in its anteriority, but any sociological posteriority is thereby compromised.
Similarly, Bourdieu cannot yield to this other temptation, which would be

that of a hermeneutics of meaning which would be content to interpret action
as a text: the anteriority of meaning finds its justification in its deposit and its
collection, thought out on the model of reading and writing, but this approach
condemns itself to a form of principled closure. In Le Sens pratique, Bourdieu
denounces the purely grammarian approach to language as follows:
[…] the grammarian is inclined to treat language tacitly as an autonomous and self-sufficient object, that is to say as an
endless finality, without any other end, in any case, than to be

8
interpreted, like a work of art .
There is, moreover, at the principle of any hermeneutical conception a form of

expressivism which does not make it possible to recognize the existence of a meaning
being made in and through practices. What matters is no longer so much the fact that
the practice makes sense, but what it can signify as beyond itself. Thus, Bourdieu
notes, in another passage of the Practical Sense, that:
Language spontaneously becomes an accomplice of this hermeneutic philosophy which leads us to think of action as
something that needs to be deciphered, by saying for example of a gesture or a ritual act that it expresses something,
instead of simply saying that it makes sense or, as

9
English, that it makes sense .
MODE OF OPERATION
Going beyond subjectivist and objectivist philosophies of the meaning of practice,

going back sociologically to the anteriority of meaning by analyzing practices: this can
only be done by implementing a relational and constructivist way of thinking (in the
methodological sense where Bourdieu
10
understands this term ). Practice must be analyzed according to the relationships that
structure it, objectively and subjectively; and this analysis is not the product of a
confrontation with a "given", but the product of a methodical construction of the object
to be known. To take note of the anteriority of meaning is to make it, through the
epistemological break, the starting point of an analysis which will then take it as a point
of reference for the methodical construction of the sociological object. A second
intelligibility, which is no longer that of practice in its relationship of immanence to
meaning, can then be gained: practice discovers a new meaning in it, thought of
relationally and from the perspective of social normativity.
To think meaning relationally is to give up seeking a foundation for it, that

it be situated, in the manner of what phenomenology proposes, in the subject
returning to himself. Thinking about meaning relationally also means
desubstantializing it or fighting against
substantialist temptations that are at work in the philosophies of meaning: the
meaning of a practice is not a unit closed in on itself that it would be a question
of situating within intentional life. The relational mode of thought, finally,
consecrates the renunciation of any philosophy of meaning which would
approach this question in an exclusively philosophical mode, that is to say by
dispensing with analyzing the various social conditions of possibility which are
at the principle of the production of meaning.
Resuming the question of the production of meaning from the perspective
of the construction of the object which is to be known sociologically, is to
postulate that a grasp of its objectivity is possible and that this will depend on
the identification of the social conditions of the possibility of the phenomenon
under consideration, that is to say, by thereby discovering a certain social normativity.
It is not enough to break with the obvious meaning of practice, which is that of
lived experience, nor to take pleasure in an objectivism which can no longer
recapture it: we must hold together lived experience and the inscription of
practice in objective reports (i.e. which do not depend on the subject itself).
There is a possible sociology of the meaning of practice when we set ourselves
the task of putting an end to the face-to-face, practical or gnoseological, of the
subject and the object in order to bring to light the objectivity strictly social
aspect of this relationship. In this sense, sociology is a task, a "profession" as
Bourdieu points out: it cannot be conceived, abstractly, as a reflection on
society in general or on the social, but must be carried out through the analysis
of practices by conferring on them a secondary intelligibility, a meaning
understood from the social conditions of the possibility of the practice.
The sociological reversal is essentially due to the fact that it is necessary to

11
hold on to the idea that practice makes . This common formula takes
Bourdieu sense a special meaning. It signifies that practice is the unique place
for the "production" and representation of meaning and that there is no need to
seek beyond what is given there, in and through practice therefore, in multiplying
presuppositions as to the “entities” that would preside over its advent. In this
sense, we must guard against the sometimes surreptitious return of the
philosophy of meaning and the temptation of any superfluous ontology which
would refer the production of meaning to instances of production which would
exist independently of the exercise of practices. On the contrary, we must stick
to the genesis of meaning within practice itself : it is practice, literally, that
makes sense. Therefore, what is to be analyzed is the modus operandi, the
practice in the making and not the opus operatum, the work done, completed,
the finished product of the practice. Taking into account the anteriority of the
meaning of the practice, implied by the very posture of a sociology which
intends to return to what is done and what has been done, always exposes us
to the consideration of the only work done. , of the unrolled and completed
action, contemplated in the blossoming of its different “moments” and thus in
the unity of a complete “meaning” (and this, whether the practice “succeeds” or
not). The practice analyst comes "always after the battle
12
».
SENSE OF PRACTICE, SENSE OF PRACTICE AND SENSE OF PLAY
In order to understand how the conceptualization of the meaning of practice

is determined, we must return to a passage from Practical Sense already
quoted above. This is part of a sequence where Bourdieu criticizes objectivism
and designates one of its limits in its inability to bring about a synthesis between
lived meaning and objective meaning:
[…] because [objectivism] ignores the relationship between the lived meaning that social phenomenology makes explicit and the objective meaning that
social physics or objectivist semiology constructs, it prohibits itself from analyzing the conditions of production and the functioning of the sense of social
play which allows
13
live as self-evident the meaning objectified by the institutions .
The overcoming of the alternative between the lived meaning of

phenomenology and the objective meaning of structuralism is outlined in the
direction of the “sense of social play”. What exactly this is, we will not learn until
much later, at the beginning of chapter IV of the Practical Sense (“Belief and the body”):
Product of the experience of the game, therefore of the objective structures of the space of play, the meaning of the game is what makes the game have
a subjective meaning, that is to say a meaning and a reason for being. , but also a direction, an orientation, a future, for those who participate in it and
thereby recognize the issues […]. And also an objective meaning, from the fact that the meaning of the probable future that gives the practical mastery
of the psychic regularities which are constitutive of the economy of a field is the principle of sensible practices, that is to say, linked by an intelligible
relationship to the conditions of their performance, and also between them, therefore immediately endowed with meaning and raison d'être for any
individual endowed with the sense of the game (hence the effect of consensual validation which founds the collective belief
14
in the game and its fetishes ).
This long quotation calls for several remarks. We see first of all that the
sense of practice understood as "meaning of play" presents, in its definition, a
subjective dimension, which defines this sense as subjective, lived sense: it is
signification and direction (the two current meanings of term "meaning"), except
that the direction it assigns is not spatial, but temporal. On the other hand, the
meaning of the game is given as an objective meaning and it is necessary to
note the incidental definition of sensible practice , that is to say of practice
which maintains an “intelligible” relation to its historical and social conditions:
the meaning of the practice is then no longer a private affair, reserved for the
sole “subject”, but indeed everyone's affair. It presents a social dimension, in
the sense that it is relative to a universe of relations (and not only of
significations) which is a space of possibilities: within this social space, there
are meanings practiced because they are first of all practicable, i.e. made
possible by conditions
material, social and historical, through complex relationships between individuals

and between individuals and things. It is in this sense that:
Each agent, whether he knows it or not, whether he likes it or not, is a producer and reproducer of objective meaning: because his
actions and his works are the product of a modus operandi of which he is not the producer. and over which he has no conscious
control, they enclose an "intention

15
objective”, as the scholastics say, which always goes beyond its conscious intentions .
To suggest that the meaning of the practice depends on the meaning of the
game is finally to reorient the very definition of what is meant by “meaning”. We
must both give leave to the philosophies of meaning and guard against their
eventual return, and the best way to do this is still not to renew the traditional
conception of meaning as signification, but to make it an expression or a
secondary determination of a "meaning" which is first of all understood as a
faculty. Meaning is itself understood as a practical capacity and, above all, as a
way of feeling. To break free from purely semiological, formalist, existentialist
or hermeneutical definitions of meaning, one must make sense something other
than what it can be for philosophy and restore it as sociologically determined
This
meaning, that is to say as a logic of practice.
This assimilation is not avoidance, dissembling substitution, but renewal: it

is always the “practical sense” that decides the meaning of the practice, and
more particularly the meaning of the practices. This is the reason why the
question of the meaning of practice is not only inseparable from that of the
nature and the modalities of exercise of the practical sense, but why it is entirely
resolved there. The sense of practice is due to the logic of practical sense.
But this resorption of the question of the intelligibility of practice in the logics
of practical meaning also presents something unsatisfactory. What is the
philosophy of meaning that makes it possible?
THE PRACTICAL-SOCIAL ORDER OF SENSE
The conception of the meaning of practices which is indicated is not

without affinity with certain pragmatist conceptions of meaning. In the great
interview which is at the heart of the Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, Loïc
Wacquant questioned Bourdieu on the proximity of his thought to the
tradition of American pragmatism and in particular Dewey. And Bourdieu recognizes:
I became aware of these studies and this determined me, fairly recently, to take a closer look at Dewey's
philosophy, of which I had only a very partial and superficial view.
Indeed, the affinities or encounters are indisputable and I believe that I understand the principle: my effort to
react against the deep intellectualism of European philosophies (with a few exceptions, such as that of
Wittgenstein, Heidegger or Merleau-Ponty) m brought me unknowingly closer to thoughts that the European
tradition of "depth" and obscurity tended to treat as foils.
Basically, and without going into all the common points and all the differences, I would say that the theory of
habitus presents many similarities with the theories which, like that of Dewey, give a central place to the " habit
" , understood not as a mechanical repetitive habit but as an active and creative relationship to the world, and
which refuses all the conceptual dualisms on which almost all post-Cartesian philosophies are built:
16
subject and object, interior and exterior, material and spiritual, individual and social, etc. .
However, to better understand what the Bourdieusian conception of the

meaning of practice still owes to a certain philosophy, or to better show the
way it has of situating itself in a certain relationship of affinity with it, we are
going to propose a conceptual detour. Bourdieu often thinks of the meaning
of practice in terms of "practical logic". But to analyze it is also to discover
what could be called an “order of meaning”. To our knowledge, Bourdieu
does not himself use the
expression "order of meaning" and if it were to be encountered, it is
unlikely that he would conceive it exactly in the terms that we ourselves
have chosen.
To speak of an "order of meaning" is therefore to propose an interpretative
key whose primary objective is certainly not to account for all the
aspects of Bourdieusian theory of practice, but to offer a focused perspective

capable of bringing into full light certain particular aspects of this theory. If this
interpretative key seems precious to us, it is because it also makes it possible
to account for the coherence of the positive references to phenomenology and
to specify the exact nature of its reinvestment. Moreover, it structures a first
dimension, absolutely crucial and founding of the two other dimensions identified
(that of temporality and reflexivity), of the anthropology of the “social subject”.
The order of meaning is a practical order, which depends first and foremost
on the operating mode of practice: one cannot recapture meaning solely by
considering the work done, the product or the effect, because you have to see
what the agents do, how they act. It is therefore not a matter of abstractly
opposing a philosophy of meaning to other philosophies of meaning, but of
returning to meaning as it is practiced, to meaning being made , to allow
sociology to construct its object on new foundations. If a new conception of the
meaning of practice is required, it is because of purely sociological requirements,
because it is a question of sociologically determining the meaning of what is
done.
The practical order of meaning has as its first characteristic the fact that the
meaning of practice unfolds according to a certain order, in a certain ordering.
The modus operandi has its own logic which decides the meaning of what is
done, that of the meaning of the game which imposes a certain temporality:
The action guided by the “sense of the game” has all the appearances of the rational action that an impartial
observer would draw, equipped with all the useful information and capable of controlling it rationally.
And yet it does not have reason as its principle. It is enough to think of the instantaneous decision of the tennis
player who goes to the net at the wrong time to understand that it has nothing in common with the skilful
construction that the trainer, after analysis, elaborates to account for it and to
17
draw communicable lessons .
The “meaning of the game” which decides what, in the order of

practice, makes sense or not can therefore give rise to rational
reconstructions a posteriori. But if this type of reconstruction after the
event is possible, it is because the meaning of what is being done already
has a certain order, which is that of the practice itself. This order is due
to the fact that certain acts are carried out one after the other, at a given
time and not at another, and this, according to a direction which is
perhaps not clear at first sight, can sometimes reveal itself gradually,
becoming explicit or remaining implicit but always determines the
“meaning” of what is done: the direction the practice takes decides its
meaning. To stick to the modus operandi is to do justice to the order of
meaning which unfolds temporally, in the practice in the making. In
chapter V of Le Sens pratique (“The logic of practice”), Bourdieu makes
this temporality a constituent dimension of the meaning of practice:
The practice unfolds in time and has all the correlative characteristics, such as irreversibility, which
synchronization destroys; its temporal structure, that is to say its rhythm, its tempo and above all its
orientation, is constitutive of its meaning: as in the case of music, any manipulation of this structure, would
it be a simple change of tempo, acceleration or deceleration, causes it to undergo an irreducible
destructuring to the effect of a simple change of reference axis. In short, because of its complete
immanence to duration, practice is linked with time, not only because it is played out in time, but also
because it plays
18
strategically time and in particular tempo .
However, this internal "order" presented by the practice, this play of

succession, orientation and meaning, is based on an experience of
necessity. The sense of practice is experienced as an experience of
order because the choice one adopts is adopted as if one had no real
choice. The practical sense, as Bourdieu often repeats, is “necessity
made virtue”:
And yet agents do, far more often than if they were acting randomly, "the only thing to do." This is because,
in surrendering to the intuitions of a "practical sense" which is the product of
prolonged exposure to conditions similar to those in which they are placed, they
19
anticipate the immanent necessity throughout the world .
The traditional question of the nature and foundations of the social order is
attested to, without however being reduced to it, in that of the order of meaning.
It is because the meaning of what is done is practically put in order thanks to the
practical encounter between “objective structures” and “subjective structures”
that the social itself appears “in order”:
The legitimation of the social order […] is not the product, as some believe, of a deliberately oriented action of propaganda or
symbolic imposition; it results from the fact that agents apply to the objective structures of the social world structures of
perception and appreciation which are derived from these objective structures and therefore tend to perceive the world as
20
obvious .
It is clear that it is not enough to say that the question of the meaning of the
practice is exhausted by identifying the role of the "practical sense" or the "sense
of the game": it is also necessary to show how this is to be the work and above
all, to make it definitively thinkable and thought through by developing a theory
of practical meaning. It will therefore be necessary to generalize, conceptualize,
possibly philosophize or at least find philosophy on its own ground. But the
theoretical effort put into the elaboration of an anthropology of practice can only
be conceived, according to Bourdieu, in relation to the "profession" of the
sociologist who sets himself the task of analyzing practices and giving them a
intelligibility that they have no premium
on board :
I am aware that I have little chance of succeeding in truly transmitting, by the sole virtue of discourse, the principles of this
philosophy and the practical dispositions, the “profession”, in which they are embodied. Worse, I know that by designating them
with the name of philosophy, by a concession to ordinary usage, I expose myself to seeing them transformed into theoretical
propositions, subject to theoretical discussions, capable of erecting new obstacles to the transmission of manners
21
constant and controlled ways of acting and thinking which constitute a method .
We must credit Bourdieu with a remarkable theoretical inventiveness,

which deserves to be better recognized by philosophers, and admit that
this inventiveness is dictated by the prerequisites of the task of sociology:
to understand what individuals do by restoring all the of the social, denied
or misunderstood, in what is thus done. Now, it is by developing this
theory of practical meaning, by showing how Bourdieu thought of the
order of meaning as a practical-social order, that we can realize the two
intentions which are at the root of this study and which we stated from
the beginning of the Introduction: take stock of the uses of phenomenology
and see how these contribute to the constitution of a sociologically
informed anthropology of the “social subject”.
We therefore propose to see what the interpretative key of the “order
of meaning” can open up, by following the declension of this motif in
Bourdieusian praxeology, theory of practice as “practical meaning”. From
this perspective, the contribution of phenomenology is obvious. Even
though Bourdieu is opposed frontally and globally to the phenomenological
conception of meaning as the meaning of lived experience, his own
conception of the meaning of practice continues to mobilize terms,
analyzes and concepts that are borrowed from phenomenology. . But
these repeats are not the declension of one and the same reference,
continuous and explicit, to a homogeneous movement, as if this single
reference were enough to support its own developments. On the one
hand, the reference to phenomenology is not exclusive and is combined
with a multitude of borrowings of various origins, which range from
structuralism to the philosophy of ordinary language, passing through
references to ethnological or sociological literature. . On the other hand,
it is obvious that we are dealing more with a collection of occasional
borrowings which find their relative relevance in relation to concepts
profoundly reworked by Bourdieu. The integration of the contributions
and achievements of social phenomenology operates in a diffracted, selective way. E
social phenomenology is condemned in its overall project and in its

approach, it remains possible to break it down and rearrange some of
its elements in a new theoretical complex.
1. SP, p. 62.
2. SP, p. 62.
3. E. Husserl, Logical Investigations. Volume 2. Research I, Paris, PUF, 1959, Introduction, § 1, p. 6.
4. SP, p. 52.
5. SP, p. 53.
6. ETP, p. 305.
7. SP, p. 44
8. SP, p. 53.
9. SP, p. 62.
10. Bourdieu stresses on numerous occasions the need for a relational thought which must be the principle of the
social sciences: "The notion of space encloses, in itself, the principle of a relational apprehension of the social
world: it affirms in effect that all the “reality” that it designates resides in the mutual exteriority of the elements that
compose it. Apparent, directly visible beings, whether individuals or groups, exist and subsist in and through
difference, that is, insofar as they occupy relative positions in a space of relations. which, although invisible and
always difficult to manifest empirically, is the most real reality (the ens realissimum, as the scholastics said) and
the real principle of the behavior of individuals and groups. », PR, p. 53.
11. We owe C. Gautier to have drawn our attention to this formulation, in the programmatic remarks outlined at the
end of La force du social. Philosophical inquiry into the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu's practices, Paris, Le Cerf,
2012, p. 447.
12. SP, p. 137
13. SP, p. 46.
14. SP, p. 111
15. ETP, p. 273.
16. SRI, p. 170-171. This proximity is also emphasized by V. Kestenbaum, The Phenomenological Sense of John
Dewey: Habit and Meaning, Atlantic Highlands, Humanities Press, 1977 and JM
Ostrow, Social sensitivity : An Analysis of Experience and Habit, Stony Brook, State University of New York Press,
1990.
17. CD, p. 21.
18. SP, p. 137
19. CD, p. 21.
20. CD, p. 160-161.
21.RP , p. 10.
Chapter 5
The presupposition: the doxa
The practical-social order of meaning, as it unfolds in practice itself,

presupposes a set of theses, beliefs, which structure in advance our
relationship to the practical environment and to the social world that
surrounds us. These presuppositions are the principle of the maintenance
of the established social order. They are also conditions of possibility of
the practical order of meaning, but these conditions of possibility are
essentially characterized by their gnoseological dimension: they consist of
a thought or a form of unreflected knowledge on which practical sense can
bet to accomplish itself. , deploying the order of meaning and governing practices.
EXPERIENCE NATURALITY
The concept of doxa designates, in Bourdieu, the set of presuppositions

required for the meaning of practice to be realized in and through practice.
More precisely, the doxa is “adhesion to the presuppositions […] of the
1
game". Bourdieu conducts the examination of what he also calls "experience"
2
doxic in chapter IV of the Practical sense entitled "The belief and the
3
body », chapter which precedes that devoted to « The logic of the practical
».
The doxic experience is characterized by its dimension of evidence: it
defines a register of “knowledge” (appreciations, judgments, evaluations,
ways of thinking) which go without saying. This knowledge is practical
resources that find their guarantee in a particular belief that is not
characterized by its object but by the type of certainty, immediate and implicit,
that it procures. In Practical Reasons, Bourdieu clarifies the status of this
belief as follows:
The belief of which I speak is not an explicit belief, explicitly posed as such in relation to the possibility of a non-belief, but an
immediate adhesion, a doxic submission to the injunctions of the world which is obtained when the mental structures of the one to
whom the injunction is addressed are in agreement with the structures involved in the injunction addressed to it. In
4
this case, we say that it was self-evident, that there was nothing else to do .
If the doxa is, in a general way, in the sense in which it still defines it, it
5
the Sketch, this "implicit and undisputed becomes more precisely,
state in practical sense where it finds its specific definition, an "adhesion to
the presuppositions of the game": if practical sense can operate in the mode
of the implicit and the tacit, it is because the doxa is effective and the agent
adheres to the “presuppositions” of the meaning of the game, to what is
taken for granted so that the game can be played and is worth playing. The
evidence of doxa is not valid in the sense of Evidenz, but in the sense of
Selbstverständlichkeit, of "it goes without saying" which confers on the
practical social order of meaning the force of the "order of things".
". In this sense, doxic
6
experience is powerfully realistic: it creates a sense of reality, a fundamental

belief in the practical world as a possible playground where practices have
meaning and values. But it is also what makes the social order an order of
meaning, since the doxa is also the principle of the immediate understanding
of the social world:
“[…] the (relative) homogeneity of the resulting habitus is the principle of an objective harmonization
of practices and works […] which lead to them being experienced as obvious or
7
self-evident, i.e. as immediately intelligible and predictable […]. »
If the practical-social order of meaning is "immediately intelligible", it is because

the practical experience that one can have of it, in and through practice, relies on
implicit evidence: meaning is order and in order for this specific reason that it cannot
be questioned from the outset. It is because the doxa fully plays its role that our ways
of perceiving, evaluating and acting seem self-evident to us and that the "meaning of
the game" implies the order of meaning.
8
.
Consequently, if we want to be able to consider practice, we must free ourselves

from this set of presuppositions, suspend their effectiveness and operate a sort of "
practical epoche , of suspending the first adhesion to the established order
9
". This can also occur when the evidence is called into question,
when there is disagreement, when the "meaning of the game" no longer operates and
what was taken for granted is put back into play. caused by new discourses or new
practices, or even by an evolution of objective structures. But this “ practical epoché ”
can also become a methodical gesture, not in the sense of phenomenological
reduction, but to inaugurate a regime of objectification of the objectifying subject,
beginning with the objectification of his doxic experience.
To objectify the doxa is to agree to no longer take it for what it is, that is to say
for a sum of evidence, but to try to restore its history and to make its genesis . Even
if this genesis of the doxa is fully intelligible only on the condition of recapturing the
principle of adjusted practice, namely the habitus – which we will soon do – we can
already suggest that, according to Bourdieu, the extension of the doxa corresponds
to an adjustment in relation to objective structures and to the internalization of these
same structures within the habitus. Doxic experience is the product of socialization
and incorporation of "external structures" or
"objective" which make possible the "spontaneous" adjustment of internal,

subjective structures with the regularities of the social world.
And when the incorporated structures and the objective structures are in agreement, when the perception is
constructed according to the structures of what is perceived, everything seems obvious, everything goes
without saying. It is the doxic experience in which one grants the world a deeper belief than all
10
beliefs (in the ordinary sense) since it is not thought of as a belief .
To restore the history of the doxa is to question what it tends to pass off
as unquestionable. The doxa has the resource of excluding in advance the
question of its own genesis and more precisely "the question that the doxic
experience of the social world excludes by definition, that of the (particular)
11
conditions which make this experience possible the doxic ". In effect,
experience is to the principle of misrecognition of the arbitrary (historical)
character of relations to objective structures and of objective structures
between them. Naturalness is the absence of questions and questioning. It
is indeed because the internal structures of the habitus successfully
reproduce or replicate the external or objective structures of the social world,
that agents can misunderstand the reality of these objective structures in
order to consider and experience the internal structures in their way of
perceiving , to evaluate and act as "natural". The naturalness of the doxic
experience proceeds from the ignorance of the reality of the dialectical
relationship between the internal structures of the habitus and the objective
structures of the field and of the social world. From this point of view, the
identification of the exact nature of the doxic experience is of great
importance in order to understand, later on, what may be the reflective
capacities of the agent and in what this "reflexivity" may well consist: if we
want to have a chance of identifying the social conditions of the possibility of
knowledge, we must be able to free ourselves from the empire of the doxa.
Misrecognition resides in the fact of accepting this set of fundamental, pre-reflective presuppositions that
social agents engage in the simple fact of taking the world for granted, that is to say as it is, and of finding it.
natural because they apply structures to it
cognitive skills that come from the very structures of this world. […] Of all the forms of “clandestine persuasion”, the most
implacable is that which is exercised, quite simply, by the order
12 things .
Because the doxa is ignorance of its social conditions of possibility and

submission to the “order of things”, it is also the principle of the exercise of
symbolic domination. It is an effective instrument of its perpetuation. Bourdieu
suggests, however, that the members of the same social space will have different
interests with regard to the perpetuation of the order of meaning ensured by the
doxa.
On the one hand, the members enjoying a dominant position will have an
interest in defending the integrity of the doxa : they will work for its extension and
will continue to pass the arbitrariness of domination for granted. By cultivating
"automatisms", the doxa makes it possible to maintain "a cultural arbitrariness
and [a] political order which impose themselves on the mode of
13
blinding and unnoticed evidence”. The institution from the point of view of the
dominant can find its political translation in the functioning of the state:
The doxa is a particular point of view, the point of view of the dominators, which presents itself and imposes itself as a universal
point of view; the point of view of those who dominate by dominating the State and who have constituted their point of view
14
into a universal point of view by making the State .
On the other hand, the interest of the members of the social space who
occupy dominated positions there is that of a questioning of the obviousnesses
15
of "the belief of which Hume spoke, the doxic submission to the established ».
order However, As we can clearly see, the doxic experience conceals an

extraordinary capacity to resist being called into question and questioned, since
its very principle is to ensure the accomplishment of practices that are spared all
reflection and all questioning. It must therefore be considered that the questioning
of the established gnoseological and practical order passes through a rupture
which is quite different from the simple crisis, always surmountable, of the functioning of
the doxic experience (due to the confrontation with another cultural

model or the evolution of economic structures). The break with the
order of established and practically operative meaning inaugurates in
Bourdieu's eyes the register of politics:
Politics begins, strictly speaking, with the denunciation of this tacit contract of adhesion to the established
order which defines the original doxa ; in other words, political subversion presupposes
16
a cognitive subversion, a conversion of the vision of the world .
This quotation does not only include, as we can see, a definition of

politics as a questioning of the established social order, that is to say of
unjust and unequal relations of domination. It also makes doxa one of
the best guarantees of the established order and consequently a priority
issue for political reflection.
FROM NATURAL (PHENOMENOLOGICAL) ATTITUDE TO (SOCIOLOGICAL) DOXA
We will argue in what follows that the Bourdieusian concept of doxa

is a rereading, in the light of the praxeology of the practical sense, of
the phenomenological theory of the natural attitude. However, it is
obviously not the Husserlian conception of the natural attitude that
holds Bourdieu's attention, but rather that of Schütz. In L'Esquisse
pour une auto analyse, Bourdieu points out that he became aware of
Schütz's work through Raymond Aron. Thus, he recalls, regarding his
decision to conduct a sociological survey of the peasant world of Béarn:
I had just discovered, thanks to Raymond Aron, who had known him, the work of Schütz, and it seemed
interesting to me to question, like the phenomenologist, the familiar relationship to the social world, but in
a quasi-experimental way, by taking as the object of an objective, even objectivist analysis, a world that
was familiar to me, where all the agents were first names, where the ways of speaking, thinking and
acting were completely self-evident for me, and to objectify, at the same time my
17
familiarity report with this object […].
Schütz's discovery is therefore not a simple theoretical contribution but it

accompanies the methodological, epistemological and ultimately anthropological
reflection on the relationship of familiarity that the sociologist can maintain with
regard to the world or the social space of which he is from. A re-reading of the
phenomenological tradition plays out very clearly in the sociological re-
elaboration of the concept of doxa, which Bourdieu initially defines, in the Outline
of a Theory of Practice, as "what is out of the question and which any agent
tacitly grants the current state of affairs by the sole fact of acting in accordance
18
with social propriety Under the Greek lexicon of the doxa, it is indeed the ».
entire Schützian analysis of the natural attitude that is called upon to study the
mechanisms gnoseological aspects of the maintenance of the established order.
Indeed, Schütz initiated a practice of phenomenology which intends to spare

itself any recourse to the transcendental apparatus in order to content itself with
working from the natural attitude, in it and towards it. The natural attitude
remains the permanent referent of this reflective attitude. It is worth to him as
an instance of validation, legitimization and confirmation of his statements.
Armed with this new methodological situation, the phenomenologist can
therefore renounce the primacy of the transcendental attitude. Schütz therefore
abandoned all recourse to the attitude
transcendental to advocate the return to a phenomenology developed as a
reflexive analysis of the natural attitude. Correlatively, Schütz borrows from
Husserl the idea of a world of life which he conceives as the a priori structural
horizon of all social life. The world of life is what is constantly presupposed in
the natural attitude: it is a stratum of reality on the background of which concrete
and singular social worlds are built. However, in the natural attitude, the world
of life does not require specific thematization but rather serves as the primary
support for any attentional thematization. The experience we have of the world
of life is therefore doxical, in the sense of a fundamental evidence that is not
challenged.
cause. In the natural attitude, the world of life is precisely what I never
attach importance to, what is never in question. In the natural attitude,
the world of life is what one takes for granted, for obvious. We grant
him the benefit of Selbstverständlichkeit, a self-understanding that
blinds us to what he really is. The world of life is what is taken for
granted, what I leave unquestioned, even though it forms the backdrop
to all my activities. In the natural attitude, the world of life is that reality
whose comprehension
19
s'impose d'elle-même (obvious reality ).
Bourdieu retains the essence of these analyses, for example when

he defines doxa as what is left "in an implicit and undiscussed state
20
(doxa )”, while restoring the social conditions of possibility of that
ci). From this perspective, the difference between a phenomenology of
natural attitude and a sociology of doxic experience is twofold.
While the first describes the functioning of the natural attitude and
the different structures of the world of daily life in a perspective which
remains, massively, that of a theory of knowledge, the second endeavors
to restore the social conditions of possibility of doxic experience. Where
the phenomenology of the natural attitude can claim a certain universality
(the natural attitude being an essential dimension of the relationship
that any subject maintains with regard to the world which surrounds
him, whatever the social and cultural variations which may also arise),
the sociology of doxic experience restores its social and historical roots,
that is to say its relativity, its contingency and its arbitrariness.
Moreover, the Bourdieusian perception of doxa opens up, much

more clearly than in the case of phenomenological analysis, to a
veritable politics of doxic experience. It therefore constitutes an important
element, which cannot be neglected, with a view to a social critique
situated on the horizon of sociological analysis. Doxic experience is never
established once and for all, it is always the contingent product of a

conjuncture:
Having said that, we must not forget that this primordial political belief, this doxa, is an orthodoxy, a straight, dominant
vision, which only imposed itself after struggles against competing visions; and that the “natural attitude” of which the
phenomenologists speak, that is to say the first experience of the world of common sense, is a politically constructed
relation, like the categories of perception which make it possible. What is presented today in the mode of evidence,
below consciousness and choice, has very often been the issue of struggles and has not been
21
instituted only at the end of confrontations between dominant and dominated .
In other words, the recognition of the decisive importance of the doxa

obviously owes something to the phenomenological analyzes of the
natural attitude, but this contribution is immediately reconsidered from an
issue absent from the phenomenological perspective, that of a political
construction of the relations of perception. Bourdieu thus places the
analysis of doxic knowledge at the service of a “politicized” conception of
the order of meaning as a social order.
1. SP, p. 111
2. SP, p. 44; ETP, p. 234
3. MS, p. 111-134. The consideration of doxa is much less developed in the Sketch, even if Bourdieu already does justice
to the experience of naturalness as an experience of the “self-evident”.
4.RP , p. 188.
5. ETP, p. 411.
6. ISR, p. 222.
7. ETP, p. 264.
8. Bourdieu considers that the empire of doxa also extends to intellectuals who “leave the presuppositions of their thought
in an unthought state (doxa) ”, a situation which is that of “ epistemic doxa ”, cf.
RP, p. 217.
9. LPS, p. 188.
10.RP , p. 156.
11. ETP, p. 234.
12. SRI, p. 222. The “clandestine persuasion” mentioned by Bourdieu should be compared to the “silent persuasion” mentioned by
Merleau-Ponty in Le visible et l'invisible, Paris, Gallimard, 1964, p. 263. We owe this indication to Jocelyn Benoist.
13. ETP, p. 300.
14. PR, p. 129. See also RP, p. 107: "If the state is able to exercise symbolic violence, it is because it is embodied both in objectivity
in the form of specific structures and mechanisms and also in 'subjectivity' or, if we want, in the brains, in the form of mental
structures, schemes of perception and thought. Because it is the culmination of a process which institutes it both in social structures
and in mental structures adapted to these structures, the instituted institution makes one forget that it is the result of a long series
of acts of institution and presents itself with all the appearances of the natural. »
15.RP , p. 128.
16. LPS, p. 188.
17. WATER, p. 80.
18. ETP, p. 239.
19. Sur l'ensemble de cette analysis, for A. Schütz, T. Luckmann, structures of the living environment, Constance, UVK, 2003, p.
3 sq.
20. Ibid., p. 411.
21.RP , p. 128-129.
Chapter 6
Le principe: l'habitus
The order of meaning is revealed in the very practice of agents. The

habitus is, in a certain sense, the name of the principle of recognition and
production of the order of meaning by agents. It confers on the order of
meaning its properly practical scope:
The habitus is this generative and unifying principle which retranslates the intrinsic and relational
characteristics of a position into a unitary style of life, that is to say a unitary set of choices.
1
people, goods, practices .
Thus the habitus must be considered as the true operator of social

normativity. In Science of science and reflexivity, Bourdieu again underlines
this principled dimension of habitus :
[…] the notion of habitus can be understood both as a general principle of the theory of action – as
opposed to the principles invoked by an intentionalist theory specific principle, –, and like a
differentiated and differentiating, of orientation of the actions of a category

2
of agents, linked to specific training conditions .
The theory of habitus, because it deals with a principle, has the function
of introducing a genetic perspective on the order of meaning. In this sense,
the concept of habitus, like that of field, is first and foremost
a whole methodological concept, which guides the researcher's approach. Its first
function, in this respect, is prophylactic in that the concept of habitus makes it
possible to avoid having recourse to concepts likely to convey implicit
anthropologies. But its role is also, more positively, to allow the establishment of a
new point of view on the “ordinary order of meaningful practices which is underlying
3
it. Here again, the persistence of a » and especially on the order of the
certain phenomenological heritage (which is perhaps not the most obvious at first
glance) deserves to be underlined, insofar as it informs, in part, the determination
of the habit concept.
HABITUS PRESENTATIONS
There is a text by Bourdieu which is particularly clear as to the intentions which

may have guided and determined the elaboration of the theory of habitus: it is the
sequence entitled "Questions of method" in the Rules of the art. This retrospective
text dispenses with re-exposing theses already developed in the Outline of a theory
of practice or in the Practical sense to return to the theoretical decisions which
prompted Bourdieu to found a new theory of practice and to promote the concept
of habit.
Bourdieu recalls first of all that “the notion of habitus […] expresses above all
the refusal of a whole series of alternatives in which social science (and, more
generally, all anthropological theory) has confined itself, that of consciousness (or
of the subject) and the unconscious, that of finalism and mechanism, etc. of going
4
beyond and not of synthesis, ". The concept of habitus is therefore a concept
where it is a question of gaining a way of thinking, strong from the new sociological
“point of view” which will work beyond the usual theoretical dualisms. As a result,
there is a frequent mode of presentation of the theory of habitus which plays on
these overruns: the
concept of habitus is often defined by the rejection of concepts in reciprocal oppositions.

More generally, the habitus is circumscribed with the help of statements in chiasm, as if it
were necessary to replay in the definition of the concept the duality
5
outdated: interiority/exteriority, structured structure/structuring structure This type of .
presentation no doubt has a certain utility, but it sometimes misleads the reader because it
prevents us from grasping with precision what Bourdieu means by the term habitus. It
preserves familiarity with more usual and less original concepts, but it also often comes at a
high cost: by presenting the habitus in this way by saying above all what it is not, one runs
the risk of remaining to a purely negative determination, or at the very least to allow a certain
indeterminacy to establish itself.
Another presentation of the theory of habitus favors more willingly the restitution of its
genealogy. The "Questions of method" in the Rules of the art constitute a form of clarification
with regard to the readings that may have been given of the theory of habitus and which, far
from serving the proper meaning of this concept, and above all, its sociological operability,
have complicated its determination. Bourdieu has in particular in mind the interpretations
developed by François Héran in the article entitled “The second nature of the habitus.
Philosophical tradition and common sense in sociological language”, which insisted on the
proximity of Bourdieu's conceptions with certain Husserlian presentations, notably in
Experience and Judgment. Returning to the genealogy of the concept of habitus and, in this
case, to the stages of its genesis in Bourdieu's work, gives him the opportunity to settle
some accounts and to denounce a genealogical attribution which seems to him excessive
and malicious :
It is clear that, at least when it applies to contemporaries, that is to say to competitors, the
search for sources, which is never the best hermeneutic strategy, is inspired less concern
to understand the meaning of a contribution than to reduce or destroy its originality (in the
sense of information theory), while allowing the "discoverers" of unknown sources to
distinguish themselves, as the one to whom we have shared, the common naive who, by
lack of culture through blindness, allows itself to be taken in by the illusion of the never seen. The tricks of
polemical reason are innumerable, and some who, like so many other "genealogists," would never have paid
the slightest attention to the notion of habitus or to the uses that Husserl makes of it if I had not used it. , will
exhume Husserlian usages, to reproach me, as if in passing, for having betrayed
6 the masterful thought in which he moreover intends to discover a destructive anticipation .
If we follow Bourdieu, we should therefore not overestimate the role that the
reference to Husserlian phenomenology may have played. If this could prove to be
a source of inspiration, which it undoubtedly is, it would be only one source among
others, within a long tradition of thought finding its origins in Aristotelian philosophy.
and scholastic thought, then reactivating itself in phenomenology and in the
anthropological and sociological tradition, in Durkheim, Mauss, Weber.
Against genealogical readings that are sometimes too generous,

"Questions of Method" of the Rules of the Art restore the genesis of the theory of
habitus by recalling that the particular context in which the first reflection on this
concept is determined, namely in the "Afterword" to
Gothic architecture and scholastic thought, this collection of two texts by Erwin
Panofsky translated and commented on by Bourdieu (namely, the text which gives
its title to the eponymous work and a text on Abbé Suger de Saint
7
Denis ). The real "source" of the theory of habitus is found there.
Bourdieu is mainly inspired by the use that is made by Panofksy of a concept that
makes it possible to make the link, not obvious at first sight, between Gothic
architecture and scholastic thought.
Finally , the “Questions of Method” of the Rules of the Art come back to the
only truly determining intention to understand the necessity of the theory of habitus.
It is a question of going beyond the consummated rupture with structuralist
anthropology:
By taking up the Aristotelian notion of hexis, converted by the scholastic tradition into habitus, I wanted to react
against structuralism and its strange philosophy of action, which, implicit in the Lévi-Straussian notion of the
unconscious and openly declared among the Althusserians , did
8
disappear the agent by reducing it to the role of support or carrier (Träger ) […].
However, it was also necessary to avoid “falling back into the old philosophy
of the subject or of consciousness”. We therefore find here the terms of the
double critique of subjectivism and objectivism, that is to say of structuralism
and social phenomenology. The path of habitus is, in this sense, a middle path.
This theoretical in-between expresses the "willingness to leave the philosophy
of consciousness without canceling the agent in its truth as a practical operator
of constructions of the real 9 ».
REGULARITIES, ADJUSTMENTS AND SOCIALITY
These presentations of the habitus are instructive, but they are not yet up to
the problem that the theory of the habitus should allow us to think about. Here
we must start again from the problem that was Bourdieu's, namely to think and
correctly describe the practical sense. The theory of habitus must indeed make
it possible to think of a set of phenomena or aspects that appear when we
consider social practices by following their modus operandi. In this respect, it is
necessary to reread this famous definition given by Bourdieu in the Sketch,
according to which the habitus is:
system of durable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles
for generating and structuring practices and representations that can be objectively "regulated" and "regular" without being
in any way the product of obedience to rules, objectively adapted to their purpose without assuming a conscious aiming at
the ends and the express mastery of the operations necessary to achieve them and, being all that, collectively orchestrated
without being the product of the organizing action 10 of a conductor
To properly read this definition which, despite appearances, is very concise,

we must start from its last moment, where Bourdieu specifies the aspects of
practice that the theory of habitus should allow us to think about.
It is from these that the habitus can find its canonical definition, as a "system of
durable dispositions", because it is thought of as
being at the root of these different aspects of practices that make them
objects of sociology.
There are basically three of them. The first is that of the regularity
presented by the practices considered, namely the possibility offered to us
of thinking of them as if they were applications of rules: they are "objectively
'regulated' and 'regular' without being in no way the product of obedience to
rules”. On the other hand, habitus is understood as a power of adjustment
to ever new situations: the theory of habitus allows us to consider practices
as being "objectively adapted to their purpose without assuming a conscious
aiming at ends and the express mastery of the operations necessary to
achieve them”.
Finally, the habitus should make it possible to think about the strictly social
dimension of the practices, assuming that these are “collectively orchestrated
without being the product of the organizing action of a conductor”. It is
because it makes it possible to think about all of these aspects that the
habitus is the principle of the practical-social order of meaning: it refers to a
form of practical knowledge whose existence the sociologist must assume
in order to that the practices and the order of the meaning of the practice
can have a certain intelligibility. Let's detail now.
1. The first aspect which the habitus must make it possible to account
for is that of regularity. Indeed, the habitus is the principle of an "orchestration
without a conductor which confers regularity, unity and
11
systematicity to the practices of a group or a class of ". The habitus generates
perceptions, attitudes, practices which present a certain regularity without

being consciously coordinated or referring to any precise rule:
[…] it was necessary to reveal and describe a cognitive activity of construction of social reality which is, neither in its instruments nor in its approaches
(I am thinking in particular of its classification activities), the pure and purely intellectual operation with a calculating conscience and
12 reasoning .
2. The second aspect of the practical meaning that the theory of habitus
makes thinkable is that of " adjustment ": this term designates the fact that
the practice "suits", is appropriate, in correspondence with the requirements
and expectations more or less explicit which are those of the field.
From The Outline of a Theory of Practice, Bourdieu clarifies this aspect of
the theory of habitus:
The practice is both necessary and relatively autonomous in relation to the situation considered in its punctual
immediacy because it is the product of the dialectical relationship between a situation and a habitus, understood
as a system of durable and transposable dispositions which, integrating all past experiences, functions at each
moment as a matrix of perceptions, appreciations and actions and makes possible the accomplishment of infinitely
differentiated tasks, thanks to the analogical transfers of schemas allowing to solve the problems of the same form
and thanks to the insistent corrections of the results obtained, dialectically
13
produced by these results .
The habitus is therefore not the mechanical reproduction of practices

whose effectiveness we have already been able to test. On the contrary,
the habitus is this resource that subjects mobilize to adjust to situations that
are always changing and new. In The Rules of the Art, Bourdieu emphasizes
in this respect that the resumption of the concept of habitus was originally
thought of in close proximity to the theory of generative grammar proposed
by Noam Chomsky:
Close on this point to Chomsky who proposed, at the same time, the notion of generative grammar, I wanted to
highlight the active, inventive, "creative" capacities of
14
the habitus and the agent (what does the term habitus not ).
The habitus, in this sense, is not the expression of a pure conformism: it

on the contrary, shows remarkable inventiveness.
3. The last aspect of practices that the theory of habitus makes thinkable
is that of the social dimension of practices. The habitus is the set of
historically constituted dispositions, collectively shared by the individuals
who belong to the same group sharing
the same living conditions. They ensure the reproduction of inequalities

and power relations, but also allow agents to produce practices
appropriate to situations. On the one hand, habitus is produced by the
structures of a milieu or a particular social environment. On the other
hand, the generative power of habitus sustains the reproduction of the
external structures of the social world.
A PHENOMENOLOGICAL CONTRIBUTION ?
From this first exploration of presentations of habitus, one must

recognize that it is difficult to appreciate what exactly habitus theory
owes to phenomenology. We must bear in mind that the declared origin
of this borrowing is in the “Afterword” to Gothic Architecture and
Scholastic Thought, where Bourdieu quotes Panofsky and Chomsky,
and refers to a concept in use in scholastic thought. It was only after
the fact, by reworking and appropriating this concept, that Bourdieu
gave it a specific definition that operates from a multitude of references
that mobilize the sociological tradition as well as the phenomenological
tradition. It is certain, however, that phenomenology plays a particular
role here in supporting the reconceptualization of the concept of habitus.
Thus Bourdieu can write:
Here again, certain phenomenologists, Husserl himself who makes the notion of habitus play a role in the analysis of antepredicative experience,
or Merleau-Ponty, and also Heidegger, opened up the

15
way to an analysis neither intellectualist nor mechanistic of the relationship between the agent and the world .
Now, on this point, it is important not to get lost. It is certain that the
reference to Husserlian phenomenology enjoys a certain relevance
here, because Husserl's phenomenology restored the merits of the
consideration of passivity, under the heading of "passive syntheses",
and promoted the figure of a subject which is the product of an "experience
sedimented 16 ". Obviously, certain presentations of the theory of habitus fall

within this filiation, particularly those which make it a “second nature”, a forgotten
history, a spontaneity without consciousness or will. But at the same time,
Bourdieu does not make the habitus a simple restitution of what has been
passively “acquired”. The concept of habitus must be conceived both as a
sedimented experience and as a principle that generates practice. In this, we
must maintain the privilege of the first definition of the habitus, namely the habitus
as a principle generating practices. More precisely, the habitus is this paradoxical
instance which allows that “behaviors [can] be oriented in relation to ends without
being consciously”. Such a formulation, among
17
directed towards these ends, directed by
these ends all those that Bourdieu proposes, retains something of objectivism
(structuralism here), with the idea that regularities can be exercised without
obedience to ends, such as subjectivism, with the idea that we can achieve some
end, even unconsciously. In this respect, we must doubtless be careful not to
give too Husserlian an interpretation of the theory of habitus, as François
Héran does in his article on the "second nature" of habitus, where habitus is
presented as a body whose primary role is to ensure the switch from passive to
active, from experience to disposition. If there is a legacy of phenomenology in
the theorization of the concept of habitus, this is situated much more, in our eyes,
on the side of the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty. Bourdieu sometimes recognizes
this:
The agent engaged in practice knows the world but with a knowledge that, as Merleau-Ponty has shown, is not established
in the exteriority of a knowing consciousness. He understands it in a sense too well, without objectifying distance, as going
without saying, precisely because he
18
finds taken, because it is one with it, that it inhabits it like a habit or familiar habitat .
The habitus is not an operator, a switching function, but what allows us to

“inhabit” the practical-social order of meaning. This proximity
proves itself both in the idea of an incorporation of the schemes of practice,

to which we will return, but also and above all at the level of the very
definition of practical meaning. Bourdieu thus shares a number of examples
with Merleau-Ponty, borrowed from the Structure of Behavior or the
Phenomenology of Perception.
However, there is a limit to this reappropriation of the phenomenological
heritage. In effect :
It must be assumed that social agents are endowed with habitus, inscribed in their bodies by past
experiences: these systems of patterns of perception, appreciation and action make it possible to carry out
acts of practical knowledge, based on the identification and recognition of the conditional and conventional
stimuli to which they are disposed to react, and to engender, without explicit position of ends or rational
calculation of means, appropriate strategies […], but within the limits
19
structural constraints of which they are the product and which define them .
The habitus is not, in this sense, a purely individual principle of practice:

it carries within it the principle of a relative homogeneity of habitus which is
due to the frequency of the situations encountered and to the objective
realities of the field. Ultimately, it is the social that crosses us, implicitly and
in a tacit mode, in this learned ignorance that the habitus manifests:
[…] the (relative) homogeneity of the resulting habitus is the principle of an objective harmonization of
practices and works capable of conferring on them the regularity at the same time as the objectivity which
define their specific “rationality” and which are worth experiencing as obvious or self-evident, i.e. as
immediately intelligible and predictable, by all agents endowed with practical mastery of the system of
action and interpretation schemes
20
objectively involved in the situation and by that only […].
In short, the theory of habitus does owe something to the

phenomenological tradition, but the recognition of this debt should not be
overestimated, at least for two reasons. On the one hand, the theory of
habitus is composite and mixes different contributions to produce an original
conceptuality. On the other hand, the approach to the habitus is no longer considered un
only perspective of individual consciousness, since it is the very

operator of social normativity.
1. RP, p. 23.
2. SSR, p. 86.
3. MP, p. 318.
4. RA, p. 293.
5. According to the famous definition given in the Sketch, where the habitus is a set of “structured structures
predisposed to function as structuring structures”, ETP, p. 256.
6. RA, p. 295.
7. P-AG and RA, p. 293.
8. RA, p. 294.
9. RA, p. 295.
10. ETP, p. 256.
11. ETP, p. 265.
12. RA, p. 295.
13. ETP, p. 261-262.
14. RA, p. 294.
15. CD, p. 20.
16. See in particular B. Bégou, La genealogie de la logic. The status of passivity in Husserl's phenomenology, Paris,
Vrin, 2000.
17. CD, p. 20.
18. MP, p. 170.
19. MP, p. 166.
20. ETP, p. 264.

Chapter 7
The genesis: the incorporation of the provisions
The habitus is a set of embodied structures derived from preexisting

external structures that determine how the individual acts and reacts
in the world. To identify it from the consideration of a circumscribed
set of practices is to recapture it as a principle of these practices, in
order to explain or give reason for their regularity, their ability to adjust
to diversity situations and finally, the part of the "social" that they carry
within them. In this way, we discover the normativity of the social in
the immanence of practices, we make intelligible a practico-social
order of the meaning of practice, by establishing a point of exteriority
with respect to the point of view of immediate understanding whose
officers show respect for what they do. The order of meaning finds
there a properly sociological dimension, according to a logic of
meaning that does not lock itself into the register of immediate
meanings and intentions of the agent but rethinks the meaning of what
is done from a set of conditions. gnoseological and social: ways of
thinking, saying, perceiving and judging that correspond to “what is done”.
However, the principle that is the habitus is itself intelligible only if
one makes thinkable the genesis of the habitus. The principle is only
a principle, with respect to practices, because it can be understood as a
a sort of precipitation, in the subject, of a set of individual and social

processes, that is to say according to a double history, individual and
social. Which amounts to saying that the principle is unitary because it
is the term of an identification, of an analytical location, of a genesis.
But this unity is also the product of a complex, mysterious “synthesis”
by which the story becomes the subject. Consequently, the genealogy
of the habitus could be almost unlimited, since it can, in right, operate
a return to the individual origins, but also social, in all their diversity:
this return is a pluralization and a dispersion. Consequently, one can
conceive that the identification of fields, that is to say of a set of social
relations having a certain history, coherent and unitary, and producing
objective determinations which in fact reduce the possibilities of
practice , has a limiting function: it assigns certain objective limits to
the properly social genealogy of the habitus. To account for the habitus,
in its strictly social and objective dimension, it is not useful to refer,
vaguely and abstractly, to "the" society, it is necessary to circumscribe
a "relevant" social space, making it possible to confirm the sociological
intelligibility of the habitus and, consequently, of the order of the meaning of practice
It is on this condition that:
The habitus fulfills a function that, in another philosophy, we entrust to the transcendental consciousness: it is a
socialized body, a structured body, a body which has incorporated the immanent structures of a world or a sector.
particular of this world, of a field, and which
1
structures the perception of this world and also the action in this world .
In what follows, we will temporarily leave aside the examination of

field theory to deal with the embodied dimension of habitus. In doing
so, it will be a question of identifying a set of phenomenological
persistences which are not obvious at first glance.
L’HEXIS
Before even being able to think about the relationship between the habitus
and the field, we must already account for the modalities of institution of the
habitus and of the practical meaning in the individual himself. Bourdieu thinks of
this individuation as an incorporation. It is the body which is the mediating
authority between the social and the individual and which ensures the regularity
of practices, allows their adjustment to the different contexts determined by the fields:
The incorporation of objectivity is thus inseparably interiorization of collective schemes and integration into the
group, since what is interiorized is the product of the exteriorization of a
2
similarly structured subjectivity .
This incorporation is thought through the concept of hexis. This concept

maintains a very close relationship with the concept of habitus, with which it
shares the same etymological origin, since medieval scholasticism had first
translated the Aristotelian notion of ÿÿÿÿ by the term habitus, which Bourdieu
borrows from it by through Erwin Panofsky. The hexis, which Bourdieu, curiously,
first spells exis, is, in general, a "way of being."
Under this term, however, in a more restricted sense, Bourdieu designates

above all the different ways that an individual has of moving, of acting, of placing
his voice, of taking a position in his surrounding world. It is therefore at the root of
a set of “usual” or regular postures, movements and expressions which are not
simply ways of acting bodily but also ways of perceiving one's own body and the
bodies of others. The bodily hexis designates all the conditioned ways we have of
walking, standing, speaking, moving. It defines a somatically informed individual
identity.
Sometimes, the body hexis extends to a clothing hexis , a set of signs established
on the body itself or in its immediate environment, such as clothing, hairstyles,
body marks such as tattoos or scarifications. This corporeal or vestimentary hexis
is also understood, more
broadly, as the set of physical arrangements of the body in physical space.

These are variable from one class of individuals to another and constitute
the product of an incorporation of the structures of the social space such as
they present themselves to the subject according to the position that there is.
busy.
The hexis is therefore a privileged mode of subjectification of the social
which allows the appropriation of bodily “schemas”. This of course does not
exclude the existence of another mode of appropriation which this time
concerns mental schemes (those of the eidos, set of logical schemes and
the ethos, set of axiological schemes) and which does not necessarily go
through the mediation of the body. But the fact remains that the incorporation
of schemes plays a particular role and that it is, in Bourdieu's eyes, better
able to shed light on some of the specificities of the habitus.
According to Bourdieu, bodily hexis is directly linked to motor function,
in the form of a model of postures that are both individual and systematic,
engaging with a whole system of objects. The motor skills are the fact of
the body, without it being necessary to mobilize the reflection and the
representation: to write on the typewriter, to dance, to practice a sport, it is
not necessary to have in mind the set of rules to follow, logical or practical,
to identify the steps of what must be done. It is practical knowledge that
provides for this.
Hexis is acquired through practical interactions with other members of
the social space and with the objective structures of the social environment.
At the principle of the constitution of this corporeal hexis , there is the
practice of imitation and the idea that the schemas of the practice can be
directly communicated, from one practice to another, without it being for
that necessary to have recourse to discourse or to a conscious explanation.
The bodily hexis is therefore constituted through bodily automatisms which
are, according to Bourdieu, at the origin of our intuitions, our feelings, our
judgments and representations, and
even common sense. It is not a priori categories that make it possible to

explain practical experience: we must start from the relationship between the
living body and the lived world and do justice to the implicit logics of
incorporation. There is a thought of the body, not recognized as such by
subjectivism and objectivism, which decides the direction of the practice.
The following two quotes attest to this:
Early education treats the body like a sticky note. […] It takes full advantage of 'conditionality', that property of
human nature which is the condition of culture in the English sense of cultivation, that is to say of incorporation of
culture. The body always thinks: the fact that it allows itself an imaginary freedom with the dream, should not make
us forget all the controls that it continues to exercise, even in sleep, and which tend to ensure the delay of
3 satisfaction .
The function of pedagogical work is to substitute for the savage body, and in particular for the social aeros which
demands satisfaction at any moment and on the spot, a "habituated" body.
4 ie temporally structured […].
Precisely, as Bourdieu points out in this last quotation, early childhood

and education play a particular role in the genesis of the bodily hexis and
consequently of the habitus. The hexis is the subject of specific learning,
through which the child learns how to execute the movements of the body,
the gestures and the postures which are in accordance with the prescribed
dispositions, appropriate to the requirements of the field, of the social group
of which they are the members.
One of the functions of early education and, in particular, of ritual and play, which are often organized according
to the same structures, could be to establish the dialectical relationship which leads to
5
the incorporation of a space structured according to mythico-ritual oppositions .
There is therefore a maintenance of order that is at stake in the

maintenance of bodies and we can note in passing that the vocabulary
relating to the body in society conceals many moral connotations, whether it
is a question of evoking righteousness or awkwardness, ease or pace, dress
or manners... The body physically realizes a certain conception of itself and of the world, a
certain vision of the social world which is not only that of an individual
point of view . The social order and the order of meaning persist only
6
if they “descend” into the order of bodies. Bourdieu formulates it

marvelously:
One could, distorting Proust's word, say that the legs, the arms, are full of numb imperatives. And we could not finish listing the
values made body, by the transubstantiation operated by the clandestine persuasion of an implicit pedagogy, capable of
inculcating a whole cosmology, an ethics, a metaphysics, a politics, in through injunctions as insignificant as "stand up straight"
or "do not hold your knife with your left hand" and to inscribe in the most seemingly insignificant details of dress, posture or
bodily and verbal manners the principles fundamentals of cultural arbitrariness, thus placed outside the
7 insights and explanations .
From this point of view, the bodily hexis is a lasting organization of

one's own body which is inhabited by meanings and social values,
incorporated rules which guide the actions of agents according to a
context itself structured by different fields . . As Bruno Karsenti points
8
out, "Bourdieu's own body is a social body. The Sketch, ". Thus, in
Bourdieu emphasizes the fact that the morality of honor in force in the
regions of Algeria which were the subject of his ethnographic studies
and sociological is not a set of abstract principles, but is realized in and
through the bodily hexis , a true incorporated expression of a practical
morality. Thus Bourdieu can write, about the upright and determined
walk, characteristic of the man of honor in the Kabyle world:
[…] the hexis is the realized, incorporated myth , which has become a permanent disposition, a lasting way of standing, of
speaking, of walking, and, thereby, of feeling and thinking ; this is how the whole morality of
9
honor is both symbolized and realized in the bodily hexis .
The body is thus the place where social normativity is individually

lived.
THE BODY, FROM MERLEAU-PONTY TO BOURDIEU
If the hexis should retain our attention, more than the eidos or the ethos, it
is because the reflections relating to the bodily hexis owe much to the
phenomenology of passivity and habit, as it is unfolds with Husserl, then
continues with Merleau-Ponty. From this point of view, the concept of habitus
undoubtedly has something to gain from a tendentially but moderately
"subjectivist" rereading, by restoring for example certain propositions of
Husserlian phenomenology, particularly in the reflections it leads to passive
syntheses and the constitution of everyday life, especially if we seek to do
better justice to the discontinuities, to the pluralities that affect the life of the
individual10 . In doing so, it is not for us to relativize the Bourdieusian critique
of phenomenology, but rather to highlight a fundamental affinity, sometimes
unrecognized, between Bourdieu's phenomenology and sociology, when it
comes to to think about the properly social dimension of subjective experience,
without sacrificing the latter on the altar of the former. Indeed, one of the
merits of phenomenology is also to have considerably renewed the classical
philosophy of the subject by thinking first of the subject as a relation to the
world, well before thinking of it as a relation to itself and as the product of a
self positionning.
It seems to us in particular that the addition of phenomenology sheds

decisive light on the question of the “cognitive unconscious” and its dual
relationship to the subject and to the social. It is very clearly by referring to
phenomenology, and more particularly by mobilizing the work of Merleau-
Ponty, notably on the question of the incorporation of schemes of perception
and appreciation, that Bourdieu intends to resolve this question.
The detour via phenomenology makes it possible to specify the bodily and
practical anchoring of the cognitive unconscious in the social world, the
principle of which is formulated as follows:
The body is in the social world and the social world is in the body. And the incorporation of the social that learning achieves is
the foundation of the presence in the social world that action presupposes.
11
socially successful and the ordinary experience of this world as taken for granted .
If the social is implicitly present in us, if it is this forgotten history whose

effects are still being felt, it is above all in the form of practical sense, this
capacity to act that Bourdieu understands as a power of adjustment to ever
new situations. What Bourdieu, in the Sketch and then in the Practical
Sense, strives to think and describe, is this knowledge which is not fully
conscious and reflected knowledge, but which is not pure ignorance either. ,
a “practical mastery of the demands of a situation, without even formulating
12 13
them », a « natural which allows the agent to respond appropriately
explicitly. The practical sense is this “learned ignorance”, that is to say “this
mode of practical knowledge not enclosing the knowledge of its own true
principles. In the situations of daily life which mobilize the practical sense,
14
the body […]”, i.e., in short, an unexplained and unreasonable familiarity
knows what it has to do without our having to think about it.
It is at this point that the reference to Merleau-Ponty, and more

particularly to the analyzes of “natured consciousness” in The Structure of
Behaviour, is called upon:
The agent engaged in practice knows the world but with a knowledge that, as Merleau-Ponty has shown, is not established in
the exteriority of a knowing consciousness. He understands it in a sense too well, without objectifying distance, as going without
saying, precisely because he

15
finds taken, because it is one with it, that it inhabits it like a habit or familiar habitat .
This reference is explicit here, but Merleau-Ponty's reflections actually

innervate many of Bourdieu's descriptions relating to practical meaning.
We find in particular, in the analyzes of Bourdieu, the theory of the proper
body developed by Merleau-Ponty, following Husserl. Let us recall the
terms: in The Structure of Behaviour, Merleau-Ponty engaged in a critique
of the “classical theory” of the reflex,
which conceives it as the product of the stimulation of a receptor isolated from the nervous system.
Mobilizing the achievements of Gestalttheorie, Merleau Ponty established on the contrary all the
importance of the situation, that is to say of all of these parts in presence which make up a totality of
meaning.
One cannot account for the adjustment of behavior to the situation with the help of the classic theory
of reflex reaction: one must bring to light the resources of one's own body, that is to say of this body
which It's not just a material body among other bodies, but this instance through which a world
presents itself to me. In fact of unconsciousness, there is here all the effect of an incorporation, an
adjustment of the practice to the situation which supposes a body in action, a body which learned
what had to be done. It is by being caught up in the action that the agent acts with relevance: he
immediately mobilizes the achievements of past experiences and concretely anticipates what is to
come.
Thus, by showing how the dialectic of environment and action can supplement consciousness,
Merleau-Ponty analyzes remarkably the presence of "natured nature" in man, in the same way that
Bourdieu endeavors to define that of social in the agent. Both share the same set of references and
examples: the child who lives in a relationship of immediacy to the world, the sportsman playing the
collective game without even thinking about it, the virtuoso who lets his fingers go without seeming
to command them, or even the animal which communicates with its environment What it is a question
of thinking through these different figures, it is the same”, says

16 .
17
a way of finding oneself in harmony with one's milieu, in "again Bourdieu's coincidence. In
18
this "knowledge by body", a kind of happy intimacy associates the agent with his world: "when the
habitus enters into relation with a social world of which it is the product, it is like a fish in water and
the world appears to him as self-evident” The agent “inhabits” his world by the grace of the habitus,
19
he is subject to social normativity. The coincidence of the individual and the social is thus thought
.
about
model of the harmonious relationship of the living organism to its environment,

at the risk, perhaps, of a certain idealization.
FROM OBJECTIVATION TO PRE-OBJECTIVE
In the Sketch and The Practical Sense, Bourdieu locates the origin of the
problem of objectification in the implicit division between the subjective and the
objective, a division already at work in practical knowledge and brought back,
then forgotten, in the theoretical knowledge. The overcoming of the problem of
objectification is situated in the perspective of a double objectification, an
objectification of the relation of the subjective and the objective implied by the
knowledge of the social world. But Bourdieu's reflections on
the incorporation of the patterns of practice, in close connection with the
Husserlian and Merleau-Pontian phenomenology of the body proper, make it
possible to designate the origin or the below of any division between the
subjective and the objective and to give a another meaning to the "double
objectification" he advocates.
There is, if we follow Merleau-Ponty, a pre-objective and pre-reflective
contact between the subject and the object which is played out in the body,
where the social dimension of existence is revealed. Thus Merleau-Ponty
maintains, in The Phenomenology of Perception :
Our relationship to society is, like our relationship to the world, deeper than any express perception or any
judgment. It is as wrong to place ourselves in society as an object in the midst of other objects, as it is to put
society in us as an object of thought, and on both sides the error consists in treating the social as an object. We
must return to the social with which we are in contact simply because we exist, and that we are attached to us
above all
20
objectification. […] The social is already there when we know it or judge it .
The body is therefore in intimate relation with the world, in the mode of
immediate, full and entire contact, but this relation must not be conceived in
terms of objectification, since this, being dual, cannot
recognize its fundamental unity, this unity that Merleau-Ponty calls "the
natural and antepredicative unity of the world and of our
21
". Such is
meaning of experience, a sense inhabited by the body. The habitus, of
course, cannot be reduced to this. But the fact remains that the
implementation of the habitus presupposes a form of social “sensitivity”
which brings us to grips with the meaning of experience, or rather the
meaning of our experiences. which binds the perceiving subject to the
world in Merleau thus finds its counterpart in the "ontological
22
The "Primordial Contract" or "Original Pact complicity" which
unites the agent to his social environment in Bourdieu. The agent owns
23
his world, but it belongs to him as well. It is this incorporation of social
structures, as well as their conversion into dispositions, that produces
habitus. This is therefore not an objective determinism that I would
undergo, but rather what lives in me and that I invest in return, since it
decides my experience. Social normativity does not operate in pure
exteriority: on the contrary, it is relayed, individually taken up by the
incorporation of provisions.
1. RP, p. 155-156.
2. ETP, p. 262.
3. ETP, p. 296.
4. ETP, p. 296.
5. ETP, p. 289.
6. Sur ce point, on lira avec profit I. Marcoulatos, « Merleau-Ponty and Bourdieu on embodied significance »,
Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour, vol. 31, 1, 2001, p. 1-27.
7. SP, p. 117
8. B. Karsenti, From one philosophy to another. The social sciences and the politics of the moderns, op. cit., p. 249.
9. ETP, p. 291.
10. Cf. S. Haber, “Contemporary French sociology facing the Bourdieusian concept of habitus”, in
O
Alter. Journal of Phenomenology, n 12, 2004, p. 191-216.
11. LL, p. 38.
12. ETP, p. 303.
13. ETP, p. 304.
14. ETP, p. 307.
15. MP, p. 206.
16. We refer to the fine analyzes of Étienne Bimbenet, “Practical sense and reflexive practices.
Some sociological developments of Merleau-Pontian ontology”, Archives de Philosophie, 2006, p. 57-78, as well as
the remarks of L. Wacquant, in ISR, p. 58 sq.
17. MP, p. 212.
18. Ibid., p. 185.
19. ISR, p. 103.
20. PP, p. 415.
21. PP, p. xxiii
22. PP, p. 251, 289, 293.
23. “[…] it is a veritable ontological complicity which, as Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty suggested, unites the agent
(who is neither a subject or a consciousness, nor the simple performer of a role or the actualization of a structure or
a function) and the social world (which is never a simple thing, even if it must be constructed as such in the
objectivist phase of research)”, ISR, p . 176.
PART III
Temporalities
In Bourdieu's work, there is another register of analysis in which the

fecundity of phenomenology is revealed. This register is that of reflection
on time in general, on temporal consciousness in particular and even
more precisely on practice as “temporalisation1 ”. In this other register, a
new aspect of the anthropology of the “social subject” unfolds.
Bourdieu has made no secret of what he owes on this point to a

certain phenomenological inspiration, decisive in the 1950s and 1960s.
In 1954-1955, on leaving school at the École Normale Supérieure,
Bourdieu taught a course entitled “Time in memory, imagination and
perception” at the Lycée de Moulins. He also undertook the writing of a
philosophy thesis under the direction of Georges Canguilhem: this was
to relate, as he specifies in the 1986 interview entitled Fieldwork in
Philosophy, to the "phenomenology of affective life, or more exactly on
2
the temporal structures of affective experience At this time, Bourdieu ».
systematically read the works of Husserl and Heidegger, in particular

Experience and Judgment and Being and Time.
But the realization of this doctoral project is then upset by the military
service in Algeria where Bourdieu is sent against his will. Bourdieu then
engages in ethnological and sociological research to understand the
colonized Algerian society. However, contrary to what certain presentations
of Bourdieu's career might suggest, which willingly insist on the radical
nature of the break with philosophy, the reorientation of his scientific
concerns did not result in the pure and simple abandonment of his primary
philosophical interests. . This is underlined, retrospectively, by Sketch for
a self-analysis :
[I said to myself] that I was only going to ethnology and sociology, in the beginning, only on a provisional
basis, and that, once this work of political pedagogy was completed, I would return to philosophy (moreover ,
all the time that I was writing Sociologie de l'Algérie and carrying out my first ethnological investigations, I continued to write every
evening on the structure of experience

3
temporal according to Husserl) .
Ethnology and sociology are therefore, at the beginning, only a detour

and Bourdieu keeps in view the pursuit of a philosophical research. But,
as we well know, the return to philosophy will not take place, in any case
not on the mode of reintegration of the discipline traditionally called
“philosophy”. However, the rest of Bourdieu's sociological work attests to
the persistence of this interest in the question of temporality. In 1963, the
book Work and workers in Algeria, which presents itself as a vast sum of
ethnological and sociological surveys, developed a number of remarks
relating to the temporality of practices.
Its republication, in an abbreviated form, in 1977, under the title Algérie
60, underlined all the importance that the consideration of the relationship
between "Economic structures and temporal structures" played there,
since this was the subtitle of the work. In 1972, the Outline of a theory of
practice included an important chapter entitled “The action of time and
the time of action”, which was completed by the appendix “Economic
4
5
temporal arrangements practices of”. The Practical Sense of 1980 also
6
a chapter on "The action of time, featured”. In Homo Academicus, in 1984,
several paragraphs returned to the question of time: "Time and power",
"A temporal order", "The breaking of the balance rules of the ". In The
7
art, work published in 1992, taking into account of the temporal dimension
of practices is still decisive for grasping the logics of . Finally, the Pascalian
8
literary field Meditations of 1997 delivered, in
their last chapter, reflections on "The social being, time and the meaning
of existence". The question of time is therefore recurrent in Bourdieu's
9
work and is the subject of continuous reflection.

Singularly, rare are the commentators of Husserl who dwell on it and
note this continuity. Three exceptions, however, which deserve to be
reported. There is first of all a note by Loïc Wacquant, in the margin of the Invitation to reflexive sociology,
which notes the precocity of Bourdieu's interest in this question, the importance it played in the break with
the structuralist paradigm, its "essential" character, finally, for the
10
conceptualization of the social space entitled “Making . An article by Jean-François Rey
time. From a Phenomenology of Temporal Attitudes to a Theory of Temporal Practices" situates Bourdieu in
relation to some of the great philosophies of time and highlights the importance of
11
Catherine Colliot-Thélène's theory of anticipatory .
Finally and above all, there is the beautiful article
consciousness, "The German roots of Bourdieu's theory". Starting from a very general questioning of
Bourdieu's relationship to German philosophy, Catherine Colliot-Thélène noted the decisive nature of the
relationship to phenomenology and she supported the idea that the question of temporality was one of the
"questions structuring” of his work. Thus one could go so far as to affirm that "Bourdieu never stopped
writing the book on temporal experience he began in his youthful years, although he fairly quickly abandoned
the idea of doing it in a phenomenological perspective
12
».
Chapter 8
The critique of the philosophies of the time
THE SCHOLASTIC CONCEPT OF TIME
To begin, we are going to follow Bourdieu by rereading a few pages

of the last chapter of the Pascalian Meditations on “Social being, time
1
and existence, the ". This text represents, in Bourdieu's work, the
culmination point of a long series of analyzes devoted to the question
of time. From a strictly genealogical point of view, it should therefore
be considered at the very last place. However, for the purposes of our
demonstration, we will instead make it an entry point. Two decisive
reasons prompt us to do so. On the one hand, this text is valuable for
seeing how Bourdieu situates his own analyzes in relation to the
heritage of philosophy. On the other hand, a careful reading of this text
will allow us to identify three apparent difficulties which will determine
the program of subsequent developments.
What is the relationship to philosophy that is emerging here? There
is nothing surprising in this: the reflections that Bourdieu develops
around the question of time are not driven by a purely philosophical
ambition, as if it were a question of approaching a philosophical
problematic which could not and should not be resolved only with the means
of traditional philosophy. It is necessary to keep in mind, even though the

question of time seems to be a philosophical question par excellence, the
remarks that we formulated in the introduction to this study: it is from the
sociology of practices that it is appropriate to investigate this question, by
“sociologizing” it and reconsidering it from the point of view of the
temporalization of practices.
Indeed, if there is reason to put the traditional philosophy of time at a
distance, it is because the point of view it adopts is in reality, according to
Bourdieu, not the right one. For this reason, Bourdieu does not attempt to
discuss and criticize the different philosophies of time. This would still be
working in the field of philosophy without succeeding in questioning the very
point of view that one adopts with regard to time. Bourdieu does not refute
in detail each of the great philosophies of the time. He contents himself with
identifying what appears to him to be an error of principle which necessarily
and in advance falsifies the considerations relative to temporality. The defect
of philosophy, in this respect, is therefore due to the "point of view" that it
adopts on time, which is none other than the scholastic point of view.
It is indeed at the beginning of the sixth and last chapter of the Pascalian
Meditations, entitled “Social Being, Time and the Meaning of Existence”,
that Bourdieu is clearest on this point. Indeed, if the scholastic situation is
generally defined as a privileged position of disengagement vis-à-vis
practice, it also and above all presupposes a "free time freed from the
urgencies of the world which makes possible a free and liberated relationship
2
to these urgencies , and ". To be able to devote oneself to free reflection,
in the world one must have freed oneself from ordinary occupations, of
course. Better, it is necessary to free oneself from their imperious need, by
3
procuring like Descartes a "assured rest in a peaceful solitude" and by often
leaving to others than oneself the care and the responsibility to provide for
the material conditions of existence. The condition of possibility of knowledge
and theory is social, but it is also, indirectly, temporal.
However, this “free and liberated time” is not only a condition of the possibility
of the scholastic situation: it is its very element. The situation of skhole is that
of a time without practical constraint: it is "put into
4
suspense of the urgency, the press and the pressure of things to do […]”. It is
therefore not free time that we occupy with something else, it is intrinsically
detachment vis-à-vis the ordinary temporalization of the practice.
But this situation, because it enjoys a certain use of time, induces a

particular point of view on time, too quickly conceived as a "thing with which
one maintains a relationship of exteriority, that of a subject in face of an object
5
". In practice, time is no longer really something experienced,
6
but "something that we have, that we gain or that we lose ". The practice
implies a form of objectification of time, in the sense that it appears to us as
one object among others or even as a component fundamental of the objective
world. Bourdieu intends to denounce this false objectification which causes us
to lose the experience of time as such and he summons to this end the classic
elements of the critique of objectified time, in a gesture which is not without
evoking the description that Bergson made , in Creative Evolution, of the
conception of a “spatialized” time:
Like the body-thing of the idealist vision in the manner of the Cartesians, time-thing, time of clocks or time of science, is the product of the
scholastic point of view which found its expression in a metaphysics of time and history considering time as a pre-given reality, in itself,
prior to and external to practice, or as the (empty) frame, a priori,
7
.
of any historical process
Here, then, is a certain metaphysics of time (Bourdieu does not go so far

as to say that all metaphysics is involved here) reduced to the expression of a
pure scholastic point of view. This, however, is not the only fault of the
traditional philosophy of the time. Indeed, the scholastic situation, and the
objectification, even the tendential "objectification" of the
time that it supposes, also imply an intellectualist conception of temporal

experience. The intellectualism in question is in fact a selective vision of
experience and practice, more particularly with regard to the relation of
consciousness to the future. This point is, as we will see later, of crucial
importance for Bourdieu's argument. Let us simply remember for the moment that
“the intellectualist vision of temporal experience […] leads to recognizing no other
relation to the future than the conscious project, aiming at ends or possibilities
posed as such, finds here a denunciation of intellectualism or of
8
». On
theoreticism which was already mobilized to underline the need for a new theory
of practice, for example when Bourdieu introduced his praxeology by denouncing
the limits of the theories of rational choice, voluntarist and too strictly rationalist
conceptions of practice.
If we continue reading this chapter of the Pascalian Meditations, a work which

is – we must not forget – primarily intended for a readership of philosophers, we
see Bourdieu sketching out the solution that should be brought to this problem. .
This is presented through three complementary indications which designate, each
time, specific difficulties. In a sense, Bourdieu outlines the program or the
problematic of his analyzes of temporality. We will therefore comment on them
quickly.
We will then be able to make the case of an implicit aspect of Bourdieu's
discourse, that of the relationship to the Heideggerian philosophy of time. We will
then be able to resume analyzes of the temporalization of practices.
But before that, let's go back to the Pascalian Meditations to see how Bourdieu
intends to go beyond the philosophy of time and make up for its shortcomings.
1. The first indication provided by Bourdieu with a view to remedying the

fundamental flaw and the shortcomings of the classical philosophy of time is an
invitation to a change of point of view, an invitation to a conversion of outlook. To
find time as we live it and especially as we practice it
indeed, it will therefore be necessary to break with the scholastic point of

view and restore what Bourdieu calls “the point of view of the acting agent,
of practice as “temporalisation9 ” ". This is what is thereby suggested:
time is no longer a form of sensibility (Kant), an experience of duration
(Bergson), a flow of experiences (Husserl) or even a fundamental dimension
of our existence (Heidegger/ Sartre), he is in any case no longer this
“framework” within which we act and agitate: he himself is what is practiced.
What makes Bourdieu say (and repeat) that "practice is not in time, but
[that] it makes time, a new point of view is therefore
10
". The conversion to
a reversal or a new figure of the sociological reversal of philosophy which
now makes time a practiced thing. It is from the agent that time is envisaged
and it is from the sociological analysis of its practices that the agent is
himself apprehended.
Hence this strong formula: "it is in and through practice, through the
practical anticipation that it implies, that social agents temporalize
11
themselves. ».
This invitation to a change of point of view is not, however, without

posing certain difficulties . One can indeed wonder if Bourdieu gives himself
the means, in these few pages of the Pascalian Meditations, to “reason”
the philosopher sociologically, that is to say to convince him effectively of
the need to change his point of view. .
Or rather, the difficulty is perhaps due to the fact that it is still necessary to
“reason” with the philosopher, which Bourdieu does marvelously, by
mobilizing all the rhetorical resources of philosophical refutation.
And yet, if one strives, if only with the intention of a "charitable" reading, to
apply Bourdieu's recommendations, a doubt persists: does Bourdieu
actually give us the possibility – sociological – to “convert our gaze”, that is
to say to succeed in grasping the point of view of the acting agent? In the
Pascalian Meditations, Bourdieu presents the philosophical results of his
sociological investigations: it therefore spares philosophers analyzes that

have been carried out elsewhere, but which are nevertheless crucial to
understanding in what and how practice makes time. To a certain extent, it
therefore contravenes its own recommendations since it dissociates
theoretical reflection on time from the sociology of practices which was
nevertheless the site of its elaboration. This difficulty is certainly not
insurmountable, but it presupposes that we rediscover the sociological
analyzes in which the "sociologization" of the philosophical question of time
takes place: we will find them below in the ethnological and sociological
studies on Algeria. Here we have a first decisive orientation.
2. The second "indication" which should allow us to consider the

passage from the scholastic point of view to that of the temporalization of
practices consists of a recurring reference to the philosophy of Husserl,
12
more particularly to the Guiding Ideas of 1913 and, more so
13
implicit, in the Lessons on the intimate consciousness of the time of ,
1904-1905 published in 1928 by Heidegger. As already pointed out,

Bourdieu had read these texts closely as part of the preparation of his doctoral thesis.
In the Pascalian Meditations, the positive reference to Husserlian
phenomenology appears to support a movement of “resubjectivation” of the
question of time, with a view to correcting this erroneous form of
objectification which stems from the scholastic situation. Bourdieu proceeds
in reality following the example of Husserl, by reproducing the inaugural
movement of the first paragraphs of the Lessons on the intimate
consciousness of time. Husserl, with a view to centering his analysis on
"the immanent time of the course of consciousness", already advocated
"putting objective time out of the circuit", that is to say "the time of the
world, the thing time, the time of nature in the
14
senseHe
[…]”. ofrestored
the natural
thesciences
question"
15
of "the 'origin' of time of by detailing the methods of accomplishment
the "consciousness of time, of the temporal character of the objects of
16
perception, memory, expectation. He placed all of his reflections under the reference
of the famous book XI of the Confessions of Saint Augustine, a remarkable
meditation on eternity and time which located the principle of the distinction between
past, present and future in the different modalities of consciousness. watchful.
Bourdieu therefore proceeds in the same way, by criticizing the scholastic
objectification of time, by inviting us to take up the question again from the point of
view of this particular "subject" which is the agent and by authorizing himself with a
reference to Husserl, in the same way that the latter could refer to Saint Augustine
17 .
It will then remain to be seen what exactly Bourdieu retains from Husserlian
analyses, or rather, how the “sociologization” of phenomenology can operate by
integrating its contribution. Two points are essential in this regard.
First of all, Bourdieu never pushes the movement of resubjectivation of time so

far that it is necessary to come to conceive the "subjective" dimension of dispositions
as being something "interior" or
18 more "mental ". Referring to Husserl does not imply returning to the
phenomenological reduction, nor subscribing to the conception of the transcendental
“subject” or of the ego understood as the focus of acts of intentional consciousness.
If the objectification of time produced by the scholastic situation is false, there is no
question for Bourdieu of yielding to the temptation of a subjectivation which would
itself be unilateral and the expression or the effect of a subjectivist anthropology. .
It is therefore a matter both of recognizing the importance of a “subjective”
dimension of temporality and of correcting the false scholastic objectification of time
by revealing the possibility of another objectification. Thus, for Bourdieu, there are
“two constituent dimensions of temporal experience, subjective hopes and objective
chances” or again, an “actual or potential power over the immanent tendencies of
the social world which controls the chances […] attached to a agent (or by his
position19 )”. The objectification of
time sought by Bourdieu, who will be able to verify this idea according to
which practice makes time, is played out in this relationship between
subjective hopes (what one can expect from a situation) and objective
chances (i.e. say the limited repertoire of possibilities opened up by the
situation).
Next, we must note the extremely selective nature of the borrowings
made by the Husserlian phenomenology of temporality. In fact, Bourdieu
evokes above all the phenomenological conception of the “living present”
which still retains something of what has just passed (what the
phenomenologist calls “retention”) and which anticipates what is
imminently happening (the “protention20 "). This is put to use in an
analysis of the temporal dynamics of the habitus. Phenomenological
conceptuality is therefore a technical instrument which makes it possible
to think about the anticipation of the “to come” and to make a distinction
between the register of foresight ( or anticipation) and of the project. We
will see later that this distinction is crucial for the analysis of the
temporalization of practices.
3. The last indication mentioned by Bourdieu in order to facilitate the
passage towards the point of view of the temporalization of practices is
a form of theoretical reframing which mobilizes the fundamental concepts
of Bourdieusian praxeology: the habitus, the field, the distribution of
social space. Bourdieu formulates it synthetically:
Thus the experience of time is generated in the relationship between the habitus and the social world, between dispositions to be and to
do and the regularities of a natural or social cosmos (or of a

21
champ) .
We thus see Bourdieu apply to the relationship to the question of

time distinctions, concepts and analyzes that had been mobilized to think
about habitus in general. The present is thus a "presentification" (in a
sense that no longer has much of Husserlianism, but it does not matter)
in that it is an "interested" time, the actualization in short of a "meaning Game ",
the adjustment of 'subjective expectations' to 'objective chances'. Insistingly, the

present is understood as a time of investment, of illusio, where the habitus provides a
"minimal adaptation to the probable course of this world to invest" and conceals
22
"chances of material and ". The present of the agent is made of "dispositions to
symbolic profit there are an economy of the present that takes precedence23 ”. Brief :
over the consideration of “experienced” which was still that which phenomenological
analysis favored.
This reinvestment of the question of temporality in the usual terms of Bourdieusian
praxeology poses two types of difficulties to which we will have to return.
First of all, the retheorization of the question of time in the terms of praxeology
actually proceeds from a narrowing of the focal point, which concentrates on a very
particular type of temporal experience. Where it finally turns out that it is not really
time in general that preoccupies Bourdieu, but rather the enigma of this practical
present which opens up to the "to come", which anticipates what is "to do" in such and
such a situation. We can therefore imagine the reaction of the philosopher who will
have a fair chance of admitting his disappointment, even though we claimed to be
contesting his point of view, in the face of analyzes which doubtless do not account for
all the dimensions of the temporal existence. It will therefore be appropriate to show
the contribution of Bourdieusian analyzes which are no longer situated in the strict
register of the philosophy of the time, but at the articulation of practice, the social and
the economic and on the horizon of what one could call a politics of temporality.
Secondly, it seems to us that the risk of this type of theoretical reframing, especially
if one sticks to the reading of the Pascalian Meditations, is to miss all the benefit of
Bourdieusian analyzes of time, whether for one's own theory as well as for his practice
of sociology. One could in fact say to oneself that Bourdieu is content to redeploy the
logic of the habitus at the level of temporal consciousness, by
trying to demonstrate again, on a ground that seemed chosen for philosophy, the
fruitfulness of his approach and his sociological reflections. In reality, it is the
opposite that must be conceived and brought to light: we will support the idea that
the analyzes relating to the temporalization of practices are absolutely decisive
for understanding the practical dynamics of the habitus and its own logic and that
they have largely contributed to the elaboration of this problem.
HEIDEGGER 'S CRITICISM
Beyond these three "indications", which are in reality so many reasons for
transition towards the point of view of the temporalization of practices and which
each time command very specific difficulties, it is also necessary to evoke what is
not indicated not and remains implicit in Bourdieu's critique of philosophy and
phenomenology. In this final chapter of the Pascalian Meditations which bears a
title with a strong existentialist echo ("Social being, time and the meaning of
existence"), there is ultimately little question of Heidegger, except for a few
mentions relating to the relation to cultural objects from the past This is surprising
24
since we know that Bourdieu had read Heidegger very closely. It is all the more
.
so because of the program that Bourdieu assigns to himself, that of a description

of the "plurality of times" which does full justice to their economic, social and
historical dimensions, a program which also marks the limit of what
phenomenological investigation can do:
[…] to really break with the universalist illusion of the analysis of essence […], it would be necessary
to describe, by relating them to their economic and social conditions of possibility, the different
25
ways to temporalize .
Now, with respect to this objective, the existential analytic proposed by

Heidegger could constitute a precious resource, since it claimed
effectively freeing oneself from the Husserlian “analysis of essence” by

returning to the consideration of the historicity of existence, under the
rubric of what he called Dasein .
In Being and Time, Heidegger proposed to "deconstruct"
26
the "running understanding of history ". In particular, it was a question of
showing that historical science was incapable of thematizing its own
conditions of possibility, which were situated in historicity or historiality.
27
(Geschichtlichkeit The fifth chapter of Being and Time, titled
"Temporality and historiality", showed that historiality was the very essence
of Dasein, in this extension which goes from birth to death, from inheritance
to project, historiality which was itself derived from temporality (Zeitlichkeit)
of Dasein.
If this discussion does not occur in the chapter of the Pascalian
Meditations devoted to time, this is no doubt due to the fact that this
account has already been settled elsewhere, notably in Martin Heidegger's
Political Ontology, which Bourdieu published in 1975 in the Proceedings
of social science research. As we know, the reading of the Heideggerian
work that unfolds there finds its principle in the highlighting of the ambiguity
of his discourse, which calls for a double reading, both philosophical and
political. Bourdieu's objective was therefore not primarily to discuss
Heidegger's conceptions relating to the temporality of Dasein.
However, in order to show that Heidegger had brought about a
"conservative revolution" in philosophy, Bourdieu returned incisively to
28
analyzes devoted to historicality .
Bourdieu recalls that existential analysis rejects the conception of man

as a "reasonable animal" and that, in general, the problem of history
cannot be posed in terms of a philosophical defense of reason, as Husserl
still does. On the contrary, it is a question of questioning the universalizing
claims of reason by recognizing the relativity which results from our
condition of historical being.
The objective is indeed to historicize the transcendental. Yet singularly, it is

by situating time and history at the level of being, by rethinking them from
the point of view of a radical ontology, that Heidegger achieves this:
Heidegger makes the being of time the principle of being itself and, immersing truth in history and its relativity, founds a
(paradoxical) ontology of immanent historicity, an ontology
29
historiciste .
All of Heidegger's interest may seem to reside in this new access to

“authentic” temporality and historicality that the analytic of Dasein would
provide us. Now the effect of the ontologization of history and temporality
effected by Heidegger is, according to Bourdieu, eminently paradoxical: far
from effectively opening up an analysis of the "plurality of times" that
Bourdieu calls for, Heidegger in reality preserves the privilege of philosophy
and its universalizing approach. The "existentials" brought to light by
Heidegger remain universals which are extracted abstractly from history.
These are pure conceptual generalities. Heideggerian historicism remains,
in this sense, pure philosophy.
But there is worse, according to Bourdieu, since this historicism is in
reality set up against the historicism developed by the social and historical
sciences. The whole drawback of Heideggerian analyzes is that they
disqualify the social and historical sciences in advance and paradoxically
consecrate a perverse form of “nihilism”:
Thus, to seek in history, the principle of the relativism of nihilism, the overcoming of nihilism, is in fact to shelter historicist
ontology from history, by escaping, through the eternization of temporality and history, to the historicization of the
eternal. To give an “ontological foundation” to temporal existence is, playing with fire, to graze a historicist vision of the
transcendental ego which would give a real role to history […]; but it also means maintaining a radical difference with
any kind of anthropology "which studies man as an object already there" and even with more "critical" forms of
philosophical anthropology (and in particular that
30
that Cassirer or Scheler proposes ).
In Heidegger, according to the reading given by Bourdieu, the

relationship between philosophy and the social sciences thus ends in
the condemnation of the latter and in the restoration of the exclusive
privilege of philosophy to think about time. It is in this sense that
philosophical aristocratism is expressed and that a “conservative
revolution” takes place, a veritable philosophical war machine directed
against the social sciences. The Pascalian Meditations retain this result of the analys
This is how Heidegger was able to become, for many philosophers, beyond philosophical differences
and political oppositions, a kind of guarantor of the point of honor of the philosophical profession,
associating the claim of the philosopher's distance from the world common to the
31
haughty distance with regard to the social sciences, pariah sciences of an unworthy and vulgar object
[…].
Heidegger therefore could not keep the promise of an analysis of the

“plurality of times” concerned with restoring their economic, social and
more generally historical conditions of possibility. The diversity and
relativity of the modes of temporalization of existence are ultimately
summed up in the alternative between authentic temporality and
inauthentic temporality, between "being-for-death" and the "One" of daily
concerns. .
This explains the apparent absence of reference to Heidegger in
reflections devoted to the temporalization of practice, even though he
was outlining the way towards a “historicization” of existence. The
reference to Heidegger is, henceforth, what should be avoided and this
against which it is advisable to demonstrate the relevance of sociology
with regard to the question of time.
1. MP, p.299-301.
2. MP, p. 9.
3. Descartes, "The Meditations", in Philosophical Works. II. 1638-1642, Paris, Garnier, 1996, p. 405.
4. MP, p. 299.
5. Ibid.
6. MP, p. 300.
7. MP, p. 299.
8. MP, p. 300.
9. MP, p. 299.
10. MP, p. 299.
11. MP, p. 308.
12. E. Husserl, Guiding ideas for a pure phenomenology and phenomenological philosophy. First volume: general
introduction to pure phenomenology, trans. Fr. by P. Ricoeur, Paris, Gallimard, 1950.
13. E. Husserl, Lessons on the Phenomenology of the Intimate Consciousness of Time, trans. Fr. by H.
Dussort, Paris, PUF, 1964.
14. E. Husserl, Lessons on the Phenomenology of the Intimate Consciousness of Time, op. cit., p. 6-7. Note the similarity of
these formulas with those used by Bourdieu in the quotation produced above.
15. According to the title of the second paragraph of these Lessons, op. cit., p. 13.
16. E. Husserl, Lessons on the Phenomenology of the Intimate Consciousness of Time, op. cit., p. 7.
17. MP, p. 299.
18. In Bourdieu's own words: MP, p. 302.
19. MP, p.311-312.
20. On the distinction between retention and protention, see E. Husserl, Lectures on the Phenomenology of the Intimate
Consciousness of Time, trans. Fr. by H. Dussort, Paris, PUF, 1964.
21. MP, p. 301.
22. MP, p. 309.
23. MP, p. 312.
24. PM, p. 307. Bourdieu then comments on § 73 of Being and Time.
25. MP, p. 322.
26. Heidegger, Être et Temps, trans. Fr. par E. Martineau, Paris, Authentica, 1985, § 73, p. 285 sq.
27. On this question as a whole, we refer to the work of J. Barash, Heidegger et le sens de l'histoire, Paris, Galaade, 2006.
28. OPMH, p. 72 sq.

29. OPMH, p. 73.
30. OPMH, p. 75.
31. MP, p. 43.

Chapter 9
Temporal Consciousness, Economic

Practices, and Alienation in Algerian Studies
TEMPORALIZATION OF PRACTICES
The origin of Bourdieu's reflections on the question of the temporality

of the practice lies in ethnological and sociological studies on Algeria.
True premises of the anthropological work developed subsequently,
these are crucial for those who want to follow the genesis of the work
and discover the origin of its fundamental concepts 1
. They also include a large number of remarks and
analyzes on time. These first works make possible and operational the
passage from the point of view of philosophical reflection (Bourdieu
does not yet speak of a "scholastic point of view") to that of the
temporalization of practices, "conversion of the gaze" which is first of all
a biographical and intellectual conversion. They make it possible to
understand the capital importance of the question of temporalization for
the theory of practice and for sociological practice itself.
The works that follow one another in a few years draw up the picture
of Algeria at the end of the colonial experience. It is necessary to recall
its purpose in order to understand the importance that the theory of
temporalization of practices. The Sociology of Algeria, published for the first time in
1958, seems to recognize from the title of the work the future independence of the
country since it is no longer a question of “French” Algeria. The different components
of Algerian society are successively examined (Kabyles, Chaouia, Mozabites, i.e.
three Berber groups, then the Arabic speakers), to then be rethought in their “). There
is no longer any question of the
2
national community (the "common European or
French society fund), if not by the diagnosis of "alienation" that the last chapter of the
book leads. With the voluminous study entitled Work and workers in Algeria, in 1963,
Bourdieu presents data statistics, sociological analyzes and a series of biographical
interviews which are the fruit of the collection initiated between 1958 and 1961 this
work has been the subject of an abridged version, initially written with a view to . This
3
an edition in a foreign language, then resumed in French, under the title Algérie 60.
As the subtitle of this last book specifies ("economic structures and temporal
structures"), it is no longer so much a question of proceeding to the objectification of
Algerian social reality, to the study of working conditions and situations than to reflect,
generally, on the structural relationship between the economy of practices and the
different modes of consciousness With Le déracinement, written with Abdelmalek
Sayad in 1964,
4
temporal
Bourdieu studies the “crisis of traditional agriculture in Algeria” caused by the
displacements of rural populations organized by the military forces. Already prepared
by the generalization of monetary exchanges, this planned disorganization of Algerian
peasant societies is undermining tribal structures, undermining solidarity and destroying
the traditional logic of economic exchanges. Result of the colonial logic, it discredits
the traditional peasant activity and accelerates an urbanization fed by the exodus
towards the suburbs which will produce an exploited and alienated under-proletariat.
However, the remarkable effectiveness of this destructuring is due to the fact that it is
first of all the "executives
5
spatial and temporal aspects of ordinary existence" which are destroyed by
uprooting. Later still, the studies of the Outline of a theory of practice will continue
to value the ethnographic materials collected in Kabylia. In general, the "great
texts" of the period are accompanied by a procession of publications now
collected in the Algerian Sketches
6
.
The work of scientific objectification is supported by a critical intention that is

not content with mere moral indignation and is not satisfied with the general
condemnation of the violence of the colonial system.
Its aim is to provide the scientific means of raising political awareness. The
colonial reality must be exhibited for what it is, by revealing the social and cultural
dysfunctions that it induces
7
. Bourdieu clarifies this intention and his epistemological position in
responding to an article by Michel Leiris from 1950. According to the latter, the
colonial situation made any ethnological objectivity impossible.
According to Bourdieu, on the other hand, there are:
for the ethnologist, an absolute imperative, not ethical but scientific: there is no conduct, attitude or ideology that can be described,
understood or explained objectively apart from any reference to the existential situation of the colonized as determined by the action of
the economic and social forces characteristic of the colonial system. To do otherwise would be, by a kind of ontological surreption, to
evade what constitutes the essence of the situation, namely the system of "determined, necessary and independent relations of
individual wills" by reference to which attitudes and conducted. This is the responsibility of
8
the ethnologist .
This objectification will therefore have to go through the distancing of

established representations of colonial reality, whether these representations are
those of the colonists or the colonized, of the dominant or the dominated (we
recognize here the principle of the epistemological break with the representations
of common sense which will be formalized in The profession of sociologist). It will
highlight the different economic and social relationships that define the positions
of the agents and will resituate
their representations in relation to these positions, thus contributing to

the social critique of colonial forms of repression and domination.
The central problematic of many of these texts, particularly Work
and Workers in Algeria and Le Déracinement, is of an economic order:
it is that of the "transition to capitalism" according to the Marxist
interpretation or that, Weberian, of the rationalization economic conduct,
that is to say that of the introduction of capitalism into the traditional
structures of Algerian society. This is engendered or accelerated by the
various actions of the colonial system which are responsible for the
disintegration of traditional rural society: the effective dispossession of
land, displacements from villages to regroupment camps, the breakdown
of family and village life. traditional. In a complementary way, the
analysis of working conditions and situations plays an important role,
because it makes it possible to measure the discordance between the
pre-capitalist economy and the capitalist economy. The most obvious
symptom of this economic change is the emergence of a rural sub-
proletariat exposed to misery, or urban, alienated and exploited.
It is this problematic, which still seems very Marxist in its first
inspiration, which governs the ethnological and sociological research
carried out by Bourdieu. The emphasis placed on the sociology of work
(a question almost absent in the rest of Bourdieu's work) is significant
in this respect: the transition to the capitalist economy orchestrated by
the colonial system is reflected in the development of a form of work
that breaks with productive activity in traditional Algerian societies.
However, from this starting point, Bourdieu is careful to distance himself
from the presuppositions and expected results of an orthodox Marxist
analysis. The reference to Weber plays an important role here, made
clear later by Bourdieu:
Our culture, in the academic sense of the term, is built on the opposition between the cultural
and the economic, between art and money, between all that is free, disinterested, and all that is
material and economic: this great historical opposition prevents us from making an economic science of symbolic goods. In this
respect, my project can be understood as a way of prolonging what had been in my eyes the great contribution of Max Weber:
by making an economy of cultural, religious, artistic practices, etc., of a materialist type, this one
9
had occupied the ground which Marx had abandoned .
The other decisive inflection of the Marxist problematic which will retain our attention
is due to the fact that Bourdieu pays particular attention to the “attitudes” corresponding to
the different economic systems. In these texts from the 1960s, it is not yet a question of
habitus, but of ethos or adaptation. Ethnological and sociological research contributes to
the progressive elaboration of an anthropological reflection attentive to the distortions and
dispositional discordances caused by the confrontation between the pre-capitalist economy
which is that of the Algerian peasant world and the capitalist economy imported by
colonization.
It would be necessary to restore all the "material" conditions and
historical, “practical” in the broad sense, which determine the modalities of “contact
10
between two economic systems of unequal forces, place of a new » : setting
administrative system, land reorganization, military strategies, devices of repression, etc.

11
time studied by Bourdieu have meaning only in . The modalities of consciousness
relation to these economic and social conditions. But they also play a very specific role in
the definition of economic provisions. Thus, when Bourdieu places at the center of his
investigations the "question of the genesis of the economic dispositions and of the
economic and social conditions of this", this can in reality only be instructed if its treatment
is not
12
genesis
not exclusively economic, that is to say that if it is supplemented by the point of view of
the anthropology of practices: "The subject of economic acts is not homo economicus but
the real man, what is the economy doing
13
.
It then sometimes happens that Bourdieu meditates on the situation of
the "real man" by reconnecting with an existentialist phenomenological vein, as in the
1959 article "The clash of civilizations":
We have too often forgotten or ignored that culture constitutes a particular way of aiming at existence which is
offered to each of the members of the community from birth and which is not the work of any of them, although
it is not exists only through them; that it is animated by an original and unique “spirit” in which all participate at
the same time as they constitute it in and through their common life; that it is inhabited by an "attention" (or, if
you will, a choice) deposited as sediment, pre-conscious intention, lived and acted before being thought of as
such by individuals, in the same way than language. The cultural system is therefore both a condition of
existence and a justification
14 to exist […].
Beyond this type of evocations, which mobilize as we can see a whole lexicon
willingly used by "social phenomenology", it is necessary to specify the role
assigned to temporal dispositions, a real point of anthropological exteriority
authorizing a new look at the economic practices. There is an absolute sociological
imperative here: “[…] the economic practices of the Algerian peasant can only be
understood by reference […]. Thus, in Algeria 60,
15
to the categories of his temporal consciousness
this same necessity:
[…] only a sociology of temporal dispositions makes it possible to go beyond the traditional question of knowing
whether the transformation of the conditions of existence precedes and conditions the transformation of the
dispositions or the reverse, at the same time as determining how the class condition can structure the entire
experience of social subjects, beginning with their economic experience, without acting through mechanical
determinations or taking
16 adequate and explicit awareness of the objective truth of the situation .
Bourdieu therefore structures his description of the traditional ethos by

situating its principle in a particular modality of temporal consciousness and it is
in relation to this, by difference, that he specifies the new requirements of the
developing capitalist economy. , this other form of temporal consciousness which
is still lacking in so many Algerian peasants and workers. However, the "sociology
of temporal dispositions" is organized essentially around the distinction between
foresight and the project , which characterize two types of relationship between
the present and the future, establishing
temporal dispositions which then determine a multitude of other social, economic and
cultural dispositions.
What then is “the structure of the temporal consciousness which is
17
associated with the pre-capitalist economy”? The elaboration of the answer to this
question first reveals that Bourdieu clearly breaks with a classic characterization of rural
temporality regulated by the rhythms and cycles of nature. What matters is not so much
the fact that the economic and social order of pre-capitalist rural life is regulated by that
of nature. What is decisive is rather due to the fact that “the cycle of production can be
embraced at a single glance in a cyclical reproduction. In this, the product is always “to
18
come”, the future itself is not distant and dissociated » : the production is registered
from the present. On the contrary, it is situated in a relationship of quasi-immanence, of
immediacy or at the very least of close proximity to the present. This confirms the
principle stated much later, in the Pascalian Meditations, according to which it is practice
that "makes" time: the rhythms of agricultural production shape temporal consciousness
and more particularly the relationship between the present and what is to come.
From the Sociology of Algeria, Bourdieu could thus remark: For the peasant
living in the natural environment, time does not have the same meaning as in the
technical environment where duration is the object of calculation; […] it is the work to be
done that controls the schedule and not the schedule that limits the work
19 .
[…] the peasant spirit (in the universality of its tradition) implies submission to duration, agricultural life being made up of expectations. Nothing is more
alien to it than an attempt to take possession of the future. This does not mean that economic calculation is totally absent, which resides, by definition, in
the choice between different possibilities whose satisfaction cannot be simultaneous. Evidence of the existence of reserves
20 .
The main pre-capitalist temporal arrangement is therefore foresight, a vision operated

"in advance" of what is to come, but as
a kind of present of the future. More clearly, in Algérie 60, Bourdieu, quite
significantly, defines it from the peasant practice of taking and setting aside part
of the harvest for future consumption or for new sowing: […] setting aside […]
presupposes the aim of a “to come” virtually enclosed in the present
21
directly perceived .
In the case of foresight, he continues, "the action
economic is oriented towards a “to come” directly grasped in experience or
established by all the accumulated experiences that constitute tradition . The
division of the different dimensions of time is thus ordered by the relationship of
experience between the past and the present and by the relationship of immediate
anticipation between the present and the future. “Traditional” logic proceeds from
this co-extension of the past, the present and the future, a continuity regulated
by the interplay of production and reproduction.
It is indeed the practice that decides, and not, according to the terms of the
Augustinian tradition, the extension of temporal consciousness.
The power of this “temporal disposition” that is foresight, the extent of its
action if you prefer, is considerable and Bourdieu methodically lists its effects or
the different forms of its expression.
These are cognitive, social, ethical.
1. This particular temporality of traditional existence governs first of all a
whole set of cognitive dispositions, which do not yet take the name of habitus,
but which are ways of perceiving and conceiving which structure peasant thought:
Foresight (like "seeing ahead") differs from forecasting in that the future it apprehends is directly inscribed
in the situation itself as it can be perceived through the schemes of perception and technical-ritual
appreciation inculcated by conditions 23
material existence, themselves apprehended through the same thought patterns […].
Each element of the world is apprehended directly in its economic dimension:

wheat is perceived as being what can be eaten. The logic
of foresight, as Bourdieu conceives it, determines a whole economy of

practices. The “reservation” constitutes the specific economic rationality of
the traditional Algerian ethos . But this rationality owes its meaning to
“schemes of perception and appreciation”, that is to say to cognitive
dispositions directly implied by the temporal disposition of foresight.
2. This temporal provision of foresight is also social, in the sense that

temporality is collective, a real power of social constraint which decides on
the inclusion or exclusion of individuals within the community:
The social order is above all a rhythm, a tempo. To conform to the social order is fundamentally to respect the rhythms, to follow the measure, not to go out
of time. Belonging to the group means having the same behavior at the same time of day and year as all the other members of the group. Adopting unusual
rhythms and specific itineraries is already
24
exclude oneself from the group .
This remark ends up freeing us from the reference to the rhythm of

nature, to the cycle of the seasons. Admittedly, there is indeed a logic of
the growth and decline of plants and animals which cannot be ignored. But
the fact remains that, in the logic of foresight, it is first and foremost the
rhythm of a social life that is expressed.
3. The traditional temporal arrangement finally finds an extension
25
ethics in the "morality of generosity and honor ».
[…] the ethos is extended without interruption in ethics: the precepts of the morality of honor which denounce the spirit of calculation and all its manifestations,
such as greed and haste, which condemn the tyranny of the watch, “the devil's mill”, can appear as so many partial and veiled explanations of the objective
“intention” of the economy.
The logic of foresight therefore goes hand in hand with a sense of honor
which finds its principle in the contempt of emergencies and more generally
of a time which would subject us to its domination. It is therefore, as seen,
the whole of individual and social existence which finds its principle in a
certain modality of temporal consciousness.
Bourdieu distinguishes forecasting from foresight , a temporal disposition

adequate to the capitalist “cosmos”. Forecasting is an accumulation or a
hoarding which is carried out with a view to an investment which always
supposes a rational calculation. It determines a relationship from the
present to the future , whereas foresight was a relationship from the present
to the future. Forecasting mobilizes the imagination which must produce a
future representation of what is not immediately present and the intervention
of the will ordered at the end of the action. Conversely, in the logic of
foresight, the relationship of the present to the future was established in the
order of perception, of the immediate grasp of what was given in the
situation itself. Generally speaking, forecasting is the expression of a
rationalization based on the elaboration of a long-range plan and on the
calculation of means; foresight, for its part, presents a more "intuitionist"
dimension, which is not radically irrational but manifests a form of rationality
which is not that of the capitalist ethos and which can, consequently, from
this point of view view, being denounced as "irrational" (practices appearing
inefficient, even lazy, etc.). The capitalist economy finds in abstraction the
measures to compensate for the void left by the absence of intuition as to
what is “to be done”:
[…] because the length of the production cycle is generally much greater, the capitalist economy supposes the constitution of
a mediate and abstract future, rational calculation before

26
compensate for the lack of intuition of the process as a whole .
The future is fundamentally abstract, places of possibilities, object of

calculation, binding by imaginary representations of individuals without
belonging. The future, on the other hand, is the direct horizon of what is perceived
as present, a concrete proximity, a set of objective potentialities, intuitively

anticipated, shared by a community.
However, it is not enough only to distinguish temporal dispositions, it
is also necessary to show the relationship of one to the other or rather
the relationship of one (foresight) to the absence of the other (forecast). .
It is the distinction of Weberian origin between subjective hopes and
objective chances that will make it possible to think about the fundamental
inadequacy of the old ethos and traditional temporal arrangements in
relation to the new requirements of the capitalist system (which Bourdieu
does not detail). really, assuming they are already known in some way):
[…] the economic system presents itself as a field of objective expectations which can only be fulfilled
by agents endowed with a certain type of economic disposition and, moreover, 27
widely, temporal .
However, the whole problem of the Algerian situation at the end of the
1950s (apart from that posed by the conflict of decolonization, totally
28
absent from these ethnological and ), stems from the questioning of
sociological texts, acquired, traditional provisions, and the requirement
for new provisions, granted to the new economic system. The capitalist
economy is characterized by "the representation of the future as a field
29
possibilities that it is up to the calculation to explore and of".
master the most ordinary behaviors of the capitalist economy (such as
savings, credit or even wages) depend on conditions of social, cultural
and dispositional possibility which are not present in traditional societies.
The new practices – and exemplarily, that of credit – are simply not
conceivable and therefore they are not practicable:
[…] If the plans often arouse only incomprehension or skepticism, it is because, based on abstract
calculation and assuming the suspension of adherence to the familiar given, they are affected by the
unreality of the imaginary: as if rational planning were to customary foresight what a rational
demonstration is to a “monstration” by cutting and folding,
a project can only meet with support if it offers concrete results and
30
immediately noticeable .
Produced by a particular class of material conditions of existence, objectively grasped in the form of
a particular structure of objective chances - an objective future - the dispositions towards the future,
structured structures, function as structuring structures, directing and organizing the economic
practices of daily existence:
31
purchase, savings or credit transaction […].
Rational planning of the future dissociates the "organic" or natural unity

that linked the present to the future in peasant thought. This in no way
means that the Algerian peasant, as the culturalist or racist vision would
have us believe, would be incapable of abstraction or by essence lazy, but
quite simply that planning presupposes a suspension of the familiarity with
which the practice. To reach the representation of this imaginary objective
which transcends the categories of concrete and ordinary life, it will take
mediations and a certain use of these mediations.
One of these mediations is that of money. The use of money

presupposes that we make do with an abstract value, as if detached from
the concrete value and qualities of things, including the time devoted to
culture. Currency presupposes an abstract and symbolic representation
that promotes calculation and the economic relationship to the future. From
the Sociology of Algeria, Bourdieu thus underlines that:
[…] the conception of an abstract and symbolic future is the condition of possibility of the most
fundamental and common economic institutions and behaviors of our society: thus fiduciary money,
obtained from barter by symbolization, conceptualization and projection in the abstract future; thus
the wage system and the rational distribution of wages over time, which presupposes rational
economic calculation; industrial work and commercialization which
32
involve planning, etc. .
The capitalist ethos presupposes symbolic mediations, which is,

exemplarily, money, an abstract mediation between the economic agent
and the commodities. One glance is enough to assess what is left in
reserve, while understanding what is left in the bank account at the end of
the month requires mastery of complex symbols and representations. The
practice of credit in use in the capitalist world can only function with reference
to an abstract future, which may be very distant.
It presupposes the establishment of a contract which inaugurates a new
type of social relationship, made up of commitments which are themselves
valid for the future. In the Kabyle peasant world, it is reciprocal trust, based
on the logic of honor and on good faith, which makes it possible to dispense
with contractuality. The circle of agents involved in loans is not abstract: it is
that of relatives, relatives and friends. It is therefore possible to dispense
with establishing the schedule of periodic repayments. The circle of familiars
will be responsible for ensuring compliance with the word given and the
restitution of what has been lent. In the capitalist world, it is the contract, an
abstract and symbolic entity, which regulates the relationships between
individuals and between individuals and institutions.
Beyond these economic mediations, it is the social bond itself that
changes in nature. Bourdieu can thus oppose the mutual aid of the traditional
world and the cooperation of the capitalist world, as two fundamental modes
of social relations:
Nothing is more radically opposed to mutual aid, which always associates individuals united by bonds of real or fictitious consanguinity,
than cooperation, which mobilizes individuals selected according to the calculated ends of a specific enterprise: in one case, the group
pre-exists and survives the joint accomplishment of a common work; in the other case, finding its reason for being in itself, in the future
objective defined by the contract, it ceases to exist at the same time as the
33
contract that founds it .
Bourdieu paints a striking picture of the dispossessions that affect

Algerians: they are landless peasants, unemployed workers, villagers
without a village, individuals without families or who have lost the traditional
bonds of solidarity. However, these empirically observable and observed
dispossessions have their principle in a
general alienation from existence, a becoming foreign to oneself, which

sees the temporal dispositions, cut off from their “material”, social and
economic conditions, losing their effectiveness and their relevance.
They are no longer adjusted to the new “cosmos” of the capitalist world
brutally introduced by colonization and persist in an inertial mode, like
persistent obstacles to the acquisition of new dispositions. The
singularity of Bourdieu's analysis, which sets him apart from the Marxist
tradition, is that alienation is not apprehended only in its economic and
social dimension, but recaptured as temporal alienation. The principle
of this temporal alienation is due to the discordance between the
structures of the temporal dispositions of the agents and the new
structures of the capitalist economy, structural discordance between
two durations, between a duration which links the present to the future
and another which proceeds of projecting a future deciding what should be done in t
THE DEPOLITIZATION OF THE “TO COME”
However, the analysis of the different modalities of temporal

consciousness in its relation to what is to come is not valid for itself, as
if it concerned only an abstract consciousness, detached from historical
and social contingencies. It must always be related to the reality of
social situations and objective possibilities:
If we must therefore always rank the opinions that engage the future according to their modality, from
daydreaming to the project rooted in present conduct, we must beware of forgetting that the degree of
commitment in the opinion formulated is depending on the degree of accessibility of the targeted future; this
future is more or less accessible according to the material conditions of existence and the social status of
34
each individual and, on the other hand, according to the domain of existence which is involved […].
In this respect, considerations relating to temporality are crucial in

order to take up, from the point of view of the sociology of practices, the
question of what in Marxist terms we would call the "consciousness of
class ". More precisely, the distinction between the proletariat and the
sub-proletariat is played out for Bourdieu on the consciousness that we
have or not of temporal alienation and on the obstacle that this can
represent in the process of becoming aware of this alienation:
It is in the relation to the future objectively inscribed in the material conditions of existence that lies the principle of the distinction
between the sub-proletariat and the proletariat, between the disposition to revolt of the uprooted and demoralized masses and the
revolutionary dispositions organized workers who have sufficient mastery of their present to undertake to reclaim
35
the future .
The consequence of this finding is of prime importance for militant

revolutionary discourse, whose exhortations to political engagement risk
turning out to be quite simply ineffective. Class consciousness does not
exist or no longer exists: urban proletarians and sub-proletarians are not
aware of the system that exploits them because they simply cannot
become aware of it. So they are not automatically, immediately,
revolutionaries.
In fact, consciousness of the class situation can also be, in another respect, an unconsciousness of this situation. The methodical
use of mediating concepts, such as objective potentialities or class habitus, makes it possible to go beyond the abstract oppositions
between the subjective and the objective, the conscious and the unconscious. The objective future is what the observer must
postulate in order to understand the present conduct of social subjects, which does not mean that he places in the consciousness
of the subjects he observes the consciousness he has of their consciousness: indeed, the objective future may not be an end
consciously pursued by the subjects and nevertheless constitute the objective principle of their conduct, because it is inscribed in
the present situation of its subjects and in their habitus, internalized objectivity, permanent disposition acquired in a situation,
under the influence of this situation. The sub-proletarians reproduce, both in their conscious representation and in their practices,
the situation of which they are the product and which encloses the possibility of an adequate awareness of the truth of the situation:
they do not know this truth but
36
they do it or, if you like, they say it only in what they do .
The truth of the situation is therefore known in practice, but not in the
mode of clear and distinct consciousness. The power of the reproduction
of situations, guarantee of the persistence of the social order, is due to this
“acquired permanent disposition” which is the habitus. It benefits from

an “interiorized objectivity” which is the subject of the practice. Against
it, awareness does not have enough hold. From then on, one can
conceive that the sub-proletarians evoked by Bourdieu cultivate a form
of resignation:
As long as the activity has no other end than to ensure the reproduction of the economic and social
order, as long as the whole group has no other end than to last and that it objectively transforms the
world without admitting it to himself, the acting subject lasts for the duration of the world with which
he is linked; he cannot discover himself as a historical agent whose action in the present and against
the present order only takes on meaning in relation to the future and to the future order that it is
working to bring about. Traditionalism appears as a methodical enterprise (although it is unaware of
itself as such) to deny the event as such, that is to say as novelty caused by the innovative action or
capable of giving rise to it; to reduce the event by making the order depend
37 Chronological of the Eternal Order of Mythic Logic. Scientific objectification is thus both a call to
reality and an implicit denunciation of the lies of colonial discourse, as well as the illusions of
revolutionary discourse.
1. Bourdieu reminds us in Fieldwork in Philosophy (CD, p. 34): “Most of the concepts around which the
work on education and culture that I carried out or directed within the framework of the Center de European
sociology were born from a generalization of the achievements of ethnological and sociological work that I
had carried out in Algeria […]. I am thinking in particular of the relationship between subjective hopes and
objective chances, which I had observed in the economic, demographic and political behavior of Algerian
workers, and which I was rediscovering in French students or their families. But the transfer is even more
evident in the interest shown in cognitive structures, taxonomies and the classificatory activity of social
agents. See also the “Preface” by P. Bourdieu, L. Boltanski, R. Castel, J.-C. Chamboredon, Un art Moyen.
Essay on the social uses of photography, Paris, Minuit, 1965.
2. One of the book's paradoxes is that Algerian "society" is thus not analyzed according to its different
social components (its different classes, for example), but from the distinction of different cultures, thus
giving precedence to an ethnological perspective.
3. These data are also included in “The dread of unemployment among the Algerian worker: proletariat
and colonial system” (1962) and “Les sous-proletaires algériens” (1962), in EA, p. 213-235 and 193-212.
4. For this reason, we will favor this reference.
5. According to the terms of the back cover of Uprooting.

6. Of all the works of the Algerian period, we recommend E. Martín-Criado, Les deux Algéries de Pierre
Bourdieu, trans. Fr. by H. Bretin, Broissieux, Editions du croquant, 2008.
7. “I started to take an interest in Algeria as a sociologist and ethnologist because I had the feeling that what
I saw in Algeria did not correspond at all to what was being said on the other side of the Mediterranean”,
Interview of P. Bourdieu with H. Adnani and T. Yacine, in L'autre Bourdieu, Awal, 27-28, p. 232.
8. Foreword, TTA.
9. P. Bourdieu, C. Du Verlie, “Outline of an intellectual project: an interview with Pierre Bourdieu”, The
French Review, 198, 61, 2, p. 194-195.
10. P. Bourdieu, “The Clash of Civilizations” (1959), in EA, p. 63.
11. Elements of analysis can be found in “Le choc des civilisations” (ibid.) and in T. Yacine, “Aux origins
d'une ethnologie singulière”, in EA, p. 21-53.
12. A 60, p. 7.
13. A 60, p. 12.
14. EA, p. 68-69.
15. A 60, p. 29.
16. A 60, p. 12-13.
17. A 60, p. 18.
18. A 60, p. 21.
19. SA, p. 103.
20. SA, p. 103-104.
21. A 60, p. 19.
22. A 60, p. 20.
23. A 60, p. 19.
24. A 60, p. 41.
25. A 60, p. 31.
26. A 60, p. 20.
27. A 60, p. 16.
28. It is of course not absent from Bourdieu's preoccupations, but we must look for political positions
elsewhere than in ethnological and sociological research. On this subject, see the articles "Revolution within
the revolution", published in the magazine Esprit in January 1961, and "From the revolutionary war to the
revolution", published in the collective Algeria of tomorrow under the direction of F.
Perroux, texts collected in I, p. 21-36.
29. A 60, p. 19.
30. A 60, p. 22.
31. "Preface" (1976), in A 60, p. 7-8.
32. SA, p. 104-105.
33. A 60, p. 26.
34. A 60, p. 68.
35. "Preface" (1976), in A 60, p. 8.
36. A 60, p. 115-116.
37. A 60, p. 40.

Chapter 10
The temporal dynamics of habitus
In line with studies on Algeria, Bourdieu returns several times

throughout his work to the question of the temporality of practices. Let us
make three preliminary remarks in this connection, before examining for
themselves the various aspects of the temporal dynamics of habitus.
1. Bourdieu deals with the problem of practical temporality in two

ways that should be clearly distinguished, even if they are sometimes
closely associated: there is, on the one hand, anthropological reflection
on the temporality of practice and on the other, the sociological exploration
of the temporality of practices.
A first way of returning to the temporalization of practices, with
reference to the experience of ethnological and sociological research
conducted in Algeria (and especially in Kabylia), comes from the
praxeological theorization carried out under the general heading of
habitus. The theory of practical temporalization unfolds in a register which
is of an anthropological order, in the broad sense of the term, and within
the framework of a reflection on the habitus understood in its generality.
This continuous reflection is found in the main works where the theory is elaborated an
praxeological: in the Outline of a Theory of Practice, Practical Sense ,

Pascalian Meditations .
At the same time, another way of returning to the question of time will
have consisted in exploring the practical diversification of its uses, with a
view to accounting for the “plurality of times” and the different ways we
have of “occupying” it. The register of Bourdieu's reflections is then more
resolutely sociological and the analyzes most often focus on situations of
discrepancy between a persistent habitus and new situations.
The relationship between these two approaches does not go without

posing certain difficulties and one could wonder if they are not in a situation
of competition, anthropological reflection constituting a response to a form
of philosophical temptation that sociological investigation and attention
properly given to the diversity of habitus should have contained and
1
conjured up the opposite, that . But we could also plead, in the sense
this paradox is not a logical contradiction and that one can discover in it a
remarkable complementarity, the theory of the temporalization of practices
finding its ultimate truth only in their sociological investigations, as if it were
a matter of thinking both about the time of practice, in its generality, and
the possibility, better, the reality of its pluralization in effective social
experience.
2. The constitution of the theory of the temporalization of practice is
singular in that it develops on two complementary lines, that of adjustment
and that of misadjustment in relation to situations. Each of these two lines
privileges, in the studies on Algeria, a particular field, as well as a particular
theoretical reference. Let's clarify things.
On the one hand, according to a first line, Bourdieu thinks the temporal
dynamics of the habitus in the action adjusted to the requirements of the
field. He then privileges the reference to what could be called the "paradigm
2
Kabyle anthropological ". On a purely theoretical level, it mobilizes
Husserlian distinctions and imports the phenomenology of the intimate
consciousness of time into its own praxeology.
On the other hand, a second line emerges with the theorization of the
hysteresis of the habitus, that is to say its tendency to persist beyond its
area of primary relevance. It is then the experience of the maladjustment
experienced by the Algerian proletarians and sub-proletarians that Bourdieu
most often has in mind, as well as that of the Béarn peasants. The
theoretical reference is then more implicit than in the first case. It refers us
to Sartre, who had used this concept about Flaubert in his Questions de
methods and in L'idiot de la famille, but also, in an underlying way, to the
theme of incorporation inherited from Merleau-Ponty .
3. We have already noted, above in connection with the theory of
habitus, this other paradox: when he produces a general theory of habitus,
Bourdieu tends to privilege the ideal of a "normal" functioning, harmonious,
where the habitus is fully attuned to the requirements of the social space,
while sociological research most often focuses on situations of misalignment.
However, the theory of the temporalization of practices considers both
aspects. There is both a dynamic of habitus which explains how we can
“anticipate” what will happen and thus ensure that our practices are timely,
adjusted to the kaïros of the situation . But there is also the powerful inertial
dynamics of the habitus, the hysteresis, structural delay of the habitus in
relation to the evolutions of the field or of the situations. In a certain sense,
the theory of the temporalization of practices corrects the impression given
by certain presentations of the habitus, moreover very informed by
phenomenology, and which relied heavily on the idea of an "ontological
complicity". , of a land agreement between the habitus and the field.
RETENTIONS AND PROTENTIONS

In generalizing and formalizing his theory of temporal dispositions,

Bourdieu constantly refers to a lexicon and descriptions borrowed from
phenomenology. He sometimes seems to do it reluctantly and as if he had
to apologize for it. Thus, in the Pascalian Meditations, he will recognize
having had to, in order to clarify his own conception of time, sacrifice
"partially" to "the universalist illusion of the analysis of essence
3
that is to say, in Husserlian terms, to the eidetic analysis of the
acts of consciousness that preside over the advent of temporality. Husserlian
phenomenology is however often put to use in order to develop a conception
of practical time, conceived as a set of possibilities open in the present,
foreseen in a more or less confused way in the anticipation of what is to
come and realized selectively. in the haste of the past.
When he defines the present of the practice, Bourdieu retains the

criterion of the agent's full and entire commitment to his practice, in the
mode of fully attentive consideration. Thus, in the Pascalian Meditations, he
writes that "the present is the whole of what one is )". There
4
present, that is to say interested (as opposed to indifferent, absent)
constitution of interest is conceived as a "presentification", a Husserlian
term typical of the phenomenology of perception which designates here the
fact that the object of Interest is made current and practice can be
determined according to this interest. Correlatively, a "depresentification" or
deactualization of what is devoid of interest takes place: the interested
present stands out against the background of all that is not is not of interest.
Bourdieu also mobilizes the metaphor of the game, already at work
when it came to characterizing the practical logic of the habitus. The
temporal consciousness of the agent invests in the present moment, in the
same way as the player invests himself, even invests concretely, in the
game. The practical investment in the present decides its direction and
meaning: one is then fully “taken” into the practice. Conversely, the
The scholastic point of view is that of an agent disengaged from practice, disinvested,
without a present except for the abstract one of theoretical study: he is no longer in the
game of practice.
However, the explanation of this definition of the present skilfully recycles, by
referring it to practice and no longer to intentional consciousness, the Husserlian
conception of the “living present” (lebendige Gegenwart). In Lessons for a
Phenomenology of the Consciousness of Time of 1905, Husserl mobilized this concept
against a long philosophical tradition which conceived of the present as a punctual
instant. Now, to make the present a moment, a point on the line of time, is still to take
space as a model, it is to think of time starting from space and it is above all to prevent
oneself from understanding the time as a continuity. Conversely, the phenomenological
description of acts of consciousness, centered on the analysis of “time-objects” (the
Zeitobjekte, such as sound), reveals the phenomenal reality of the “living present”.
This, as Husserl clearly shows, is not a punctual moment since it is imbued with what
has just happened and open to what is about to happen. The living present is not a
moment closed in on itself: it is stretched between what has just passed and what is
about to happen.
According to Husserl, the present finds its origin in the original impression
(Urimpression) which is “the original source of all subsequent consciousness and being.
5
". However, if it is the very event of presence on this side of the

partition of consciousness and being, this present is also a tension between the
residual and the imminent, between “retention” and “protention”: “ All perception has
6
its retentional and protentional halo.” Retention is the past impression, of which
.
something remains, in the transition from an original consciousness (that of the “now”)
to a modified consciousness.
Protention is, symmetrically, awareness of what is going to happen, straining towards
appearance. Therefore, time can no longer be conceived as a series
linear of discrete moments. It is a network of intentionalities which overlap, interpenetrate.

Like Husserl, Bourdieu refuses
to make the present a punctual moment. In the same way that the living present is
stretched between the retentions of the “just past” and the protentions that anticipate what
is “just to come”, the present of the practice encompasses, according to Bourdieu “the
anticipations and the practical retrospectives which are inscribed as potentialities or
objective traces as an analogue of the phenomenological “living present”. Thus, in the
7
Sketch, the habitus is presented as a ". The present of the action is defined as follows:
relation, a set of objective potentialities, in the same way that the living present of
perception opens up to immediate potentialities, articulated by protention:
[…] the responses of the habitus […] are first defined in relation to a field of objective potentialities,
immediately inscribed in the present, things to do or not to do, to say or not to do.
8 not say, compared to one to come […].
The analogy with the phenomenological conception also informs the consideration of
the past. Ultimately, there is no past as such, only what remains of it, in the form of habitus
and which informs present practices. Very clearly, the temporal disposition governed by
the habitus replaces the phenomenological “retention”. The formation of the habitus
defines what is inherited, acquired, it is the product of past confrontations with the social
world: "the habitus is this presence of the past in the present which makes possible the
9
presence in the present of the future Finally, we find the legacy of the phenomenology of
10
temporality in the considerations relating to the meaning of anticipation, ».
that is to say of the practical meaning in its relation to the “to come”. The reference to
phenomenology proves valuable in denouncing the intellectualist conceptions of temporal
experience which define the relationship to the future as a "conscious project": the
"practical" intention requalifies and generalizes this
which was thought under the theme of "foresight" in studies on Algeria.

There again, the seat of temporal experience is not so much consciousness
as the habitus, a set of incorporated dispositions which has the resource
of anticipating the future, since it allows the practical, rapid, precise
anticipation of this which is to be done. The habitus manifests an ability to
anticipate which is only acquired by frequenting a field over the long term:
Ordinary analyzes of temporal experience confuse two relationships to the future or to the past which, in Idean, Husserl distinguishes very clearly: the
relationship to the future that can be called project, and which posits the future as future, that is to say, as possible constituted as such, therefore as
being able to arrive or not to arrive, is opposed to the relation to the future which he calls protension or preperceptive anticipation, in relation to a
future which is not one. , a future that is a quasi-present. […]. In fact, these preperceptive anticipations, kinds of practical inductions based on previous
experience, are not given to a pure subject, a universal transcendental consciousness. They are the fact of the habitus as the sense of the game. To
have the sense of the game is to have the game in your skin; it is to master in practice the future of the game; it's having a sense of the game's
history. While the bad player is always out of time, always too early or too late, the good
11
player is the one who anticipates, who goes ahead of the game .
Thus the temporal dynamics of the practice are described by Bourdieu

in a style that recalls Husserlian analyzes of temporality but also those
relating to “passive geneses”. The restitution of the past does not suppose
any memory, voluntary or involuntary: its principle is situated in the habitus
and it depends on the bodily acquired disposition.
The habitus is this sort of practical sense of what is to be done in a given situation - what is called, in sport, the meaning of the game, the art of
anticipating the future of the game which is inscribed in dotted lines in

12
the current state of the game .
If Husserlian analyses, as we said above, place retention at the

forefront of their consideration, the Bourdieusian conception of temporality
finds its center of gravity in analyzes relating to protention and anticipation.
13
practice . On
On this point, a more specifically Heideggerian influence cannot be ruled out.

Indeed, Heidegger, in chapter III of the second section of Being and Time,
characterizes temporality as the “ontological sense of”. However, the primary
worry 14 character of Concern (Sorge) resides in anticipation. The existential
constitution of Dasein is stretched towards its possibilities. Dasein has the ability to
"get ahead", that is to say to be ahead of itself to decide on its possibilities of
existence and to choose between the authentic and the inauthentic . As Heidegger
puts it, “temporality is experienced in a phenomenally originary way in the originary
being-all of Dasein – in the phenomenon of anticipating resolution.
15
».
However, this "resolution" does not operate in the absolute, but in relation to a
world where Dasein is always already "thrown away": Dasein is assigned to a
precise place and time, it is enclosed in a determined horizon of possibilities that
he must assume. This being-thrown of Dasein is not only the presence of the past
in the present, that is to say what one inherits: it is also co-present in the anticipating
resolution, which is only defined in relation to him. Resolution is therefore openness
to possibilities, but these are not understood in a purely logical and abstract sense.
They concern existence itself, down to its properly “practical” dimension (in the
sense that Heidegger can conceive of it in this precise context):
This phenomenon that we have just identified under the name of resolution cannot in any way be confused with an empty "habitus" and an
indeterminate "inclination". Far from first representing a situation to itself by taking cognizance of it, resolution has already placed itself in it.
As
16
that resolved, Dasein is already acting .
The recovery of phenomenological analyzes within praxeology therefore

involves two important shifts. On the one hand, Bourdieu's analyzes detail above
all the particular temporality of the habitus understood as a principle of action: the
strictly practical dimension is privileged in the analyzes as in the examples
mobilized by Bourdieu. The more specifically “cognitive” aspects of the

habitus are not ignored, but take a back seat. On the other hand, Bourdieu
favors the analysis of protention or anticipating awareness of the future,
whereas Husserlian analyzes focus more readily on retention.
L'HYSTERESIS DE L'HABITUS
Bourdieu's considerations relative to practical temporality still think of the

relationship of the present to the past in another way, which is no longer only
that of the "acquired" mobilized with relevance by the grace of the habitus
and according to the requirements of the situation. Indeed, the anthropology
of practical temporality also accounts for the fact that we do not always do
things "on time", not for obscure psychological reasons of the order of
procrastination or precrastination, but because certain practices show a real
mismatch and inadequacy in relation to the objective chances of the situation
and the field.
Now, this type of misalignment stems from a certain temporality of practice
and is due, according to Bourdieu, who then seems to free himself from the
analogy with Husserlian phenomenological analyses, to the inertial character
of the habitus and to what he calls its “ hysteresis ”. Thus it is necessary to
dissociate the temporality of the practical logic of the habitus, entirely in the
present moment and in the anticipation of the future, from its internal
dynamics, deeply and powerfully structuring, referring to an acquisition due
to frequentation on a long duration of a certain social space.
Generally speaking, hysteresis (from the Greek hustereîn, to be late) is
the tendency of a system to remain in a certain state when the external
cause which produced the change of state has ceased: it is a delay of the
effect in relation to the cause. In Bourdieu, the hysteresis of the habitus
designates the fact that the acquired dispositions of an individual persist in the
time, in such a way that the practices engendered by the habitus can find
themselves inappropriate in relation to the objective structures of the social
space. It is again in the Practical sense that Bourdieu is most clear on this
point:
[…] the persistence, in the form of the habitus, of the effect of primary conditioning also accounts for the cases where the
dispositions operate out of time and where the practices are objectively unsuited to the present conditions because they are
objectively adjusted under outdated or abolished conditions. The tendency to persevere in their being which groups owe,
among other reasons, to the fact that the agents composing them are endowed with lasting dispositions, capable of surviving
the economic and social conditions of their own production, may be the principle of maladjustment as well as adaptation,
revolt as well as
17
resignation .
If the durable character of the habitus is the principle of both adaptation

and maladjustment, the fact remains that it is most often the experience of
the misalignment of the durable dispositions in relation to the "objective
chances" which suddenly reveals this durability. principle of habitus. If the
individual is in a different social space, for example because he has changed
status or social position, or if this social space is changing, as in the case of
Algerian society at the end of the 1950s, the inertial tendency of the habitus
will incline it to act as before, in fidelity to an outdated state of the social
order, thus creating a situation of misalignment: "[...] there is an inertia (or a
hysteresis) of the habitus which have a spontaneous tendency (inscribed in
biology) to perpetuate structures corresponding to their conditions of
production .
»
Therefore, it happens that the built-in provisions run empty. This

misalignment can be simply embarrassing, if it is about awkwardness. It can
be experienced very painfully and lead to different forms of social
disqualification. It can be temporary, in the case where a new habitus comes
to compete with the first, or definitive. In other words, it can take multiple
forms, has subjective and
objectives, but it always results in the failure of the practice: it does not reach its
end, does not give satisfaction or creates unexpected effects.
The concept of hysteresis is already present and named as such in

the Sketch of 1972 and he finds there a definition which will hardly evolve:
[…] practical estimates confer disproportionate weight on first experiences, insofar as they are the characteristic structures
of a determined type of living conditions which, through the economic and social necessity which they impose on the
relatively autonomous universe of family relations or better through specifically family manifestations of this external
necessity (eg prohibitions, concerns, moral lessons, conflicts, tastes, etc.), produce the structures of the habitus which
are in turn at the root of of the perception and appreciation of any
19
subsequent experience .
It is above all in an article of 1974, entitled “Avenir de classe et causalité du

probable” and published in the Revue française de sociologie, that
Bourdieu seals the definition of the hysteresis of the habitus:
The persistence, in the form of habitus, of the effect of primary conditioning, implies that the immediate correspondence
between structures and habitus (with the representations […] and the expectations […] that they engender) does not is
only one particular case of the system of possible cases of relations between objective structures and dispositions. It also
accounts for, and just as well, the cases where the provisions operate out of time (according to the paradigm of Don
Quixote, so dear to Marx) and where the practices are objectively unsuited to present conditions because they are
objectively adjusted to bygone or abolished conditions: Suffice it to mention the particularly paradoxical case of social
formations where a permanent change in objective conditions is observed – therefore a permanent discrepancy between
the conditions to which the habitus is adjusted and the conditions to which it must adjust –, at the same time as a simple
translation of the structure of class relations, the hysteresis of habitus being able to lead in this case to a discrepancy
between expectations and the objective conditions which induces the impatience of these objective conditions […]. In
short, the tendency to persevere in their being which groups owe, among other reasons, to the fact that the agents who
compose them are endowed with lasting dispositions, capable of surviving the economic and social conditions of their
own production, can be at the root of
20
maladjustment as well as adaptation, revolt as well as resignation .
The logic of hysteresis is that of mishap, but this logic finds its principle in a
mismatch between the subjectivity of the agent and
the objective conditions of the practice.

It also happens to Bourdieu to use the term punctually, without. in the
to deepen one's determination, as in The Practical
21
direction
Distinction, Bourdieu gives a striking literary example of this type of
misalignment or phase shift, moreover borrowed from Marx: it is Don
Quixote, ultimate knight of a world without chivalry, persistent, in the mode
of honorary confrontation, defying windmills when enemies fail
22
. In the Outline of a Theory of Practice, Bourdieu
already gave the example of generational conflicts, an example taken up in
the Practical Sense :
We understand by the same logic that the conflicts of generations do not oppose age groups separated by natural
properties, but habitus which are produced according to different generation modes, that is to say by conditions of
existence which, by imposing different definitions of the impossible, the possible, the probable and the certain,
cause some to experience as natural or reasonable practices or aspirations that others feel
23
as unthinkable or scandalous and vice versa .
Beyond these different examples which are useful to illustrate the

effects of hysteresis, it is above all the first works on Algeria which are
decisive for understanding the importance of this concept, even if it is not
elaborated. as such at that time. As we said above in evoking these studies,
Bourdieu locates the reasons for the crisis of Algerian society in the brutal
confrontation between the capitalist "cosmos" and a traditional ethos which
cannot be transformed to adjust to new circumstances. new material, social
and economic conditions. The discrepancy between subjective aspirations
and objective chances is typically an effect of what Bourdieu was to call,
only later, the hysteresis of the habitus.
The brutality of change is not only the result of external interventions: there
is brutality, precisely, because the incorporated dispositions are late,
persist, while the social space changes profoundly.
Another example of hysteresis – but this is undoubtedly much more of a

sociologically and personally founding experience – can be found in Le bal
desSingles, this remarkable sociological study of the Béarn peasant world.
Bourdieu confronts the enigma that constitutes the celibacy of the elders in a
society attached to the right of primogeniture. From a famous ball scene, where
single elders of landowning families do not find partners to dance to only that the
24
marital strategies that had hitherto prevailed are no Bourdieu finds no

,
longer in effect, but also that old practices persist despite everything: the bodies
that have become awkward cruelly reveal the transformation of peasant society.
Indeed, the dispositions that were granted to the matrimonial strategies of the
first half of the 20th century involved a whole economy of the love relationship,
It is
ways of behaving with "girls", of approaching them, of talking to them, etc., and
a logic of the social relations implied by marriage. However, the transformation
of the peasant world, and in particular the departure of young girls from the
villages to the cities, made these matrimonial strategies and the dispositions that
supported them obsolete. Through an effect of hysteresis, these nevertheless
persist and Bourdieu sees in this the main factor in explaining the inadequacy of
these elders to the new social space. They are thus the first “victims of the
hysteresis of the habitus”.
Hysteresis clearly marks the limit of a theory of the “subject” which owes all
its temporalization only to itself and which would be situated at the principle of it.
The temporal dynamic of the dispositions is dependent on a primary socialization
which is an incorporated duration, therefore itself destined to last a long time.
The phenomenon of hysteresis attests to this remarkable property of the habitus,
which is in a way its first property: it is a set of lasting dispositions, beyond the
variability of circumstances. It is worth emphasizing this point: the concept of
habitus is based on the one hand on the idea of disposition, on the other
shares the idea of sustainability. Yet it is in and through the body, a

veritable instance of social individuation, that the durability of dispositions
is exercised. Consciousness is no longer the instance where time finds its
origin and its place of accomplishment. This inertial dynamic specific to
the habitus is therefore of particular importance for the theory of the
temporalization of practices, but also for the internal coherence of the
theory of the habitus, as well as for its sociological relevance.
Indeed, taking hysteresis into account invites us to look differently at
investment in the present of practice. In the concrete logic of the practice,
the present opens onto the future, it mobilizes the agent cognitively,
emotionally, instinctively, the latter investing himself in the living present of
the situation. Engagement in the “game” is not a simple metaphor from
this point of view: the habitus operates by attaching, in a relationship of
immediacy, the agent to what he does. The illusio is this entry into the
game (ludus) which carries with it a part of illusion, since we have to
believe in what we are doing: it forces us into the present of the practice.
This illusion can, moreover, give rise to an artificial situation, where the
habitus still believes it can recognize itself in the conditions presented to it
by the social environment, even though this has profoundly changed.
Bourdieu gives an example of this in La distinction, where hysteresis
causes and is reinforced by allodoxia, that is to say by a dispositional
belief which tends to make us recognize and take as real what we would
like. be reality. We have here a good demonstration of the fact that the
habitus is not simply what makes it possible to anticipate, to open up
potentialities that we can exploit, but that it is the principle of the investment
of the agent in his practice. However, what is thereby revealed is also a
remarkable paradox, constitutive of the temporal dynamics of the habitus:
it is because it always anticipates what is "to be done" that the habitus is
exposed to the risk of delay, phase shift and misalignment. We can go
even further by following an interpretation
proposed by Bruno Karsenti who suggests that "if there is anticipation, it

means that the body is late, and that the structuring of the socialized body will
25
be, whatever happens, a way of not being late ».
Bourdieu, in doing so, has an important resource at his disposal to correct

certain presentations of the theory of habitus. As we have already noted, the
theorization of habitus, precisely in those moments when it bets a good part
of its purpose on the exploitation of phenomenological references, runs the
risk of a "functionalist" drift which would see between the habitus and social
space a simple relation of expression. The presentations of the "happy"
habitus which describe its full coincidence with the social world and discover
its basis in a kind of "ontological complicity" suggest that the habitus, in its
theoretical generality, is an almost automatic adjustment between the
structures structured and structuring structures, between dispositions,
positions and social positions. But with the well-identified phenomenon of the
hysteresis of the habitus, Bourdieu can correct this type of anthropologico-
phenomenological presentation. This, moreover, is what we observe in a
remarkable movement that animates chapter VI of the Pascalian Meditations.
Indeed, after having insisted at length, even more perhaps than in his other
works, on the “coincidence” between the habitus and the field, Bourdieu
operates a “return to the relationship between hopes and chances of
occupation. of time which do better justice to the plurality of temporal
26
experiences and to », then he develops considerations relating
experiences of disadjustment. Singularly, Bourdieu seems here to carry out a
conceptualization after the fact in accordance with sociological observations
made in Algeria or in Béarn. The theorizing of this particular aspect of the
dynamics of the habitus seems to distance us from the Husserlian
phenomenological references so frequently evoked to think about the practical
logic of the habitus and the opening of the present to the future.
It is at this point that we should note the astonishing proximity of Bourdieu's conception
to another “phenomenological” reference, more precisely “existentialist”. Indeed, even if he
never says it explicitly, Bourdieu uses the concept of hysteresis in a manner analogous to
that which can be read in various texts by Sartre. This proximity, which is probably not a pure
coincidence, is to our knowledge never reported in the secondary literature. Bourdieu himself
never mentions it and he never refers to Sartre when he happens to evoke the hysteresis of
the habitus Yet it is indeed Sartre who was the first to import the concept of hysteresis into
the field philosophy and social sciences. First of all, it is clear that the scientific meaning of
27
the term is well recognized by Sartre, notably in .
Being and Nothingness Questions of Method, also makes hysteresis a principle of

explanation
28
. But Sartre, in
29
history that allows him to shed light on Flaubert's relationship to his time Sartre's objective .
is to challenge certain Marxist-inspired interpretations that seek in the work a direct expression
of the time, a relationship of determination or reflection. On the contrary, Sartre defends the
idea that Flaubert's case must be understood by restoring a mediation, an era other than the
contemporary era: that of his childhood. This is how the concept of hysteresis finds new
relevance. Flaubert's work is out of step with contemporary society and this out of phase is
due to the persistence of a state of society which is the product of the writer's first socialization:
[…] there is a sort of hysteresis of the work in relation to the very time when it appears; it must unite within itself a certain
number of contemporary meanings and others which express a recent but already outmoded state of society. […] There
will come a time when Flaubert will appear ahead of his time (in the time of Madame Bovary) because he is behind it,
because his work expresses under a mask to a generation disgusted with romanticism the
30
post-romantic despairs of a schoolboy of 1830 .
In L'idiot de la famille, Sartre extends this interpretation by suggesting that

if Flaubert could have been seduced by the Second Empire, it was because he
could find there a feudal ethos which corresponded to the relationship
experienced with his father in his childhood: everything happens as if he had
been born fifty years earlier than his contemporaries. There is here the principle
of a hysteresis, that is to say of a historical discrepancy which "conditions his
31
social destiny and even ". Indeed, as Sartre argues at the beginning of
his art, third volume of The Idiot of the Family, the success met by Flaubert , in
particular with Madame Bovary in 1857, is explained by the fact that his
personal hysteresis then meets an era which wishes the representation of a
"hateful" humanity. As Jean-François Louette remarkably puts it, "Flaubert's
neurotic idiocy allows him to do the Art-Neurosis demanded by the Second
Empire: and this is the very reason for his success as a writer.
32
».
It is therefore, in all likelihood, in Sartre that Bourdieu discovers a model

for the historicization of hysteresis. However, whereas Sartre made it a useful
concept to describe the case of Flaubert, Bourdieu generalizes its use: it is
indeed any habitus which is exposed to the phenomenon of hysteresis,
precisely because its fundamental property is to last through beyond the
variability of circumstances and situations.
1. See in particular the interrogations of C. Colliot-Thélène, “The German roots of Bourdieu's theory”, op.
cit., p. 45.
2. L. Addi, Sociology and anthropology in Pierre Bourdieu. The Kabyle anthropological paradigm and its
theoretical consequences, Paris, La Découverte, 2002.
3. MP, p. 301.
4. MP, p. 304.
5. E. Husserl, Lessons for a Phenomenology of the Intimate Consciousness of Time, op. cit., p. 88.
6. Ibid., p. 15.
7. MP, p. 304.
8. ETP, p. 258-259.
9. MP, p. 309.
10. MP, p. 304.
11.RP , p. 155.
12.RP , p. 45.
13. This point is well raised by J.-F. Rey, “Faire le temps. From a phenomenology of temporal attitudes to a theory
of temporal practices”, op. cit., p. 152.
14. M. Heidegger, Being and Time, op. cit., p. 236.
15. Ibid., p. 237.
16. Ibid., p. 234.
17. SP, p. 104-105. We find the same formulations, practically word for word, in P. Bourdieu, “Avenir de classe et
causalité du probable”, Revue Française de Sociologie, 1974, 15/1, p. 5.
18. MP, p. 231.
19. ETP, p. 260.
20. P. Bourdieu, “Class future and causality of the probable”, Revue Française de Sociologie, 15/1, 1974, p. 5.
21. D, p. 158, 231, 361.
22. SP, p. 104. This sociological explanation of the character of Don Quixote deserves to be compared with that
proposed by A. Schütz, who situates the knight's maladjustment in the fact that he takes refuge in the "sub-
universe" of the imaginary and abandons the natural attitude towards the world of everyday life embodied by his
servant. Cf. A. Schütz, Don Quixote and the Problem of Reality, trans. Fr. by T. Blin, Paris, Allia, 2014.
23. ETP, p. 260. See also what Bourdieu says about it in the interview with R. Chartier on the occasion of the
publication of the Pascalian Meditations, in the “Mondays of History”, on France Culture, in May 1997: “There
strangely akin to Don Quixote in every old man: […] it's the nostalgia for a vanished order in which the habitus was
like a fish in water and, conversely, the moments of happiness, of euphoria are the moments when there is a
coincidence between the habitus and the world, when the world responds to the quarter turn of the expectations of
the habitus. »
24. BC, p. 7-8
25. B. Karsenti, From One Philosophy to Another. The social sciences and the politics of the moderns, op. cit., p.
249.
26. MP, p. 332.
27. It is, however, highly probable that Bourdieu, who himself wrote extensively on Flaubert (see in particular The
Rules of Art, p. 17-191), encountered this concept in Sartre's texts devoted to
to Flaubert, notably L'idiot de la famille.
28. J.-P. Sartre, Being and Nothingness, Paris, Gallimard, 1971, p. 153 and 156-157.
29. We follow here the precious remarks of J.-F. Louette, “Revenges de la bêtise dans L'idiot de la famille ”, in
Traces de Sartre, Grenoble, Ellug, 2009, p. 317-324.
30. J.-P. Sartre, Questions of methods, Paris, Gallimard, coll. "Tel", p. 62.
31. J.-P. Sartre, The Family Idiot. I, Paris, Gallimard, 1988, p. 81.
32. J.-F. Louette, “Revenges of stupidity in The Idiot of the Family ”, op. cit., p. 319. For an exploration of this same
theme of the delay of consciousness, in Sartre, from an ontological perspective, see D. Giovannangeli, Le retard de
la conscience. Husserl, Sartre, Derrida, Brussels, Ousia, 2001.
1. MP, p. 299.
2. CD, p. 16.
3. WATER, p. 57. See also, in “Fieldwork in Philosophy” (CD, p. 16-17): “I thought of myself as a philosopher
and it took me a very long time to admit to myself that I had become an ethnologist. »
4. ETP, p. 337-347.
5. FTE, p. 377-385. The thing is little noticed, but this appendix is actually, in large part, a compilation of extracts
borrowed from Algeria 60.
6. SP, p. 167-189.
7.HA , p. 120-139, p. 198-205.
8. See in particular AR, p. 263-267.
9. MP, p.297-351.
10. ISR, p. 187-188.
11. J.-F. Rey, “Making time. From a phenomenology of temporal attitudes to a theory of temporal practices”, in
M.-A. Lescourret (ed.), Pierre Bourdieu. A philosopher in sociology, Paris, PUF, 2009, p. 145-164.
12. C. Colliot-Thélène, "The German roots of Bourdieu's theory", in Pierre Bourdieu, theory and practice. Franco-
German Perspectives, La Découverte, Paris, 2006, p. 30 and 31.
PART IV
Reflexivities
We have seen, in the previous moments of this study, how the

Bourdieusian discourse could bring into play the reference to phenomenology
to address questions of normativity (or the order of meaning) and the
temporalization of practices. We thought we could show what Bourdieu owed
to phenomenology on these different questions, whether it concerns
conceptual or argumentative borrowings or even the resumption of certain
particular problematizations, analogous to those which are discovered in
certain phenomenological analyses. At the same time, it is also obvious that
these borrowings or these reappropriations are never accomplished as if it
were a question of purely and simply “applying” phenomenology. Quite the
contrary: the reversal is always at work, which constantly destitutes the
supposedly sovereign consciousness in order to reestablish the primacy of
practice – the practice in question covering both the practices of agents of
the social world and sociological practice as such. Phenomenological
concepts and analyzes are thus constantly placed at the service of a
praxeology which “reobjectives” them. Bourdieu thus puts into practice his
unique definition of sociology:
Sociology as I conceive it consists in transforming metaphysical problems into

1
problems likely to be treated scientifically, therefore politically .
There is, however, an ultimate declension of the relationship to

phenomenology, where the persistence of a certain heritage is revealed and
where the necessity of its reversal, of its subversion is confirmed: it is that of
reflexivity. Contrary to what has been established previously, it should be
noted from the outset that the borrowings made from phenomenology are not
as numerous and that the reversal is accomplished in an even more radical
manner. We are here, from the outset, beyond phenomenology. Phenomenological reflexiv
constitutes here much more than an inspiration of the Bourdieusian

discourse. It's a kind of counter-model, a real foil figure, in relation to
which we must conceive a completely different form of sociological
reflexivity. In the effort put into this demarcation, Bourdieu has recourse
to another discipline: psychoanalysis. This discipline (or practice) is not
exactly an entirely positive and directly applicable “model”.
But it is located in a theoretical proximity such that one can find there
several resources to think, by analogy, the nature and the modalities of
exercise of sociological reflexivity.
Starting from the rejection of a fundamentally "subjectivist" reflection
(philosophical reflection generally forming an obstacle to sociological
reflexivity), by mobilizing the reference to psychoanalysis and in
particular to its method or its style of method, Bourdieu thus develops a
number of considerations relating to sociological reflexivity. These take
on greater importance towards the end of the work, in particular from
the work undertaken with Loïc Wacquant, around the Invitation to
reflexive sociology and up to the Collège de France course entitled
Science de la science and reflexivity. In the wake of these texts, the
Sketch for a self-analysis is a true implementation, practical and
personal, of sociological reflexivity. Even more than in the previous
sections, the question of the social “subject” comes up insistently here.
The register of reflexivity, in this sense, does not only complete that of
the "meaning" of the practice or the temporalization of practices: it is
also a matter of giving oneself the means to "find oneself" as a "subject",
at the term of the rediscovery of this part of the social and the impersonal
which made and made the person, without however this new figure of
the subject being able to be reduced to what philosophy was able to propose until the
Chapter 11
From reflection as self-position

to sociological reflexivity
First, we will establish a conceptual division between reflection understood as the

subject's self-position and reflexivity based on taking into account the reality of the
subject's position within the social space. This distinction corresponds to a disciplinary
division between philosophy and sociology.
A CRITICISM OF “SELF-KNOWLEDGE”
If we retain the idea, so dear to Bourdieu, that any relationship of knowledge is

fundamentally a relationship between the subject and the object, we can see straight
away what the particularity and the problematic nature of “self-knowledge” can be. ,
this relationship of knowledge where the object to be known is none other than the
subject himself. Reflection is, in a general way, the name of this particular relation of
knowledge: it is this way of mirroring oneself, of coming back to oneself in order to
know oneself better.
Most often, therefore, the term “reflection” is understood to mean the return to
oneself by which the subject accesses a knowledge of himself of which he does not know.
could dispose of without this privileged access constituted by the return to oneself. Reflection, as it
has been conceived in philosophy since Descartes at least, thus operates in the privileged mode
of self-positioning, that is to say of the position of oneself by oneself. To say that there is a position
of self by self is to say that the position thus obtained is not a position determined by and in a space
of positions. Self-positioning does not proceed from the objectification of the relations of a certain
social space. Self-position is in principle a non-situated position, a position without its own site. It is
its own condition of possibility. It does not imply any other relation than the relation of self to self,
that is to say the application to oneself of this dual structure, which is according to Bourdieu at the
foundation of all knowledge, between the subjective and the goal. The self-position proceeds from
an elementary division of the self between a subjective part and an objective part. The immediacy
of the experience one has of oneself is thus split and this split makes it possible to adopt a “point of
view” on oneself. Self-knowledge is the very institution of this reverberated point of view, which is
no longer a linear perspective whose object would be the more or less distant focus point. Self-
knowledge is self-positioning because the point of view that one carries on oneself finds its principle
and its end there, in a form of self-founded looping of the perspective. One thus owes only to
oneself the principle of the institution of the reflective and reflected self.
This conception of reflection as a self-position finds its historical model in Descartes, even if
the attribution of the metaphysical discovery of the "subject" to Descartes can be widely discussed
because he never uses the term subject in the sense modern, as an instance in the first person,
but always in the sense of the logical subject or the subject of the book (the theme). This remark
made, it remains all the same that the enterprise of the Metaphysical Meditations decides on a
philosophical modernity of which one of the founding principles is indeed the reflection of the
subject on himself.
1
.
A rereading of the approach adopted by Descartes in the Metaphysical

Meditations thus makes it possible to suggest that self-knowledge
understood as self-positioning has three characteristics. 1. First of all, its
object is this subject who takes himself as the object of reflection and
establishes himself, by this very gesture, as subject, a subject who has
within him the power to recapture himself as subject: c This is, exemplarily,
what Descartes does by exhibiting the performance of the cogito, this
thought whose existence I cannot doubt at the moment when I actualize it,
defining the certainty of thought to itself which is the first certainties. 2.
Next, the reflection that proceeds from the self-position determines a
movement of subjectivation, at the end of which the subject must access
a new "knowledge of the self": in Descartes, the discovery of the cogito,
prepared by the exercise of methodical doubt, is the first principle from
2
which all knowledge can be refounded reflection . 3. Finally, this form of
which begins with Descartes owes nothing to others, but everything to the
subject himself. It is a methodical, voluntary, and above all solitary activity,
which one practices sheltered from any urgency or worries of a practical
order, that is to say on the margins of the world and of society. Reflection
understood as self-positioning therefore has the subject itself as its object
(1), it inaugurates a movement of subjectivation conceived as self-
knowledge (2) and operates with the sole resources of subjectivity (3). Its
object, its end and its means are always the subject, nothing but the subject.
Phenomenology reactivates, prolongs and cultivates this glorious
model which celebrates reflection as self-position and self-knowledge. For
Husserl, what must be discovered are the essential structures of subjectivity
in its relationship to the world. It goes without saying that the world appears
to us each time with a certain relativity. Object data modes are always
subjective and what appears always appears to a subject. But what
interests Husserl is not to describe the factual particularity of each subject-
world relationship but to show that this
report has an "essence" structure. To achieve this, Husserl implements

a heavy methodology, that of the transcendental reduction.
To reduce is to lead back, and in this case lead back to subjectivity
insofar as it gives us objects of perception, imagination, etc. For this,
Husserl tells us, we must free ourselves from the natural attitude,
suspend our spontaneous belief in the reality of the things of the world
and return to what he calls "pure" consciousness, in the sense that it is
"purely and simply” consciousness. What is released by the epochè,
by the suspension of the natural attitude, is the level of consciousness.
This pure consciousness defines the field of exercise of phenomenology.
Thus, in paragraph 33 of Ideen I, Husserl establishes
what :
Consciousness itself has its own being […] which is unaffected by phenomenological exclusion. Thus it remains as a
"phenomenological residue" and constitutes a region of being which is original in principle and which can become the field of
application of a new science, the

3
phenomenology .
Under the perspective instituted by reflection or, in the present

case, by the implementation of the transcendental reduction, it is
consciousness that turns back on itself, discovering itself both subject
and object of reflection. There is therefore, in the phenomenological
tradition, the exercise of a reflection understood as a self-position. It is
for this reason that Husserl explicitly claims the heritage of Descartes.
In the Cartesian Meditations, Husserl also reactivates the old ancient
project of self-knowledge since phenomenology is for him "a radical
and universal continuation of the Meditations of Descartes or, what
comes to the same thing, of a universal self-knowledge, c It is
philosophy itself and it embraces all true and responsible ". so here's
4
science, the ambitious promise of phenomenology, in its canonical

version, that is to say Husserlian.
Reflection conceived as a self-position, as it is elaborated and re-

elaborated from Descartes to phenomenology, is the counter-model of the
sociological reflexivity that Bourdieu for his part intends to practice. Thus, in
Science of science and reflexivity, when it comes to saying what reflexivity
should not be and can no longer be, Bourdieu emphasizes that:
This reverberation, this reflexivity cannot be reduced to the self-reflection of an I think

5
(cogito) thinking an object (cogitatum) which would be none other than itself .
Reflection as a self-position is indeed in question in this condemnation

which denounces a form of closure on oneself, of a relationship of self-identity
to oneself. The reference to the distinction between the cogito and the
cogitatum is sufficiently vague to be valid both for Descartes and for the
phenomenology which follows in his wake and takes up this same distinction
(for example, in Husserl, in the Cartesian Meditations
6
).
It is also in question in a note in Le Sens pratique, where Bourdieu

specifies the type of certainty that phenomenology attaches to the
consideration of lived experience, quoting at length from L'imaginaire de
Sartre, who himself referred to Descartes to argue that reflective
consciousness delivered "absolutely certain data »: 7
It is the self-evidence and the transparency to itself of experience reflecting itself (that of the cogito), that
the phenomenologist (for example, the Sartre of L'imaginaire) opposed as the "certain" to the
8
"probable" of objective knowledge […].
In the speech receiving the Huxley Medal, Bourdieu again very clearly
distinguishes the type of reflexivity promoted by double objectification,
renamed “participant objectification”, from the reflection implemented by
phenomenology:
The reflexivity to which participant objectification leads is not at all, as we can see, that which is ordinarily
practiced by "postmodern" anthropologists or even by philosophy and certain
9
forms of phenomenology .
Admittedly, most often, when he presents the idea he has of what

reflexivity should be, Bourdieu does not explicitly aim at phenomenology,
but more generally at the philosophical aspiration to self-knowledge.
Thus, Bourdieu rejects, in the Answers he gives to Loïc Wacquant's
questions, "the ordinary representation of self-knowledge as an
10
exploration of singular depths, a general reproach, which ". This
therefore applies to any philosophy that would aim at the knowledge of

itself, however, seems to apply more particularly to the precise case of
phenomenology, when Bourdieu calls into question, shortly after, "the
privilege of the knowing subject, who is arbitrarily freed, as a purely
noetic, from the work of objectivation11 ”, the mention of the noetic
referring us here to the famous Husserlian distinction between the
noetic and the noematic presented in the first volume of the Guiding
Ideas of 1913. even finds itself primarily defined by the type of reflection
that it promotes. Thus, in the 1972 Sketch , it happens that Bourdieu
allusively denounces social phenomenology by criticizing the theories
of practice which reduce the latter to "a lived experience capable of
being apprehended by a reflexive return
12
". Things are even clearer in Science of science and reflexivity.
This time, it is in relation to phenomenological reflection that Bourdieu
presents his own conception of reflexivity:
[…] What needs to be objectified is not the lived experience of the knowing subject, but the social conditions of possibility, and therefore the
effects and limits, of this experience and, among other things,

13
of the act of objectification .
The critical reference to phenomenology thus constitutes, here

again, the starting point of a strategy of differentiation. This will lead to
the elaboration of a positive model going beyond the counter-model that we

have given ourselves, that is to say a theory of reflexivity which does not
renounce the "return on oneself" but strives to make assert their specific
rights in the field of sociology.
This reflexivity, if we read Bourdieu correctly in the last quote we have
just cited, must concentrate, in particular, on the “social conditions of
possibility” of the “act of objectification”. If it were needed, we find
confirmation and a more precise determination of this program at the end of
the exchange between Pierre Bourdieu and Loïc Wacquant, in the Invitation
to reflexive sociology :
The classical philosophy of knowledge has long taught us that we must seek in the subject the conditions of
possibility, and therefore the limits, of the objective knowledge that it establishes. Reflexive sociology teaches us
that we must also seek in the object constructed by science the social conditions of possibility of the
"subject" (with, for example, the skhole and all the heritage of problems, concepts, methods, etc., which make its
activity possible) and the
14
possible limits of his acts of objectification .
Here is indicated a displacement that exhibits the principle of sociological

reversal. Reflection no longer finds in itself, or rather in the reflective and
reflected subject, its condition of possibility. On the contrary, sociological
reflexivity must make it possible to exhibit the “social conditions of possibility”
of the knowing subject, while reflection as a self-position was content to
discover the subjective conditions of possibility of the subject. We established
above the different characteristics of reflection understood as self-position
and showed that this discovered in the subject its object, its end and its own
means. Let us now see how sociological reflexivity is defined in relation to
each of these different characteristics of philosophical reflection.
THE COUNTER-PROGRAM OF A SOCIOLOGICAL REFLEXIVITY

The model of reflection as self-position has for it the weight of history and a
certain philosophical aura. In Bourdieu's eyes, it not only represents what must
be rejected and what should be stopped: it is also what must be opposed, in the
sense that the program of sociological reflexivity is defined necessarily, initially,
in relation to the model of reflection as self-position.
The model must be thought of as a counter-model. Consequently, the different

major characteristics of sociological reflexivity can be deduced negatively, then
positively. It is possible to produce an inventory of it by taking as a guideline the
identification of the characteristics of reflection conceived as self-position.
1. If reflection understood as self-position took as its object the very subject

of reflection, sociological reflexivity will have as its object "objectification" itself,
that is to say the subject as an instance of objectification. More precisely still, let
us say that what is to be reflected upon and criticized is indeed the institution
and the exercise of different forms of knowledge and misunderstandings by
means of which we relate to the social world, c that is, of relevant or successful
objectifications and of false objectifications. Sociological reflexivity, in this sense,
can be understood in two ways. It offers itself to the agent of the social world by
offering him resources that will allow him to understand himself as a social agent,
that is to say as a subject of knowledge whose knowledge and misunderstandings
have
social conditions of possibility. It is also offered to the “scholarly” subject who

claims to achieve a form of scientific objectification of the social world.
But there is no discontinuity between one and the other: the social agent who
benefits from the resources of sociology already becomes a sociologist, while
the learned subject cannot completely evacuate the agent he has been. and that
it is elsewhere. In one case as in the other, it is always about the modalities and
the nature of the knowledge of the social world that it is a question of “reflecting”:
One of my goals is to provide instruments of knowledge that can turn against the subject of knowledge, not to
destroy or discredit (scientific) knowledge but to
15
contrary to control and reinforce it .
This intention suffices to mark the difference between the project of

a sociological reflexivity and that of reflection as self-position: the object
of reflexivity is no longer so much the subject as knowledge itself in the
claim that it students to know “objectively” the social world.
It should however be pointed out that this difference is also at the

root of a difficulty, to which we shall return later, since this program will
have to be modulated according to the different degrees and the different
forms of knowledge of the social world. Thus we must understand that
sociological reflexivity, in the strong sense, is the reflexivity of sociology
itself on itself: this reflexivity is therefore first and foremost of a natural nature.
epistemological. It primarily concerns sociological science, which must
proceed to a critical reflection on the scholastic bias to which it is always
exposed, to the discussion of the anthropological "tendencies" which
sometimes quietly animate it (primarily subjectivism and objectivism), to
the methodological and epistemological criticism of its own means, to
the collection of information concerning objective realities of its own field.
Sociological knowledge must therefore apply its own resources to itself.
Understood as the work by which social science, taking itself as its object, uses its own weapons to understand
and control itself, [sociological reflexivity] is a particularly effective means of reinforcing the chances of accessing
truth by reinforcing mutual sanctions and by providing the principles of a technical criticism, which makes it
possible to control
16
more carefully the factors likely to bias the research .
But we must also see that the program of sociological reflexivity finds
another variation with the theme of "self-analysis", where it is a question
of providing the subject of knowledge with the means of a reflexivity
personal, applied to oneself. However, the objective of this particular declension

of sociological reflexivity is not self-knowledge that would claim to reach the
intimate, the private, a subjective sphere withdrawn from the world and from
others. On the contrary, the “subject” in question can no longer be understood
except as an instance of socialized knowledge. The only "subject" that is still in
question – if there is one – is this instance of objectification which works
towards the objectification of itself, by restoring the characteristics of the social
fields frequented throughout its personal trajectory within the social space.
2. While reflection conceived as self-positioning was accomplished in a

movement of subjectivation sanctioned by “self-knowledge”, sociological
reflexivity promotes, on the contrary, an objectification of the subject which can
procure a form of prudence, an “epistemological vigilance as Bourdieu says,
17
only the object of sociological reflexivity, it . Objectification is therefore not
is also its first
AVERAGE.
To objectify is to mobilize the means of sociology as Bourdieu conceives

it, that is to say to describe sociologically the structures of the field, the space
of positions which defines the position of the agent. This amounts, first of all,
to characterizing the field according to the stake which is specific to it and
which justifies the investments and the capitalizations committed by the agents.
It is also to reveal the balance of power, domination and inequality that
structure this field. It is still to denounce the illusions which are at the foundation
of the game according to which the field is organized. Finally, to objectify is to
historicize, that is, to restore the arbitrariness that affects the temporalization
of practices. The speech on receiving the Huxley Medal around the theme of
participant objectification delivers a concise program (even if it is above all a
question of the case of the objectification of the scientist):
Applying to the knowing subject the most brutally objectivist instruments of objectification
provided by anthropology and sociology and in particular statistical analysis (tacitly
excluded from the panoply of anthropological weapons), it aims, as I have already said, to grasp all that the thought of the
anthropologist or the sociologist can owe to the fact that he is inserted into a national scientific field with his traditions, habits of
thought, issues, shared evidence, etc. and the fact that he occupies a particular position there, that of the newcomer who must
prove himself or that of the consecrated master, etc., with "interests" of a particular type which can unconsciously orient his
scientific choices (of discipline , method, object, etc.). In short, scientific objectification is complete only if it includes the point of
view of the subject who operates and the interests he may have in objectification (especially when he objectifies his own universe)
but
18
also the historical unconscious that he inevitably engages in his work .
In Bourdieu's eyes, objective knowledge of the structures of the

social world, of the principles that govern its different “fields”, goes hand
in hand with the institution of a new relationship to oneself. It must
“include the point of view of the subject”. However, the reflexivity sought
is anything but introspection or narcissistic complacency, it restores the
self in its dimension of social being. The singularity of the person is
reduced to his social dimension. In Practical Reasons, Bourdieu makes
this very clear reminder:
It is true that sociological analysis makes few concessions to narcissism and that it operates a radical break with the deeply
complacent image of human existence defended by those who want at all costs to think of themselves as "the most irreplaceable
of beings”. But it is no less true that it is one of the most powerful instruments of self-knowledge, in
19
as a social being, i.e. as a singular being .
More clearly still, in the Pascalian Meditations, it even happens that

Bourdieu sees in sociological reflexivity the opportunity for a new self-
knowledge, forbidden to philosophy, inaugurating a new understanding
of what we have, until then. , could call "subject":
It is in this way that those sciences, in which the philosophies of the "subject" see the worst threat to a status of "subject"
supposed to be universally and immediately imparted to all, are doubtless the most capable of producing and offering the
instruments of knowledge of the world and of oneself which allow one to really approach what one commonly puts under the
name of
20
" subject ».
We must then mourn the illusory promises that were the basis of the
Delphic imperative of "Know thyself!" ". There is no universal subject, but
“subjects” who recognize their uniqueness only by discovering their
position in social space, through the intermediary of the social sciences.
3. Finally, while reflection understood as self-positioning found the

means of its accomplishment only in the subject alone, sociological
reflexivity is conceived as a collective enterprise. This characteristic is
not a simple wish but stems from the very nature of sociological reflexivity.
Indeed, if this must reveal us to ourselves as social beings, this new
reflexivity is valid in principle for everyone, for oneself as well as for
others:
This means that the privilege traditionally conferred on consciousness and reflexive knowledge is devoid of foundation
and that nothing authorizes the establishment of a difference in kind between
21
self-knowledge and knowledge of others .
There is no priority to be established between the I and the You and

it is not a question of believing oneself alone authorized to practice this
new form of reflexivity. Sociological reflexivity does not proceed from a
solitary process which owes everything to the sovereign will of a subject.
It is not exercised in an egological perspective but as a collective
approach. Bourdieu underlines this in the Pascalian Meditations, when
he evokes the fact that the sociological analyzes he develops also apply
to himself, which constitutes in his eyes "one of the very effective forms
22
of reflexivity as [he] conceives it, that is to say as a collective enterprise
».
Therefore, this reflexivity can and must be practiced collectively. This

collective dimension of reflective practice is already attested to in the fact
that it is supported by the contribution of the sociological discipline, since
the latter provides the effective means of proceeding to the objectification
of the fields of the social world. However, sociological reflexivity is not
only collective because it draws its resources from the work of
sociology, it is also because it requires an institutionalization of reflexivity in the

field of social science and beyond, through the practice of public debate,
dialogue, evaluation and mutual criticism. As Bourdieu points out in Science of
science and reflexivity :
To which it must be added, to complete the marking of the difference with narcissistic reflexivity, that reformist reflexivity is
not the business of a single person and can only be fully exercised if it
23
is incumbent on all agents involved in the field .
This is why the intellectual, for Bourdieu, must be, can only be”. In order to
« collective24 understand what Bourdieu had in mind under this designation, we
often insist on the distinction thus established with the “committed” intellectual
as Sartre was able to conceive of him. It is also emphasized that the collective
intellectual, according to Bourdieu, must ensure negative, critical functions, by
producing and communicating means of defense against symbolic domination,
and positive or constructive functions, by creating conditions conducive to the
production of 'realistic utopias', pioneering new possibilities through the probable.
However, the figure of the collective intellectual can only truly be understood if
we impose on ourselves, collectively, an imperative of sociological reflexivity.
Bourdieu underlines this in the “Postscript” of the Rules of the Art, entitled “For a
corporatism of the universal”:
When we speak as intellectuals, that is to say with the ambition of the universal, it is, at every moment, the historical
unconscious inscribed in the experience of a singular intellectual field which speaks. through our mouth. I believe that we
only have some chance of achieving true communication if we objectify and master the historical unconscious that
separates us, that is to say the specific histories of the intellectual universes of which our categories of
25
perception and thought are the product .
The pooling of thought therefore operates only on the condition of “mastering”

the historical unconscious, by practicing a socialized reflexivity, able to reduce
everything that separates us.
FROM KANT TO FREUD
Such is the principle of sociological reversal, on this precise question of

reflexivity: it is not only a question of widening the domain of the conditions
of possibility, but indeed of substituting a certain type of condition of
possibility for another, that is, to convert the transcendental, in its classical
version, to a new determination of its nature and to a new regime of
functioning. We must therefore consider a transcendental which no longer
sends us back to the generality and universality of a disembodied functional
subject, but to what Bourdieu calls a " historical transcendental,
26
which is linked with the structure and history of a field ».
It is necessary to specify this program, in its generality, then to try to

distinguish its various realizations. Bourdieu, as we see, often presents his
own conception of reflexivity by reference to criticism. We have already
said all the importance of this reference for the definition of the
anthropological perspective and for that of a critical sociology (that is to
say, critical in an eminently Kantian sense, in the sense of examining the
scope and limits of a given faculty). Does this mean, therefore, that we
have returned to what appeared to us to be the original problematic of the
theory of practice, namely the question of the objectification of the subjective
and the objective? In a sense, there is a certain continuity here, since the
question of objectification remains central, since it is both the object and
the means of sociological reflexivity.
However, the question of objectification no longer arises in the terms of the
Sketch or the Practical Sense. Indeed, the objective is no longer just to
produce a theory of practice, but to guarantee the possibility of continuous
reflexivity, that is to say of a considered relationship of the subject of
knowledge to his conditions of social possibility. Bourdieu restores this
reorientation of the reference to Kant in Science de la science et
reflexivity :
[…] at first, I substituted for the universal conditions and the a prioris of Kant socially constituted conditions and a
prioris , as Durkheim did for religion and the religious principles of classification and construction of the world in The
Elementary Forms of Religious Life and in his article on “Primitive Forms of Classification”; secondly, I would like to
show how the process of historicization of the Kantian interrogation must end in a scientific objectification of the
subject of objectification, a sociology of the knowing subject in its generality and its particularity, in short, by this which
I call an enterprise of reflexivity, aiming to objectify the transcendental unconscious that the knowing subject invests
without knowing it in his acts of knowledge or, if you will, his habitus as historical transcendental, of which one can
say that it is a priori as a structuring structure that organizes the perception and appreciation of any experience and a
posteriori as a structure
27
structured produced by a whole series of common or individual learning .
This dense passage is important. The first part of this long quotation
restores the "reversal" of Kantian philosophy: we must ask ourselves the
question of the conditions of possibility of knowledge, but ask it sociologically,
that is to say by questioning its social conditions of possibility. . However, this
“socialization” or “historicization” of the transcendental subject must be
supplemented by the practice of sociological reflexivity, which is, as Bourdieu
formulates it, a “sociology of the knowing subject in its generality and its
particularity”. Until then, in a sense, nothing very surprising taking into account
what has already been exposed: the task of sociological reflexivity is defined
in relation to the counter-model of a self-position where the subject is content
to find himself itself in the universality and the necessity of the a priori. Now,
more surprisingly, we see Bourdieu suddenly mobilize the idea of a
“transcendental unconscious”, itself quickly assimilated to the habitus, then,
without further ado, to a “historical transcendental”. How to understand it?
If the relations between the habitus, the unconscious and the transcendental
are anything but easy to disentangle in this quotation, the latter already
indicates that the examination of the conditions of possibility must operate in
a domain which exceeds the reign of consciousness, in renouncing the illusions of
transparency to oneself and by accepting the confrontation with a history

which no longer knows itself as history, since it is a forgotten history. On
these bases, the implicit reference to psychoanalysis can function as a sort
of heuristic scheme. The practice of psychoanalysis provides a model for a
form of restitution of a forgotten story, which has become unconscious and
which nevertheless makes the subject such as he is.
The reference to Kantian criticism, already redirected towards the

examination of the social conditions of the possibility of knowledge, therefore
undergoes a new redirection and is completed by a reference to psychoanalysis.
As we will see, Bourdieu thus develops a reflection on the theoretical
foundations of sociological reflexivity which proceeds by establishing a
succession of analogies with the psychoanalytical method. To clarify this
proximity, decisive in order to definitively dismiss the counter-model of
reflection understood as the self-position of the subject and to ward off the
“phenomenological” danger in this matter, it is necessary to proceed in two
stages. First of all, we are going to justify the use of the concept of the
unconscious, in the very particular sense in which Bourdieu understands it.
Then, we will distinguish the different versions of “socio-analysis”. We will
show how the sociological objectification of sociology can generally be
conceived as an update of its "historical transcendental", then we will analyze
the conditions of exercise of "socio-analysis" applied to the scholastic
condition, to the scientific field. , to the field of sociology itself and finally to
the individual, by developing a veritable sociological psychoanalysis (a self-
analysis) which completes the objectification of the “subject”.
1. On this interpretation, see E. Husserl, Méditations Cartesiennes et les Conférences de Paris,

trans. Fr. by MB de Launay, Paris, PUF, 1994.
2. “Self-knowledge” is therefore not an introspection but a way of reconsidering the empire of one's knowledge.
3. ID I, p. 108.
4. MC, p. 208.
5. SSR, p. 15.
6. MC, § 14, p. 76 sq.
7. J.-P. Sartre, The Imaginary, Paris, Gallimard, 1948, p. 13-14.
8. SP, p. 44
9. P. Bourdieu, “Participating objectification”, Proceedings of social science research, 150, 2003, p. 47.
10. ISR, p. 271.
11. ISR, p. 272.
12. ETP, p. 230.
13. SSR, p. 182-183.
14. ISR, p. 272.
15. SSR, p. 15-16.
16. SSR, p. 173-174.
17. SSR, p. 173-174.
18. P. Bourdieu, “Participating objectification”, Proceedings of research in the social sciences, 150, 2003, p. 47.
19.RP , p. 11.
20. MP, p. 276.
21. ETP, p. 307.
22. MP, 13.
23. SSR, p. 178.
24. We refer to the text “Towards a collective intellectual”, in I, p. 293 sq.
25. AR, p. 552. This “postscript” is an abridged and revised version of “The corporatism of the universal: the role of
intellectuals in the modern world”, Telos, 81, p. 99-110.
26. ISR, p. 246.
27. SSR, p. 153-154.

Chapter 12
The social unconscious
The theory of sociological reflexivity is based on a theory of the social

unconscious which is gradually developed by Bourdieu. To achieve this,
1
Bourdieu subtly uses a reference to psychoanalysis .
We know that the Freudian theory of the unconscious, far from being
reduced to the narrow and abstract perspective of an individual psychology,
implies a social psychology which considers the social, historical and . Freud
culture of individual life 2
granted all its place to the social
dimension of the psychic, in particular through the famous exposition of the
second topography. The founder of psychoanalysis thus redefines the
coordinates of a decisive problem for any social theory that intends to make
a case for individuality: that of the psychic interiorization of social life.
Ultimately, there is in Freud a remarkable attempt to think about the
ontological autonomy of the individual psyche and to conceive, at the same
time, the social as a constraining force. As Stéphane Haber rightly points
out, whom we are following here, "a social theory which seeks to make room
for individuality cannot fail to recognize its inverted, and therefore highly
instructive, image in a psychological theory which, in Freud as his successors,
tenaciously sought to make
room not only for the interpersonal, but also for the social and the cultural
3
as such ».
rethinking the subjectivity of individual experience from the

constraining force of the social. In fact, in The Outline of a Theory of
Practice of 1972, Bourdieu sees in his theory of practice the condition of
an "experimental science of the dialectic of interiority and exteriority, that
is- that is, the interiorization of exteriority and the exteriorization of
interiority
". If this characteristic presentation of

the first philosophy of habitus has certain limits, it also has the merit of
reconnecting with the Freudian problematization that we have just restored.
What needs to be thought about is indeed the relationship of the
individual to the social, and vice versa, by establishing the consideration
of practices as a place for going beyond this distinction. However, for a
sociology which therefore intends to think together the individual and
the social from the innovative perspective of a praxeology which
promotes the concepts of fields and habitus, then defends the rights of
a sociological reflexivity, the question inevitably arises to know what fate
should be reserved for the theory of the unconscious, this mediating
authority which operated precisely, in Freud, the mediation between
social exteriority and psychic interiority, via the persistent presence ,
within individual life, the history of his social life. Now it is clear that
Bourdieu could only refuse a theoretical solution which, in his eyes, ran
the great risk of reactivating the illusions of a philosophy of the subject
by making us moreover run the risk of neglecting the strictly social
5
determinations of our practices. can only be wary of a concept that

A consistent sociology of the “force of the social” seems, at first glance,
to be only a makeshift solution, a theoretical convenience that only shifts
the problem without managing to truly resolve it.
However, we would like to show that this explicit rejection of any theory
of the unconscious which would send us back to the sole depths of individual
psychic life (rejection which only replays the old sociology/psychology
distinction) does not for all that condemn any recourse to the concept
unconscious and that there is indeed, in Bourdieu, "something like a theory
of the unconscious", in the same way that he could declare, at the end of
the "Introduction" to Practical sense, to work to “something like a subject
6
concept of the ". Under the question of the legitimate sociological use of
unconscious, there is in an insistent and persistent way, that of the
relationship between mental structures and social structures, determining
for the project of a sociological reflexivity.
THE EPISTEMOLOGICAL CRITICISM OF THE CONCEPT OF THE UNCONSCIOUS
Before considering a positive recourse to the notion of the unconscious

from the perspective of the theory and practice of reflexivity, it is necessary
to take note, in a number of Bourdieu's texts, of a determined distancing
from psychoanalysis. On several occasions, Bourdieu criticized the very
concept of the unconscious and condemned its uses in the field of social
sciences. At first glance, Freud's theory of the unconscious is not soluble in
Bourdieu's sociology, and Bourdieu's relationship to psychoanalysis seems
to be one of pure avoidance.
In this respect, it is quite significant that Le profession de sociologue,
co-written in 1968 with Jean-Claude Passeron and Jean-Claude
Chamboredon, only addresses the notion of the unconscious through a
short text by Wittgenstein which wonders about the meaning of the
expression "to have a toothache unconsciously". It is not only the polysemy
of the term "unconscious" which is then denounced by the authors of Le
Métier, but above all the "thingish tendency which results from the tendency
to infer the substance
7
of the not
". It is difficult substantive
to read there an end of inadmissibility to the
not very rigorous uses of the concept of the unconscious that were current at
the time, in the 1960s, when Freudo-Marxism flourished, when different paths
of passage between sociology and psychoanalysis were explored, when
finally power and politics are interpreted in psychoanalytic terms. Sociology
as a profession is thus defined against the air of the theoretical times, by
condemning in advance any recourse to the concept of the unconscious.
In direct line with these considerations, one will find later, in The Practical
Sense, a lively criticism of the immoderate recourse that Lévi-Strauss makes
to the concept of the unconscious. According to Bourdieu, structural
anthropology attributes the principles of practice to the unconscious. It makes
8
the unconscious a “mechanical operator of finality,” which surreptitiously
transfers the finality of the mind into nature and history. The unconscious of
Lévi-Straussian structuralism names an action oriented by ends without
assigning them to an intentional consciousness. Now the problem, typical of
the theory of practice, of going beyond the alternative between rational action
and mechanical reaction can only receive, with such a conception of the
unconscious, a false solution. This amounts to confusing the “regularity
immanent to practices” with the “unconscious regulation of a mysterious
9
cerebral or social mechanism”. By naturalizing finality, we only subtract it from
the historicity of meaning in order to send it back to the mysteries of nature.
We produce a “kind of Deus ex machina which is also a God in the machine
10
". And we thus spare ourselves any in-
depth reflection on the specificity of practical meaning. This amounts above
all to inverting the order of things, by putting the "natural" before the historical,
an intolerable inversion since the only acceptable conception of the
unconscious will consist for Bourdieu, as we shall see, in making it an effect
of the historicity of practical sense, a product of history (and not, as does
11
structural anthropology, one of his secret reasons ).
Mistrust of the concept of the unconscious persists in the Outline of a

theory of practice, where Bourdieu takes great care not to think about the
habitus, and in particular the incorporation which is at the principle of its
genesis. subjective, using the concept of the unconscious. Yet such a bias
was tempting. As we know, the habitus is at the root of ways of doing and
thinking which are immediately actualized in practice and which are both
incorporated and social, in that they reflect and reproduce inequalities of status
and power hierarchies.
We will take up here two famous definitions, reformulated later in the Practical
Sense :
The habitus, system of dispositions acquired by implicit or explicit learning which functions as a system of generative schemes,
generates strategies which can be objectively in conformity with the objective interests of their authors without having been expressly
12
designed for this purpose .
The conditionings associated with a particular class of conditions of existence produce habitus, systems of durable and transposable
dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is to say, as principles generating and
organizing practices and representations which can be objectively adapted to their purpose without assuming a conscious aiming at
ends and the express mastery of the operations necessary to achieve them, objectively and without being in any way the product of
obedience to rules, and being all of this collectively orchestrated without to be the product of the organizing action of a leader
13
orchestra .
Habits therefore have three properties: that of durability, since they are
identical to themselves over a long period due to the weight of social
determination; that of generativity, since they guarantee the regularity of the
action while organizing the improvisations necessary for the application of the
rules; and finally that of the efficiency that they owe to a history made body
14 !
It is of course this last property that one may be tempted to think of as

belonging to an unconscious dimension, or even to refer it to an "unconscious",
since the habitus therefore operates "without the conscious aim of
purposes”. Now, for Bourdieu, this affirmation in no way implies that we

bother with a costly theory of the unconscious, at least not in the sense
in which a certain psychoanalysis was able to conceive it, that is to say
on the intellectualist mode of a reserve of representations that cannot
be immediately mobilized. The danger is quite different and it is more
serious: the concept of the unconscious is not only devoid of sociological
relevance, it is ruinous for explanation in the social sciences. It is
completely useless to attempt to account for social practices by referring
them to an unconscious instance that would be housed in the heads of
agents and that would mechanically orient their action. To presuppose
the existence of such a “black box” is to refrain from grasping the socially
instituted dimension of practices. It is therefore necessary to be very
clear on this point: in the first texts where the theory of habitus is
elaborated, it is not assimilable to an unconscious, for this good reason
that Bourdieu sees in the concept of unconscious an epistemological
obstacle that should be circumvented since it threatens the intelligibility
of one's own theory of practice. The Sketch is thus interspersed with
reminders that do not constitute a formal criticism of the concept of the
unconscious but clearly and regularly condemn its use. Thus Bourdieu
affirms for example that "the theory of habitus raises a whole set of
questions that the notion of the unconscious has the effect of concealing
and which all refer to the question of practical mastery and the effects
of the symbolic mastery of this mastery […]”, which amounts to inscribing
the concepts of habitus and unconscious in a common problematization
space, while denying the concept of the unconscious any relevance for
answering the questions raised. Thus Bourdieu again invites us to
conceive of the rule that governs practice as a "scheme [...] immanent
in practice, which must be said to be implicit rather than unconscious, to signify that i
16
in the practice of agents and not in their ". L'attitude allows
consciousness, therefore to think what remains implicit in practice, but without
However, it is necessary to presuppose the existence of a subterranean,

unconscious psychic stratum or instance which works surreptitiously inside
the agents.
We still find confirmation of this distancing of the
psychology and all forms of metapsychology in a 1980 interview collected in

Questions de sociologie. After recalling that Bourdieusian anthropology was
defined against the philosophy of the subject and against the theory of the
world as representation, Didier Eribon frankly asks Bourdieu the question of
his relationship to psychoanalysis.
Bourdieu responds as follows:
I would only say that individual history in its most singular aspect, and in its very sexual dimension, is socially
determined. This is what Carl Schorske's formula says very well: “Freud forgets that Oedipus was a king. But if he is
entitled to remind the psychoanalyst that the father-son relationship is a relationship of succession, the sociologist
must himself avoid forgetting that the strictly psychological dimension of the father-son relationship can be an
obstacle to a succession. without
17
story, in which the heir is actually inherited by inheritance .
Bourdieu considers that psychoanalysis cannot account for the social

dimension of the psychic since it does not thematize the objective structures
of social life, namely the "royal" position of Oedipus which necessarily makes
the father-son relationship a relationship of succession. Pretending to forget
that Oedipus was king, or promised to be, psychoanalysis suspends the
course of social determinations. Bourdieu nevertheless recognizes in him the
deserves to do justice to individual psychological resistance to the “good”
development of social life, to which the sociologist himself may be blind.
THE (DURKHEIMIAN) REHABILITATION OF THE UNCONSCIOUS
But this essentially critical presentation of Bourdieu's relationship to

psychoanalysis and the resulting rejection of the concept of the unconscious can and
must, however, be nuanced.

In fact, Bourdieu, from The Profession of a Sociologist, sometimes
mentions psychoanalysis positively, in particular when he invites us to
practice a "psychoanalysis of the sociological mind", an undertaking understood in a
18
strictly epistemological intention . Under the auspices of this reference
implicit in Bachelard, it must be understood that the epistemological
perspective dominates the psychoanalytical perspective. It is therefore not
so much a question of analyzing the unconscious of the scientist (in the
present case, of the sociologist) as of identifying the mental obstacles which
hinder the scientific process and, in this case, the elaboration of sociology
as science and craft. However this program, still very allusive in The
profession of sociologist, will be maintained by Bourdieu and it will be the
occasion of a positive reinvestment of the concept of unconscious. There is
a real paradox here: in spite of all the warnings and all the criticisms
formulated against anything that closely or remotely resembles a theory of
the unconscious, Bourdieu seems to be proposing a reformed definition of
the concept of the unconscious.
And this sociological redefinition of the unconscious is in reality already
the work in the Sketch of 1972, if we read this text attentively:
The "unconscious" is in fact never anything but the oblivion of history that history itself produces in
19
incorporating the objective structures it produces into those quasi-natures that are the habitus .
The sociological reworking of the idea of the unconscious discovers here

its principle formula: the unconscious is conceived as the oblivion of history.
This understanding of the unconscious as "forgetting history" is taken up in
an article from 1977, published in the Actes de la Recherche en Sciences
Sociales and entitled "A class object". Bourdieu thematizes there the
reappropriation, by the scientist, of history, a reappropriation which
presupposes precisely that one averts the forgetting of history:
The unconscious, said Durkheim more or less, is history: there is no other way to completely appropriate one's own thought of
the social world than to reconstitute the social genesis of concepts, historical products of historical struggles that the amnesia
of genesis eternalizes and reifies. Social history or historical sociology would (perhaps) not be worth an hour of trouble if it
were not inspired by this intention of reappropriating scientific thought by itself which 20
is constitutive of the most current and active scientific intention .
Finally, there is a passage from Practical Sense which completes the re-clarification
of the program of a psychoanalysis of the scientific mind and rehabilitates the concept of
the unconscious, by directly extending the subject of the previous quotations:
The unconscious is in fact never anything but the forgetting that history itself produces by realizing the objective structures
that it engenders in these quasi-natures that are the habitus. Embodied history, made nature, and thereby forgotten as such,
the habitus is the active presence of

21
all the past of which it is the product .
In all these references, Bourdieu endeavors to substitute a strictly Durkheimian

conception for the Freudian, Marxist, Lévi-Straussian or current of the unconscious
concept. This, which Bourdieu does not always take the trouble to quote with precision, is
exposed in a course of
22
Durkheim pronounced in 1904-1905, The educational evolution in France The founder .
of scientific sociology, without mobilizing strictly speaking the concept of the unconscious,
evokes there the requirements of the collective memory registered in us, which is likely to
work in the individual without presenting himself as such. By making Durkheim play against
Freud in this way, Bourdieu therefore assumes the problematic of the unconscious
dimension of social life incorporated by the individual in the course of his history, while
very clearly putting at a distance the substantiated ontology of the unconscious proposed
by the psychoanalysis.
There is therefore a legitimate sociological use of the concept of the unconscious, to

the point that Bourdieu, who one could then believe was oblivious to the recommendations
given in Le profession de sociologue, allows himself to write,
in 2000, an article entitled “The school unconscious”. He precisely

defines the school unconscious as "the set of cognitive structures which,
in this historical transcendental, is attributable to strictly school
experiences", or even as a "set of common dispositions, often attributed
to a 'national character' which make [that the products of the same
national school system] can be understood half-word, and that many
things go without saying, which are not the
23
less essential […]”. And in the rest of the text, Bourdieu does not
hesitate to advocate a sociology that would unfold as an “analysis of the
24
cognitive unconscious”. How to understand this rehabilitation of the
concept of the unconscious and its requalification under the rubric of the
“historical transcendental”?
Singularly, the most precise definition of this “cognitive unconscious”,
or of this history that has become implicit thought, appears at the opening
of the Pascalian Meditations, a work explicitly designed for the
philosophical public. Bourdieu takes up the Durkheimian definition there,
which he rereads from his own anthropology of practice:
The unconscious is history – the collective history which produced our categories of thought, and the individual history through which
they were instilled in us: it is, for example, the social history of educational institutions (commonplace among all, and absent from the
history of ideas, philosophical or otherwise) and from the history (forgotten or repressed) of our singular relationship to these
institutions that we can expect some real revelations on the objective structures
25
and subjective […] which always orient, in spite of ourselves, our thinking .
The Bourdieusian anthropology of practical meaning and dispositional

action, fundamentally monistic, thus often replays within itself the
conceptual dualisms (the first of these being the subject-object dualism)
that it claimed to leave behind. In reality, the “unconscious” is not the
product of a story, it results from the coincidence of two stories:
objectified history and incorporated history, the history of the field and
that of the habitus. The practical sense is animated by a double dynamic, objective an
subjective, and the implicit, infra-conscious dimension of the actions that

arises from it carries within it this double dynamic. The unconscious is
therefore not and cannot be a sociological theme: to give in to this
temptation is to succumb to the epistemological obstacle, by theoretically
consecrating the forgetting of history already at work in practice. . However,
it must be recognized that this "unconscious" is the name of a problem that
involves a double task, which effectively falls to sociology: to understand
the genesis of the habitus from certain (past) social conditions and to grasp
its effectiveness. in relation to certain (present) social conditions.
Only, if Bourdieu openly subscribes to the Durkheimian strategy, which

has the merit of recognizing all the power of constraint of the social on the
individual conscience, as well as its own dissimulation, it is also exposed
to its difficulties, which one cannot ignore. Indeed, Durkheim orchestrated
the sociological redefinition of the unconscious in three stages. First of all,
it was a question of proclaiming the homogeneity of the social and the mental.
Next, it was important to affirm the essential, genetic and structural
dependence of the second on the first. Finally, he could deduce the
necessary consequence, namely that the autonomy of the mind ceased to
be truly thinkable. However, this radical strategy cannot fail to raise at least
two questions: how can we guarantee, from a non-reductionist perspective,
the at least relative autonomy of mental structures in relation to social
structures? On the other hand, how to specify the exact nature of this
unconscious, if we want to propose here something other than what
Bourdieu called an "artifice of theoretical reason"?
In what does this mysterious coincidence, in the practical sense of the
agent, between objective history and embodied history consist?
To this last question, we know the answer given by Bourdieu. In short,
it is a question of replacing the traditional or current definition of the
unconscious as a reserve of hidden representations in order to
produce a new one, where the unconscious becomes a system of

incorporated dispositions. The reversal point is of an ontological order.
Ultimately, Bourdieu will have tried to substitute for the ontology of the
unconscious proposed by psychoanalysis, but also by other approaches in
force in the social sciences, a different ontology, which rethinks the bodily
and practical anchoring of the cognitive unconscious in the social world. As
we have already seen, it is then a certain phenomenology, of Merleau
Pontian inspiration, which is called upon to think about the "ontological
complicity" which binds the subject to the social world, via his particular
history and the incorporation of this one. This incorporated social is the
place of coincidence between objective history and subjective history.
Where it finally turns out that the “unconscious” dimension of the practical
sense is not conceivable without a minimal social ontology of the relation
of co-belonging of the subject to his social world. In short, Bourdieu is the
follower of a decapitated phenomenology, since he substitutes for
intentional consciousness a body which manifests a certain knowledge of
the environment in which it evolves. It is precisely this reinvestment of
certain Merleau Pontian descriptions that makes the properly “unconscious”
dimension of the habitus thinkable and seems to legitimize the sociological
use, of fundamentally Durkheimian inspiration, of this concept.
However, even if the reference to the unconscious seems to have
become sociologically legitimate again, it still retains something excessive.
In reality, the habitus does not operate unconsciously, but rather in the
register of the infra-conscious. A statement taken from the collection of
Practical Reasons, among other possible references, reinforces this doubt:
the incorporated social is defined there as an "infra-conscious relationship
26
of complicity between agents and the social ". In short, the coincidence
world between objective history and incorporated history may very well be
thought of in terms of the infra-conscious rather than by recourse to the
concept of the unconscious.
REFLEXIVITY BEFORE THE COGNITIVE “UNCONSCIOUS”
Even if Durkheim's reduction of the unconscious to history
presents some interest, it is not sure that it is sufficient to authorize a real

sociological reinvestment of the concept of the unconscious. To tell the
truth, recourse to this concept would remain fundamentally dispensable
if Bourdieu had not established a completely different relationship to
psychoanalysis than that of pure criticism which seemed to prevail for so
long. If the concept of the unconscious is finally legitimized and if it
becomes sociologically operational again, it is because Bourdieu has
come to develop an explicit analogy between psychoanalysis and "socio
analysis", going beyond the initial reluctance arising from the
epistemological caution recommended in the Profession of sociology.
Indeed, the renewed interest in psychoanalysis depends directly on the
growing importance given to the question of reflexivity (even if the theme
has been present since the 1968 Métier ) and its sociological translation
under the heading of the so-called "socio -analysis", that is to say a
27
sociological analysis of the cognitive, social . We find proof
and historical unconscious in this statement by Bourdieu, taken from his
last course at the College de France, at the very moment when he came
to expose its own self-analysis, where all of sociology is ultimately assimilated to a soc
[…] It is all research in the social sciences which, when we know how to use it for this purpose, is
a form of socio-analysis; and this is particularly true, of course, of the history and sociology of
education and intellectuals (I never tire of recalling Durkheim's saying:
28 “the unconscious is history »).
We therefore never tire of quoting Durkheim, but this reference finds

in this case a new echo, this time positive, in relation to the project of a
“socio-analysis”. Let's clarify things. Reflexivity consists, according to
Bourdieu, in exercising a constant critique of the relationship between
theory and practice, that is to say of the institution and the exercise of different forms
knowledge and misknowledge by means of which we relate to the social

world. However, this criticism is only possible thanks to an anamnesis, that
is to say a recollection that will restore the history of the confrontation
between the individual and the social. One can reflectively criticize the
“cognitive” consciousness only if one restores the “cognitive” unconscious
which determines in advance its scope and its limits, its formations and its
deformations. Between the two, the relationship is necessarily historical.
Thus Bourdieu can affirm, at the end of the preface to Le Sens Pratique ,
that 'every true sociological enterprise is', but only on the condition of
29
inseparably, a socio-analysis
emphasizes that the social revealed by sociological analysis presents an
essential historical dimension, which is at the root of its arbitrariness and its
persistence. To become aware of what the social really is is not to describe
its states but to understand these in and in relation to history. Let us sum
up: the reference to Durkheim and assimilation without
remains of the unconscious to history redefine the ontological tenor of the
unconscious; the reference to psychoanalysis shows the usefulness of this
concept for thinking reflexivity as a critique of the “historical transcendental”,
that is to say of the subject's social and historical conditions of possibility.
Reflexivity, in this sense, is not simply a return to the modes of

achievement of knowledge of the social world, it is also a return to history,
going back to the past, retrospection of the social through history.
The analogy with psychoanalysis finds its principle here, which stems from
the exploration of the forgotten or misunderstood genesis of individual and
social experience: it is indeed a matter of saying and repeating the past in
order to reclaim it, in the same way way that the patient of a treatment can
gain a new relationship to the traumatic experiences suffered in the past. By
restoring the course of a certain social subject through a space of determined
social positions, it is the very genesis of his social "unconscious", that is to say
of its misunderstandings and oversights, which socio-analysis seeks to

bring to light. In short, there is here a dimension of the “cognitive
unconscious”, of this social history made forgotten, which remains in
principle accessible to a certain form of reflexivity. The "unconscious" names the
principle of this accessibility. From then on, such an unconscious is no
longer only the infra-conscious of the practical sense, that is to say a set of
dispositional resources functioning discreetly, implicitly, to better guarantee
the effectiveness of the practical sense. It becomes, positively, the forgetting
of history that we can overcome in this potentially liberating overcoming that
comes from becoming aware of what we have been and what makes us as
we are.
However, if Bourdieu recognizes adopting "the point of view of", the fact
30
the remains that he does not develop a methodical comparison
analyst between socio-analysis and psychoanalysis. Everything happens
rather as if the model of psychoanalysis, already well known, sufficed to
constitute a kind of methodological background to a practice that it will be
important above all to give as an example. The relationship of sociology to
psychoanalysis does not proceed from a methodically regulated comparison,
but rather from the recognition of a proximity of approaches in the disciplinary
difference. The methodology of sociological reflexivity is not expressed in a
small corpus of precisely defined rules: it is rather a matter of drawing
inspiration freely, by a series of occasional analogies, from what
psychoanalysis does in order to think about the possibility and the means
of a sociological reflexivity.
It therefore appears, at the end of this examination, that the question of
the unconscious is for Bourdieusian sociology a borderline question, and
this in several ways. It is first of all in the sense that it must be contained in the
strict limits of the sociological enterprise. The theory of the unconscious,
which Bourdieu instructed within the strict limits of sociology, is only
admissible on the condition of excluding any reference to an individual psyche which
would be the exclusive seat and on the correlative condition of fully

recognizing the instituting and structuring action of the objective realities of
the social world. What then remains conceivable under the rubric of the
unconscious is the share of implicitness and naturalness which is at the
foundation of our practices, which supposes that we substitute an ontology
of the "complicity" of the subject to the world for any form of metapsychology.
It must be recognized here that Bourdieu's merit is indeed to have fully
addressed the question of the relationship between the mental and the
social, by relying on misappropriated phenomenological resources.
But we must also see in the question of the unconscious a borderline
question in the sense that it tests the disciplinary limits of the sociological
enterprise. Despite all the criticisms, sometimes quite hasty, that Bourdieu
addresses to tendentially subjectivist theories, among which psychoanalysis
and phenomenology, there is in Bourdieu a remarkable effort to integrate
the positive contributions of both. and to propose a recasting of the
philosophy of the "subject", which it is not a question of abandoning
definitively, but of making epistemologically compatible with the sociological
discovery of social realities, with a view to offering new resources to the
reflexive capacities of the subject.
However, the question of knowing what exactly remains of the “subject”

at the end of the implementation of sociological reflexivity receives two
distinct answers from Bourdieu. On the one hand, when socio-analysis
operates as an objectification of the scientific field, it seems that there is not
much left of the subject, which is purely and simply confused with the field
itself. But on the other hand, socio-analysis can also be realized as an
objectification of social trajectories and account for personal singularity, or
at the very least for "particular cases": Bourdieu does not then completely
renounce the idea of the "subject", even if this subject
depends above all on the very practice of objectifying reflection and on

the few possibilities that are thereby opened up.
1. We have given a first version of the analysis which will follow in L. Perreau, "Sociology, psychoanalysis and
phenomenology: the theory of the unconscious in Pierre Bourdieu", in M. Gyemant and D. Popa (dir.) ,
Phenomenological approaches to the unconscious, Olms, Hildesheim, Zürich, New York, 2015, p. 119-138.
2. “In the psychic life of the individual taken in isolation, the other regularly intervenes as a model, support and
adversary, and as a result, individual psychology is also, from the outset and simultaneously, a social psychology,
in this enlarged and perfectly justified meaning”, S. Freud, Gesammelte Werke, Fischer, Frankfurt, XIII, p. 73.
3. S. Haber, Freud and social theory, Paris, La Dispute, 2012, p. 17. See also, by the same author, Freud
sociologue, Bordeaux, Le Bord de l'eau, 2012.
4. FTE, p. 256. Such a formula obviously evokes Sartre's definition of individual praxis in the Critique of Dialectical
Reason, which makes of it a "synthetic mediation of interiority and exteriority" (J.-P. Sartre, Critique of Dialectical
Reason, II. The intelligibility of history, Paris, Gallimard, 1985, p. 351).
5. C. Gautier, The strength of the social. Philosophical inquiry into the sociology of practices by Pierre Bourdieu,
op. cit., 2012.
6. SP, p. 41.
7. MS, p. 152.
8. SP, p. 68
9. SP, p. 64.
10. SP, p. 69.
11. On the entire critique of the structuralist theory of the unconscious, see A. Lentacker, The Science of Impure
Institutions. Bourdieu critic of Lévi-Strauss, Paris, Reasons to act, 2011.
12. Ibid., p. 120-121.
13. SP, p. 88. We underline.
14. See chapter 6 of this study above.
15. ETP, p. 301.
16. Ibid., p. 250.
17. QS, p. 75.

18. MS, p. 14 and 16
19. ETP, p. 263.
O
20. P. Bourdieu, “An object class”, Proceedings of research in the social sciences, 1977, vol. 17, no. 18, p. 2-5, p. 2. 17-
21. PS, p. 94. It will have been noted that this quotation repeats the actual text of the Sketch quoted above.
22. Here is Durkheim's statement: “[...] in each of us, in varying proportions, there is the man of yesterday; and it is even the man of
yesterday who, by force of circumstances, is predominant in us, since the present is very little compared to this long past during
which we were formed and where we result. Only, this man of the past, we do not feel him, because he is inveterate in us; it forms
the unconscious part of ourselves. As a result, we tend to disregard it, no more than its legitimate demands”, É. Durkheim,
Educational Development in France, Paris, Alcan, 1916, p. 16.
O
23. P. Bourdieu, “The school unconscious”, Proceedings of social science research, 2000, n p. 3. 135,
24. Ibid., p. 5.
25. MP, p.
26.RP , p. 95.
27. Borrowings from psychoanalysis are not limited to the question of the unconscious. It thus happens that Bourdieu requalifies the
question of the interest or the symbolic investment in the field by remobilizing the concept, of psychoanalytical origin, of libido : "One
of the tasks of sociology is to determine how the social world constitutes the biological libido , undifferentiated drive, in social,
specific libido . There are in fact as many species of libido as there are fields: the work of socialization of the libido being precisely
what transforms the drives into specific interests, socially constituted interests which exist only in relation to a social space within
which certain things are important and others indifferent, and for socialized agents, constituted in such a way as to make differences
corresponding to objective differences in this space”, RP, p . 153.
28. SSR, p. 186.
29. SP, p. 40
30. WATER, p. 11.

Chapter 13
Theories and practices of socio-analysis
After having examined in what sense Bourdieu rethinks the concept

of the unconscious, we must detail the concrete modalities of
sociological reflexivity, that is to say of the "socio-analysis" that he
recommends to guarantee the correct functioning of the scientific spirit
and provide a new form of self-knowledge. As we are going to see, the
project of a “socio-analysis” is not unified: it is made up of different
complementary variations that we are going to explore successively.
SOCIO-ANALYSIS AS OBJECTIVATION OF THE FIELD AND RESTITUTION

OF THE “HISTORIC TRANSCENDENTAL”
A first version of socio-analysis consists quite simply in the

sociological objectification of the field, that is to say in the objectification
of the space of positions and of the position that such an agent, such a
"subject" maintains. knowledge of the field under consideration. Here
we have the most general formula of socio-analysis, with a paradigmatic
value. Indeed, the other variations that will be studied later are rather
applications to particular cases: the case of the scientific field and the field
sociology; the case of this “singularity” that is the self, with self-analysis.
This type of socio-analysis cannot be conceived independently of its first context

of elaboration, namely the theory of the cultural field which, moreover, constitutes a
privileged place for the constitution of the theory of the field, complementary lines of
1
. This theory of the cultural field is approached by Bourdieu according to two
investigation. On the one hand, starting from La distinction, Bourdieu studies the
modes of consumption of cultural goods.
On the other hand, with The Rules of the Art, Bourdieu reports on the production of
cultural goods. It is especially in this last work that “socio analysis”, understood as
objectification of the field, discovers its principles.
The rules of the art is a theory and a practice of the objectification of the literary
field put at the service of the understanding of a particular work: that of Flaubert. His
project is to understand the “singularity” of the author – Flaubert – from the space of
possible positions that constitutes the “field”:
[…] the scientific analysis of the social conditions of the production and reception of the work of art, far from reducing or destroying it, intensifies the
literary experience: as we will see with regard to Flaubert, it does not seem to first cancel the singularity of the "creator" in favor of the relations which
make it intelligible only to find it better at the end of the work of reconstructing the space in which the author finds himself encompassed and "understood
as a point" . To know as such this point of literary space, which is also a point from which a singular point of view on this space is formed, is to be able
to understand and feel, through mental identification with a position constructed, the singularity of this position and of the one who occupies it, and the
extraordinary effort which, at least in the particular case of Flaubert, was necessary to make it
2 exist .
This project of sociological objectification is a clear response to Sartre and his

3
Idiot de la famille gripping . In this work, Sartre had delivered a
interpretation of Flaubert's claim to the position of 'pure writer'. Sartre sees in it a
reaction of Flaubert to the awareness, between 1837 and 1840, of his bourgeois
origin, a discovery which
would have decided the entire rest of his existence. Sartre's objective is to exhibit the genesis and the
reasons for this discovery, to restore the "original project" deciding the rest of existence, a project which
itself proceeds from the awareness of the determinations implied by the social position The "existential
psychoanalysis" practiced by Sartre, very different from that of Binswanger, thus locates in the conflictual
4
relationship with the bourgeois father the origin of the vocation of writer, which represents the possibility,
.
through literary creation, of a reappropriation of freedom against the determinations of the social and
historical environment “Socio-analysis” offers itself precisely as an alternative to this “existential
psychoanalysis” of the work of art, since it maintains that the principle of the singularity of Flaubert does
not place himself in the claim and the affirmation of the individual freedom of the creator but finds his
5
reasons in .
the particular economy of the literary field in the process of autonomization. It is therefore necessary,
for that, to accept the sociological detour by the objectification of the field and "to face the reduction to
the historical necessity of what wants to be lived as an absolute experience, foreign to the contingencies
of a genesis not of itself its literal sense, but of its relationship to a space of socially and historically
circumscribed possibilities.
[…]”. Flaubert's aesthetic project does not draw
Restituting the social conditions of possibility of the agent, in this case of this author who is Flaubert,
therefore amounts to “objectifying” the field. But this simplified formula actually requires that we adopt a
certain "point of view" on the points of view present. To speak of a “field” is to suppose that there is a set
of positions and relations which are in relative coherence. It is necessary to underline the fact that the
field is not an “object” that one would discover “ready made”. It is a sociological object which is the
product of a methodical and thoughtful construction: “The notion [of field] first served to designate a
theoretical posture,
generator of methodical choices, negative as well as positive, in the construction

7
of its methodological and […]. The notion of "field" thus has a value
heuristic objects: it must encourage the researcher in social sciences not to
appeal, as long as possible, to exogenous factors in the field.
8
From the 1966 article entitled “Intellectual field and creative project »,
Bourdieu notes that the work of art is the product of a strategy which takes into
account the objective potentialities which are imposed on the creator. There is
no direct relationship with the public, but a relationship mediated by a primary
horizon of reception (peers, critics, publishers) which constitutes what Bourdieu
then calls a “system of social relations”. The field theory, subsequently developed
from the case of literature but also from other domains, such as that of religion
or that of politics, extends these initial views.
Without claiming to restore the whole of this theory, a task which would far
exceed the limits of the present essay, we will content ourselves with recalling a
few fundamental elements.
The field is therefore, according to the metaphor of the magnetic field, a
social space constituted by a set of inter-individual relationships. These
relationships define the relative positions of individuals. It is complex power
relations that decide these positions.
Then, the unity of the field resides in the fundamental agreement of the
agents on a common issue (beauty, truth, etc.). There is an illusio which is the
principle of the definition of the field and which organizes the division between
included and excluded, between those who "are in it" because they believe in it
and those who cannot be in it because they do not don't believe it. The collective
belief in what is at stake specific to such and such a field allows the social game,
that is to say the dynamic relationships between positions, to exist. And this
game, in its deployment, contributes in its turn to the importance and the value of the stake.
Each field therefore obeys a fundamental law, a nomos, which is
both a “physical” law according to which the balance of power is

determined, defining dominant positions and dominated positions and a
law governing the relative assessments of positions. The field is thus
valid as an axiological principle allowing the reciprocal estimation of the
value of positions.
This fundamental law is not for all that an immutable definition of the
field. On the contrary: the space of positions and power relations is
understood as a space in tension and as a space of struggles. The
primary issue of these struggles is the judgment passed on the productions
of the field, more precisely the definition of the principles of the evaluation
of the productions of the field. The struggle therefore does not go so far
as to call into question the issue specific to the field, but it concerns the
relations of domination, which are the subject of questioning or
contestation, or, conversely, are supported by preservation and
conservation strategies. Thus, because the relationship is never definitively
acquired, it is always threatened by the passage of time. The struggle of
positions is always temporalized, the conservative positions referring to
the achievements of a past that we want to see continue, while the
subversive positions turn towards a future which is the promise of renewal
(this is the role avant-gardes in the literary field). The struggle between
positions is not static and synchronic. It is at the root of the dynamics that
run through the field, and better still, of its history:
It is not enough to say that the history of the field is the history of the struggle for the monopoly of the imposition of legitimate categories of
perception and appreciation; it is the struggle itself that makes

9
field history; it is through the struggle that they temporalize themselves .
The history of the field is that of struggles, according to a logic that is

specific to the field. It is therefore appropriate, at first glance, not to look
elsewhere than in the field for the evolutionary factors of this story. To
understand the dynamics at work within the field, Bourdieu defends the
idea that it is necessary to study the relationships and more precisely the
homologies between the order of the positions, that of the dispositions

and that of the positions taken. In other words, there are correspondences
between socially conditioned intellectual dispositions and a universe of
production made up of more or less recognized producers and works
that reference or are denigrated. A work, in this sense, is not the product
of an isolated act but is also defined, negatively and by difference, in its
opposition to works already recognized: it is a position taken among
other position taken, a work among other works.
Let us now return, with these few reminders, to the particular case
of the literary field. One of the major characteristics of the literary field
is the shared demand for autonomy: it is its own principle of intelligibility
and the positions and strategies of the different agents are understood
in relation to the different states of the field. Admittedly, on the basis of
this common aspiration, different poles organize the distribution of
positions. The "extended production sub-field" (which constitutes the so-
called "heteronomy" pole) situates literary value in public success, while
the so-called "autonomous" pole, "restricted production sub-field", turns
away from judgment of the public, even despises it in order to rely on
the judgment of peers alone (authors, critics). While the first pole relies
on economic criteria, the second invests in the gradually constituted
symbolic capital. The progressive autonomization of the literary field is
explained, according to Bourdieu, by the continuous rise in power of the
second pole. Certain authors, the "nomothetes", play a particular role in
this history of the field: thus, Baudelaire or Flaubert, who affirm against
all odds, and above all in defiance of worldly consecrations and
economic or social profits, the exclusive value of the criteria aesthetics
and invent the principle of art for art's sake or "pure" literature.
What Bourdieu studies in the Rules of the Art are the different
polarizations of a literary field in the process of autonomization which define
a set of relative positions, but also, between these positions, possibilities of

new positions. Flaubert's work, like that of Baudelaire, can only be understood
if we establish a correspondence between what it claims to say and the
contemporary field of literature: they represent a critical moment in the history
of the field, where the positions
10
established are called into question and new positions are won. What is .
exhibited in this way is the very history of the field, the powerful dynamic of its
internal renewal, one literary generation replacing another.
It is by resituating the work among other works, by conceiving it as a

possible actualizing itself in the field that one serves a certain understanding
of the "author's point of view", not by betting on a vague empathy, but
understanding how the author positions himself in a space of possibilities. In
this sense, the sociological analysis of literature is not crude relativism. It is a
question of restoring the author such as he is, that is to say of bringing to
light the logic of individual production related to the logics of the field.
The field is therefore a set of evolving power relations, of positional

struggles, but it is also what is constantly valid as a principle of reciprocal
evaluation. It is therefore not simply a set of relations that would be imposed
from outside (this is the limit of the metaphor of the “field of forces”), it is also
“internalized” by the agents. It “acts” as a repository that guides the production
and appreciation of the works.
This aspect of the agent's relationship to the “system of objective relations”
was present in the 1966 article “Intellectual field and creative project”, where
Bourdieu already assumed the existence of a "cultural 11 ”. In The
unconscious rules of the art, it is also from this perspective of taking into
account external and internal constraints, precisely, that Bourdieu introduces
the notion, already mentioned but so far somewhat enigmatic, of the “historical
transcendental”:
This space of possibilities imposes itself on all those who have internalized the logic and the necessity of
the field as a sort of historical transcendental, a system of (social) categories of perception and appreciation,
of social conditions of possibility and legitimacy which , like the concepts of genre, schools, manners, forms,
define and delimit the universe of the thinkable from the unthinkable, that is to say both the finite universe
of potentialities likely to be thought and realized at the moment in question – freedom – and the system of
constraints within which
12
determines what to do and think – necessity .
The link is thus made between the “necessity of the field”, the unconscious which remains
oblivion of history and the “historical transcendental”. This notion is thus clarified in a new light.
The “historical transcendental” is constituted by a set of dispositions, more or less explicit,
which determine ways of seeing and perceiving: the social conditions of possibility come under
the order of internalized or incorporated social constraint. But this transcendental is historical
because it refers,
13
priority, to the history of the struggles of positions which animate the field. This history is .
never, in its entirety, consciously present: it acts in the present moment by being summed up
in it, by rushing into it in a way. The consciousness that one can have of it is most often that of
the present state of the struggle of positions within the field. Paradoxically, the “historical
transcendental” is therefore immanent in the situation, in the sense that it is not necessary to
look for it beyond it. The history of positional struggles is summed up here and structures the
order of the possible and the impossible. At the same time, it is necessarily misrecognized as
such and functions as such as an "unconscious" since it operates from the "interiority" of the
agents and more precisely from the "practical sense" which is relevant in relation to the
requirements of the considered field. It is on this condition that we can understand certain
statements of Bourdieu which may seem surprising at first glance:
Thus, the entire history of the field is immanent in each of its states and to live up to its objective
requirements, as a producer but also as a consumer, it is necessary
possess a practical or theoretical mastery of this history and of the space of possibilities in
14
which she survives herself .
Since the whole history of the field "is immanent in each of its states" this
– and it is necessary to see the full significance of –, history cannot be
this statement restored by the sole gaze of the historian, as if it were a question of
noting the persistence of established positions or the succession of avant-gardes
which contest them: it is above all necessary to understand the logic complexes of
conservation and subversion of positions, the possibilities of which play out in the
order of dispositions. In Choses dits, evoking his research on the autonomization
of artistic or intellectual fields, Bourdieu clarifies the status of this history, then
presented as a “structural history”:
A fully accomplished sociology should obviously include a history of the structures which are the culmination at a given moment of the
whole historical process. […] It is a question of making a structural history which finds in each state of the structure both the product of
previous struggles to transform or preserve the structure, and the principle, through contradictions,
15
the tensions, the balance of power that constitute it, subsequent transformations .
The main factor of internal change in a given field are therefore the struggles
that take place there, insofar as these are understood first and foremost in their
maintained reference to the stakes of the field: is the complex interplay of positions,
dispositions and position-taking which makes up "structural" history, that is to say
the history of the fundamental structure of the field distributing itself, via the habitus,
under the double regime of the “structured structure” and of the “structuring
16
structure” This “structural history” is the only way to account both for the ».
struggles that are at the root of the evolutions of the field and for the logic of the
individual, singular, which always appear as actualized possibilities in a space of
possibilities circumscribed by the structure. Thus Bourdieu can add, still in Choses
dits :
[…] the model I propose of the relationship between habitus and fields provides the only rigorous way of
reintroducing singular agents and their singular actions without falling back into
17 the irrelevant anecdote of event history .
However, it is still necessary to insist on the fact that this “structural

history”, immanent in the situations, does not unfold completely and in full
transparency. This relative opacity, which constitutes its properly
“unconscious” dimension, is essentially due to two structural reasons. On
the one hand, the agents never have more than a partial and relative
point of view on structural history since their position and their positions
always represent one possibility among others. On the other hand, the
very history of the field produces its own forgetting, through illusions,
denials, repressions.
The analogy between socio-analysis and psychoanalysis proves here
again very valuable for thinking about this effect of a double gnoseological
and social break instituted by the very evolution of the field: the production
of ignorance or absence of knowledge, underpinned by strategies of
distinction, contributes to making the field an effective power of oblivion
and blindness as to the reality of what it is. There is therefore a need to
historicize or rather to re-historicize because history itself produces its
own forgetting, insofar as the particular economy of the field gives rise to
dominations which have an interest in not appearing as such and to
demands for autonomy that are always sanctioned by forms of denial
with regard to the economy of the field. Thus, it is about the claim of art
for art's sake, aspiration to a “pure” literature, that is to say one satisfied
with its self-referentiality to better deny its social and historical inscription.
The role of the sociologist, with the objectification of the field he

proposes, is therefore a role analogous to that of the analyst. It provides
an opportunity for reflection on history, which is ultimately the return of
history to itself:
Through the sociologist, historical agent historically situated, social subject socially determined, history, that is to say the
society in which it survives, turns back on itself for a moment, reflects itself; and, through it, all social agents can know a
little better what they are, and what they
18
font .
This quotation sums up admirably the Bourdieusian conception of

reflexivity: the sociologist is this agent who acts as a reflective instance
for social agents and for society itself.
SOCIO-ANALYSIS AS AN OBJECTIVATION OF THE SCIENTIFIC FIELD:

SOCIOLOGICAL REFLEXIVITY AS SOCIOLOGY OF SOCIOLOGY
In The rules of art, at the end of the "Questions of method" which

delivers a kind of small methodological and epistemological treatise on
the theory of fields, Bourdieu considers the objectification of the scientific
field and the sociological field as a possible case of field objectification.
"Possible" case which is in reality a "particular" case, since the reflexivity
procured by objectification then becomes a reflexivity in the strong
sense, operated by sociology which provides the means of objectivation
on sociology as a system of objective relations between agents
(sociologists):
This work of objectification, when it is applied, as here, to the very field in which the subject of objectification is located,
makes it possible to take a scientific point of view from the empirical point of view of the researcher, who, being thus
objectified, in the same way as the other points of view, with all its
19
determinations and its limits, finds itself subject to methodical criticism .
Bourdieu therefore sees in the work of objectification of the scientific

and sociological field the promise of two gnoseological gains. On the
one hand, the objectification of the field gives the possibility of accessing
a global vision of all the objective relations between the agents, that is
to say, of arriving at a point of view on all the perspectives. On the other
hand, the objectification of the field appears as an instrument of rupture
epistemological with the partial visions that one can have of the field and with a
form of "naivety", which is due both to the immediate adhesion to the illusio which
is at the principle of the field and especially to the unreflected character of the
point scientific point of view on the subject.
This second declension of “socio-analysis” is in fact a particularization of its
fundamental approach which concerns an “agent” of a very particular kind: the
learned “subject”, the scientist or even, more precisely, the sociologist. Reflexivity
is no longer just the return to the historical past occasioned by the awareness of
the objective, historical and social realities of the field. It takes on a new meaning
since it is also the return of objectification to itself. The sociologist who practices
socio-analysis turns against himself the instruments of the science he practices.
Bourdieu sees in this sociological reflexivity a specificity of his sociology:
If the sociology that I propose differs in any way from other sociologies of the past and
20
present, it is above all in that it turns against itself the weapons it produces .
Such is the program summarized by the inaugural lecture at the Collège de

France in 1982, during which Bourdieu exposes "[...] one of the most fundamental
properties of sociology as [he] conceives it: all the propositions that this science
states can and must
21
apply to the subject who makes science ". In other words, the subject of the
science remains a socially situated subject, in the social space in general and in
the social space of science, and sociological science, in its concrete realization,
only verifies it by the inventory of established misunderstandings. In the
continuation of the aforementioned text, Bourdieu again invites this scientific
subject to a necessary “objectifying, therefore critical distance”. There is an
intimate correlation, at the level of the subject of scientific knowledge, between
epistemological criticism and social criticism. It is thus up to the approach of socio-
analysis to accomplish the reflexivity
criticism by developing a sociological objectification of the subject by itself:
It is not enough to seek in the subject, as the classical philosophy of knowledge teaches, the conditions of possibility, and
also the limits, of the objective knowledge that it establishes. It is also necessary to seek in the object constructed by science
the social conditions of possibility of the learned "subject" (for example, the skhole and all the heritage of problems, concepts,
methods, etc., which makes its activity possible ) and the possible limits of his actions
22
of objectification .
23
The approach of this "socio-analysis of the scientific mind claims, » with
here again, a more or less explicit reference to Kantian criticism, by calling

for the examination of the social conditions of possibility to be substituted
for that of the conditions of possibility of the subject transcendental. But we
also see this critical program reoriented by the analogical reference to
psychoanalysis. What applies to the general program of “socio analysis”
applies and is verified in the particular case of sociological reflexivity. It is
therefore hardly surprising to see Bourdieu reaffirm the need for an
investigation of the “scientific” unconscious, the social unconscious that
results from a history made forgotten, according to a now fully intelligible
formula. Thus, at the end of the interview with Loïc Wacquant, in the
Invitation to reflexive sociology, we can read that:
[…] the social history of sociology, understood as an exploration of the scientific unconscious of the sociologist through the
explanation of the genesis of the problems, the categories of thoughts and the analytical instruments that he uses, is an
absolute prerequisite for
24
scientific practice .
To restore this “history” and reveal the scientific unconscious for what it
is, it is necessary here again to “objectivize” the field, the space of positions
and relations between agents. But at the same time, this objectification must
operate at different levels, the scientific unconscious, and more particularly
the sociological unconscious, being composed of strata which actually
correspond to a sort of successive interlocking of different
fields. It is by investigating for themselves each of these "fields" (with this

reservation that the scholastic condition, which cannot be neglected here, is
perhaps not a "field" properly speaking, but indeed a certain "condition", that is
to say a type of social position implying a certain type of relationship, distanced
in this case, to practice), then by reconstituting their compositional relationship
in actual scientific work, that the we can produce the analysis of this scientific
unconscious. In this light, a great diversity of work and research finds its
coherence.
1. At a first level, the socio-analysis of the scientific spirit must come back to
the institution of the scholastic “look” and to the particularities of the situation of
skhole. Sociology is indeed a "scholastic" field among others, a discipline whose
agents enjoy an exceptional social position, freed from the urgencies of practice,
and benefit from free time conducive to reflection and theories. However, the
scholastic situation, “condition of the existence of all scholarly fields, certain
25
“biases” which predetermine the exercise of objectification ", Is at the origin of
and are likely to lead it astray. The socio-analysis of the scholastic condition
therefore aims to return to these biases and prevent their effects. This socio-
analysis of the scholastic unconscious is present from the beginning of the
Sketch for a Theory of Practice. Account of the hiatus between "logical logic"
26
and the "logic of practice. We , deepened in the practical sense that makes
will therefore not return, that the criticism of the implicit "anthropological
27 28
», then finally, in the Pascalian Meditations .
foundations" of sociological practice, namely of subjectivism and objectivism,

finds its origin in the gnoseological break between theory and practice, as well
as in the misunderstanding of some of its particularities. . It is this
misunderstanding of what theory owes to practice that gives rise to the
surreptitious importation of its fundamental categorial division between the
"subjective" and "objective". This gnoseological problem, widely exploited in

the Sketch and then in Le sens pratique, presents a social dimension that
Bourdieu never ceased to thematize more directly. In this sense, the reflections
of the Pascalian Meditations are the most successful, operating in the register
of a socio-analysis which assumes itself as such and which cultivates its
proximity to the register of psychoanalysis.
On the basis of historical considerations retracing the genesis of the scholastic
situation in the Western world, Bourdieu describes above all the functioning
and the effects of a disposition which presupposes an “ epistemic doxa ”
based on a double ignorance:
The "free" and "pure" disposition favored by the skhole implies ignorance (active or passive) not only of what
happens in the world of practice […], and, more precisely, in the order of polis and politics, but also what it is to
simply exist in this world. It also and above all implies the more or less triumphant ignorance of this ignorance and
29
economic and social conditions that make it possible .
This double ignorance is not the conjunction of two different ignorances,

but indeed a doubled ignorance, negatively “reflected” in a certain sense,
forming an ignorance of ignorance in which Bourdieu sees the expression of
a “great repression”. . The unconscious of the scholastic disposition proceeds
from this "repression of the material determinations of" which is not simply
30
symbolic practices ignorance of social reality, but self-blindness in
relation to what it is, denial of the practical reality which allows to practice
theory. It is defined, in the terms of Practical Sense, as an "epistemological
31
unconscious ».
The first two chapters of the Pascalian Meditations lead to the objectification
of this self-blindness by drawing up a critical inventory of the processes of
denial and sublimation of scholastic reason. In addition to the presuppositions
of the epistemic doxa , Bourdieu notes the affirmation of individual and
collective autonomy with regard to economic powers and "the
32 33
policies , the invention and the majesty of the "scholastic gaze
34
refusal of the objectification of the objectifying subject , the generalization and "the
35
the universalization of the particular case , refusal of the thought of the genesis
36
and, above all, of the thought of the genesis of the thought of philosophies of ", the production
history which are in fact attempts at dehistoricization37 and so on. This table is
38
, the absolutization of works ,
complete inventory of the "effects of the unconscious universalization of the vision of the world associated
39
with the scholastic condition of the three forms of scholastic error in the ", through the examination
field of knowledge (epistemocentrism), ethics (moralism) and aesthetics (aesthetic universalism).
The cure imposed on the scholastic disposition therefore passes through the historicization of scholastic
reason, that is to say, in this case, through the constant reminder of the practical origins of the theory.
Thus, the historical anamnesis, even barely sketched, recalls the originary repression which is
constitutive of the symbolic order and which is perpetuated in a scholastic disposition implying the
40
repression of these economic and social conditions of possibility […].
Consequently, the Pascalian Meditations are undoubtedly not only a book created for the benefit of
philosophers, but also and above all an objectification of the scholastic condition illustrated by the example of
philosophy, this discipline being the one which has the best, according to Bourdieu, realized this condition.
This is also the reason why the "Impersonal Confessions", an essay in self-analysis in which Bourdieu
concentrates on his relationship to philosophy, directly extend "the effort to objectivize this subject that we are
led to believe universal effort which is already at work in the chapter entitled "Critique of scholastic reason".
41
»,
Before continuing, it should be pointed out that the situation of the sociologist, relative to the situation of
the skhole, is quite special.
On the one hand, he is himself in this situation which begins with a double cut, gnoseological and social. It is
therefore, as we have already said,

exposed to a number of scholastic “biases” and in particular to

subjectivist and objectivist tendencies that are likely to inform an
unconscious anthropology that is harmful to the scientific work of
objectivating social reality. But, on the other hand, he is also the only
one who can recall agents to their social conditions by restoring social
reality for what it is. This paradox is well noted by Bourdieu in the
Pascalian Meditations :
The sociologist has the particularity, which has nothing to do with a privilege, of being the one whose task is to say things about the
social world, and to say them, as much as possible, as they are: nothing but normal, even trivial in that. What makes his situation
paradoxical, sometimes impossible, is the fact that he is surrounded by people who either (actively) ignore the social world and do not
talk about it […] or worry about it and talk about it , sometimes a lot, but without knowing much […]. Thus, when he simply does what
he has to do, the sociologist breaks the enchanted circle of collective denial: by working for the return of the repressed, by trying to
know and to make known what the universe of knowledge does not want. not know, especially about himself, he takes the risk of
appearing
42
like the one who spills the beans .
In other words, it is the extension of the scholastic condition which

is here a factor of resistance to the work of socio-analysis undertaken
by the
sociologist. 2. At a second level, the socio-analysis of the scientific
spirit focuses on the scientific field which it sets itself the task of objectifying.
This sociology of the scientific field is developed in the 1975 article
which bears the precise title “The scientific field course43 and leads to
entitled Science of science and reflexivity. The Pascalian Meditations
also contain a certain number of analyzes that fall within this domain.
In Science of science and reflexivity, Bourdieu discusses the

different philosophies of science (Merton's structural-functionalism,
Thomas Kuhn's theory of scientific revolutions, David Bloor's
Wittgensteinian-inspired sociology of science) before exploring " a
world apart", that of the scientific field. Field
The scientific field is analogous to the literary field in that it operates on the principle of
disinterestedness, that is to say the distancing of economic, social or political interests. Its
empowerment is sanctioned by the affirmation of scientific authority as the sole criterion for
evaluating individual and collective productions. If the scientific field is understood, since the
1975 article, as a field of forces and a field of struggles
44
, it should be emphasized that forces and struggles find their origin in this “scientific
authority”, that is to say in the constitution and recognition of scientific capital, individual or
collective. The social game which takes place in the scientific field itself operates with
“disinterested” means which are those of rational exchange, reasoned discussion, logical
coherence and verification by confrontation with reality. Symbolic struggles develop in the space
devoted to and to scientific reason.
If the scientific field is a "world apart", it is above all because it The first
45
imposes a special entry fee on new entrants component of this entry fee is .
scientific competence, that is to say the incorporated scientific capital, a set of knowledge and
"practical sense" in accordance with the requirements of the field, a criterion of "purity" which
excludes from its consideration any extra-scientific interest. Entering the field ensures the
closure of the field, which functions as a world closed in on itself, where discussion, competition
and recognition between peers prevails, staged by "honorary" procedures, and grants symbolic
and material profits. . The second component of the right to enter the scientific field is unreserved
46
. It is, moreover, the latter which consecrates the scientific capital, the
adherence to the illusio which is its principle, that is to say the search for disinterested research.
The illusio cultivates the "specific interest in disinterestedness" which is also sometimes
presented as a particular interest in the universal.
47
.
It is still in the terms of psychoanalysis that the functioning of this field is

analysed. However, Bourdieu does not insist so much on the unconscious
and on the historical transcendental as on the censorship and the sublimation
which make the social game possible. The Pascalian Meditations deliver this
collected formula:
[…] the specific drive engendered by the field is made to sublimate in order to fulfill itself
48
within the limits and under the constraint of field censorship .
Censorship is that which results from the reciprocal and constant control
exercised by the gaze of peers. The field is thus constituted "by instituting
censorship at the entrance and then by permanently exercising, by the very logic
49
of its operation, and outside of any transcendent normativity […]”. This
censorship ensures the closure of the field and the exclusion of certain
possibilities from the logical and social space, without it even being necessary
to state prohibitions. 50 . The constraints exerted by censorship are both
institutionalized (particularly within the framework of what is called “discipline”)
and incorporated as a provision. They implicitly regulate the exchanges in
the social game.
Sublimation transforms impure interests into pure interests, in the form of
disinterestedness. If there is "sublimation", it is also because the libido
dominandi, the struggle for symbolic power and the monopoly of scientific
authority, cannot be expressed as such: it is converted into The drive for
51
libido scindi or libido scientifica drive .
power turns into
to know. Consequently, the reality of social relations, in the scientific field, is
often denied: the relations of domination do not appear as such, but as
differences of position in relation to the monopoly of scientific authority, i.e.
-say as differences in the order of knowledge.
3. At a third level are the analyzes relating to Homo academicus, which

delimit and describe the academic field. Since the
first chapter of the book, Bourdieu specifies what its usefulness may be
from the more general perspective of socio-analysis:
Sociology leads too little to illusion for the sociologist to think of himself for a single moment in the role of the liberating hero:
nevertheless, by mobilizing all the scientific knowledge available to try to objectify the social world […], he offers the possibility
of freedom; and he can at least hope that his treatise on academic passions will be for others what it has been for himself, the
instrument
52
of a socio-analysis .
The title of the work should not mislead by suggesting that it is a

question of indulging in the search for an essence, in order to identify a
kind of man who would populate the academic world. It is indeed by
developing knowledge of the particular social space within which scientific
activity develops, by objectivizing it, that one can know oneself as a
scientist, as a member of an academic world which has its laws, its rites,
its classifications, its hierarchies and its relations of power and domination.
The academic world then becomes its own object of research and the
study will be able to describe the evolutions of the French university
world before and after May 1968, the defense of the "body" by the
professors, the effects of the crisis inside the school institution.
But Bourdieu analyzes above all the logics of distribution and division
which conceal the inequalities which structure the academic field. A place
of conflict and competition between individuals, the university world is a
“field in which several specific powers clash, corresponding to social and
educational trajectories and also to irreducible, if not incompatible,
53
cultural productions”. Thus, the University is the place where a form of
scrambling develops which justifies social inequalities and power relations
through recognized technical or scientific skills. The academic field is
thus structured by power relations which have their own logic.
To become aware of this is obviously to advance the socio

analysis of the scholarly mind.
At the end of this discovery of the different levels of exercise of the
socio-analysis, we hope to have demonstrated the coherence of its unity. This is not always
apparent because Bourdieu does not always take the trouble to systematize this approach.
The research developed at each level can be considered independently of each other, like
so many applications of field theory. This is often how they are presented. However,
Bourdieu's analyzes obey constant principles: those of objectification, of the exhibition of
socio-transcendental conditions, of the revelation of the historical transcendental
unconscious, of the continuous methodological analogy with psychoanalysis.
The socio-analysis of the scientific mind is therefore exercised at different levels and
applies to the scholastic condition, to the scientific field, to the academic and university
field, but while preserving from start to finish a profound theoretical and practical unity.
Before going on to examine the socio-analysis applied to the case of the “subject” itself,
two further remarks must be made. The first concerns the exposition of the benefits of the
socio-analysis of the scientific spirit; the second concerns the effects of this approach for
the learned subject and the type of epistemological vigilance that can result from it.
1. Here is the first remark: given the resistance encountered by objectification

(particularly because it sometimes forces the "subjects" to shed part of their illusions, but
also because it can be an instrument for denouncing dominations), Bourdieu endeavored
to specify the gains that reflexivity provides for science itself:
As I tried to do in Homo academicus, I use the instruments provided by reflexivity to

try to control the biases introduced by consciousness to progress in the knowledge of
the mechanisms that can alter reflection. Reflexivity is an instrument
intended to produce more science, not to reduce the scope or destroy the possibility of
54
science .
Reflexivity is thought of as a device for controlling sociological

practice. Instead of “self-knowledge”, sociological reflexivity provides us
with a form of “epistemological vigilance”, a form of prudence in the
elaboration of knowledge relating to the social world:
It is not a question of pursuing a new form of absolute knowledge, but of exercising a specific form of epistemological
vigilance, the very one that this vigilance must take on a
55
field where epistemological obstacles are primarily social obstacles .
This epistemological vigilance makes it possible to master the

fundamental dualism that Bourdieu identified both in ordinary thought
and in scientific thought, which sometimes surreptitiously imports these
categories:
What needs to be mastered is the subjective relationship to the object which, when it is not controlled and which guides
the choice of objects, methods, etc., is a of the most powerful factors of error, and the social conditions of production of
this report, the social world which has made the specialty and the specialist (ethnologist, sociologist or historian) and
the unconscious anthropology which it engages in its
56
scientific practice .
Sociological reflexivity thus provides the means to exercise a

constant critique of the relationship between theory and practice, thus
informing sociological practice. The point of differentiation concerns the
object of reflection, this object no longer being quite the subject itself,
but objectification, knowledge as it is practiced. Reflexivity is then
achieved by imposing a sort of diplopia, a doubling of the gaze, thought
57
of by Bourdieu as an “anti-Copernican” revolution. »:
To recall, as Husserl does, that “ the arkhe-originary earth does not move” is not to invite us to repudiate Copernicus'
discovery in order to purely and simply replace it with directly proven truth […]. It is only to encourage holding together
the observation of objectification and
the observation, just as objective, of first experience which, by definition, excludes objectification. It is a question, more
precisely, of permanently imposing on oneself the work which is necessary to objectify the scholastic point of view which
allows the objectifying subject to take a point of view on the point of view of the agents engaged in the practice, and to
try to adopt a strange point of view, absolutely inaccessible in practice: the dual, bifocal point of view of someone who,
having reappropriated his experience as an empirical "subject", understood in the world and thus capable of
understanding the fact of implication and all that is implicit in it, tries to inscribe in the theoretical reconstruction, inevitably
scholastic, the truth of those who have neither the interest, nor the leisure, nor the instruments necessary to undertake
appropriate the objective truth and 58
subjective of what they do and what they are .
2. Before analyzing an ultimate way of exercising socio-analysis,

one more remark must be made: the socio-analysis of the scientific
agent is undoubtedly the one that leaves the least room for the idea of
" subject ". More precisely, this idea is constantly denied in its meaning
and in its traditional value in favor of highlighting the field as the only
real “subject”. It is indeed always within the framework of the socio-
analysis of the scientific spirit that Bourdieu assimilates the “subject” to the field.
This second declension of “socio-analysis” presents the particularity of
working towards an objectification of objectification and this
radicalization of reflexivity, a form of squared objectification, is not
without consequence as regards the status of the “subject”. If "socio-
analysis" is, as a whole, in opposition to the counter-model of reflection
conceived as a self-position, consecration of the subject by his own
reflexive power, sociological reflexivity seems to push this opposition
to its optimum: who d other than the sociologist to extend the power of
objectification as far as possible and definitively dismiss what remains
of the "subject"? Thus, sociological reflexivity, because it is a radicalized
objectification, also leads Bourdieu to assimilate without further ado
the scientific subject to the field itself. Thus, at the very end of
“Questions of Method”, in The Rules of the Art, Bourdieu remarks:
[…] indeed, the conditions of possibility of the scientific subject and those of its object are one and the same as any
progress in the knowledge of the social conditions of production of the scientific subject
corresponds to progress in the knowledge of the scientific object, and vice versa. This can never be seen as
clearly as when research takes the scientific field itself as its object,
59 i.e. the true subject of scientific knowledge .
In Science of science and reflexivity, we find a statement

similar:
The subject of science is not the individual scientist, but the scientific field, as a universe of objective relations
of communication and regulated competition in matters of argumentation and
60 verification .
However, these extreme formulations, it should be noted, are only stated

from the perspective of a socio-analysis of the scientific agent situated in relation
to the scientific field. One cannot therefore read there the general formula of a
pure and simple eviction of the philosophy of the subject which would be at
work everywhere in Bourdieu.
SOCIO-ANALYSIS AS SELF-ANALYSIS
Finally, it is up to the “socio-analysis” approach to achieve critical

reflexivity by developing a sociological objectification of the subject
himself, by himself. This last declension of socio-analysis, Bourdieu
calls it “self-analysis”. This self-analysis represents in short the
sociological and personal response that Bourdieu brings to the
philosophical question of the subject whose problematicity persists
through and despite the critique of social phenomenology. This is what
makes it possible to understand Bourdieu's insistence on returning on
numerous occasions to his own career and his own singularity as a
socially situated sociologist subject: already occasionally in the Sketch
of 1972 or in the Lesson on the lesson of the Collège de France, then
in the post scriptum of the Pascalian Meditations entitled "Impersonal
Confessions" and finally in the last chapter of the last course of
Bourdieu at the College de France, Science of science and reflexivity,

text taken up and completed under the title of Sketch for a self-analysis.
These different texts are, for Bourdieu, like so many occasions to set an
example of his own reflective singularity. Paradoxically, Bourdieu is
undoubtedly the sociologist who will have spoken the most about himself,
not by yielding to some narcissistic complacency or to the facilities of
glorious autobiography, but indeed by giving as an example his own reflective singular
Thus, self-analysis does not expose the subject's intimacy, on the contrary:
it undoes his person by forcing him to reobjectivize what was initially
subjectivized. Claiming a certain form of impersonality, the discourse of
self-analysis actually effaces the self-instituted subject, in order to uphold
what an "existence [has] that is most banally common, right down to the
61
illusion of singularity ».
Thus unfolds a retrospection which does not consider choices as

products of a conscious project but rather as positions adopted with
regard to a determined social field: exemplary from this point of view are
the pages devoted to the objectification of the subject of knowledge
"Bourdieu" at the crucial moment of research in Algeria, in the experience
of familiarization with a foreign world and uprooting from a familiar world
62
. Orchestrated in this way, the account of positions
taken definitively condemns the illusion that was that of the classical
philosophies of consciousness, that of self-position.
Bourdieu owes to a certain literature (Virginia Woolf, William Faulkner,
James Joyce, Claude Simon) the idea that the linear life story, that is to
say the biography as a self-narrative punctuated by a succession of
events , is not the right way to “say” the subject. A 1986 text entitled "The
biographical illusion" thus recommends replacing biography as "life
history" with the "notion of trajectory as a series of positions successively
occupied by the same agent (or the same
group) in a social space itself in the process of becoming and subject to

incessant transformations". And Bourdieu continues:
Trying to understand a life as a unique and self-sufficient series of successive events with no other connection
than association with a "subject" whose constancy is doubtless only that of a proper name, is about as absurd
to try to explain a journey in the metro without taking into account the structure of the network, that is to say
the objective matrix of
63
objective relations between the different stations .
64
Because the "effort to explain and understand requires above all
undoing the singular history of the subject, this history or rather this double
history made oblivion. Socio-analysis applied to the case of the singular
person in no way consecrates the intimacy of the subject: it reobjectives the
subjective experience and undoes the person. The “choices” now appear as
positions taken with regard to a given social field. In Bourdieu's eyes, objective
knowledge of the structures of the social world, of the principles that govern
its different "fields" therefore goes hand in hand with the institution of a new
relationship to oneself:
[…] the most intimate truth of what we are, the most unthinkable unthought, is also inscribed in objectivity, in
the history of the social positions that we have held in the past and that
65
we occupy in the present .
From there, the comparison established between socio-analysis and

psychoanalysis is extended in an unprecedented way, in the case of self-
analysis, when it comes to considering the effects of one and the other. other
of these two approaches. For Bourdieu, sociological self-analysis is capable
of producing effects analogous to those of a psychoanalytical cure. Thus, in
the Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, Bourdieu responds in the following way
to a question from Loïc Wacquant relating to the choice of sociology rather
than that of philosophy or psychoanalysis:
[…] sociology was the best thing I could do, if not to feel in tune with life, at least to find more or less acceptable
the world in which I was condemned to
live. In this limited sense, I think I have succeeded in my work: I have carried out a kind of personal therapy which, I hope,
has at the same time produced tools which can be of some use
66
for the others .
For me, sociology played the role of a socio-analysis which helped me to understand and
67
put up with things (starting with myself) that I used to find unbearable .
Self-analysis therefore has liberating effects analogous to those of an

analytical cure: it frees from the experience undergone dominations, insofar
as it makes it possible to objectify them. We thus give back to the social field
what we owe it. It will be very tempting to see in it an emancipatory promise
and to make Bourdieu a distant successor to the Enlightenment. Some
words of Bourdieu even seem to invite us to do so:
[…] the sociology of the social determinants of sociological practice is the only possible basis for a possible freedom in
relation to these determinations. And it is only on condition that he ensure the full use of this freedom by continually submitting
to this analysis that the sociologist can produce a rigorous science of the social world which, far from condemning agents to
the iron cage of a rigid determinism, offers them the means of an awareness
68
potentially liberating Resentment .
is for me the quintessential form of human misery; and the worst thing the dominant imposes on the dominated (arguably the
greatest privilege of the dominant, in any universe, is to be structurally free from resentment). Sociology is therefore in my
eyes an instrument of liberation, and therefore of generosity
But if sociology, as Bourdieu conceives and practices it, offers us the

means to reclaim our history, we should not however overestimate its
powers. We cannot expect too much from these awarenesses which are
only potentially liberating and it is not on them alone that we can bet to
emancipate individuals. To become aware of the unconscious is both to
distance oneself from it or at the very least to gain the possibility of doing
so, but it is also to recognize all its weight, all the inertia of the acquired
dispositions. It would be illusory to consider that the awakenings brought
about by the work of socio-analysis can suffice to correct the dispositions of
an agent, and
even less to make them disappear. This requires continuous work, an

active struggle of the individual with himself, which must be coupled with
a struggle against the social conditions in which certain dominations are
exercised, because "[...] it is not enough to take consciousness of the
70
class condition in order to free himself from the ". In his texts the
lasting dispositions that it produces more pessimistic, Bourdieu almost
makes the unconscious dimension of practices a principle of conservation
of the social order, a reason for its persistence at the very least. Thus,
he notes, in La domination masculine, that the principles of habitus "are
transmitted, for the most part, from body to body, beyond consciousness
and discourse, they largely escape the conscious takeovers and at the
71
transformations and corrections same time Bourdieu never ceases
to emphasize the importance of becoming aware of unconscious
determinations, of defending the merits of socio-analysis, while marking
the limits of the enterprise:
Sociology gives us a small chance to understand the game we are playing and to reduce the influence of the
forces of the field in which we evolve such as those of the social forces
72
embodied that operate within us .
From this point of view, the summary criticisms of the sociology of

Bourdieu, who sees in it only a crude determinism, a pure sociologism,
even a left-wing intellectual terrorism, would be well advised to take a
closer look at the various elements of the theoretical constitution of
Bourdieusian sociology. Bourdieu does not only oblige us to become
aware of the structuring action of the social that we cannot or do not
ordinarily want to see, he also invites us to question ourselves on our
own singularity as social subject by revealing the possibilities of the
practice likely to free us from our determinations and from the
dominations suffered.
1. As Louis Pinto points out, the sociology of literature “condenses major theoretical choices” (L. Pinto,
Pierre Bourdieu and the theory of the social world, Paris, Albin Michel, 2002, p. 87).
2. RA, p. 14-15.
3. J.-P. Sartre, The Idiot of the Family, I, II and III, Paris, Gallimard, 1988. See also the “Questions of
Method” in The Critique of Dialectical Reason, I. Theory of Practical Sets , Paris, Gallimard, 1985, p. 15-111.
4. See on this subject the remarks of P. Bourdieu in the sequence of the Rules of the art mischievously
titled “Questions of method”, p. 308 sq.
5. More generally, the sociological analysis defended by Bourdieu is opposed to the "internal" readings of
works (those of traditional literary history) which misunderstand or neglect the importance of social factors
and are incapable of restoring the logics of the field , as well as to “external” readings, notably inspired by
structuralism, which excessively formalize the principles of reading works. On all this, see the sequence
entitled “The space of points of view” in RA, p. 318 sq.
6. RA, p. 15-16.
7. RA, p. 297.
8. P. Bourdieu, “Intellectual field and creative project”, Modern times, 19966, 246, p. 865-906.
In The Rules of the Art, Bourdieu casts a critical eye on this founding article for the sociological analysis of
literature as well as for the theory of fields: "This is how the first attempt to analyze the 'intellectual field'
stopped at the immediately visible relationships between the agents engaged in intellectual life: the
interactions, between authors and critics or between authors and publishers, had hidden from my eyes the
objective relationships between the relative positions that each occupy in the field, that is to say the
structure which determines the form of the interactions” (RA, p. 299).
9. RA, p. 261.
10. “ Dating is inseparably creating a new position beyond established positions, ahead of these positions,
in the vanguard, and, by introducing difference, producing time”, RA, p. 261.
11. P. Bourdieu, “Intellectual field and creative project”, Les Temps Modernes, 22, 1966, p. 865-906.
12. RA, p. 387.
13. Which does not mean, of course, that the field should be isolated from the rest of the social space,
which could only lead to a new form of dehistoricization. See AR, p. 327.
14. RA, p. 399.
15. CD, p. 56.

16. Let us note in passing that this conception of structural history is far removed from the caricature that has
sometimes been given of it, particularly with regard to the school institution, history then being reduced, in certain
crude or lies, to a set of imposed determinations and to an implacable reproduction of existing inequalities. At the
same time, if it is true that the Bourdieusian conception of history gains in precision with the idea of a structural
history, the question arises as to what exactly is meant by the concept of " structure ". This task exceeds the limits
of the present reflection. We can read the presentation of J.-L. Fabiani, Pierre Bourdieu. A heroic structuralism,
Paris, Seuil, 2016.
17. CD, p. 61.
18.LL , p. 29. See also, on the necessity of historicization: SSR, p. 168.
19. RA, p. 342.
20. ISR, p. 272.
21.LL , p. 29. See also the decisive pages of the Pascalian Meditations : MP, p. 174 sq.
22. RA, p. 343.
23. SSR, p. 180.
24. ISR, p. 272.
25. MP, p.
26. ETP, p. 225-234.
27. See in particular chapter V, “The logic of practice” of SP, p. 135-165.
28. See in MP chapter II (“The three forms of scholastic error”), p. 73-131.
29. MP, p.26-27.
30. MP, p. 38.
31. SP, p. 51.
32. MP, p. 37.
33. MP, p. 40.
34. MP, p. 50.
35. MP, p. 53.
36. MP, p. 66.
37. MP, p. 67.
38. Ibid.
39. MP, p. 75.
40. MP, p. 42.

41. MP, p. 53.
42. MP, p. 15.
43. P. Bourdieu, “The scientific field”, Proceedings of research in the social sciences, June 2-3, 1976, p. 88-104. This article
is a reprint of "The specificity of the scientific field and the social conditions of the progress of reason", Sociologie et
O
Sociétés, vol. 7, n Field and Scientific Thought. Marginal Notes", in 1, 1975, p. 91-118. We should also mention “Scientific
SB Ortner (ed.), Transformations, CSST Working Papers, University of Michigan, November 1989, translated in "Notes in
the margin of Sherry B. Ortner's article", in Awal, 21, 2000, p . 59-64; and finally Animadversiones in Mertonem, in R.
Merton, Consensus and Controversy, The Falmer Press, 1990, p. 297-301, taken up in “La double rupture”, in RP, p. 91-97.
44. SSR, p. 69.
45. SSR, p. 101 sq.
46. “[…] each researcher tends to have no other receivers than the researchers most apt to understand it but also to criticize
it, even to refute it and to deny it”, SSR, p . 137.
47. SSR, p. 105.
48. MP, p. 161.
49. SSR, p. 107-108.
50. SSR, p. 119.
51. SSR, p. 101.
52. HA, p. 212.
53. HA, Back cover.
54. ISR, p. 251.
55. SSR, p. 173-174.
56. SSR, p. 182-183.
57. We owe this expression to Dominique Pradelle.
58. MP, p. 275.
59. AR, p. 343. This passage is reproduced unchanged in ISR, p. 273.
60. SSR, p. 138-139.
61. MP, p. 54.
62. ETP, p. 2. In 1972, in the "Foreword" which opens the second part of the Sketch, Bourdieu already noted that "there is
no doubt that the scientific experiment which is at the root of these reflections owes much to the particularities of a
biographical itinerary” (ETP, p. 222): it is thus the familiarity of a
certain peasant world, that of Béarn, which protected him from the excesses of objectivism when he was carrying out ethnographic
research in Algeria between 1957 and 1963.
63. P. Bourdieu, “The biographical illusion”, Proceedings of research in the social sciences, 64, 1986, p. 71.
64. WATER, p. 14.
65. ISR, p. 271.
66. ISR, p. 269.
67. ISR, p. 268.
68. ISR, p. 273.
69. ISR, p. 271.
70. ETP, p. 271.
71. DM, p. 102-103.
72. ISR, p. 255.

1. QS, p. 49.
CONCLUSION
At the end of this study, it is clear that Bourdieusian sociology is not

“without subject” as Raymond Boudon1 suggested . Quite the contrary:
this sociology has the remarkable merit of inventing a new figure of the
subject, or more precisely of conceiving a form of subjectivity.
This invention of what we have called, following Bourdieu, the “social
subject” proceeds from a complex relationship of conversion and
subversion of different phenomenological contributions. In criticizing
social phenomenology, Bourdieu ultimately renounces a theory of the
subject which had the advantage of unifying, in its own way, the subject
of knowledge and the subject of practice in the unity of a lived experience.
But this critique is salutary, since it should make it possible to reconsider,
under the heading of habitus, the social determinations of practice, and
more broadly, to pose the problem of the conditions of possibility, social
and historical, of knowledge. It also functions as a matrix of specific
problems, recurring insistently in Bourdieu's work: the questions of time
and reflexivity are, in our view, the best examples.
The conception of the social subject that thus emerges, at the

conjunction of reflections on the incorporation of normativity, on the
temporality of practice and on the powers of reflexivity, can no longer
be confused with that of the agent. It designates a form of subjectivity
which resists its objectivist negation, but which must also recognize all that its identit
owes to the historical and social world. Such a conception of the “social
subject” subverts classical philosophy, which defined it more readily by the
conscious relationship to oneself and by freedom, two essential traits here
relegated to the background, without being abolished for all that. The subject
is for Bourdieu an effect of the social world, a subject “subjugated” by his
biographical journey within the fields that structure this social world. However,
such a subject is not only the internalized summary of the social order, he
has for him the resources of practical sense, the possibility of relating
reflexively to his own experience and finally of acting collectively on the social world. .
We must take full measure of this result, which can be interpreted in
different ways, depending on whether we adopt the point of view of the social
sciences or that of philosophy. On the side of philosophy, first of all, the
exteriority of the sociological point of view makes it possible to assign some
limits to the sometimes uncontrolled uses of certain concepts. In this case, it
is no longer possible to see in the subject any foundation, nor to be satisfied
with a conception of the subject that ignores all of its social and historical
conditions of possibility.
As for the social sciences, it appears that they can no longer neglect the
subjective dimension of social reality. In this sense, the specificity of
Bourdieu's approach lies in the practice of “socio analysis” which is the
ultimate answer to the problem of double objectification.
By analyzing the effect of the objective structures of the social world in lived
experience, Bourdieu invites the “subject” to confess indefinitely what he
owes to others. It is not one of the lesser attractions of Bourdieu's sociology
that, in this way, one can learn so much about “oneself”. But we also see the
difficulty of the undertaking: that of a critical vigilance which ultimately remains
entirely our responsibility, that also of a relative uncertainty as to what one
can really know of "oneself". ". It is here that the question of the temporality
of practices ultimately affects the conception
sociology of the subject: of what this subject may be in the future, sociology
can of course say nothing. Rather, it lays out the conditions for the subject to
become a little freer thanks to the lucidity gained by knowledge of the
determinations that weigh on him. Ultimate ambiguity, which leaves to the
“freedom” of the subject the possibilities that he will be able to conceive and
invent, individually and collectively, beyond the acquired awareness of social determinations
1. R. Boudon, Ef ets pervers et ordre social, Paris, PUF, 1977, p. 187.

ANNEX
We provide below the translation of a short text by Bourdieu written in

response to the article by C. Jason Throop and K. Murphy, "Bourdieu and
phenomenology: a critical assessment", published in Anthropological Theory,
2, 2 , 2002, p. 185-207. This answer was written at the end of 2001, shortly
before the disappearance of Pierre Bourdieu, which occurred in January 2002.
P. Bourdieu, « Response to Throop and Murphy », Anthropological

Theory, 2, 2, 2002, p. 209 :
While thanking the authors for their very serious and meticulous work, I would like to raise
a few questions about their intentions themselves. I actually see a contradiction in blaming
myself on the one hand for (1) failing to do justice to phenomenology for which I seem to
owe more than I care to acknowledge (p 197: "here, as elsewhere, Bourdieu seems to
simply restate some of Schultz's [sic] hypotheses in his own idiosyncratic and excessively
deterministic vocabulary, so that they may appear new, when they do not." are not in
reality"; or p. 203: "[Pierre Bourdieu] fails to recognize the positive influence that Husserl's
thought had on his own theoretical formulations") and, (2) for having misunderstood,
misinterpreted and distorted the ideas of Husserl and the phenomenologists (see for
example p. 198: "his entirely phenomenological naivety which led him to erroneously
characterize any non-representational state as being necessarily 'non-conscious' […]", or p.
203: “ he often distorts the ideas of Husserl ”).
In short, it is not possible to claim without avoiding serious inconsistencies that what I say
about Husserl is true and therefore that I would be a quasi-plagiarist concealing his
borrowings (while I have often declared my debt to the respect to the phenomenology that I practiced
some time in my youth) and that what I say about Husserl is wrong and that my criticisms
and reservations are unfair.
It seems to me that I do indeed do justice to Husserl, Schutz and a few others. But it was
not my intention to reformulate them in one of these commentaries which, to speak like
Mallarmé, “forms a pleonasm” with the work, nor to refute them. My objective is to integrate
the phenomenological analysis within a global approach of which it is a phase (the first,
the subjective phase), the second being that of the objectivist analysis. This integration is
in no way an eclectic compilation since its effect is to go beyond the limits (which I recall in
my review) inherent in each of the approaches, while retaining their essential contributions.
But I think that the misinterpretation of my ideas has its origins in the fact that the authors
forget that, for me, the theoretical ideas which they treat in isolation, separately, in
themselves and for themselves, are intended to guide empirical research and to solve
specific problems of anthropology and sociology, such as the problem of exchange by gift
or that of work for which I propose in Pascalian Meditations an analysis integrating
subjectivist and objectivist points of view , as with so many other problems encountered
throughout my research career.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
I. Works by P. Bourdieu
1. Works
Bourdieu P., Sociology of Algeria, Paris, University Press of

France, 1958.
Bourdieu P., Darbel A., Rivet J.-P. and Seibel C., Work and workers in
Algeria, Paris/The Hague, Mouton, 1963.
Bourdieu P. and Sayad A., Uprooting: the crisis of traditional agriculture in Algeria,
Paris, Les Éditions de Minuit, 1964.
Bourdieu P. and Passeron J.-Cl., The heirs: students and culture, Paris, Les Éditions
de Minuit, 1964.
Bourdieu P., Castel R., Boltanski L. and Chamboredon J.-Cl., A medium art: Essay on
the social uses of photography, Paris, Les Éditions de Minuit, 1965.
Bourdieu P., Chamboredon J.-Cl. and Passeron J.-Cl., The Profession of Sociology:
Epistemological Prerequisites, The Hague/Paris, Mouton/EHESS, 1968.
Bourdieu P. and Passeron J.-Cl., Reproduction: Elements of a Theory of the Education

System, Les Éditions de Minuit, 1970.
Bourdieu P., Distinction: Social Critique of Judgment, Les Éditions de
Midnight, 1979.
Bourdieu P., Outline of a theory of practice preceded by Three studies

of ethnology [1972], Paris, Seuil, 2000.
Bourdieu P. and Boltanski L., "The production of the dominant ideology"
[1976], reed. Paris, Editions Reasons to act, 2008.
Bourdieu P., Algeria 60: economic structures and structures
temporal, Paris, Editions de Minuit, 1977.
Bourdieu P., The Practical Sense, Paris, Editions de Minuit, 1980.
Bourdieu P., Questions of sociology, Paris, Les Editions de Minuit, 1980.
Bourdieu P., What speaking means: the economy of linguistic exchanges, Paris, Fayard,
1982.
Bourdieu P., Lesson on the lesson, Paris, Les Éditions de Minuit, 1982.
Bourdieu P., Homo academicus, Paris, Editions de Minuit, 1984.
Bourdieu P., Things said, Paris, Editions de Minuit, 1987.
Bourdieu P., The political ontology of Martin Heidegger, Paris, Les
Editions de Minuit, 1988.
Bourdieu P., State nobility: great schools and esprit de corps, Paris, Les Éditions de
Minuit, 1989.
Bourdieu P., The rules of the art: genesis and structure of the literary field,
Threshold, 1992.
Bourdieu P. (dir.), The misery of the world [1993], Seuil, 2007.

Bourdieu P., Male domination, Paris, Seuil, coll. Liber, 1998.
Bourdieu P., Practical reasons: on the theory of action, Paris, Seuil,
1994.
Bourdieu P., Pascalian Meditations, Paris, Seuil, 1997.

Bourdieu P., Contre-feus: remarks to serve the resistance against the neo-liberal invasion,
Paris, Liber, coll. "Reasons to act", 1998.
Bourdieu P., Contre-feus 2: for a European social movement, Paris, Reasons to act, 2001.
Bourdieu P., Language and symbolic power, Paris, Seuil, 2001.

Bourdieu P., Science of science and reflexivity, Paris, Reasons to act,

2001.
Bourdieu P., The Bachelors' Ball. Crisis of peasant society in

Béarn, Paris, Seuil, 2002.
Bourdieu P. and Chartier R., The sociologist and the historian, Marseille/Paris, Agone &
Reasons to act, 2010.
Bourdieu P., On the State: Lectures at the College de France 1989-1992, Paris,
Threshold, 2012.
Bourdieu P., On Manet: A Symbolic Revolution, Threshold/Reasons

to act, coll. "Courses and work", 2013.
Bourdieu P. and Wacquant L., Invitation to reflexive sociology, Paris,
Threshold, 2014.
2. Articles
Bourdieu P., "Intellectual field and creative project", Modern times,

1966, p. 865-906.
Bourdieu P. and de Saint-Martin M., “Academic excellence and the values of the French
O
education system”, Annales, Paris, vol. 25, n March 1970, p. 147-175. 1, Jan-
Bourdieu P., "Public opinion does not exist", Modern Times, vol. 29, 318, January 1973.
nO
Bourdieu P., “Class future and causality of the probable”, Revue Française de Sociologie,
15/1, 1974, p. 3-43.
Bourdieu P., "The invention of the artist's life", Actes de la recherche en sciences
sociales, vol. 1, March 1975, p. 67-94.
Bourdieu P. and Boltanski L., “The fetishism of language”, Proceedings of research in
the social sciences, vol. 1, no. 4, July 1975, p. 2-32.
Bourdieu P., “Reading Marx: about “reading Capital””, Actes de 5-6, November
O
the search in social sciences, vol. 1, no 1975, p. 65-
79.
Bourdieu P., “The practical sense”, Proceedings of research in the social

sciences, vol. 2, No. 1, February 1976.
Bourdieu P., “The scientific field”, Acts of research in social sciences, June 2-3,
1976, p. 88-104.
Bourdieu P., “An object class”, Acts of research in science
social, 1977, vol. 17, not 17-18, p. 2-5.
Bourdieu P., “Interview with Pierre Bourdieu: is sociology a science? »,
Recherche, no 112, June 1980, p. 735-743.
Bourdieu P. and de Saint-Martin M., “The Holy Family. The French episcopate
in the field of power”, Actes de la recherche en sciences sociales, 44-45, p.
2-53.
Bourdieu P., “The social sciences and philosophy”, Proceedings of research in
the social sciences, no. 47-48, June 1983, p. 45-52.
Bourdieu P., "The biographical illusion", Acts of research in science
Sociales, 1986, 64, p. 69-72.
Bourdieu P., « The corporatism of the universal : the role of intellectuals in the
modern world », Telos, 81, 1989, p. 99-110.
Bourdieu P., « For a socio-analysis of intellectuals : on “Homo Academicus” »,
Berkeley Journal of Sociology, no 34, 1989, p. 1-29.
Bourdieu P., "The literary field", Acts of research in science
Sociales, no 89, September 1991, p. 4-46.
Bourdieu P. et Eagleton T., « Doxa and common life », New Left Review, 191,
février 1992, p. 111-121.
Bourdieu P., “What does it mean to make an author speak? About Michel
Foucault”, Societies and Representations, 1996, 3, p. 13-18.
Bourdieu P., “The economic field”, Acts of research in science
sociales, no 119, September 1997, p. 48-66.
Bourdieu P., “The school unconscious”, Proceedings of social science

research, 2000, no. 135, p. 3-5.
Bourdieu P., "Participatory objectification", Proceedings of research in
social sciences, 150, 2003, p. 43-58.
II. Other references

Addi L., Sociology and anthropology at Pierre Bourdieu. The Kabyle
anthropological paradigm and its theoretical consequences, Paris, La
Découverte, 2002.
Alexander JC, Reduction: criticism of Bourdieu, Paris, Le Cerf, coll.
"Humanities", 2000.
Ambroise B., "Bourdieu and language", in Frédéric Lebaron & Gérard
Mauger (ed.), Read Bourdieu, Paris, Ellipses, 2012, p. 193-206.
Austin JL, Sense and Sensibilia, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1962
[trans. Fr. by P. Gochet, reviewed by B. Ambroise, The language of
perception, Paris, Vrin, 2007].
Begou B., The Genealogy of Logic. The status of passivity in Husserl's
phenomenology, Paris, Vrin, 2000.
Bouveresse J. and Roche D. (eds.), Freedom through knowledge. Rock
Bourdieu (1930-2002), Paris, Odile Jacob, 2004.
Bouveresse J., Bourdieu, scholar & politician, Marseille, Agone, 2003.
Cefaï D. and Depraz N., “On the phenomenological method in the
ethnomethodological approach”, in M. de Fornel, A. Ogien and L.
Quéré (dirs.), L'ethnomethodologie. A radical sociology. Colloquium of
Cerisy, Paris, La Découverte, 2001, p. 99-123.
Cefaï D., Phenomenology and social sciences. Alfred Schutz. Birth of a
philosophical anthropology, Geneva, Librairie Droz, 1998.
Colliot-Thélène C., "The German roots of Bourdieu's theory", in Pierre Bourdieu, theory
and practice. Franco-German Perspectives, La Découverte, Paris, 2006, p. 23-46.
Encrevé P. and Lagrave R.-M. (ed.), Working with Bourdieu, Paris,

Flammarion, coll. « Champs », 2004.
Fabiani J.-L., Pierre Bourdieu. A heroic structuralism, Paris, Seuil,
2016.
Gautier C., The strength of the social. Philosophical inquiry into the sociology of the
practices of Pierre Bourdieu, Paris, Le Cerf, 2012.
Heinich N., Why Bourdieu, Paris, Gallimard, coll. "The Debate", 2007.
Héran F., “The second nature of habitus. Phenomenological tradition and common
sense in sociological language”, Revue française de sociologie, XXVIII-3, CNRS
Éditions, 1987.
Karsenti B., From one philosophy to another. The social sciences and
politics of the moderns, Paris, Gallimard, 2013.
Kestenbaum V., The Phenomenological Sense of John Dewey : Habit and Meaning,
Atlantic Highlands, Humanities Press, 1977.
Lahire B. (dir.), The sociological work of Pierre Bourdieu: debts and
reviews, Paris, La Découverte, 1999.
Lentacker A., The Science of Impure Institutions. Bourdieu review of
Lévi-Strauss, Paris, Reasons to act, 2010.
Lemieux C., “Philosophy and sociology: the price of passage”, Sociologie,
2, 3, 2012, p. 199-209.
Lescourret A.-M., dir., Pierre Bourdieu, a philosopher in sociology,
Paris, PUF, 2009.
Lescourret M.-A. (ed.), Pierre Bourdieu. A philosopher in sociology,
Paris, PUF, 2009.
Louette J.-F., Traces of Sartre, Grenoble, Ellug, 2009.
Martín-Criado E., The two Algerias of Pierre Bourdieu, trans. Fr. by H.
Bretin, Broissieux, Editions du croquant, 2008.
Monod J.-C., “The two hands of the State: remarks on the sociology of misery by
Pierre Bourdieu”, Esprit, no 8-9, September 1995, p. 156-171.
Ostrow J. M., Social sensitivity : An Analysis of Experience and Habit,
Stony Brook, State University of New York Press, 1990.
Perreau L., “From phenomenology to ethnomethodology: varieties of social ontology
in Husserl, Schütz and Garfinkel”, in Phenomenology 2005, edited by T. Nennon
and HR Sepp, Zeta Books, 2007, p. 453-477.
Perreau L., “Defining situations. The report of the sociology of Erving Goffman to the
phenomenology of Alfred Schütz”, in Goffman and the order of interaction, under
the dir. by D. Cefaï and L. Perreau, Amiens, CURAPP-ESS/PUF, 2012, p.
139-162.
Perreau L., The social world according to Husserl, Dordrecht/Boston/London/New
York, Springer, 2013.
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THANKS
This study finds its distant origins in a communication delivered

within the framework of the symposium “Theories of practice. Bourdieu
and the idea of critical sociology” organized in 2008 by Claude Gautier,
Pascale Laborier, Sandra Laugier and Frédéric Lebaron at the University
of Picardie Jules Verne, in Amiens. This intervention was then the
subject of a publication entitled "Something like a subject: Bourdieu and
social phenomenology", published in a volume coordinated by Michel
de Fornel and Albert Ogien published by the École des Hautes Études
en Sciences Sociales in the “Practical reasons” collection (Bourdieu,
theoretician of practice, Paris, Éditions de l'EHESS, 2011). We then
had the opportunity to present a first state of our research, in February
2012, within the framework of the seminar "Rereadings of Pierre
Bourdieu" organized by Florent Champy, Bruno Karsenti, Cyril Lemieux
and Jean-Louis Fabiani at the EHESS . May they find here the
expression of our thanks for the remarks they addressed to us then.
Our reflections on the work of Bourdieu would not have been the
same without the work undertaken in common with Bruno Ambroise,
particularly within the framework of the seminar on the epistemology of
the social sciences that we co-hosted at the Center de Recherches
Universitaires on Public Action and Politics – Epistemology of Social
Sciences (CURAPP-ESS, UMR 7319), at the University of Picardie
Jules Verne. During our work around the work of Bourdieu, we have also
contracted a certain intellectual debt with regard to Claude Gautier.

Finally, we owe a lot to the friendship of Jocelyn Benoist, whom we
thank for her constant support.
This study was presented as unpublished within the framework of
an Habilitation to Direct Research supported at the University of Paris I
Panthéon-Sorbonne. We would like to thank Jocelyn Benoist, Claude
Gautier, Bruno Karsenti, Natalie Depraz, Nathalie Zaccaï-Reyners and
finally Dominique Pradelle, members of the jury, for their comments and
suggestions.
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Bourdieu's relationship to phenomenology may

Laurent Perreau is Professor of Contemporary Philosophy at the

© CNRS Editions, Paris, 2019

This digital document was produced by PCA

Part I: On a ritual opposition in the social sciences

Chapter 1. The perspective of the anthropology of practice

The problem of objectification

The problem of “the” practice

Replaying the cut: the double objectification

The anthropology of practices program

Chapter 2. Subjectivism: social phenomenology and existentialism

Elements of a critique of social phenomenology

The Sartre case

Chapter 3. Rethinking the subject beyond subjectivism

Critique and Integrate

strength and meaning

Part II: Normativities

Chapter 4. The “meaning” of the practice

The problem of the anteriority of meaning

Sense of practice, sense of practicality and sense of play

The practical-social order of meaning

Chapter 5. The presupposition: the doxa

The experience of naturalness

From the natural attitude (phenomenological) to the doxa (sociological)

Chapter 6. The principle: the habitus

Presentations of the habitus

Regularities, adjustments and sociality

Chapter 7. The genesis: the incorporation of the provisions

The body, from Merleau-Ponty to Bourdieu

From objectification to pre-objective

Part III: Temporalities

Chapter 8. The Critique of the Philosophies of the Time

The scholastic conception of time

Chapter 9. Temporal Awareness, Economic Practices, and Alienation in Algerian Studies

The temporalization of practices

The depoliticization of the “to come”

Chapter 10. The Temporal Dynamics of Habitus

Retentions and retentions

Part IV: Reflexivities

Chapter 11. From reflection as self-position to sociological reflexivity

The counter-program of a sociological reflexivity

From Kant to Freud

Chapter 12. The social unconscious

The epistemological critique of the concept of the unconscious

The (Durkheimian) rehabilitation of the unconscious

Reflexivity in front of the cognitive “unconscious”

Chapter 13. Theories and practices of socio-analysis

Socio-analysis as objectification of the field and restitution of the "transcendental

Socio-analysis as objectification of the scientific field: sociological reflexivity as the sociology of

Find all the works of CNRS Editions

Algeria 60. Economic structures and structures

Science of science and reflexivity [2001].

F. Héran, “The second nature of the habitus. Phenomenological

To read and comment on Bourdieu is to accept taking a position in a", that is to

1. The reference to phenomenology in Bourdieusian

The reference to phenomenology appears with a certain insistence in the

1. In the first place, the relation of Bourdieusian sociology to phenomenology

In this regard, we can recall some elements of Bourdieu's biographical career,

was then determined in relation to . This criticism of

More generally, Bourdieu questioned the claims of philosophy by theorizing what he

practice and a restorative theory of practice. As we will see later, it is

the “Introduction” to the Pascalian Meditations is unambiguous on this point: