Prolegomena to reflexive film study: a Bourdieusian analysis of the economy of cinematic exchange.

by David Lupton

Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, Faculty of Life and Social Science, Swinburne University

December, 2004.

What is unique to the experience of cinema that has ensured its ongoing popularity across generations of filmgoers? As both a theoretical construct and a real world practice, cinematic experience is necessarily implicated in systems of social and cultural stratification, and thus subject to the drive for symbolic distinction amongst classes. As such, practical logics grounded in specific cultural arbitraries hinder illumination of the complexities of film going, perpetuating epistemological errors based in social ignorance and therefore denying a new understanding of cinematic experience in its embodied state. By uncovering the key theoretical and methodological fallacies informing scholastic knowledge production within the discipline of film studies, the sociological program of Pierre Bourdieu allows for the systematic mapping of cinematic experience as an economy of exchange an economy engaging specialised categories of patron recognition and appreciation in order to offer an experience of recognised social value. Whilst subject to a range of both theoretical and methodological criticisms, ultimately the deficiencies of Bourdieus program are outweighed by the benefits of reflexive sociology in developing the autonomy of the field of film studies, allowing for future film study fully cognizant of the mechanisms of symbolic violence and thus academic knowledge production more attentive to the destructive logic of the open market.

Acknowledgements.

This thesis was made possible through the help, enthusiasm and patience of Dr. Arran E. Gare, to whom I owe an enormous debt of thanks. I should also like to gratefully acknowledge the encouragement provided by the staff and students of Swinburne Universitys Faculty of Life and Social Sciences, and the assistance of the Office of Research and Graduate Studies.

Many people both entered and exited my life during candidature; I miss them dearly.

Finally, for their ongoing (unconditional) love and support, I am forever indebted to my family.

Declaration.

I declare that this thesis contains no material which has been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma, except where due reference is made in the text of the thesis; to the best of my knowledge contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made in the text of the thesis; and where based on joint research or publications, discloses the relative contributions of the respective workers or authors.

Signed: DAVID LUPTON

Table of Contents Introduction: The experience of cinema in theory and practice .................... (i) - (vi) 1.
1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5

The study of cinema .....................................................................................1 - 47

Introducing Pierre Bourdieu: the logic of practice............................................................8 Confronting film studies: the field of film studies ..........................................................19 The crisis in the humanities and the conditions necessary for reflexivity.......................27 The practice of David Bordwell: theorization and symbolic violence............................33 Beyond Post Theory: The contribution of reflexive sociology to film studies ............42

2.
2.1

Scholasticism and the theorization of cinematic experience ................48 - 101

Mapping the cinematic experience: theorization of the field of film studies (early film theorization) ..........................................................................57

2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6

Bazin, auteurism, film criticism ......................................................................................66 The structuralist critique .................................................................................................72 Psychoanalytic film theorization.....................................................................................77 Psychoanalysis interrogated: Mulvey and feminist film theorization .............................91 Rethinking the apparatus: innovation or convention?.....................................................97

3.
3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4

The practice of reflexivity: problems and answers .............................102 - 147

Illusio and the practice of reflexive sociology ..............................................................111 The contemporary habitus: contradiction and alignment..............................................120 Situating oneself............................................................................................................131 Between the primary habitus and the intellectual field. ...............................................138

4.

Reflexivity in action: objectification and the problem of conversational analysis ..........................................................................148 - 178

4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4

Reflexivity in practice: The Weight of the World ........................................................156 Research in practice: cinematic experience and reflexive fieldwork ............................163 Models of reflexive fieldwork and implications for mapping cinematic experience ....171 Conclusion: The limitations of reflexive understanding ...............................................177

5.
5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6

Cultural value and the judgement of taste: in defence of Bourdieu..179 - 220

Thinking in progress: the epistemological and social concerns of Bourdieu................181 Autonomous cultural representation: possible? ............................................................190 Rethinking habitus: ambiguity, mismatch, struggle......................................................196 Autonomy and folk culture ...........................................................................................202 Bourdieu Goes To The Movies: A) Film studies and reflexive sociology....................208 Bourdieu Goes To The Movies: B) Cinema, capital, patron.........................................217

6.
6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4

The cinematic experience.......................................................................221 - 269

Orders of legitimacy in cinematic recognition ..............................................................223 The emergence of laws of cinematic exchange.............................................................232 Recognition and response: the cinematic transfiguration of relations of violence........241 The cinematic experience..............................................................................................247

Conclusion: The problem of, and future possibilities for, reflexive film study .................270 - 274 Bibliography .......................................................................................................275 - 284

(i)

Introduction: The experience of cinema - in theory and practice.

Why do people attend the cinema? As a form of entertainment, its popularity would appear to be well in decline. Although historically resistant to the domination of leisure time by free-to-air television, the cinema now exists alongside content delivery systems (such as the Internet, cable television and DVD home theatre systems) that offer an experience supposedly comparable to theatrical filmic presentation. Indeed, video rentals now account for 46.6 per cent of (film) studio revenues, compared with 24.6 per cent collected at the box office.1 Why does the cinema therefore still maintain an audience? Why have developments in technology and apparent changes in leisure interests not rendered a night at the movies obsolete? What is unique to the experience of cinema that has ensured its ongoing popularity as an independent universe, self-created, self-patronizing, a licensed zone of unreality, affectionately patronized by us all?2 The problems of new media notwithstanding, investigations into the experience offered by the cinema have been well rehearsed in film study. From the earliest reflections upon production, distribution and exhibition that accompanied the development of the medium, to contemporary academic research that explores cinematic phenomena within the margins of film studies as a discipline, the nature of movie-going has provided a wealth of research material for the scholar intent upon demystifying the operations of the medium and its enduring appeal. Indeed, as an abundant resource for study, the experience of cinema has permitted a variety of interrogative perspectives and thus invited responses that engage a wide range of critical methods. Within the context of intellectual universes, however, this diversity does not indicate lack of prejudice. There are significant stakes to be won or lost in academic practice, the most obvious being intellectual reputations, tenure, publishing contracts, scholarships, research funding, and access to the media. As a research interest, the study of the cinema is not disinterested. Therefore, whilst it may be assumed that the complexity of cinematic phenomena has required a degree of theoretical sophistication in order for the operations of the medium to be properly interrogated, specific stakes and interests have also directed knowledge production within the field of film studies - subject to the conditions of any particular historical moment. The state of exchange relations between interested actors situated within film studies as a discipline has determined the possibilities for cinematic investigation (in terms of defining which particular theoretical and methodological frameworks are to be recognised as legitimate contributions to the study of
Duncan Campbell and Stuart Millar, Hollywood takes aim at the pirates, The Sunday Age (The Guardian), March 10, 2002.
1

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cinematic phenomena), thus sanctioning certain intellectual practices of inquiry whilst denying others. Historically, investigation into the experience offered by the cinema has therefore exhibited a logic specific to the field of film studies - a logic developed in direct relation to the ongoing struggle of film study to achieve intellectual recognition as a distinct and legitimate discipline, whilst also functioning to some degree as a viable commercial enterprise. The oft-asked question of Why do people attend the cinema? - so embedded in film studies historically - might therefore be more helpfully situated as an attempt to achieve recognition from systems of legitimation that function in intellectual universes. Approached from this perspective, attempts to understand cinematic experience must necessarily be understood as implicated in systems of social and cultural stratification, in terms of bearing the traces of a specific intellectual universe (and the struggles constitutive of that universe) that perpetuates increasingly powerful representations of the social world. To fully engage with the experience offered by the cinema therefore requires a dual focus, involving the recognition of a) the construction of the cinematic experience as a knowledge production reflecting the terms of a specific academic discipline, in order to b) provide the conditions for greater insight into cinema patronage as an existing real world practice. To ask such questions is necessarily to situate oneself in relation to the field of film studies, and to engage with the intricate system of perception and classification constructed by producers within the field that is perpetuated through their ongoing symbolic labour. However, this does not imply a position above and beyond the struggles to wield the power of consecration and legitimation that are typical of cultural production. Given that any critique undertaken of established theoretical traditions, investigative procedures or general conceptual systems informing existing approaches to cinematic experience must be recognised as issuing from a place in social space (thus exhibiting a range of conscious prejudices and corporeal assumptions specific to that space), what is required is an appropriately systematic procedure through which to achieve a thorough comprehension of the intricacies of field determination, allowing for greater recognition of the structural conditions informing a proposed area of study and therefore the possibilities available for new understandings. The work of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1930 - 2002) is not particularly well recognised in Australian intellectual life. The complexity of his thought, coupled with the hazards of translation and the troubled terms of his reception internationally, has ensured that attention to the overall scope and structure of his body of work has been neglected in favour of a) piecemeal application of his conceptual framework along rigid disciplinary lines, b) degrees of adaptation attempting to
Michael Wood, America in the Movies or Santa Maria, It Had Slipped My Mind! (New York: Delta Books, 1975), 8.
2

(iii)

supplement the perceived inadequacies (mostly resulting from selective reading and misinterpretation) of his theoretical and methodological system, and c) the desire to awkwardly situate Bourdieusian sociology with respect to specific intellectual traditions (the binary oppositions of which Bourdieu continually attempts to overcome). Indeed, reaction to Bourdieu has been further complicated by his prolific publishing schedule, and, in the 1990s, the greater presence in public affairs he adopted in order to illuminate the impact of neo-liberalism and globalisation upon French intellectual and social life.3 These obstacles have ensured that the investigative potential of Bourdieus rigorous theoretical and methodological framework has been given limited attention in Australia, even with the increased emphasis upon the privatisation of tertiary education and the encroachment of economic rationalisation upon academic life. This oversight has deprived Australian academia of an exceptional intellectual resource, in the manner of a powerful reflexive sociology that provides the means to comprehend academic knowledge production not simply as an isolated act but rather as a form of cultural practice functioning in relation to broader processes of social recognition and domination - a practice with meaning and value to social agents given its place within an entire universe of interrelated social habits that operate to maintain and extend fundamental class distinctions and differentiations. Bourdieus generative anthropology of power, with special emphasis on its symbolic dimension - that is, on the mechanisms that mask and help perpetuate domination by misrepresenting it, to those who wield it no less than to those who bear it4 offers the tools to methodically construct both the intellectual representation of cinematic experience, and the real world practice of cinematic patronage, as manifestations of the struggles that routinely shape social space.5 To engage the Bourdieusian program is to suggest that theorising the cinema, as much as experiencing it, are practices both subject to the everyday battles over resources (i.e. possessions - both symbolic and material) that constitute and divide the entire social world through the creation of dominant and subordinate positions of difference. Reflexive sociology therefore provides the means to decisively interrogate the relationship between film studies as a form of
Toril Mo suggests: One of the reasons for such belated interdisciplinary interest is surely that (Bourdieus) resolutely sociological and historical thought could find little resonance in a theoretical space dominated, in the humanities at least, by poststructuralism and postmodernism. Toril Moi, Appropriating Bourdieu: Feminist Theory and Pierre Bourdieus Sociology of Culture, New Literary History, Vol. 22, no. 4 (1991), 1018. 4 Loic J.D. Wacquant, Bourdieu in America: Notes on the Transatlantic Importation of Social Theory, Craig Calhoun, Edward LiPuma and Moishe Postone (eds), Bourdieu: Critical Perspectives (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993), 235. 5 (Bourdieus) advantage is that from the outset he requires that his social facts are meaningful to the people he studies. Pekka Sulkenen, Society Made Visible - On the Cultural Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, Acta Sociologica 25, no.2 (1982), 104.
3

(iv)

cultural production and cinematic experience as a lived experience, and thus address the perpetuation of domination via symbolic means. Fundamental to this approach is extensive criticism of the representational practices constitutive of academia, which Bourdieu understands to be largely complicit in perpetuating the orthodoxy of the social world, even as the autonomy traditionally enjoyed by the intellectual field (an autonomy deemed to legitimate the objectivity of its greatest creations) becomes increasingly subject to outright economic determination. However, the problems facing homo academicus do not simply issue from outside the field, but from within; Bourdieu identifies three forms of scholastic fallacy resulting from the adjustment (i.e. willed ignorance) of the intellectual to the conditions of scholastic existence, an adjustment precluding comprehension of the practical sense (the engaged actors corporeal knowledge) and thus rendering academic practices of objectification entirely ineffectual in understanding the forms of logic animating the practices of the social world. Epistemological error grounded in social ignorance is thus recognised by Bourdieu as the key vehicle for symbolic domination, an insight that has considerable importance for the study of cinematic experience. As Christian Metz insightfully noted in his pioneering The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema (1977):

In a social system in which the spectator is not forced physically to go to the cinema but in which it is still important that he should go so that the money he pays for his admission makes it possible to shoot other films and thus ensures the auto-reproduction of the institution - and it is the specific characteristic of every institution that it takes charge of the mechanisms of its own perpetuation - there is no other solution than to set up arrangements whose aim and effect is to give the spectator the spontaneous desire to visit the cinema and pay for his ticket.6

Bourdieus attention to the practical logics of human action, the inability of traditional theorisation to account for them and the need to explain cultural practices with respect to allencompassing processes of social recognition and domination provides the possibility for an entirely new mapping of cinematic experience in its embodied state, a mapping that can assist in revealing the mechanisms informing the spontaneous desire to visit the cinema identified by Metz. However, if existing theorisations of the experience offered by the cinema may be criticised along epistemological lines, what safeguards exist to ensure alternative understandings of film going do not traffic in similar fallacies? The reflexive component of Bourdieus sociology provides the means to systematically address this problem. In stipulating a thoroughly reflexive relation to the

(v)

structures informing ones practices, and thus requiring that any program of study interrogate (with clinical objectivity) the situated practical sense, the Bourdieusian system demands research practice that is wholly aware of the symbolic domination it both channels (in representing the practices of the social world and the agents within it) and is subject to. Bourdieus insistence upon reflexivity, however, is not only a safeguard intended to promote responsible academic practice. It is also a necessary precursor to thoroughly comprehending the lived experiences of an agent or group under study, given that the reflexive method requires the specific social position of both the researcher and the object of study to be thoroughly mapped, in terms of the dispositions associated with that position and the position-takings that may result from it. This comprehension both respects situated logic and ensures its proper theorisation in research, thus situating reflexivity as the means whereby agents traditionally objectified (and thus dominated) by science may experience greater representation. Bourdieus sociological program therefore provides a detailed series of investigative activities that may help illuminate the nature of cinematic experience and its historical association with scholarly practice. But beyond these specific disciplinary concerns, Bourdieu argues that the adoption of his distinctively reflexive program provides exceptional benefits for intellectual practice generally, enabling an academic to:

understand his generic and specific conditions. (With this understanding), he can hope to free himself (in part at least) and to offer others the means of liberation Intellectuals who are shocked by the very intention of classifying the unclassifiable intellectual thereby demonstrate how remote they are from awareness of their true position and of the freedom it could give them.7

In order to fully pursue this possibility of awareness of ones true position and realise its benefits, the following research program will - unlike other (more fragmented) applications of reflexive theory - attempt to systematically embrace reflexive intellectual practice and reflexive sociology as it is theorized (and not unproblematically) across the full range of Bourdieus works. This entails a thorough recognition of Bourdieus thought (and resulting publications) as a work in progress - i.e. a constant attempt to comprehend the shifts occurring in social and cultural life both in France and
6

Christian Metz, The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977), 7. 7 Pierre Bourdieu, Sociology in Question (London: Sage Publications, 1993a), 44.

(vi)

internationally, and thus always oriented to engage with the realities of lived experience (an orientation fully presaging and thus legitimating his greater visibility in public affairs during the 1990s). And, as a work in progress, Bourdieus sociology will also be acknowledged as, to a certain extent, an ongoing form of autobiographical reflexivity intended to illustrate and illuminate through lived example. In a similar manner, therefore, the potential for reflexive film study as mapped throughout the following research program will necessarily reflect the conditions specific to this writers situatedness - thus being an objective case study, so to speak, of a distinct position in social space and the possibilities for reflexive understanding such a position allows.

1.

Chapter 1: The study of cinema.

The University indeed seemed like a sanctuary in which are preserved rare types which would soon be obsolete if left to fight for existence on the pavement of the Strand. - Virginia Woolf, A Room of Ones Own.8

To understand the experience that is specific to the cinema is no simple task. The question of how the average filmgoer engages with and consumes the product of cinema has fuelled the study of film in a variety of guises since the beginning of the motion picture, being continually reconstituted in and through a multitude of logics and theoretical formations and thus exhaustively interrogated and re-fashioned according to the demands of any specific moment. However, whilst ensuring the debate has been rocky, rough and (at times) especially rowdy, the resulting momentum of this almost self-perpetuating inquiry has largely obscured the fact that the question itself is an historical construction and a significant symbolic device - one decidedly academic in nature, shaped by scholarly modes of thought and reflecting a largely intellectual experience of the social world. The question of the experience of cinema as it has come to be constructed historically is indeed a charter and contract through which social relations are played out and consolidated, where hierarchies are observed and dissidents punished, and where the logic of a distinct field of (partly) institutionalised relations comes to be represented in the form of sanctioned questions, preferable modes of inquiry, and recognised research methodologies. Thus, when attempting to define an alternative entry point to this most troublesome of cinematic quandaries, one may understand the historical instances of the posing of this question as manifestations of a cultural arbitrary - a practice that is a) recognised as necessary primarily given its importance in defining and consolidating a particular arena of social relations and the agents functioning within it, and which b) over time becomes encoded as an instinctive orientation to the regularities of that arena, slowly eroding any objective recognition of its historical emergence. Therefore, to ask: How does the average filmgoer engage with and consume the product of cinema? is to engage in an act of ordering the social world beyond the concerns of the question per se as it comes to be articulated with respect to film studies; it is to invite and extend the use of principles of vision and division that segment, analyse and construct the world, and in doing so, construct ones activities and understandings in relation to those principles also. In this respect, the study of film (in the sense of a functioning discipline asking specific questions regarding cinematic phenomena) is, in the terminology of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu,

2.

both a structured structure and a structuring structure. Film study is structured with respect to the various bodies and institutions that inform its existence, and yet it also structures through the rigorously consecrated and recognised practices it offers appropriately interested agents to pursue. As such, film studies commits a specific form of symbolic violence against those who are taken in by its games and thus subject to them, a form of violence where agents participate in this structuration of their activities (and extend the implicit logic of this structuration to others), whilst recognising the terms of these divisions as simply self-evident realities of the social world. Indeed, Bourdieu proposes: The efficacy of symbolic violence is proportionate to the misrecognition of the conditions and instruments of its exercise,9 thus suggesting that the overcoming of such violence entails a rigorous examination of its genesis and subsequent modes of operation. Of course, this is no simple matter. Indeed, as theorized by Bourdieu, symbolic violence rests upon elaborate practices of misrecognition, a process of submission that obscures the social conditions of possibility that enable a dominant logic to function in a particular social arena, turning the history of that arena into nature and thus rendering arbitrary divisions (approved theoretical frameworks, research paradigms, etc.) as self-evident common sense. In being reciprocal and often affective, misrecognition endeavours to develop in agents an exclusive series of notions and dispositions adjusted to the regularities of a discrete arena of action, these dispositions constituting a set of patterns of action and evaluation responsive to the regularities of this world and anticipating its calls to order through a conditioning based in corporeal structuration. Therefore, whilst misrecognition provides agents with categories of perception, recognition and belief, allowing them to respond appropriately (and attain profits) within their respective domains of existence, consideration of the origins or foundations of that belief diminishes with each appropriately structured action. Successful processes of misrecognition thus obscure and, ultimately, annihilate history, creating an immediate adherence, a doxical submission to the injunctions of the world which is achieved when the mental structures of the one to whom the injunction is addressed are in accordance with the structures inscribed in the injunction addressed to him.10 At first glance, film studies - a recognisable academic discipline exhibiting a rigorous theoretical discourse - does not appear to be a realm of intellectual production averse to historical consideration of the social conditions of possibility that enable it to function. It appears attentive to the specifics of its history: overviews, reading guides, introductory works, theoretical anthologies and extensive revisionist texts abound in both popular and academic formats (roughly grouped according to the
8 9

Virginia Woolf, A Room of Ones Own (Harcourt: San Diego, 1929), 8-9. Pierre Bourdieu, Sociology in Question (London: Sage Publications, 1993), 41. 10 Pierre Bourdieu, Practical Reason (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998a), 102.

3.

categories of film criticism, film history and film theory), thus providing a multitude of theoretical perspectives and investigatory frameworks to assist scholars intent upon exploring the construction of the discipline in order to outline a genealogy of the theory upon which it is based. Indeed, these categories (with, perhaps, the exception of film history11, which has only in recent years begun to develop systematic historiographical frameworks in response to increases in the availability of primary sources and first-hand evidence related to film production, distribution and exhibition) appear to rely upon a method of constant reflection in order to develop new insights into their respective subjects of interest. Film criticism, concerned with the critical exposition of filmic texts, has a history grounded in the popular press in the form of film reviews which, at various times, have been utilized by the commercial institution of cinema as a form of publicity. Over time, certain instances of reviewing developed a more demanding analytical language and academic posture indebted to art and literary theory, resulting in a distinct film criticism that matured in aesthetic circles and later came to be extended through a range of film journals. Indeed, in regularly deploying scholarly language to illuminate the workings of a vast range of films, contemporary film criticism exploits many of the latest developments and critical trends of film theory, thus creating a space for the future development of that criticism. Film theory, alternatively, appears less coherent in both meaning and in procedure. Whilst film criticism has adopted many of the trends of film theory to examine the film text, film theory has laboured to display a unified purpose, objective or goal, experiencing greater difficulty in establishing a clear function in the manner of film criticism, or film history. Whilst film theorisation may very generally be defined as a broad project to locate and define the key conceptual principles underpinning the operations of cinema, its specific nature is open to question. Stephen Prince, for example, suggests film theory is sometimes understood as providing sets of shared perspectives that facilitate scholarly dialogue12, a scholarly dialogue that Robert Stam acknowledges has bred both productive fallacies and regrettable successes.13 Indeed, one might suggest that a defining characteristic of film theory is its apparent ongoing transformation and rejuvenation, its unceasing variations and modifications, which thus trouble attempts at a unified definition of purpose or function. Film theory thus appears to be in constant confrontation with the conceptual formations previously presented within its shifting borders, exhibiting a sense
11

Robert C. Allen and Douglas Gomery define film history as: Attempts to explain the changes that have occurred to the cinema since its origins, as well as account for the aspects of the cinema that have resisted change. Robert C. Allen and Douglas Gomery, Film History: Theory and Practice (New York: MacgrawHill, 1985), 5. 12 Stephen Prince, Psychoanalytic Film Theory and the Problem of the Missing Spectator, David Bordwell and Noel Carroll (eds), Post Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies (Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1996), 71. 13 Robert Stam and Toby Miller, Film and Theory: An Anthology (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2000), xvi.

4.

of constant internal criticism and intellectual wariness. This apparent openness and reflection in the three categories of film study thus gives the overall discipline the impression of sustained inner criticism, of transparency in intellectual production and investigation, and a willingness to systematically consider deficiencies in that production and attempt to overcome them. In short, film studies appears to exhibit an ongoing dialogue with itself, a natural extension of the rigorous academic logic specific to intellectual production and a mode of self investigation which anchors the future of the discipline with constant reference to an interrogated past. This apparent dialogue thus suggests an open economy of exchange within the discipline, a trade in intellectual production and competition that embraces the ideals of intellectual accountability and responsibility, allowing no preference or privilege that cannot be justified without reference to the history of position-takings that have preceded it. There thus appears to be emphasis placed upon unregulated critical examination, an ideal certainly aspired to by most disciplines but one which film studies amplifies perhaps as a direct consequence of it being voraciously assimilative, as Robert B. Ray states (with reference to the theoretical productions indicative of the academic film journals Screen and Jump Cut), ransacking such disparate disciplines as anthropology, linguistics, political science, communications theory, semiotics, sociology, and even literary criticism.14 Film studies has rarely assumed a single answer to any critical, theoretical or historical question as regards film, and openly legitimates (and often demands) the amalgamation of many of the aforementioned pre-existing critical frameworks to provide multiple justifications for any position held within the discipline. Certainly, the complexity of filmic phenomena requires an investigative framework broad enough to offer answers to problematic issues both specific to film and to the varied contexts throughout which its production, distribution and exhibition unfolds in contemporary society, but there is also an attendant (and excessive) critical labour associated with film studies that extends beyond what might reasonably be assumed to be necessary in other areas of study. Ray Misson, in writing of media studies generally, notes how early media theorists started to work within theoretical discourses that were self-evidently complex, and little was done to underplay or mitigate the difficulty, just to make the point about the seriousness of their work15, an attitude that one might suggest was matched in film studies by a certain combative (some might suggest overtly violent) stance in critical examination. Christian Metz understands the cinematic writer (a term inclusively designating the film critic, historian and theoretician) to be characterized by a measure of vitriol, with cinematic literature, taken as a whole, (not) sparing in passages where
14

Robert B. Ray, A Certain Tendency of the Hollywood Cinema, 1930-1980 (Oxford: Princeton University Press, 1985), 8. 15 Ray Misson, Non Print, No Problem, Ken George (ed), V.C.E. English (VATE Occasional Paper) no. 3 (1995): 13.

5.

a film, a film-maker, a genre, some general aspect of the cinema itself, is taken to task. Settling accounts is as frequent, probably more so and certainly rougher, in cinema criticism than in literary criticism, for example.16 These excessive qualities - present in both investigative orientation and critical temperament - indeed suggest that film studies functions with respect to a code of conduct, or orienting sense, denoting a discipline with definite stakes and definite profits to be won and thus requiring mastery of sophisticated modes of competition and contest in order to obtain them. However, to what degree can it be accepted that the position-takings and productions that constitute such competition and contest constitute a representative logic of the discipline, allowing transparent access to the network of social relations that construct and animate the domain of film studies? To what degree can it be assumed that the conventional mapping of the history of this arena - as contained in the aforementioned array of overviews, anthologies and refereed papers that circulate both within and without the discipline - provide an accurate understanding of the logics and habits of thought that animate and inform the position-takings constitutive of this domain? To what degree have the idiosyncrasies of scholastic practice constructed the concept of cinematic experience, and what alternative understandings of that experience are available - or can be made available - to scholars situated within the field of film studies? These questions provide the impetus for the following research program, which will stage a series of interrelated investigations designed to fully articulate the problem of cinematic experience as both a knowledge production and an existing real world practice. Beginning with an examination of the field of film studies and a mapping of the history of film theory (specific to cinematic experience), the program will offer reflexive study as a corrective to traditional scholastic knowledge production and the habits of thought informing film studies historically. With due attention to the problems of engaging reflexive methodological practice within an intellectual world functioning with respect to a specific cultural arbitrary, the program will then re-articulate cinematic experience by incorporating the insights provided by each preceding stage of the research program, thus offering a properly reflexive understanding of cinema going as engaging an idiosyncratic economy of exchange. Throughout this program, the tenets of Pierre Bourdieus reflexive sociology will be strictly recognised, principally in order to break away from vague references to the social world (via words such as context, milieu, social base, social background) with which (social histories) usually (content) themselves,17 in order to prioritise incorporation, recognition and strategy: i.e. a non-intellectualist, non-mechanistic analysis of the relations between agent and
Christian Metz, The Imaginary Signifier (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982), 9-10. Pierre Bourdieu, In Other Words: Essays Towards a Reflexive Sociology (California: Stanford University Press, 1990a), 140.
17 16

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world.18 Indeed, film studies will be recognised as exhibiting a distinctive, and irreducible, mode of operation (but one nevertheless exhibiting structurally common traits comparable to other social and cultural games) that players interiorise and thus extend through appropriately adjusted action. I would say that I am trying to develop a genetic structuralism, Bourdieu suggests:

the analysis of objective structures - those of different fields - is inseparable from the analysis of the genesis, within biological individuals, of the mental structures which are to some extent the product of the incorporation of social structures; inseparable, too from the analysis of the genesis of these social structures themselves.19

Adopting Bourdieus conceptual system thus allows the discipline of film studies to be approached in a manner that avoids overt reliance upon pre-existing representations of academic practice, instead focussing upon the conditions of possibility that have shaped the procedures and profits that define film study and its boundaries. Indeed, engaging reflexive sociology allows for the arbitrary relational laws of this domain to be examined and mapped in order to provide greater insight into the conditions and instruments of misrecognition that function to sustain it, for although the discipline appears to rigorously engage in reflexive practice, what exist in the social world are relations - not interactions between agents or intersubjective ties between individuals, but objective relations which exist independently of individual consciousness and will, as Marx said.20 The history of film studies, in the manner of the ongoing narration supplied by recognised film academics and commentators that both depicts, and reflects upon, the unfolding of events within the discipline, is thus a history grounded in the misrecognition indicative of structuration within an unfolding game. Such histories therefore reproduce the objective structures of the discipline and contribute to their ongoing recognition (and power), disseminating understandings of film study that reflect the bias indicative of an inhabited, situated position. To understand the discipline through reflexive sociology thus entails mapping these objective structures and relations and how they fundamentally inform individual position takings - this approach providing a greater understanding of the tendencies and regularities of agent performance within the field and, most importantly, the various productions they engage in whilst situated (including their articulation of the question of how the average cinemagoer experiences cinema).
Bourdieu (1990a), 10. Bourdieu (1990a), 14. 20 Pierre Bourdieu and Loic J.D. Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 97.
19 18

7.

The following chapter will therefore initiate the research program by engaging with a number of related issues specific to the discipline of film studies - in order to properly outline the nature of the field, its terms of recognition/misrecognition and the productions and position-takings that result from a position of situatedness. First, an outline of the principles informing Bourdieus methodology will provide the proper justification for its application, suggesting reflexive sociology to be necessary for a useful mapping of the arena of production specific to film studies. This mapping is intended to avoid the norms of conventional historicizing to focus instead upon the forgetting of history implicit in misrecognition, and the routines and procedures which contribute to the system of misrecognition specific to the practices constitutive of film studies. Far from being, as David Bordwell disparagingly stated in 1996, a 1970s-era thinker21, Bourdieu, as Richard Jenkins notes, is enormously good to think with. He raises tricky questions and helps to provide some of the means by which they may be answered. Bourdieus work offers the patient reader a tremendously useful intellectual resource.22 Second, consideration of the struggle in the humanities throughout the 20th century to impose a dominant principle of hierarchization will allow a greater understanding of the competing logics and structural conditions through which film studies came to construct and define itself. Third, consideration of these logics and conditions will suggest an examination of the properly reflexive attitude (as theorized by Bourdieu) to be integral to intellectual and cultural practice, in order to illuminate the structural barriers that deny film studies the ability to systematically interrogate the specific conditions that enable the discipline to function as it does (a denial contributing to the nature of the works produced within its borders). Finally, examination of an instance of position-taking (as represented by the works of David Bordwell) will develop an understanding of how contemporary film studies practice turns upon a space of possibles increasingly concerned with issues of legitimation and autonomy, with respect to which all competition and consecration unfolds, shaping the questions and issues that may arise and be pursued within the field, and marginalizing others.
21

David Bordwell, Contemporary Film Studies and the Vicissitudes of Grand Theory, David Bordwell and Noel Carroll (eds), Post Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies (Wisconsin: Wisconsin University Press, 1996), 20. 22 Richard Jenkins, Pierre Bourdieu (London: Routledge, 2002), 11.

8.

1.1. Introducing Pierre Bourdieu: the logic of practice.

The sociology of Pierre Bourdieu is concerned with understanding the social practices of the everyday, in terms of the unfolding, lived logic of practice; as such, it is equally concerned with the problem of theorizing practice as with the actual lived experience of practice. In attempting to identify the structural foundations giving rise to everyday human action, Bourdieusian sociology is also engaged in an epistemological critique of traditional (scholastic) scientific discourse; it is therefore a reflexive play between understanding the mechanics of practice and objectifying the processes that enable that understanding. Consequently, Bourdieusian sociology understands human action and practice to be temporally, spatially and corporeally determined, with the logic of practice marked by the conditions of its unfolding. Bourdieu argues:

(The) temporal structure (of practice), that is, its rhythm, its tempo, and above all its directionality, is constitutive of its meaning. As with music, any manipulation of this structure, even a simple change in tempo, either acceleration or slowing down, subjects it to a destructuration that is irreducible to a simple change in an axis of reference.23

The directionality of practice, however, is also subject to the conditions of space, as human activity occurs within:

a set of distinct and coexisting positions which are exterior to one another and which are defined in relation to one another through their mutual exteriority and their relations of proximity, vicinity, or distance, as well as through relations of order, such as above, below and between. 24

Finally, time and space are understood by Bourdieu to unfold through the body, which exhibits a practical logic grounded in embodied structuration and thus comprehends the world in a manner entirely distinct from conscious understanding:

Practical sense, social necessity turned into nature, converted into motor schemes and body automatisms is what causes practices, in and through what makes them obscure to the eyes of
23 24

Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990b), 81. Pierre Bourdieu, Practical Reason (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998a), 6.

9.

their producers, to be sensible, that is, informed by a common sense. It is because agents never know completely what they are doing that what they do has more sense than they know.25

Of the determinants of practice, the nature of space - or, more accurately, social space - is crucial to Bourdieusian sociology. Defined by difference and mutual exteriority, social space is theorized as a dynamic, fluid realm of division and unification that situates agents (and their resulting practices) according to their wielding of specific powers. More specifically, to occupy a position in social space is to be differentiated by ownership of, or proximity to, capital - certain types of force, ability or influence that, if and when deployed within the parameters of a specific social formation, changes its composition or operational structure in order to increase the capital holdings and recognition of the owner. Bourdieu theorizes capital and its distribution in modern society along two basic differentiating lines: the economic, and the cultural. Economic power (or capital) is the most objectified and recognisable marker of value and worth, embodied in financial assets, income level, etc. Cultural power (or capital) is less recognisable in objective terms given its embodiment in specific competencies and knowledges involving cultural taste and preference - logics born of both educational attainment and the family transmission of dispositional discrimination. For Bourdieu, the structuration of modern social life through the unequal distribution of the different forms of capital produces and sustains hierarchical relationships of order, with all social formations functioning with respect to this fundamental division of power and embodying that division through specific logics and associated modes of distinction and discrimination. The distribution of the various forms of capital is thus, for Bourdieu, the axis upon which the social world turns. Accordingly, there exist identifiable grids of objective relations structured around the competition for those capitals: what Bourdieu terms fields. Fields function as historically established pathways for the pursuit of power, requiring the display (sometimes explicit, other times obscure) of a range of differentiating properties between players that function to increase their respective ability to win in competition.26 As Bourdieu notes:

A field - even the scientific field - defines itself by (among other things) defining specific stakes and interests, which are irreducible to the stakes and interests specific to other fields (you cant make a philosopher compete for the prizes that interest a geographer) and which are not Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990b), 68-69. Derek Robbins defines fields as mutually supporting combinations of intellectual discourses and social institutions. Derek Robbins, The Practical Importance of Bourdieus Analysis of Higher Education, Studies in Higher Education Vol. 18, no.2 (1993), 155.
26 25

10.

perceived by someone who has not been shaped to enter that field (every category of interest implies indifference to other interests, other investments, which are therefore bound to be perceived as absurd, irrational, or sublime and disinterested). 27

Therefore, for the uninterested spectator, it may appear relatively straightforward to identify hierarchical structures existing within a field, but not their effects in predisposing an agent to anticipate, act and respond to counteractions in the immediate context of the game (for not only is it difficult for a philosopher to compete for the prizes that interest a geographer, but indifference makes it impossible for an observer to identify prizes which may be totally specific to the game [i.e. not transferable to other fields] and thus unable to be transposed into the logic and language of another, entirely distinct social universe); similarly, an agent immersed in the regularities of a field is afforded no better position to comprehend (and adequately represent) the forces that incline them to act and respond in a certain manner, given the misrecognition inherent within their situatedness. Action undertaken within a field therefore exhibits the logic specific to that field: to transpose, demystify and deconstruct the logic of field action thus risks losing the specificity of that action, the very sense which makes field undertakings significant within their context. Although structured through the binary opposition of economic/cultural capital, capitals as they come to be enacted within specific fields are therefore modulated according to the idiosyncrasies of the game and the established (and shifting) relations existing between conflicting positions within that game. There are thus specific capitals (capitals gaining little or no recognition outside the confines of a distinct field), and fundamental capitals (capitals with wide-ranging influence and application across all fields), the applicability of both subject to the conditions of history in terms of the constitution of a field at a particular moment in time. Forms of capital, and their uneven distribution throughout a field, thus define the difference between positions in a field array, determining the nature of a position and the channels of movement and action available to its occupant. Such movement is understood by Bourdieu to be either broadly reproductive of the existing state of relations and distribution of power and capital within a field, or broadly transformative, in the sense that competition and position-taking - whether resulting in winning or losing - affects the entire relationships constitutive of the field and redefines (even incrementally) its borders. The distribution of capital in society therefore contributes to shaping the kinds of activities and strategies players bring to bear upon the game unfolding within a field, predisposing them to instances of action that best defend, or promote, their respective holdings, both in the short and long term, and allowing them to do so in certain ways. A players field position, their
27

Pierre Bourdieu, Sociology in Question (London: Sage Publications, 1993a), 72.

11.

occupation of space, is therefore a specific form of differentiation that situates and marks them as cleanly and efficiently as they situate and mark others in their immediate recognition of other (potentially competing) positions. This being-perceived is exceptionally important, as to be situated within relationships of perception and appreciation allows a player to support definitions of legitimate capital and action or contest them, thus contributing (or not) to the structural hierarchy of a field. Thus, the uneven distribution between players in terms of the volume and structure of their respective capitals also differentiates the ability of players to recognise the state of play (both immediately at hand and over time) within a field, and thus the optimum moment for their strategic manoeuvres and actions. The differentiation of players within a field, however, is pre-empted by fundamental divisions encoded previous to the game at hand. The structure and character of a field is determined both by the competition that results from a) the clash between agents structured differently due to intra-field divisions, and b) extra-field divisions, in the form of dispositions to action as defined and structured by each players respective habitus. Denoting the strategic operations of agents embedded in, and operating via, acquired systems of generative schemas, which make possible the free production of all thoughts, perceptions and actions inherent in the particular conditions of its production - and only those28, the concept of habitus thus posits an infinite yet strictly limited generative capacity29 in the structured dispositions and principles that animate and inform the practices constitutive of fields, and details a conditioned and conditional freedomas remote from creation of unpredictable novelty as it is from the simple mechanical reproduction of the original conditioning.30 Thus, habitus is a system of transposable inclinations produced through socioeconomic class histories, related to the material conditions of life and the responses and attitudes generated as a result of those conditions. Habitus therefore structures an agent to respond immediately and appropriately to stimuli recognised as important (i.e. to believe in a call for recognition in terms of a felt, affective belief in its legitimacy). As Bourdieu makes clear:

The belief I am describing is not an explicit belief, possessed explicitly as such in a relation to a possibility of non-belief, but rather an immediate adherence, a doxical submission to the injunctions of the world which is achieved when the mental structures of the one to whom the injunction is addressed is in accordance with the structures inscribed in the injunction addressed to him.31
28 29

Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990b), 55. Bourdieu (1990b), 55. 30 Bourdieu (1990b), 15. 31 Pierre Bourdieu, Practical Reason (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998a), 103.

12.

Thus, the encoding specific to each instance of habitus determines how players respond in their position-takings to the regularities of a specific field, in terms of how readily the dispositions particular to this primary habitus are translatable in terms of field logic. This relationship is complex: the more autonomous the field, the more likely there will exist a recognisable corps of professional curators regulating acceptable field procedure, thus requiring a new entrant to adjust behaviour until it is deemed acceptable in terms of the field doxa. In instances of successful field practice one assumes the relationship between primary habitus and field specific dispositional structuration to be complementary, thus allowing the transferral of extra-field skills to the games unfolding in a discrete field. Therefore, whilst adjustment to the conditions and regularities expected of players is therefore a condition of entry to a field, the ability to successfully occupy a position and exploit its potentialities may be said to result from strategic action that both recognises and manipulates conditions of structural homology between fields. Homology may take the form of basic similarities between fundamental perceptual cues learnt during primary structuration and those functioning within a field, or - at a more integrated level of practice - it may involve correspondences that turn upon atypical skills of recognition and appreciation of a more distinctive nature. Bourdieu understands simple relationships of homology to be founded upon basic categories of perception and appreciation that function with respect to simple binaries (heavy/light, bitter/sweet, etc); more specific field vocabularies thus translate and order these fundamental binaries into elaborate systems of perception and recognition that reflect a discrete field logic, dividing field occupants in different ways. As he notes:

The conservation of the social order is decisively reinforced by what Durkheim called logical conformity, the orchestration of categories of perception of the social world, which, being adjusted to the divisions of the established order (and thereby to the interests of those who dominate it) and common to all minds structured in accordance with those structures, present every appearance of objective necessity. 32

This logical conformity functions most directly in relation to, and through, the body, in the form of embodied structuration (as noted), with the practical sense enabled through embodied adjustment to categories of perception providing a fluid, corporeal experience of the world - an experience, nevertheless, that reflects the terms of a specific social order. Social practices therefore
32

Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984), 471.

13.

have a dynamic quality, given that an agents social existence is something to be done, not simply assigned in relation to overly determining objective structures, but turning upon practical knowledges both engaging, and responding to, categories of perception. Accordingly, social classes for Bourdieu come to be examined in terms of similar positions in social space that provide similar conditions of existence and conditioning and therefore create similar dispositions which in turn generate similar practices33: the correspondence between habitus, capital and field (= practice) thus provides a procedural framework through which an agents position can be examined to predict subsequent trajectories of practice. Bourdieu argues:

One cannot really live the belief associated with profoundly different conditions of existence, that is, with other games and other stakes, still give others the means of reliving it by the sheer power of discourse. It is correct to say in this case, as people sometimes do when faced with the self-evidence of successful adjustment to conditions of existence that are perceived as intolerable: You have to be born in it. 34

Therefore, for Bourdieu, the comprehension of the world experienced by the habituated body functioning within the context of a field remains obscure to traditional scholastic theorization, which presupposes selection between either a theory of consciousness (reliant upon established models of individual action) or a theory of mechanical reproduction (the individual as merely the reproduction ad infinitum of structure); consequently, the systems of differentiation dividing groups in the social world, in terms of the mechanics of practice that turn upon the practical sense, also remain obscure. Charting practical logic, in terms of the embodied structuration that informs situated social activity, thus presents problems. Whilst an uninterested researcher must attempt to elucidate the logic of the situated, interested field occupant, such objective readings appear unable to render the very immediate, lived experience of the immersed player whose action in no way occurs in relation to what might be termed the secondary representations of action (objectification) required of scientific discourse. Furthermore, such acts of objectification, informed by traditional scholastic understanding, renders situated practice in an openly economic manner, ignoring the place of time, space and embodied understanding in action and thus mistaking relationships based upon practical comprehension for reasoned calculation.
David Swartz, Culture and Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1997), 153-154. 34 Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990b), 68-69.
33

14.

With the typical rendering of the practices of communication that function within the social world misunderstanding the nature of embodied structuration, the subtle differences in communicative action that contribute to creating markedly distinct social relationships are thus collapsed. In particular, traditional theorization of social practice misrepresents the fundamental human act of exchange and its place in consolidating different relationships within the social world (the example frequently cited by Bourdieu being the structuralist misinterpretation of exchange in precapitalist societies). The economic universe is made up of several economic worlds, Bourdieu argues, endowed with specific rationalities, at the same time assuming and demanding reasonable (more than rational) dispositions adjusted to the regularities inscribed in each of them, to the practical reason that characterizes them.35 Beyond outright economic exchange, which creates social ties based upon the explicit exchange of exact equivalents, the act of symbolic exchange objectively achieves the same effect whilst denying through embodied comprehension and dispositional structuration the economic truth of that exchange. This form of communicative action, distorted by traditional theorization through the act of making explicit what goes without saying, exhibits a sort of contradiction between subjective truth and objective reality36, but nevertheless functions in reality as practical truth: the socially disposed agent, in entering into symbolic exchange without intention or calculation, thus ignores or denies its objective truth as an economic exchange.37 Therefore, whilst both forms of exchange articulate the struggle between dominant and dominated classes, symbolic exchange, in being a denial of the outright economic economy, allows for the denial (or forgetting) of relations of domination, with the material object present within blatant exchange substituted for a communicative act that resonates with social significance. Indeed, whilst the transfiguration of economic relations inherent in symbolic exchange may contribute to greater social bonding (given this transfiguration allows for exchange to be perceived as a generous, disinterested act), it also functions to obscure unequal exchanges, and thus leads to symbolic domination. As Bourdieu notes:

As one moves away from perfect reciprocity, which assumes a relative equality of economic situation, the proportion of counter-services that are provided in a typically symbolic form of gratitude, homage, respect, obligations or moral debts necessarily increases which produces relations of dependence that have an economic basis but are disguised under a veil of moral relations. 38
35 36

Pierre Bourdieu, Practical Reason (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998a), 93. Bourdieu (1998a), 95. 37 Bourdieu (1998a), 98. 38 Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990b), 122-123.

15.

Therefore, symbolic exchange turns upon identical categories of perception between parties, with agents thus adjusted corporeally to respond to terms of exchange through socially instituted structures of belief - belief that, through misrecognition, obscures the economic reality of the exchange. Thus exist the conditions for the pursuit of symbolic capital, which in its most effortless form results from an agents immediate adjustment of practice to correlate with the collective beliefs that pertain to a specific field, in order to achieve dominance within that field and thereby be recognised as both legitimate and perpetuating legitimacy through their actions. Therefore, to access the games constitutive of a field implies that the nature of that field, including its history and the stakes that animate position-takings within its border, is useful in part to an agent as a being perceived (a property that may be readily recognised by others appropriately structured to perceive it), and thus as symbolic capital. Indeed, to simply engage in a practice has profits in itself, irrespective of whether an agent actually wins the capitals at stake within a field; to be active, to be able to produce effects and to be classified as existing within a field and thus to be able to classify others are all distinctive profits in themselves which may (or may not) be transferable into the logics specific to other fields. The relational theoretical system of field, capital and habitus thus provides a framework within which the specific productions of the consecrated (and unconsecrated) agents operating within the discipline of film studies may be examined and mapped with respect to the distinctive history of the field and the relationships of power (in terms of specific distributions of consecrated capital) that enable it to function as it does. This mapping assists in revealing the struggles occurring historically in the field to assert authority and practice modes of domination and misrecognition, illuminating the traffic of capitals and evaluative modes of consecration that most immediately shape the internal dynamics of the field at any given moment. Mapping the history of this field and its systems of misrecognition involves determining its limitations, definable by tracing its specific field effect. As Bourdieu notes, there is a field effect when it is no longer possible to understand a work (and the value, i.e. the belief, that it is granted) without knowing the history of the field of the production of the work39. The reach of this effect, and thus the scope within which the symbolic violence specific to a field may function, designates the limitations of the field (and therefore those acts that may be deemed of the field and subject to the lure of its stakes, and those not). Indeed, the presence of field effect - or the distinctive consecrating mark enabling a particular cultural or symbolic work to come into being as a recognised position-taking within a field, to be perceived appropriately and so function with a measure of power and effect - denotes a corps of recognised professionals (the presence of which

16.

indicates a functioning system of authority) appropriately structured to anticipate and recognise actions or works as they come to be positioned for consecration (given their structuration with respect to what Bourdieu terms the problematic - the history or specific tradition - that informs the logic specific to their field). Such gatekeepers are objectively oriented (and able) to encounter and recognise these acts given their grounding in the universe of possibilities of response and evaluation that exist by nature of the problematic, or the:

space of possibles that tends to orient their research, even without their knowing it, by defining the universe of problems, references, intellectual benchmarks (often constituted by the names of its leading figures) concepts in -ism, in short, all that one must have in the back of ones mind in order to be in the game.40

The problematic or space of possibles, therefore, structures in a de facto manner field effects, adjusting position-takings along traditional lines as additions to pre-established lines of action. Consequently, field effect is strongest in those practices correlating with the institutions and associated discourses that monopolise the instruments of consecration within a field (and which labour to present a unified, recognisable history of the monopolisation of those instruments as doxa). Likewise, it may be deemed to diminish in intensity as the legitimacy of those institutions and discourses falls under scrutiny, but may still be detected wherever and whenever the profits at stake within a specific field are recognised and become the subject of competition. The space of possibles thus bears greatly upon the position-takings of agents within a field given that it guides the application of their capitals along established pathways (in the form of recognised research methods or standard referencing practices, for example). These options for the exhibition of competencies and skills resulting from the ownership of specific capitals contribute a) to the ranking of players, differentiating them in relation to standardised assessment procedures, and thus b) periodises their statements, works and productions, by locating them within a specific tradition and therefore in relation to the history of a field. Such historicizing contributes to the marking of positions by defining the new and the old (divisions corresponding to the alternative and the conventional), and thus assists in identifying players oriented towards the reproduction of the preexisting state of relations between players, and those geared towards transformative action. The space of possibles thus guides the natural adoption of certain practices within a field, practices that appear self-evident and natural to a player (appropriately structured to pursue the profits specific to
39 40

Pierre Bourdieu, Sociology in Question (London: Sage Publications, 1993a), 75. Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993b), 176.

17.

the game) given their historical legitimation and their importance to ongoing recognition. Indeed, as Bourdieu notes, concepts in -ism provides a form of scaffolding that allows a disposition to be realised in concrete action and practice. Allowing for both the logic of the field to be taken in and extended by players through their subsequent position-takings, and dispositions anchored to (or originating from) structuration outside the principal field of influence to be realised (albeit in a manner consistent with the game), the space of possibles therefore provides consecrated forms of thinking and reasoning through which players may articulate their strategies, orientations and dispositions. Players thus become situated with respect to the logic and history of a field through the taking up of a systematic framework denoting (recognised) knowledges, understandings, skills, competencies and values (as is typical of all practices of learning), which also entails practical fluency in the consecrated practices through which this framework is expressed (i.e. specific languages). Indeed, through the implicit and explicit understandings of the field enabled by the space of possibles, players themselves are interpreted and marked, with, for example, specialized or consecrated languages both constructing the field universe for the player and constructing the player for the field. The sociological framework provided by Bourdieu therefore provides a comprehensive reading of the mechanics of human practice and the terms of its unfolding in the social world. To win capitals, agents are theorized as engaging socially structured categories of perception in order to respond to terms of distinction and differentiation informing various field universes; entrance into, and continuing existence within a field thus presupposes that an agent is predisposed to its terms of misrecognition, which may function either through outright economic exchange or the affective qualities of symbolic alchemy that is grounded in bodily engagement. The pursuit of capital is therefore presented by Bourdieu as not only an undertaking achieving meaning within discrete field formations, but the generative principle of practice whereby classes reproduce their dominant (or subordinate) positions within the social world. Indeed, the logic of human practice extends also to the theorization of human practice; as Bourdieu makes clear, the symbolic production typical of scholastic universes is also bound up with legitimation and consecration. In an effort to bracket this system of social relations turning upon distinction, Bourdieusian sociology attempts to unite ethnographic study and theoretical reflection in a manner conducive to rendering the logic of practice without the distortion perpetuated historically through scholarly theorization (and legitimation); as such, Homo Academicus (1988) and The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society (1999) attempt to represent the logic of practice in a manner that does not project the understandings characteristic of theorized objectification into the actions of the situated agent. Whilst the ramifications of these elements of Bourdieus program will be addressed in later

18.

chapters, this introduction to the logic of practice provides a model through which film studies may be properly comprehended as a field exhibiting distinct capitals and enforcing specific terms of legitimation.

19.

1.2. Confronting film studies: the field of film studies.

The field of film studies, whilst a relatively new discipline, has its historical regimes of consecrated issues and problems for examination dispersed across its different categories of study (theory, criticism, history), each subject to different pressures both internally and externally but all contributing to ordering the struggles of the field. Within the practices constitutive of film theory and film criticism, these distinctions might be said to be less entrenched than in older, established disciplines, but there still exists a core number of consecrated theoretical productions and traditions that serve to continually animate struggles within the field through defining the modes of thinking and language (or procedure and terminology) deemed proper to recognised competition. The space of possibles is here informed by the histories of procedure and terminology specific to literary and artistic fields, although sufficiently advanced in specificity to exhibit a distinctive system of euphemistic language that functions to articulate (as in all economies of cultural production) a state where the blatantly economic world is subject to a measure of reversal. Accordingly, there exists a recognised corps of cultural gatekeepers (not necessarily functioning through alliance or association in their practices of discrimination, but nevertheless through their activities perpetuating a sense of the value of the field and its respective games) who both guard the legitimacy of these euphemisms and in doing so the ongoing existence and integrity of the space of possibles. However, given the historical constitution of the field, film studies exists and proceeds in a state of contradiction that is not repressed in the manner indicative of other realms of autonomous cultural production. Although sufficiently advanced historically to turn upon a space of possibles exhibiting a definite language of consecration (as noted), outlining the characteristics of the structural double game specific to the field of film studies is problematic, given its historical indebtedness to fields functioning solely with respect to heteronomous logic. As opposed to the historically elaborate euphemization of social relations that ensures the continued existence of other (often autonomous) fields of relations (such as those involving the Catholic Church), the transfiguration of relationships of inequality and submission in the field of film studies is decidedly more complex. The space of possibles indicative of film studies sanctions (albeit with differing rewards) production both geared strictly towards consecration by other producers (in the manner of art for arts sake as unfolds in the most rigorously autonomous artistic fields) and practices designed to accommodate and exploit a popular, heteronomous market. Given the fields grounding in both scholastic universes and the institutions associated with popular journalism, the space of possibles and its accompanying system of euphemistic language encompasses a broad range of practices that both embody and rupture the laws of exchange Bourdieu understands as generally informing economies concerned with the

20.

circulation of symbolic goods. Examined further below, this contradiction functions as a fundamental principle informing the constitution and mechanisms of the field, and has in many ways denied the discipline of film studies outright autonomy and thus any corresponding practices born of an historical condition of autonomy - therefore making difficult a straightforward mapping of the structural double game specific to the field in the manner outlined in Bourdieus Outline of a Theory of Practice (1977), The Logic of Practice (1990) and Practical Reason (1998). Whilst there may be identified a range of knowledges, skills, understandings and values that function both explicitly and implicitly (consciously and corporeally) within the field, they have not exclusively resulted from the logic specific to an economy of symbolic goods. In the field of film studies, there are profits to be realised both from the play (in the objective sense) of disinterestedness, and the assertion of outright interest - a contradiction that one assumes might be somewhat obscured by the distribution of field practices across the three categories of film criticism, film history and film theory. It may be suggested that structural adjustment to the practices specific to each individual category ensures this contradiction functions without major complication, although this would be to assume that each category displays a largely discrete logic, founded upon either the autonomous principle of hierarchization or the heteronomous principle of hierarchization. This presents a difficult challenge to the mapping of the field of film studies, in the sense of disallowing easy characterisation of the field as either functioning through blatantly economic logic, or the logic of disinterest. However, Bourdieu suggests that the disavowal of economic logic that typifies fields of cultural production:

is neither a real negation of the economic interest which always haunts the most disinterested practices, nor a simple dissimulation of the mercenary aspects of the practice, as even the most attentive observers have supposed. The disavowed economic enterprise of art dealers or publishers cannot succeed, even in economic terms, unless it is guided by a practical mastery of the laws of the functioning of the field in which cultural goods are produced and circulate, i.e. by an entirely improbable, and in any case rarely achieved, combination of the realism implying minor concessions to economic necessities that are disavowed but not denied and the conviction which excludes them.41

This rarely achieved combination appears to be somewhat typical of the field of film studies, given that its three categories of production may be provisionally understood as displaying adherence to a core logic, whilst permitting some degree of traffic in production (and appropriate
41

Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993b), 75-76.

21.

level of recognition) between subjects. Film theory traditionally aspires to academic legitimacy; film criticism aspires to intellectual recognition but grounds its practices most generally within the conditions of the open market; film history also aspires to intellectual recognition and legitimacy and yet is required, in attempting to articulate the story of popular filmic entertainment, to engage a range of research practices and interpretive strategies subject to academic scorn (i.e. engaging with the popular in historical records, deploying a range of questionable interpretive frameworks to map reading practices and proposing everyday audience response to be admissible as scientific data). However, even this mapping assumes that all productions issuing from these categories display a unity of purpose and character - whereas the reality is, of course, different. Instances of film criticism may be decidedly scholarly, with little to recommend them to the readers of the popular market. Likewise, examples of film history may proceed through the procedures specific to film criticism, reading history through the thematic concerns and formal properties of a body of films. There is thus a definite combination of the realism implying minor concessions to economic necessities that are disavowed but not denied and the conviction which excludes them42 across the field of film studies, a play between open interest and perpetuation of the mechanisms typical of disinterest. Reducing the field to a singular logic, whilst ignoring the historical construction of the field, also downplays difference and hierarchy within its borders, disregarding the coexistence of two basic logics and thus a space of play that functions with respect to two poles of influence. In order to further explore this aspect of the field of film studies, and how it informs the division of the field into three categories of activity, Bourdieus technique of mapping the cultural field may be introduced, albeit with some adjustment. For whereas the theorisation of The Field of Cultural Production (1993) examines the slow historical breakdown of a condition of field autonomy, the field of film studies (as noted) was born of a collision between disparate fields with mixed logics. Nevertheless, the organizing principles that function to determine the hierarchical consecration and legitimation of practice and production occurring within the cultural field still applies, given that the field of film studies produces works both requiring and exhibiting cultural competencies. Each category of film study may thus be mapped 1) with respect to the heteronomous and autonomous poles of influence, 2) with respect to the divisions operating at each respective pole, and 3) in relation to the hierarchy of cultural legitimacies. As regards 1), film theory aspires to intellectual legitimacy in engaging academic theoretical frameworks (therefore implicitly suggesting producers produce for no-one other than similar producers), thus being situated as a practice closer to the autonomous pole; film criticism is largely conducted with reference to the conditions of publication characteristic of the open market (and is thus situated closer to the heteronomous pole); film history,
42

Bourdieu (1993b), 75-76.

22.

a developing academic enterprise that some might suggest is indebted to the film annuals and popular historical overviews of the cinema of the last century, wavers between the two poles. Each category may then be further distinguished by 2) the divisions operating at each respective pole (i.e. the distinction between popular and commercial art at the heteronomous pole, and the distinction identified as functioning between conventional and avant-garde art at the autonomous pole). Thus, film theory may be seen to be, in a very general sense, aspiring to conventional legitimacy at the autonomous pole, given its routine adoption (and insistence upon) largely consecrated conceptual systems functioning with a measure of distinction in adjacent fields (structuralism, psychoanalysis, cognitive theory, etc.). Film criticism, alternatively, may be situated as engaging in a popular practice at the heteronomous pole, with production often adjusted to the expectations of established, receptive audiences (spanning written publications as wide ranging as film journals, magazines and newspapers, to personal appearances on television or radio programs of varying nature). Indeed, film criticism, in spite of this easy transferral to different cultural contexts and competencies, has also achieved a recognised measure of influence in academia, for as David Bordwell notes, (academic) film criticism has proven easily assimilable to the universitys demand for teachable techniques, professional specialization, and rapid publication output.43 Film history, again when considered generally, balances between engaging the tastes and expectations of a growing popular audience at the heteronomous pole, whilst being bound by the aesthetic discriminations typical of the reigning hierarchy functioning at the autonomous pole. Indeed, according to Richard Maltby, both the development and productivity of film history as a component of film studies has been hampered by research largely proceeding from conceptual and aesthetic assumptions fashioned within film theory and film criticism. He notes how any systematic grasp of Hollywoods production and distribution logic has:

remained relatively undeveloped, in part because of a reluctance to regard Hollywood output as product. While it is commonplace in the analysis of television to argue that programs exist in order to deliver viewers to advertisers, it is as yet considered a form of vulgar economism and an undervaluation of the aesthetics of production to observe that Classical Hollywoods motion pictures existed to deliver audiences to exhibition sites.44

Furthermore, the potential of film history - i.e. its promise to provide a rigorous examination of more than a century of film production and film consumption, through access to a range of
43 44

David Bordwell, Making Meaning (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1989), 22. Richard Maltby and Melvyn Stokes (eds), Identifying Hollywoods Audiences: Cultural Identity and the Movies (London: British Film Institute, 1999), 2.

23.

data previously unavailable to film scholars and enthusiasts - also stands to challenge many of the assumptions that have long reigned in both film theory and criticism. Whether the success of that project results in the reorganization of the field of film studies remains to be seen; however, as the discipline stands, film history remains situated between the logics and corresponding audiences of criticism and theory. Finally, each of the categories functioning within the discipline of film studies may be ranked 3) in terms of the hierarchy of cultural legitimacies that evaluates production with respect to the systems of expression they engage and the varying discourses of legitimation that inform those modes: the arbitrary, the legitimizable and the legitimate. Film theory observes the forms of production specific to the legitimate mode, conducting itself in the traditional manner of academic publication, and thus aspiring to recognition from historically legitimated bodies (i.e. academia). Film criticism, in being situated closer to the heteronomous pole and producing for an established (and, to varying degrees, popular) audience, functions in the realm of the legitimizable, in the sense of engaging in the aesthetic contemplation of commercial filmic works that have, in recent times, advanced in the hierarchy of cultural legitimacies specific to artistic production. However, given the array of publications and media outlets through which film criticism operates, each act of criticism may function with respect to differing forms of legitimation, for the practice spans publications with a readership and editorial philosophy honouring the logic specific to historically legitimated bodies (the legitimate) to glossy magazines subject to the cyclical tastes and trends more typical of the open market. Indeed, the most popular, readily accessible forms of film criticism are situated with respect to the arbitrary modes of legitimation, as function throughout those institutions of commercial media explicitly designed to suppress legitimate cultural judgement and advance those cultural competencies of consumption required by advertisers in order to develop their preferred demographics. Although yet to be co-opted by the mainstream commercial media as pervasively as film criticism, it might be suggested that film history is inviting a similar fate, given its potential for commercial adaptation. However, the lack of any

24.

significant, ongoing commercial applications of film history (outside of specialised publications intended for an academic audience and/or television programs designed for a casual audience of popular film enthusiasts) positions the subject closer to the legitimizable mode, with the infancy of the subject and its tendency to exhibit an aestheticism typical of academic film criticism also legislating against its (as yet) total reduction to the arbitrary mode. Indeed, more than film theory or criticism, definitively plotting film history with respect to this third hierarchy remains difficult, for it has yet to define its standard modes of production and publication, and thus fully develop and stabilise a core audience. This is largely due to the inability of film history to move beyond research and interpretive paradigms established in the other categories of film studies, as noted by Richard Maltby previously: Until recently, critical study of Hollywood has taken little interest in movies audiences, concentrating its attention on the relatively abstract entity of the film-as-text.45
46

Indeed, the most successful instances of film historicizing (in terms of securing an ongoing, popular audience) have been those publications (and Web sites) exploring critically reviled sub-genres, such as foreign exploitation or horror films, interest in which has bloomed given the Internet and the increasing availability of previously unobtainable titles on DVD. Beyond these more specialized (albeit popular) examples, however, film history continues to appear as an adjunct to film criticism, introduced in specific interpretive or evaluative instances where historical knowledge is required in order to justify a position taken in argument. To reiterate, this mapping of each category is not intended to present the field of film studies as a domain with discrete boundaries and entirely distinct logics (and position-takings entirely adjusted to those logics). Rather, it suggests the difficulty in ascribing to the field a dominant logic functioning with respect to one key form of cultural legitimacy. The pressures with respect to which the field functions, both in terms of the internal review of the enabling presuppositions upon which the field turns and the exterior shifts in orders of cultural legitimacy which problematize the contemporary cultural status of film (and those who labour to construct film study as a recognisable and - increasingly viable - academic enterprise) ensures film studies is in constant confrontation with the mechanisms of cultural production and distinction and their historical transformation. Such pressure complicates the practices of field gatekeepers and their attempts to institute measures of hierarchical order through practices of discrimination and recognition, given the instances of
45 46

Maltby and Stokes (1999), 3. Indeed, Harold A. Stadler notes: Due to the lack of concern for the actual, individual and historical spectator, the (film) theorist is chained to his own point of view and is confronted with his own shadow image which is neither identical with nor representative of any viewer. Harold A. Stadler, The Spectacle of Theory: An Historical Speculation, Wide Angle Vol. 8, no. 1 (1987), 5.

25.

contradiction that may exist when agents attempt to negotiate the (sometimes) shifting or overlapping logics specific to each category of film study and thus situate their practices to achieve recognition. These contradictions, whilst not unique to film studies, nevertheless introduce difficulties into instances of consecration within the field, in terms of agents definitively acknowledging (both consciously or unconsciously) the terms of evaluation moderating processes of recognition. Indeed, this difficulty is further extended given that acts of consecration (as theorized by Bourdieu) avoid the overt tone of simple determination so readily accorded instances of evaluation and cultural legitimation in social theory, for he suggests authorized gatekeepers also stand to profit or lose by their respective instances of evaluation. Recognition is reciprocal. Consecration, that is, the taking of a position and thus believing in a new instance of production (and thus, implicitly, reaffirming the old), thus constitutes an investment that has legitimate consequences for a future in any field. The practice of authority and discrimination never therefore functions outside the conditions and terms of play constituting a field, as it is a creditbased value, enabled by and dependant upon the system of relationships (and ongoing future existence of those relationships) that structure a field and give authority its right to authority. As Bourdieu states:

This authority is nothing other than credit with a set of agents who constitute connections whose value is proportionate to the credit they themselves commandThe source of the efficacy of all acts of consecration is the field itself, the locus of the accumulated energy which the agents and institutions help to reproduce through the struggles in which they try to appropriate it and into which they put what they have acquired from it in previous struggles.47

The accumulated energy of the field is therefore manifested in all forms of position-taking occurring with its borders (to varying degrees), given that practical adjustment to the game required of all players (a requirement that is implicit in ones undertaking of the operations specific to the game rather than an explicit condition of entry) effectively reproduces the history of the field in each instance of movement and play. Thus all acts of production, consecration and recognition unfolding within a field are characterized by illusio, or the incorporation of the logic of the game, with the history and logic of the field thus speaking through the practices of agents - albeit according to the degree to which an agent has come to embody that logic. Indeed, the structuration that occurs through illusio that is specific to a discrete field occurs after the recognition of the stakes that function to define that field; it might therefore be suggested that to be structured through
47

Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993b), 78-79.

26.

illusio is the final stage, as it were, of an orienting process that adjusts agents and their practices to the regularities and logic of a field. Both embedded in, and taken up by players in a completely practical, generative sense, illusio thus functions as the mechanism ensuring that (as a rule) movements in a field function interdependently, each bearing upon all other positions and orders of influence and thus constantly shaping and redefining the limits of the field and its sphere of effect. To approach the productions indicative of the field of film studies in such a manner - in short, to determine the objective relations existing between a range of agents and consecrating bodies in the battle for ownership of the recognised instruments of consecration and legitimation specific to the field - is thus to look for the sense, value and belief in an instance of production as an outcome (and manifestation) of these relations, an embodiment of the history of position-takings having occurred in the field and a position taking itself intended to win specific profits and perpetuate a specific order.

27.

1.3. The crisis in the humanities and the conditions necessary for reflexivity.
The functioning and composition of the discipline of film studies, in terms of a) its relationship to orders of cultural legitimacy, b) its sensitivity to historical instability in academic and cultural fields and thus c) its internal functioning with respect to a range of historically fluctuating and interwoven logics corresponding to disciplinary categories of theorisation and production, thus raises the question of the coherency of the discipline as a form of cultural production. With various degrees of competition (and overlap) between the different categories within the discipline (informed by the varied profits each category comes to offer appropriately interested agents), one wonders at the elaborate structural double game undertaken by agents situated within the field, and their ability to negotiate what, objectively, appear as damaging inconsistencies in the everyday practices which inform the ongoing existence of the discipline. For example, to produce within the conditions specific to the production of film criticism invites certain logic, appropriately adjusted to the realities of the publishing world and to the assumptions of a range of audiences. Alternatively, to engage in (recognised) film theorisation involves proper indication of correct adjustment to (consecrated) logic - logic incompatible with the open market. Beyond the extra-field habitual structuration that may have presented the field as a viable arena for the investment of time and resources, how does an agent situated within the field of film studies recognise (and appropriately respond to) the terms and conditions specific to each category of the discipline? How, indeed, might they confidently maintain practices functioning within two categories, or all three? This problem is not specific to film studies, for in Practical Reason Bourdieu examines ambiguities in practice and the double consciousness of social agents who participate both in the economic universe and in one of the anti-economic sub-universesa very great (partial) lucidity which is manifested above all in situations of crisis and among people in precarious positions.48 However, such objective understandings of conflicting logics complicating the practice of an agent is, for Bourdieu, obscured by the mechanics and habits tied to belief - the accepted sense of an agents undertakings when they are properly predisposed to engage in a game at hand, a predisposition legitimated and reinforced (given concrete meaning) by the competition of other, appropriately interested players. These lived truths of practice (i.e. ambiguities anchored, and overcome, by structuration) thus function as a component of habitual structuration and thus do not reveal themselves to agents appropriately secured in an ongoing play of the field. Indeed, one
48

Pierre Bourdieu, Practical Reason (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998), 113.

28.

might propose the existence of a series of sub-fields (or enclaves specific to each category) functioning within the broader field - in the manner of concentric circles - structuring practice in increasingly subtle ways so as to ensure contradiction does not regularly arise or at least threaten the everyday functioning of the field. However, whilst such structuration provides answers to how the everyday practices specific to film studies are executed with limited episodes of conflict, the coexistence of differing logics also presents a key problem for the field. The simultaneous intertwining and functioning of three categories of study within the discipline (and its situating with respect to two conflicting principles of hierarchization, combined with the ever more specific functioning of each category with respect to this binary opposition) ensures that there is no common evaluative standard against which all productions arising from the field may be judged and appropriately recognised. With the coexistence of conflicting logics within the field (resulting from the uneasy combination of such traditionally disparate fields as popular journalism and academia into a singular discipline, and its historical development thereof), film studies has been unable to fashion a general logic of practice that might place recognised value upon systematic reflexivity (in the sense traditionally associated with the scientific field). Indeed, whilst the three distinct categories of study functioning under film studies have coexisted historically, each category has on occasion defined itself against the others in order to either labour for a greater measure of autonomy in its respective productions and enclave of recognition, or win the approval (and corresponding profits) of a power functioning principally outside the discipline. And this is to say nothing of the history of the field in reacting to shifts in broader relationships of cultural and social power, rather than proactively formulating strategies for capital accumulation independent of broader influence. For Bourdieu, the possibility of fields attaining a state of autonomy (and thus functioning without undue influence) is of great importance, for as he notes:

In the case of the social sciences, the establishment of the social conditions for the epistemological break and for autonomy is particularly necessary and particularly difficult. Because their object is politically contentious a fact which brings them into competition with all those who claim to speak with authority about the social world, writers, journalists, politicians, priests, etc. they are particularly exposed to the danger of politicization. It is always possible to import and impose external forces and forms into the field, which generate heteronomy and are capable of thwarting, neutralizing and sometimes annihilating the conquests of research freed from presuppositions.49
49

Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), 112.

29.

This situation is doubly pronounced for film studies, given the nature of its historical development and the varied traditions of cultural criticism and production from which it extends. Rigorous attempts to overcome internal contradictions have plagued the discipline, producing a situation of ambiguity where, unlike the scientific field, there may be several possible logics of recognition poised to evaluate the validity of any specific production undertaken within the general confines of the field. Unlike the objective reality to which everyone explicitly or tacitly refers50 in the scientific field, the field of film studies lacks general principles and techniques of verification, authenticity and recognition that denote common interests - or, more specifically, dedication to a singular form of truth. This is not to suggest that fractions of the field did not aspire to the regimes of rationality that Bourdieu understands as governing the scientific field, but rather that the space of possibles specific to the field of film studies do not function as a direct result of a structural situation of autonomy, disallowing the functioning of a symbolic system that is respected (as in the scientific field) for a strength that is both logical and social.51 Consider the development of the field. As a developing area of study labouring to define itself in some form, film studies needed to openly demonstrate its credentials to claim credibility - either to gain recognition within academia as an intellectual concern of the highest order, or with respect to the terms of acceptability specific to the world of publishing and/or journalism. Lacking a consistent theoretical history concerned strictly with the examination of filmic texts, that fraction of (academic) cineastes most requiring intellectual recognition attempted to achieve acknowledgement primarily through association, drawing upon social and cultural theory developed in other disciplines and adapting the conceptual essence of this theory to examine issues specific to film. This particular fraction sought to invest film study with a sense of theoretical rigour and thus be attractive as a new discipline comparable in principle and procedure to established fields of learning (and thus properly distinct from popular film criticism and review). In submitting to various degrees of peer review and thus labouring to exhibit standards of intellectual rigour, the academics of film study attempted to observe the autonomous principle of hierarchization traditionally informing production within the intellectual field. However, although these academics succeeded in securing film study as a recognisable, if uneasily defined, discipline, they failed in severing all ties with film journalism, as film criticism (rather than simply film theorisation) continued to be conducted, and recognised, under the banner of film study. Indeed, these early struggles over the construction of a legitimate definition of the field and its practices occurred against the backdrop of the broader
50 51

Bourdieu (2000), 113. Bourdieu (2000), 113.

30.

struggle in the intellectual field from the mid 20th century onwards over the ability to impose a dominant principle of hierarchization, particularly in the humanities. As traditional narratives defending both the necessity and, indeed, existence of high culture came under scrutiny (by extension complicating the role of intellectuals as cultural gatekeepers qualified in enacting regimes of taste and distinction), competing logics and systems of evaluation informed by the heteronomous principle of hierarchization arose to challenge the historical power of the intellectual field. A contributing (perhaps key) factor in this cultural breakdown was the rise of the popular media, and its increasing influence upon social and cultural affairs. As a result of these conditions, film studies became rather awkwardly positioned through its own internal struggles to appeal both to the (slowly disintegrating) intellectual hierarchy whilst simultaneously courting a new student body and general readership socialised through mass communications. This problem of legitimation (through circumstance positioned to accommodate conflicting principles of hierarchization) is, as noted, not unique to film studies. Many disciplines, given the increasing privatisation of tertiary education and dissolution of the autonomy of the intellectual field, have gradually been forced to accommodate the demands of the open market, most immediately through increased reliance upon public relations in order to legitimate their pursuits in the popular media (increasingly, the arena in which legitimation is most necessary, in being most visible). Alternatively, however, the situating of film studies between the intellectual field and, most broadly, fields of production operating with reference to the heteronomous principle of hierarchization, has provided the discipline with a measure of stability in lieu of the presuppositions of reflexivity and validity that characterize autonomous fields. Given its historical relationship with the popular media, film studies has been favourably situated to anticipate (and benefit from) the shift to heteronomous consecration that increasingly informs fields of cultural production. Indeed, the range of practices conducted under the banner of film studies has enabled academics, reviewers and commentators (functioning with compromised capital accrued via unconventional sources) an avenue for public recognition and acceptance, and, increasingly, the ability to battle agents holding more historically legitimate capital. As Bourdieu has noted:

Media intellectuals collaborate with those in the media who conspire more or less consciously to discredit intellectuals, or, to speak in a more rigorous manner, who contribute to all the mechanisms (among which are the effects of urgency) which tend, apart from all malicious intentions, to make the dissemination of complex messages difficult.52

52

Pierre Bourdieu and Hans Haacke, Free Exchange (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995), 21.

31.

This access to the popular media, and its historical grounding in popular journalism (in terms of film reviewing), has enabled film studies a unique power in the contemporary configuration of disciplines, a power that has been unable to be entirely realised by other artistic or literary fields. Indeed, the recognition of film studies in the popular media is at least partially attributable to the general popularity of mainstream narrative film, and the ease with which interested students and the popular audience may make the transition from the consumption of film to its study. Bourdieu notes how, given the increasing contemporary breakdown of autonomous fields, the power of any instance of cultural production increasingly lies in its ability to consistently engage a divergent audience, an engagement that film studies exhibits in some respects given its interest in exploring (and in a sense validating) the enchantment of the filmic medium. Indeed:

The artist is the one who is capable of making a sensation which does not mean being sensational, like television acrobats, but rather, in the strong sense of the term, putting across on the level of sensation - that is, touching the sensibility, moving people - analyses which would leave the reader or spectator indifferent if expressed in the cold rigour of concept and demonstration.53

The situating of film studies with respect to the popular media has allowed the discipline to bridge this gap, engaging audiences through the popular fascination with film - an intermediary of similar interest largely denied the more traditional disciplines. This not only enables film studies a level of recognition and visibility within the popular media, but with it specific profits (the value of which will increase as the autonomy of traditional cultural fields continues to dissolve). This collaboration with (and indebtedness to) the popular media has ensured that, whilst there exist occupants within the field of film studies engaged in the construction of film theory (and, often, in the writing of specialized academic criticism) who aspire to traditional intellectual standards of production, recognition, and, indeed, value, they are increasingly unable - due to choices (consciously undertaken or otherwise) resulting from the growing adherence to the market principles indicative of popular cultural production generally - to order production (in any great numbers) within the field along traditionally academic lines. Whilst acknowledging the limitations of scholasticism and the distorting power of unchecked academic production, Bourdieu nevertheless argues that the autonomy such a situation denies is most likely to be realised in a realm where traditional standards of production are valued and aspired to. When a state of relations exists whereby producers produce under the strict examination of other (similarly reviewed) producers
53

Bourdieu and Haacke (1995), 23-28.

32.

(thus being subject to assessments mutually recognised as favouring the production of knowledge over commercial interest) - as in the ideal conditions of the academe - then the conditions for the production of true knowledge are most likely to be realised. For Bourdieu, such conditions recognise the essence (and obligation) of intellectual privilege, to:

fulfil the liberating function that (the intellectual) claims for himself, often in an entirely usurped way, only on condition that he understands and masters what determines him Bringing the subject of science into history and into society does not mean condemning oneself to relativism; it means preparing the conditions for a critical knowledge of the limits of knowledge which is the precondition for true knowledge (emphasis mine).54

Without being subject to the sustained critiques and reviews of production that occur traditionally in autonomous fields (albeit not without problems), agents structured within film studies are generally less inclined (increasingly the result of occupying a position within the field rather than outright choice) to realise a condition of autonomy, and thus by extension never recognise the conditions of intellectual privilege and its associated profits (a critical knowledge of the limits of knowledge which is a precondition for true knowledge). Thus, the inability (or outright unwillingness) to understand or examine a position within the systems of classification which enables production to function as it does ensures that film studies, in terms of the future of its development and consolidation as a discipline (albeit increasingly appealing to the principles of legitimation specific to the open market), will a) increasingly be subject to extra-field dominant forces and logics, and thus b) be inclined to practice (and reflect) symbolic violence extending from those powers. This suggests that the field will increasingly be determined by external forces beyond its immediate control, and will transmit the logic and effect of these forces to other fields.
54

Pierre Bourdieu, Sociology in Question (London: Sage Publications, 1993a), 44.

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1.4. The practice of David Bordwell: theorization and symbolic violence.

Whilst this condition of the field of film studies is symptomatic more broadly of the question of the legitimation of knowledge55 (Jean-Francois Lyotards formulation) informing practices across contemporary culture, and thus (one would assume) beyond the ability of the field itself to completely rectify, programs of action to combat the slide into the open criteria of heteronomous legitimation (that one assumes is likely to accompany the intermingling of disparate logics) have nevertheless been undertaken within the field, albeit with varying degrees of response. Most representative of the desire to reinstate procedures of research, terminology and standards of legitimation traditionally associated with the scientific field (and academic fields more generally) is film academic David Bordwell, who has consistently addressed the state of film studies throughout his broad range of publications (which range explicitly across film theory, history and what at times can be identified as film criticism) to call for more rigorous and defensible theorisation and research in film studies practice. In articulating a specific position within the space of possibles structuring and informing the field, Bordwell has both explicitly and implicitly argued for exacting standards in the production of knowledge within film studies - standards he suggests have been historically lacking (or entirely absent) in much of what is recognised as theory, criticism and history in film study (albeit with exceptions). Bordwells editorial article Contemporary Film Studies and the Vicissitudes of Grand Theory, written (with Noel Carroll) as an introduction to Post Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies (1996)56, serves as a generalised overview to this position, an extension of arguments pertaining to procedure as examined in Lowering the Stakes: Prospects for a Historical Poetics of Cinema (1983),57 and the works Making Meaning: Inference and Rhetoric in the Interpretation of Cinema (1989)58, Narration in the Fiction Film (1986)59 and (with Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson) The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (1985).60 Bordwells editorial outlines the key theoretical and investigative
Jean-Francis Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 37. 56 See David Bordwell and Noel Carroll (eds), Post Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies (Wisconsin: Wisconsin University Press, 1996). 57 See David Bordwell, Lowering the Stakes: Prospects for a Historical Poetics of Cinema, Iris 1, no. 1 (1983). 58 See David Bordwell, Making Meaning: Inference and Rhetoric in the Interpretation of Cinema (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989). 59 See David Bordwell, Narration in the Fiction Film (London: Methuen, 1986). 60 See David Bordwell, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson, The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985).
55

34.

principles (and their deficiencies) informing the development and academic consolidation of film studies in the United States (largely from 1970 onward), ostensibly in order to provide justification for more empirical middle-level research that attempts to evade the expansive concerns (and flaws) of Grand Theory. Bordwells key criticism is that, whilst contemporary film studies in the United States has appeared to draw from a seemingly diverse range of interdisciplinary frameworks in attempting to augment (or replace entirely) the limitations of psychoanalytic (or subject-position) theory with the perceived benefits of culturalism, there remains obvious continuities in theoretical methods with respect to what he brackets as deficient a) doctrinal premises and b) reasoning routines. These deficiencies are not specific to American film studies, but are also (implicitly) suggested by Bordwell to characterise film studies internationally (given the heavy dependence of American film academics upon, for example, French cultural and social theory). Bordwell identifies reliance upon four general doctrinal premises historically informing instances of film study (spanning subject theory to Culturalism) in the United States - and, through degrees of extension, across the world. These premises include a) implicit (and explicit) dependence upon theories of constructivism, b) the requirement of subject theorisation in accounting for c) the operations of identification in the cinema (such theorisation drawing upon psychoanalytic understandings of the construction of identity), which turns upon d) an understanding of the combination and substitution of images in the filmic text as largely analogous to the structures of language (particularly as theorised in the works of Ferdinand de Saussure). Bordwell also identifies reliance upon four reasoning routines (not methods but habits of mind, routines of reasoning61) accompanying film study turning upon these four premises, including a) the necessity of top-down inquiry - an institutional routine (positing) that every argument rests upon some larger assumptions about (ideology or culture)62, b) eclectic theorization combining contradictory or incompatible conceptual systems into unstable wholes, c) conceptualisation conducted through strained association and the amalgamation of incongruent justifications, rather than systematic procedure based on the causal and rational principles of argument (and associated standards by which to judge those arguments), and d) a reliance upon the interpretation of filmic texts (extending to audiences, promotional material, etc.) with interpretation substituting for and assuming the place of rigorous explanation, demonstration or justification. For Bordwell, therefore, both interrelated sets of deficiencies have been imported comprehensively into the newer strands of film study, for scholars who change their opinions do not typically revise their convictions from top to bottom. An
61

David Bordwell, Contemporary Film Studies and the Vicissitudes of Grand Theory, David Bordwell and Noel Carroll (eds), Post Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies (Wisconsin: Wisconsin University Press, 1996), 18. 62 Bordwell and Carroll (1996), 21.

35.

intellectual trend that wishes to gain adherents will appeal to a common ground - shared presuppositions and habitual practices.63 In short, Bordwell (with a range of co-authors) is attempting to reintroduce (and rigorously enforce) traditional standards of procedure and verification into the field of film studies (indeed, essentially calling for the reconstruction of film studies in order for it to function with more integrity as an academic enterprise), suggesting from a position of moderate advocacy64 in another key essay (A Case For Cognitivism [1989])65 that investigation into filmic phenomena that wishes to avoid deficient doctrinal premises and reasoning routines be conducted with reference to the body of theory and research somewhat broadly grouped under the label of cognitivism - an intellectual position that Bordwell suggests provides a distinctive problem solving program.66 Cognitivist analyses (of the kind advocated by Bordwell) engage a model of information processing to determine the processes engaged in knowing, learning and remembering to - as Bordwell and Noel Carroll more concisely outline:

understand human thought, emotion, and action by appeal to processes of mental representation, naturalistic processes, and (some sense of) rational agency cognitivism is not so much a theory as a perspective which includes diametrically opposed theories.67

As a perspective or program, cognitivist analysis is thus positivist, reductionist, openly dependent upon experimental testing for theory formation, and (at least through Bordwell) fundamentally critical of the faulty reasoning and associated deficiencies characterizing the bulk of former film theorization. Indeed, Bordwells adoption of this rigorous problem solving program is matched by his unforgiving rhetorical style - the two having been combined and exercised throughout a number of prominent (some might suggest notorious) essays and ripostes largely following the publication of his major works. The 1989 publication of Making Meaning: Inference and Rhetoric in the Interpretation of Cinema (Bordwells lengthy examination of institutionalised interpretative paradigms characteristic of film criticism, or how film critics build up interpretations and try to convince others that these interpretations warrant attention68) prompted significant response in the field of film studies, to be sure, as did Post Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies (Bordwell and
63 64

Bordwell and Carroll (1996), 13. David Bordwell, A Case for Cognitivism, Iris 9, Spring (1989): 12. 65 See Bordwell (1989). 66 Bordwell (1989), 12. 67 Bordwell and Carroll (1996), xvi. 68 David Bordwell, Making Meaning: Inference and Rhetoric in the Interpretation of Cinema (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), xii.

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Carrolls broad canvas for the interrogation of the deficiencies of film-scholarly practice and attendant advocacy of cognitivism) in 1996, but Bordwells response to the reception of those works was foreshadowed in manner and content by his (and Staiger and Thompsons) retort to Barry King in the film studies journal Screen in 1988. Most particularly, Bordwells response Kings review
70 69

to

of The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960

is perhaps the best example of a ferocious writing style guarded by an insistence upon rigorous standards of scholarly academic procedure and research conducted according to traditional scientific method. Proceeding with due reference to the instruments of consecration he intends to resurrect through a cognitive research program, he attacks Kings review of the Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson text with reference to Kings alleged indifference to evidence, misunderstanding of how research-based arguments work (and) faulty reasoning71, and in doing so proceeds to present King as a deficient dilettante, ill-equipped to judge the books under review(displaying) no competence to evaluate any of the hundreds of empirical claims made in The Classical Hollywood Cinema. For all one can tell, King has never seen any films at all, or read any trade papers or technical journals72 This defiant depiction of the dunce masquerading as a film academic would indeed inform the cover illustration73 of Post Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies, prompting reviewer Bruce Bennett to note that the image has clearly been chosen to imply that film theorists are institutionalised morons, incapable of solving the simplest problems,74 and Bordwells subsequent publications have done little to downplay this approach, implicitly suggesting his critics (and, by extension, their respective theoretical affiliations) lack proper grounding in the consecrated practices (knowledges, skills, understandings) that he understands as implicit in the history of the field and which function to guide its future (the space of possibles).75 Thus, Bordwells case for cognitivism, in attempting to institute a new degree of scientificity in the practices typical of the field of film studies (a scientificity that has fundamental implications for the construction of film theory, the practice of film criticism and the research informing the writing of film history) endeavours to institute a new vision of what constitutes legitimate film study, and
69 70

See David Bordwell, Adventures in the Highlands of Theory, Screen 29, no. 1 (1988). See Barry King, The Classical Hollywood Cinema: A Review by Barry King, Screen 27, no. 6 (1986) and A Reply to Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson, Screen 29, no. 1 (1988). 71 David Bordwell, Adventures in the Highlands of Theory, Screen 29, no. 1 (1988): 72-73. 72 Bordwell (1988), 73. 73 Laurel and Hardy from the 1940 film A Chump at Oxford, as noted by Bruce Bennett, Misrecognizing Film Studies, Film Philosophy 4, no. 5 (2000). 74 Bennett (2000). 75 Andrew Britton writes of the energy of repudiaton that drives Bordwell. In another lengthy examination of The Classical Hollywood Cinema, Britton suggests Bordwell finds himself in the embarrassing position of having won a Pyrrhic victory. The field is his, but everyone is dead.Andrew Britton, The Philosophy of the Pigeonhole: Wisconsin Formalism and The Classical Style, Cineaction! 15, Winter (1988-89), 59.

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the legitimate practices best suited to realising the benefits of that legitimate film study. Indeed, the vision of film studies (as a specific arena of practice subject to more demanding standards of evaluation) that is being attempted by Bordwell is a vision that promotes the logic specific to one form of academic film theory - implicitly suggesting this logic inform all categories of production within the field and function to classify agents thereof. Bordwell is implying new standards of ranking, classifying players with respect to what he understands as the history of the field, thus assuming one particular incarnation of the space of possibles functioning within the field as most representative of the practice of film study. As a response to this project, film critic Robin Woods recent editorial in Cineaction notes how:

Over the last few decades we have witnessed, in the university, theory and scholarship usurping the place of criticism: a major setback for the development of our culture the result has been the degrading of criticism to the level of reviewing. Theory supplies the critic with maps, scholarship with facts; the critic needs both, as a reference point when relevant to his/her needs. But it is the critic who is primarily concerned with questions of value: the value of the individual work of art, its potential value within a (so-called) civilization that at present appears bent on self-destruction. The question of value has never been so urgent.76

Bordwells program attempts to consolidate this shift away from considerations of value and traditional criticism, given the cognitive framework:

does not tell stories. It is not a hermeneutic grid; it cannot be allegorised. Like all theorizing, it asks the Kantian question: Given certain properties of a phenomenon, what must be the conditions producing them? It then searches for causal, functional, or teleological explanations of those conditions. 77

To use such a theoretical map as a reference point to criticism (as Wood might) appears strictly limited; considerations of value are essentially alien to a program of research intending to determine how film is comprehended with reference to the processes of human perception and cognition. The politicising characteristic of much film criticism (implicit or otherwise) is therefore negated by the cognitive approach, and the emphasis upon scientific models of hypothesis testing renders evaluation based upon traditional critical analysis obsolete. Indeed, what is important to the critic is less than important to the cognitivist, thus marking out in sharp and distinctive terms the
76 77

Robin Wood, Questions of Value, Cineaction! 62 (2003): 1 (editorial). David Bordwell, A Case for Cognitivism, Iris 9 (1989): 11- 40.

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intellectual position of film study subscribing either to the theoretical framework of cognitivism or the scientific method implicit in its problem solving program. Indeed, Bordwell includes in the intellectual position he advocates a range of instances of film study termed middle-level research, middle-level in being closer to traditional academic scholarship (and concentrating upon) in-depth research(to build) theories not of subjectivity, ideology or culture in general but rather of particular phenomena.78 An implicit mapping of the history of the field is thus part of Bordwells project - a mapping that distinctly constitutes the field and its space of possibles in such a way as to mark the legitimate and (correspondingly illegitimate) practitioners of film study. He notes: Literary studies, art history, musicology, and many other disciplines within the humanities developed rich research traditions before Grand Theory intervened. Film studies had hardly begun in-depth inquiry when subject-position theorists and culturalists gained supremacy,79 a statement implying the field would have arrived at programs and methods of study of a kind similar to those embodied in contemporary film-cognitive research if it had not been essentially hijacked by Big Theories of Everything. Bordwells narrative suggests a slide from purity to pollution. Bordwells program is therefore as much a rigorous attempt to develop a new approach to the study of film as to impose a single film study culture (and practices characteristic of that culture). As Bourdieu wrote of ritual practice in The Logic of Practice (1990):

To bring order is to bring division the limit produces difference and the different things by an arbitrary institution, as Leibniz put it, translating the ex instituto of the Scholastics. This magical act presupposes and produces collective belief, that is, ignorance of its own arbitrariness. It constitutes the separated things as separated, and by an absolute distinction, which can only be crossed by another magical act, a ritual transgression.80

Bordwells magical act, ironically, is conducted with appeal to classical research methods (observation, hypothesis, testing of hypothesis [prediction and experimentation], conclusion, evaluation) - the absolute distinction that serves to differentiate the legitimate from the illegitimate through advocating a distinct problem solving program as inherent to (good) film study. In drawing upon such paradigms, Bordwell is able to both invoke a disciplinary history far more extensive than that of film studies, align his work with the overarching power of scientific
78

David Bordwell, Contemporary Film Studies and the Vicissitudes of Grand Theory, David Bordwell and Noel Carroll (eds), Post Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies (Wisconsin: Wisconsin University Press, 1996), 27-29. 79 Bordwell and Carroll (1996), 29.

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rationality that functions in the contemporary social world (a power ever more potent in an intellectual universe increasingly subject to the pressures of economic rationalisation) and yet reap symbolic profits in the field of film studies by appearing to be entirely disinterested in doing so (this practiced disinterest a key manifestation of his inherent feel for the game). Whilst the illusio specific to the field is appealed to and thus honoured, with Bordwell engaging (as he defines film studies) a process of posing and trying to answer questionsseeking to answer questions in a systematic way that is open to criticism and discussion,81 his program is (from the Bourdieusian perspective) a work of symbolic alchemy - the instituting of a new arbitrary justified as grounded and enabled by the principal logic (understood by Bordwell to be historically mandated) of the field, and thus presented as legitimate. Bourdieu notes:

Symbolic alchemy produces to the benefit of the one who accomplishes acts of euphemization, transfiguration, or imposition of form, a capital of recognition which permits him to exert symbolic effects Symbolic capital (perceived by) social agents endowed with the categories of perception and appreciation permitting them to perceive, know and recognize it, becomes symbolically efficient, like a veritable magical power: a property which, because it responds to socially constituted collective expectations and beliefs, exercises a sort of action from a distance, without physical contact. Symbolic domination (which is one way to define it) rests on misrecognition, and therefore on the recognition of the principles in whose name it is exerted.82

Indeed, Bordwells stinging reaction to Kings labelling of Bordwell, Staiger and Thompsons combined output as amounting to a Wisconsin project - all three (as phrased by Thompson) in cahoots to perpetuate a monolithic poetics of cinema on an unsuspecting world of film studies83 suggests King (situated within British academia) to suspect Bordwells intentions as much as the specific merits of his intellectual position and problem solving program. King himself wonders whether the institutional conditions informing British academia would ever allow research on the scale of The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960,84 and one might go further to suggest that King - alien to the perceived conditions enabling the practices of film academics associated with the University of Wisconsin - is therefore not able to be grounded in
80 81

Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990b), 210. David Bordwell, Studying Cinema, from David Bordwells Website on Cinema, Internet address: www.geocities.com/david_bordwell/studying.htm 82 Pierre Bourdieu, Practical Reason (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998), 102. 83 Kristin Thompson, Wisconsin Project or Kings Projection?, Screen 29, no.1 (1988): 49. 84 See Barry King, The Classical Hollywood Cinema, Screen 27, no. 6 (1986): 74.

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the collective expectations or socially inculcated beliefs that have enabled Bordwell and Co. their level of recognition in the field of film study. As one example of a specific articulation of a position within the field of film studies, Bordwells program illustrates how particular research strategies may be justified over other avenues of study on grounds that imply proper structuration through field illusio as necessary to proper legitimation and recognition within the field. However, this is not to suggest that Bordwells program has been taken up in the field in any systematic sense. Indeed, film academic Robert B. Ray, although also critical of the Grand Theory that Bordwell is intent upon discrediting, attempts to outline an alternative program for the study of film based in avant-garde theory and practice - an interesting alternative direction post-Theory given Ray achieved considerable academic and publication success85 with A Certain Tendency of the Hollywood Cinema, 1930-1980 (1985), a work fundamentally grounded in theories of overdetermination and transformation,86 particularly Althusserian Marxism, Freudian psychoanalysis and theory of myth developed by Levi-Strauss. Rather than pursue Bordwells obsession with legitimation87 as a response to deficient doctrinal premises and reasoning routines, Ray instead proposes knowledge production recognising Paul Feyerabends famous formulation: there is only one principle that can be defended under all circumstances and in all stages of human development. It is the principle: anything goes. Another stake: knowledge as gamble.88 Indeed, Ray simply sidesteps Bordwells gauntlet to note:

What counts for (Bordwell) are propositions confirmed by facts. You may disagree with our conclusions, he repeatedly argues, but for your disagreement to count, you must come up with proof. No-one has been able to do so because on his own ground, Bordwell seems irrefutablewe must acknowledge (Bordwells) willingness to live by the sword, and assume (he has) marshalled the protective evidence needed to keep from dying by it.89

Such an insight demonstrates how Bordwells theory and practice, a response undoubtedly to increasing conditions of heteronomy within the field (and the resulting complications to academic practice this entails), functions as a paradigmatic instance of symbolic violence, given that
85

Robert B. Rays A Certain Tendency of the Hollywood Cinema: 1930-1980 is Princetons best selling film book of all time, Alan Clinton, Review: How A Film Theory Got Lost and Other Mysteries of Cultural Studies, Reconstruction 3, no. 3 (2003). 86 Robert B. Ray, A Certain Tendency of the Hollywood Cinema: 1930-1980 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 11. 87 Robert B. Ray, How a Film Theory Got Lost and Other Mysteries in Cultural Studies (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2001), 35. 88 Ray (2001), 47. 89 Ray (2001), 35-36.

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symbolic domination (is) exerted with the complicity of the dominated, in that for a certain form of domination to be established, the dominated must apply to the acts of the dominant (and to all of their being) structures of perception which are the same as those the dominant use to produce those acts.90
90

Pierre Bourdieu, Practical Reason (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998a), 101.

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1.5. Beyond Post Theory: The contribution of reflexive sociology to film studies.
Bordwell thus functions as an interesting example with which to illustrate the value of Bourdieus sociology in teasing out the practices of the field of film study, but the example extends further. Bordwells drive to reintroduce (and enforce) traditionally academic research paradigms produces other significant problems beyond those identified in his works by critics. The tendency towards a more traditional intellectualism and its corresponding modes of practice in some fractions of the field - intellectualism presented as the solution to establishing greater standards of validity and procedure (and thus championed as a solution to the total sliding of the field into heteronomous logic) - is, for Bourdieu, fraught with problems. Throughout his works, Bourdieus call for common evaluative procedures that result from a condition of autonomy (with adherence to those procedures functioning as a recognisable capital with associated profits) not only functions as an attempt to liberate agents from the conditions that determine them (and, through them, others), but also to insist agents become aware of the deeper scholarly fallacies that inform and legitimate them and their respective practices. As he writes in Homo Academicus (1988):

The sociologist who chooses to study his own world in its nearest and most familiar aspects should not, as the ethnologist would, domesticate the exotic, but, if I may venture the expression, exoticize the domestic, through a break with his initial relation of intimacy with modes of life and thought which remain opaque to him because they are too familiar.91

By appealing to agents to labour to control (through reflexive understanding) the systems of generative schemas that give rise to this opacity, Bourdieu calls for the systematic examination of the practical logics and structuration that inform an agents everyday immersion in the social world, thereby through reflexive science contributing to the production of better understandings of that social world, and, crucially, introducing a rigorous system of critical investigation appropriate to interrogating the relations of symbolic violence indicative of field universes (rather than simply consolidating a specific hierarchy, as might be assumed of academic cineastes - such as Bordwell in film studies). To objectify these systems of structuration that inform our immersion in a range of social
91

Pierre Bourdieu, Homo Academicus (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), xi.

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universes is not an entirely new concern within the realms of philosophy or sociology, particularly as regards the obscuring of history and questions of origin through the incorporation of practical logics. Indeed, the issue of the foundations (and archaeologies) of specific fields, and attendant consideration of the social and cultural conditions that may be identified as having provided the context within which specific field epistemologies came to power, have, at least theoretically, long concerned philosophical discourse and sociological investigation. However, the question of how to break the enchanted circle of objective denial in order to release oneself from the enshrined social and cultural traditions within which one is situated has remained, if not unanswered, then at least illconsidered, principally (as suggested by Bourdieu) for two reasons: a) the binding of shared histories (involving the encoding and enforcement of specific habits of thought) that underpin social situatedness, and b) the individual investment in specific social games (and their attendant logics) that, through corporeal structuration, attunes players to pursue capital accumulation with respect to heteronomous terms of evaluation rather than conduct themselves with any degree of systematic reflexivity (which might threaten ownership of those capitals). As Bourdieu notes, objective and subjective structuration in this manner ensures that questions regarding the archaeologies of knowledges and discourses often remain subdued, or - as in the case of Bordwell - predisposed (through practical structuration) to be constructed and interpreted through the logic specific to a certain field (with any insights or discoveries thus predetermined by the prejudices characteristic of that universe and a specific position within that universe). In particular, the intellectual field, whilst historically granted license to critically objectify a range of social universes and cultural practices, has been reluctant to turn this objectifying gaze upon the practices and modes of inquiry specific to academia and scholastic universes. This facet of Bourdieus sociological critique requires careful examination, as it not only provides a) further illumination of the logic(s) functioning within the discipline of film studies and thus b) allows greater understanding of the practices of academics such as Bordwell, but because it provides a tool with which to articulate an alternative research program within the domain of film studies that is properly reflexive, rather than being simply reactionary in responding to an established line of inquiry (in this instance, the cinematic experience). The relevance of Bourdieus critique to the field of film studies is most apparent in both Homo Academicus and Pascalian Meditations (2000), where he provides the procedure necessary for the systematic interrogation of the fallacies indicative of scholasticism, designed to illuminate the deficiencies of a range of intellectual traditions and their attendant modes of argumentation and research. Whilst these methods are but one component of Bourdieus broader goal of bettering scientific practice through universalising the conditions of access to the universal, and is thus simply one dimension of his

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greater investigation into the operations of symbolic power, Bourdieu deems the examination of fallacies particular to intellectual fields as exceptionally important given the power he attributes to academia in policing the processes of consecration and legitimation (and thus misrecognition) that function both in scholastic social universes and across a range of differing fields that draw upon (to varying degrees) the symbolic authority of the intellectual for purposes of recognition and distinction, thus extending scholastic power (through homology) to contribute directly to ongoing processes of stratification and subordination that function across the broader social world. The power and reach of these fallacies have remained unchecked largely given their embodiment in standard academic procedures of scientific investigation and objectification, procedures that extend and encode such fallacies into concrete practices, providing an ongoing correlation between subjective and objective structures that consistently functions to orient perception and practice. Indeed, these fallacies are largely shielded from sustained criticism given the hierarchically ordered nature of the intellectual field and its complex methods of consecration and legitimation. Such methods range from outright symbolic exclusion and segregation (including definitions of legitimate and illegitimate scientific practice) to the more subtle modes of exclusion and correction that function in corporeal terms (effecting structuration through bodily adjustment). This may include concretised recognition in terms of official legitimation of academic research, publications or cultural production, or seemingly infinitesimal acts of recognition (i.e. favourable remarks or gestures offered in a socially influential context, or recognition through adjustment of behaviour and manner). Such symbolic regulation thus creates an immediate harmony between the logic of a field and the dispositions it induces and presupposes, (meaning) that all its arbitrary content tends to be disguised as timeless, universal self-evidence.92 Thus, through the drive for distinction and capital accumulation, the fallacies historically specific to scholasticism and the intellectual field, although subject to degrees of contest and criticism by those occupants of the field necessarily predisposed (due to a range of factors) to challenging the reigning symbolic hierarchy, are continually perpetuated through each round of consecration and recognition and thus constantly reinforced through, and invested within, the act of judging and the conferred right to judge. The ongoing symbolic hierarchies indicative of the intellectual field (and, specifically, the field of film studies) therefore defend and prolong, through the processes of judgement and consecration specific to each discipline, modes of thought specific to highly unique social conditions of construction, and, most damagingly (through the aforementioned relationships of homology and influence across other fields), the universalization of these modes without proper correction. This universalization thus perpetuates a specifically intellectual orientation to, and relationship with, the
92

Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), 29.

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world that is implicit within academic thought and action, with homology ensuring that academic investigative methods and research programs which exhibit this orientation have a real world impact on the classifications and representations functioning within broader social universes. However, whilst Bourdieu makes clear that the perpetuation of scholastic fallacy is a general property of the intellectual field given its grounding in the scholastic point of view, as was examined in the case of Bordwell such fallacies are both inflected and, indeed, exhibited to varying degrees depending upon each respective players position within the structure of that field, position being determined by ownership of, or proximity to, the capital recognised as most valuable within the field (and which determines the rules [or regularities] defining the field as a space of play between forces). As noted, in the intellectual field a distinction may be made between the established intelligentsia who occupy a position at the top of the field hierarchy, and those intellectuals inclined to struggle against the reigning orthodoxy in an attempt to institute new modes of consecration and classification (often resulting from their production of new forms of knowledge). (In the field of film studies, this distinction is most prevalent in film theory, although film criticism produced for a largely academic audience also partakes of this division.) Following this distinction one may also suggest that scholastic fallacy has a greater tendency to be perpetuated by those intellectuals reliant more upon the reproduction of the established order for their continued existence than its restructuring, given that the contemporary decay (in Australia, at least) of the autonomy of intellectual (and cultural) fields has resulted in confrontational intellectuals increasingly appealing to the more heteronomous logics of legitimation informing fields that surround academic universes rather than those traditionally functioning within restricted fields of intellectual and cultural production. The case of Bordwell notwithstanding, the dispersal of legitimation that has come to inform, to varying degrees, intellectual and cultural production (and specifically film studies) introduces a number of problems into examinations of academic fields. One must consider whether the fallacies indicative historically of scholastic reason are liable to slowly dissipate in future years, given the erosion of academic autonomy and the encroaching of journalists and serious media personalities upon realms of public discourse and channels of communication previously traversed and utilised by traditional academics. These experts-on-opinion-who-claim-to-be-scholars93, or doxosophers (to use Bourdieus term) have complicated public appreciation of the role and relevance of intellectuals by offering opinions on a range of political, social and cultural issues with little or no critical interrogation of the systems of domination they, through their actions, tacitly reproduce.
93

Pierre Bourdieu et al., The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999), 629.

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Even if his mode of response is to be criticised, Bordwells fears are nevertheless well founded, for as Carol A. Stabile and Junya Morooka write:

The media are interfering in evaluative processes hitherto reserved for peers and jeopardizing what Bourdieu describes as the autonomy of various academic fields Content to serve as knee-jerk critics and providers of legitimacy, media intellectuals tend to subscribe to the doxic view of the world, repeat political slogans, and make it easier to speak glibly about the social world.94

This crisis suggests complication of the processes of distinction and ranking that characterise the relationships between positions within the intellectual field, which depends upon the reproduction of an entrenched system of cultural order to sustain academics as cultural gatekeepers and thus ensure that revolutions within the field, whilst allowing a diversity of intellectual and cultural orientations, nevertheless sustain the implicit role and ranking of homo academic. As a recognised capital, encoded in the body as much as in official titles and qualifications, this status of the intellectual was historically rarely questioned within academic universes, presumably given the continual structuration and adjustment of players by the conditions they incorporated (thus turning history into nature). However, given the increasing power of the media in contemporary life, the breakdown of the autonomy of the intellectual field, and the complication of its previously strict boundaries of recognition, the definition of what constitutes the intellectual or academic is increasingly open to struggle and contestation. Thus, whilst homologies across fields ensure that revolutions in the hierarchical order and power distribution of specific fields are, most often, slow (given that interrelationships amongst orders preclude drastic transformation), contemporary conditions suggest the traditional hierarchical order of the intellectual field (and with it, the ongoing perpetuation of scholastic fallacies) is under threat. However, the typical response to these conditions, as noted, is rife with problems of its own. For Bourdieu, the deficiencies of scholastic reason and the possible rise of doxosophic speculation in its place is great cause for concern; for the field of film studies, these conditions suggest both the increasing recognition of film studies as a discipline that is financially viable, popularly visible and accessible (and thus attractive to a student body), and yet foretell a slide from traditional standards of knowledge production to heteronomous legitimation (and the dilution of the discipline in conventional academic terms as such). As a result of this situation, the need for reflexive research in
94

Carol A. Stabile and Junya Morooka, Between Two Evils, I Refuse to Choose the Lesser, Cultural Studies 17, 3/4 (2003): 329-330.

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the field of film studies is exceptionally necessary, and the need to establish reflexive practice as profitable (in the sense of being recognised by the field and thus functioning as capital), urgent. However, the pursuit of capitals recognised as valuable within the field, and indeed the functioning of the field itself given its constitution historically, has ensured that reflexivity of the kind advocated by Bourdieu has been lacking, and thus knowledge production that might provide greater understanding of the phenomenon of the cinema significantly compromised. As much as field structuration enables, it also circumscribes; the space of possibles produces and sustains the instruments productive of research and inquiry (and thus knowledge) and yet also reigns in that knowledge in assuring (recognised) production respects hierarchy, order and the reigning cultural arbitrary - an arbitrary that (as noted) likely conceals systematic relations of symbolic domination and misrecognition. In order to clear a path to suggest an alternative approach to examining the cinematic experience, it is therefore necessary in the following chapter to examine how deeply ingrained the scholastic impulse is to film studies, and how it has informed and enabled some of the fields greatest knowledge productions. In doing so, it will become increasingly clear how important it is to not only guard against scholastic fallacies that are a product of the past, but also to construct a new sense and definition of the film intellectual that avoids becoming the negativeintellectual (the doxosopher). This role must appeal to the traditional standards of academic production without trafficking in scholastic fallacy, and it must be systematically profitable as an activity and practice in the manner of the profits earned by conventional research and procedure as conducted currently.

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Chapter 2: Scholasticism and the theorization of cinematic experience.

Of all the possible ways of reading this text, the worst would no doubt be the moralizing reading, which would exploit the ethical connotations ordinary language attaches to technical terms like legitimacy or authority and transform statements of fact into justifications or denunciations; or would take objective effects for the intentional, conscious, deliberate action of individuals or groups, and see malicious mystification or culpable naivety where we speak only of concealment or misrecognition. - Pierre Bourdieu and JeanClaude Passeron, Reproduction In Education, Society and Culture.95

In tracing the varied expressions of the scholastic impulse within the field of film studies, the following historical examination suggests varying articulations of the problem of cinematic experience to be manifestations of the logic informing a specific cultural arbitrary. Indeed, attempts to chart the specificity of the experience typical of cinematic consumption have functioned both as programs of study (exhibiting recognisably academic characteristics), and, more implicitly, as challenges to prioritise and naturalise what ought to be studied in the field - practices, in short, through which definitions of knowledge and legitimacy are tested and determined with reference to the logic of the arena specific to film studies. In the guise of research programs, orienting questions, reading lists and ongoing debates, the question of what constitutes cinematic experience has functioned as a means whereby a specific cultural arbitrary is negotiated between field occupants - and, where successful, imposed as valid and logical.96 Functioning as a particular form of pedagogical work, the symbolic violence indicative of such theorizing allows particular hierarchies to naturalise the historical distribution of capitals that inform their power and thus ensure the perpetuation of the power relations which put that cultural arbitrary into the dominant position.97 As regards film studies, the prominence of a particular arbitrary informed by scholastic epistemocentrism was aided by the predispositions of the occupants of the field - initially, scholars and academics whose respective capitals were attained in largely autonomous literary or artistic fields, thus exhibiting degrees of habitual structuration sympathetic to the terms
Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron, Reproduction In Education, Society and Culture (London: Sage Publications, 1977b), x. 96 As Richard Jenkins notes: University life offers unrivalled opportunities for the bad faith of doing one thing while claiming to do another. The quest for insight and knowledge goes hand in hand with the quest for promotion, preferment and profundity. Richard Jenkins, (Review of) Sociology in Question, Sociological Review, Vol. 43 Issue 1 (1995),178. 97 Bourdieu and Passeron (1977b), 10.
95

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and conditions of that arbitrary. Indeed, Bourdieu notes that the success of a cultural arbitrary is a function of 1) the pedagogic ethos proper to a class or group, i.e. the system of dispositions towards that (cultural arbitrary) and the agency exerting itand 2) cultural capital,98 thus suggesting why scholastic reason came to frame investigations into cinematic phenomena, and how scholastic fallacies were subsequently perpetuated within the field of film studies. Historically, the question of what occurs when an audience experiences cinema has been formulated in a variety of ways, either explicitly or implicitly (such as where consideration of the question of cinematic experience results from broader reflections upon the nature of the cinema). Certainly, a high percentage of film study (even when engaging with other cinematic phenomena) tacitly refers to either academic or common understandings of the relationship between the institution of cinema and the practices of its audiences, thus suggesting the importance of the issue to film study, and, by extension, its significance as a powerful symbolic device to be wielded in a field marked by struggle. The space of possibles informing film studies thus validates the posing of questions regarding cinematic experience across a range of articulations: a) within film history (in terms of the nature of exhibition practices and historical configurations of cinematic consumption), b) in terms of film criticism (as concerns the role of the film critic in determining the value of the filmic text, its relationship and worth to a film audience, and thus to culture more generally) and, most specifically, within film theory. Film theory, in attempting to classify the key conceptual principles underpinning the operations of cinema, understands the question of cinematic experience to be of great importance to the success of that classification - understanding the audience relationship with cinema is deemed an important component of a broader theory outlining the nature of cinematic phenomena. However, there have been widely disparate articulations of this question within film theory: emphasis upon the determining processes of the film-as-text upon the cinema audience, mapping of the social affiliations or cultural practices of the audience and their respective constitution (and/or negotiation) of the textual effects of the individual film, investigation of the inter-relationship between the unconscious (or cognitive) processes of spectators and the film text in the dual construction of meaning, emotion and experience in the cinema, etc. Whilst such investigations attempt to account for a range of differing activities and processes deemed specific to cinematic experience, insights are often subsumed under pre-existing conceptual formations (in order, one assumes, to be recognised within the field). Indeed, Murray Smith has noted how the theorisation of cinematic experience has laboured under such blanket concepts as identification and point of view: While some theorists have attempted to make important discriminations, he notes, the tendency is simply to extend one of the governing metaphorswe will never prise
98

Bourdieu and Passeron (1977b), 30.

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(distinctive phenomena apart) so long as we are seduced by the attraction of elaborating a single metaphor.99 This tendency indicates the degree to which a specific cultural arbitrary informs knowledge production concerned with articulating cinematic experience within the field, and how such an arbitrary has structurally negated new approaches to the problem. Smith notes how an amalgam of critical assumptions concerning identification, fusing psychoanalysis with both Brechtian and structuralist ideas, has become dispersed and institutionalised100 in the field of film studies, thus suggesting the symbolic violence implicit in these critical assumptions (given the academic context) has at least partially functioned as a pedagogic action of the diffuse kind - a process of symbolic violence exerted by all the educated members of a social formation or group101 which is recognised as (at least partially) legitimate given the dispositions of occupants within this section of the field to respond to such action (as befits the pedagogic ethos indicative of those field fractions aspiring to traditional standards of intellectual recognition). When approached in such a manner, the assumptions of which Smith speaks may be interrogated to reveal the enabling presuppositions (and, more importantly, enabling dispositions) that have allowed them to function within the field. As Richard Jenkins observes: The long term function or effect of pedagogic work is, at least in part, the production of dispositions which generate correct responses to the symbolic stimuli emanating from agencies endowed with pedagogic authority.102 An historical excavation attempting to uncover the content of (and modes of symbolic domination specific to) the cultural arbitrary that informs the varied theoretical articulations of cinematic experience in the field of film studies therefore necessarily involves investigation into the successive conceptual formations that have perpetuated consideration of this issue in the field over many decades. Thus is required examination of a) early theorisations of cinema and its audiences, b) the structuralist project, c) an outlining of psychoanalytic models and the impact of poststructuralist theory, and d) consideration of issues pertaining to intertextuality, postmodernism and the broader concerns of cultural studies. However, this is as much a history of structuration in terms of pedagogic action and corporeal encoding through habitual internalisation (and the cultural arbitrary such structuration enables agents to exhibit in their symbolic productions), as it is an outline of theoretical approaches to the study of the cinematic experience. As an analytical method, this approach objectifies previously objectifying subjects in order to trace how the cultural arbitrary specific to a certain social formation perpetuates recognition (and thus
Murray Smith, Engaging Characters: Fiction, Emotion and the Cinema (Oxford: Oxford University/Clarendon Press, 1995), 4-5. 100 Smith (1995), 6. 101 Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron, Reproduction In Education, Society and Culture (London: Sage Publications, 1977b), 5.
99

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knowledge production) within a particular social arena. This process of objectification provides insight into how structuration tacitly establishes standards of legitimation consecrating individuals within that social arena (in this case the cine-academic or intellectual), an approach allowing deficiencies, bias and predisposition in theorisation and research to be both uncovered and properly addressed - without partaking of the logic informing such deficiencies. Outlining the specifics of a cultural arbitrary in order to determine how scholastic epistemocentrism has informed film theorisation concerned with cinematic experience also indicates to what degree film studies (in its various incarnations historically) has come to function with respect to extra-field structures of distinction (i.e. the universe of lifestyles which inform the field and their corresponding divisions and homologies). Historically, the practices that ultimately came to characterise the field (criticism, historicizing, theorization) originated (as noted in Chapter 1) from pre-existing arenas of cultural production, with their adaptation to the needs of film study importing into the field the implicit bias and overt assumptions of a range of (largely consolidated) critical practices. Indeed, to propose the study or aesthetic evaluation of cinema implied that one wielded enough power (with respect to historically functioning orders of legitimacy) to bestow upon it research significance as an important cultural artefact or social practice, and that, presumably, one was invested with the critical temperament and symbolic capital to properly evaluate it. The study of cinema was thus situated in relation to prevailing orders of cultural evaluation, and the life-styles specific to a range of social and cultural orders (not the least being those linked to academia). Cinematic study thus came to propose a distinctive symbolic system with which to construct experience. This should be regarded as no small achievement. Indeed, in the contemporary era, fluency in the language of film study has become increasingly linked to the production of cultural and symbolic capital (as a means of effectively exercising a degree of social and cultural power), aided by a core of cultural producers who, through their symbolic labour, have attempted to ensure that the study of film is convertible into a symbolic good across a range of field contexts. To engage a specifically Bourdieusian analysis thus provides both an intra-field mapping of field specific practice, and wider consideration of how film studies knowledge production and consumption has increasingly become useful in complex post-industrial societies. This approach is necessary given the changes wrought by the new international bourgeoisie, who have transformed capitalism on a global scale and effected change specifically in regard to finance, design, marketing and purchasing, their power resting upon developments in communications, and to a considerable extent through the control of mass media which has been the site of unprecedented
102

Richard Jenkins, Pierre Bourdieu (London: Routledge, 2002), 107.

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corporate activity in recent decades.103 The rise of this class, whose entry into the mass media and book publishing and distribution has been associated almost uniformly with the decline in standards of newspapers, television and books, and the disruption and impoverishment of education and cultural life,104 has essentially provided the conditions for the rise of the new service sub-class - a class based in the information economy, employed in marketing and advertising, and for whom cinema functions as an important cultural object with significant symbolic profits to be gained from its study and appreciation. If the continuing existence of film studies may therefore in some part be attributed to its place in the drive for symbolic distinction and differentiation that occurs amongst the newer class fractions, then one may assume specific categories of film study to exhibit a quality structurally recognised by members of these fractions as dispositionally attractive (and thus consumed as a component of the lifestyle choices indicative of these specific classes). Indeed, David Swartz notes how the new petite bourgeoisie recruits from:

two different social origins: (1) educated individuals from working class origins who do not accumulate the most prestigious educational credentials and who are unable to convert their credential capital into well-established, prestigious positions; and (2) individuals of dominantclass origins who also do not obtain prestigious educational credentials but who are able to avoid downward mobility by converting their inherited cultural capital as well as social and economic capital into the symbolic goods and services that are easily marketable.105

The social milieu into which members of these genealogically differing groups are cast is one where the drive for stature and elevation (a product of habitus in the form of a disposition for one, an educated set of aspirations for the other) is crucial - given that, either through the benefits of educated cultural capital or inherited economic (and cultural) capital, both groups find themselves on a similar rung of the social ladder in being largely equal in their overall volume of capital. Thus, lifestyles and the capitals associated with them become increasingly important throughout
Arran Gare, Postmodernism and the Environmental Crisis (London: Routledge, 1995), 11-12. Gare (1995), 12. 105 David Swartz, Culture and Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 160-161.
104 103

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this social world as strategic moves in the quest for distinction. Accordingly, those cultural practices that in essence embody dominant class aesthetics are increasingly attractive. The appeal of film studies to these newer classes thus suggests, through the theory of habitus, that specific instances of knowledge production within the field personify this aesthetic - typically inflected in an academic form - and thus exhibit knowledges, skills and values prized as distinctive capitals for use in the contemporary social world. In Pascalian Meditations (2000), Bourdieu argues that the social universes specific to academia exhibit a variation upon the aesthetic taste structure, resulting from the naturalisation of an exclusive social position and its associated world of intellectualist practices. This scholastic disposition is the direct result of struggles within the intellectual field historically, particularly science (knowledge), ethics (i.e. law and politics) and aesthetics breaking away from the urgencies of practice anddissociating themselves from philosophy.106 The conditions of autonomy realised through this separation enabled the pretend mode of imaginary projection to reign unchecked in the knowledge production indicative of these fields, removing the investigating subject from practical considerations of the everyday and prioritising an epistemic posture marked by suspension of motion, engagement (both mental and corporeal) and the concerns of the common world. These conditions of scholastic leisure thus provide:

a site and moment of social weightlessness where one can play seriously. Learning situations, and especially scholastic exercises in the sense of ludic, gratuitous work, performed in the lets pretend mode, without any real (economic) stake, are the occasion for acquiring, in addition to all they explicitly aim to transmit, something essential, namely the scholastic disposition and the set of presuppositions contained in the social conditions they make possible.107

For Bourdieu, this disposition is manifested in three forms of fallacy that universalise the assumptions resulting from privileged conditions of existence. Firstly, scholastic thought, in forgetting the social circumstances permitting it to function, projects the process of meditation typical of the intellectual world into the practices indicative of the everyday world. All comprehension, or recognition, of the nature of inclusion - of practical understanding and the practical mode of knowledge (which informs the scholastic world no less than the common world), is negated. As Bourdieu notes:

106

Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), 50.

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Projecting his theoretical thinking into the heads of acting agents, the researcher presents the world as he thinks it (that is, as an object of contemplation, a representation, a spectacle) as if it were the world as it presents itself to those who do not have the leisure (or the desire) to withdraw from it in order to think it.108

Thus is reified not only the practice of distanced contemplation but, by extension, the concept of the disengaged, first-person singular self - a subject engaged in inner processes through which are attained the fruits of purely mental labour.109 Secondly, scholasticism projects an ethical universalism that ignores (or represses) the conditions of possibility informing and legitimating scholastic ethical discourse. Bourdieu argues:

A number of universalistic manifestos or universal prescriptions are no more than the product of (unconscious) universalising of the particular case, that is, of the privilege constituting the scholastic condition Is there a single philosopher concerned for humanity and humanism who does not accept the central dogma of the rationalist faith, that the faculty of judging well, as Descartes put it, of discerning good from evil, truth from falsehood, by a spontaneous, immediate inner feeling, is a universal aptitude of universal application?110

Finally, scholasticism perpetuates a third fallacy of aesthetic universalism, which reflects the scholastic freedom from the preoccupations typical of the common world. This aestheticism thus prioritises modes of perception and appreciation favouring style, form and the signifier over content, theme and the signified, and results from both breeding in the sense of the familial transmission of cultural capital and prolonged, institutionalised education that enshrines a position of privilege founded upon the uneven distribution of capitals in the social world. The scholastic disposition is thus constituted of both a position in, and orientation to, the world; it enables a whole world of being for the individual who is situated to occupy it. By encoding methods of reflection, evaluation and thought process that are taken up practically through the occupation of a place within the scholastic universe (even whilst that practical logic is negated through the emphasis upon theoretical reason), this situated learning provides the terms through which the world is subsequently experienced, and, importantly, represented to - and for - others.
Bourdieu (2000), 13-14. Bourdieu (2000), 51. 109 Indeed, Bourdieu states: I would say that ignoring everything that is implicated in the scholastic point of view leads to the most serious epistemological mistake in the social sciences. Pierre Bourdieu, The scholastic point of view, Cultural Anthropology Vol. 5, no. 4 (1990), 384. 110 Bourdieu (2000), 65-68.
108 107

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Indeed, denying as largely unthinkable modes of comprehension and conduct that operate outside of its terms of reference, this disposition prioritises reason which in practice functions to divide and mark agents within the social world. As Bourdieu notes: The suspension of economic or social necessityis what, in the absence of special vigilance, threatens to confine scholastic thought within the limits of ignored or repressed presuppositions, implied in the withdrawal from the world.111 There is thus implied a connection between agents structured with respect to the aesthetic taste structure (who are informed, one assumes, by the knowledge productions indicative of scholastic universes in either inheriting consecrated cultural capital or refining embodied distinctions through prolonged education) and those bearing the scholastic disposition - both being the product of privileged conditions of existence that suspend economic considerations and thus produce distinct ways of viewing the world both socially and epistemologically. However, the key difference between these groups results from disparities in economic capital: the scholastic disposition is inflected with asceticism, this being the product of the limited economic capital traditionally available (and recognised) within the academic world (and thus the subsequent encoding of tastes and preferences reflecting this lack). Whilst the embodiment of such principles of vision and division is thus a matter of structural predisposition resulting from situatedness within specific conditions of possibility, such taste and discrimination (in common parlance) are nevertheless traits increasingly desired by a range of social agents given their value as expedient forms of distinction (i.e. as socially dominant markings extended through perceptual judgements). The contemporary diffusion of the scholastic disposition as a socially recognised distinctive trait (and the mental categories of thought and appreciation it produces and re-produces in practice) is thus a result of the need to exhibit cultural competencies and win symbolic profits in everyday social arenas that are increasingly facing, as noted in Chapter 1, a crisis in legitimation and recognition. The diminishing autonomy of cultural and intellectual fields has ensured that academic practice has become more visible in broader social worlds outside the strictly intellectual field, and consequently more attractive (as a marker of distinction) in everyday life where the relative weight of the two principle markers of differentiation informing social space (economic and cultural capital) appear to be open to increasing contestation and negotiation. Contextualising the appeal and functioning of the dispositions indicative of scholasticism in such a manner provides some understanding of how they have to come to inform the knowledge productions issuing from the field of film studies, and how they have become increasingly attractive to agents as they exist in social space (and differ within that social space as distinct, significant,
111

Bourdieu (2000), 15.

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socially pertinent agents). Therefore, whilst a history of the scholastic disposition is not possible here, an outlining of its embodiment in knowledge productions specific to film theory (as pertain to questions of cinematic experience) will provide an understanding of how the principles of vision and division it designates assisted agents in both constituting themselves (as suitably qualified agents) and their work (as new forms of knowledge production requiring degrees of recognition and legitimation) within the field, thus consolidating a specific form of practice and knowledge production within the relations constitutive of film study. In providing examples of film theorisation that partake of the fallacies typical of scholasticism (as an embodied orientation to the regularities of the intellectual world rather than as a result of explicit choice), the overview will also allude to the wider cultural and social affiliations of a select group of theorists, therefore suggesting how a) their particular articulations of the problem of cinematic experience perpetuated a specific cultural arbitrary, and, more broadly, constituted b) communication in the symbolic language of distinction (involving the assertion of competencies and knowledges in the drive for recognition and thus capital.

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2.1 Mapping the cinematic experience: theorization in the field of film studies. Early film theorization.
What is the relationship between the cinema institution and its audience? What is the cinematic experience? This question has confounded film studies for decades, resulting in a wide range of critical reflection, historical research and theoretical speculation. Nevertheless, a general distinction separates research, which attempts to outline the experience of cinema by tracing how it has been represented historically through attention to reviews, film publicity, indirect advertising, audience word of mouth, fan club correspondence, industry records and archive material, etc., and theory, which (often with little systematic empirical work) endeavours to elucidate the conceptual principles that inform and order the phenomena indicative of going to the movies. Whilst this distinction is not inflexible, with each category regularly borrowing from the other (and film criticism exploiting the insights of both), the focus in this chapter will be upon theoretical production, given the need to define an alternative entry point to the question of cinematic experience that confronts the key principles of vision and division that characterise the field of film study - principles which have oriented all other knowledge productions within the field. Film theory may be identified as initiating and sustaining these principles, often - as suggested by both Robin Wood and Richard Maltby112 - setting the agenda within the field of film studies (informing, both explicitly and implicitly, the directions which criticism and historical research have taken), and thus being the focal point henceforth. Discussion regarding the cinema, from the first moment of exhibition, focused upon its nature as chimera, as phantasm or illusion of reality, investigating how basic cinematographic technology came to represent time and space. Such discussion was thus situated within interpretive and evaluative frameworks present within pre-existing aesthetic theory, positioning investigation with respect to the history of artistic forms, their respective functions and associated cultural worth. Analysis of the experience specific to cinema was thus oriented within established fields of cultural production (and evaluation) and conducted with due reference to conventional distinctions functioning within established cultural markets. However, the presence of early reflection upon cinematic experience (as existed in reviews, newspaper articles and the like from approximately 1900 to 1915) cannot be said to have represented a coherent attempt to mark out an autonomous
112

See Chapter 1.

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arena for knowledge production, given the rigid autonomy of the field of cultural production at the time. With no secondary, less specialized realm of cultural production in existence - due most likely to the limited economic structuration of the cinema industry and the lack of any consecrated publishing outlet (such as elite cultural reviews, journals, etc) broadly committed to either mass culture or the cinema - such discussion must be assumed to be a spontaneous (rather than systematic) response to the novelty of the medium, thus adjusted to the logic informing the dominant fields of the day. Hugo Munsterbergs The Photoplay (The Film): A Psychological Study (1916) represents the first systematic investigation of cinematic phenomena. It marked the beginning of formalism in film studies, arguing:

It is the aim of art to isolate a significant part of our existence in such a way that it is separate from our practical life and is in complete agreement with itself. Our esthetic satisfaction results from this inner agreement and harmony, but in order that we may feel such agreement of the parts we must enter with our own impulses into the will of every element, into the meaning of every line and color and form, every word and tone and note. Only if everything is full can we really enjoy the harmonious cooperation of parts. The means of the various arts, we saw, are the forms and methods by which this aim is fulfilled. They must be different for every material. Moreover, the same material may allow very different methods of isolation and elimination of the insignificant and (reinforcement) of that which contributes to the harmony.113

In short, Munsterberg argued that manipulation of the formal elements specific to the medium promised cinema the status of an art form; accordingly, the impulse to mere mechanical reproduction of reality jeopardized this status, for:

the photoplay tells us the human story by overcoming the forms of the outer world, namely, space, time, and causality, and by adjusting events to the forms of the inner world, namely, attention, memory, imagination and emotion.114

Such an approach is notable not simply for articulating an anti-realist and formal stance in attempting to define cinematic specificity, but for its grounding in the scholastic orientation to the world. The Photoplay (The Film): A Psychological Study was a significant step for film theorization
113

Hugo Munsterberg, The Film: A Psychological Study - The Silent Photoplay in 1916 (New York: Dover Publications, 1970), 73. 114 Munsterberg (1970), 74.

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in outlining the psychological needs and operations characteristic of the average spectator when engaging with a film, indeed suggesting the application to the filmic experience of requisite belief structures by viewers in order to participate in its illusion (an early theory of disavowal which suggests spectators function with respect to a double logic). However, Munsterbergs aesthetics were equally significant, understanding a) the conditions of artistic production to be founded upon removal and distance from the world and thus b) the artistic worth of cinema to be evaluated in terms of the systematic reconfiguration of its basic mechanical reproduction of reality. Indeed, as a recognized Harvard psychologist probing the common appeal of the cinema, Munsterberg represents a prime example of scholastic social enclosure practicing the fallacy of aesthetic universalism. His theorization of esthetic satisfaction (resulting) from this inner agreement and harmonyseparate from our practical life universalizes a sensibility of aesthetic feeling or taste entirely ignorant of its conditions of possibility. As Bourdieu notes of Kant (whom Munsterberg is surely echoing), aesthetic pleasure, the pure pleasure that must be able to be felt by every man, as Kant puts it, is the privilege of those who have access to the conditions in which the so-called pure disposition can be constituted.115 Whilst The Photoplay (The Film): A Psychological Study is particularly novel in theorizing an object of popular consumption in such terms (given the autonomy of the fields of cultural production at the time and thus the regulation of position-takings by peer approval), its revolutionary potential is blunted if one interprets Munsterbergs psychological argument to be suggesting the potential of cinema to be in cultivating a specifically scholastic aesthetic sensibility in audiences through the development of a particular formal style. The fields of cultural production in France came to recognise the cinema as an object of academic investigation more rapidly than in Britain or America, given the theoretical developments in artistic modernism that encouraged experimentation with (and consequent theorization of) established modes of perception and experience. Position-takings within French intellectual fields were aided by broad shifts in a number of related cultural and intellectual sub-fields, enabling definitions of legitimacy to be elastic enough to accommodate examination of the cinema. Similarly, Russian cine-theorists were provided the context in which to systematically embrace the study of the cinema, given the establishment (through Kuleshov) of the State School in Cinema Art in 1920 (followed by a government-controlled distribution company in 1922 and, finally, a national film company, Sovkino, in 1925). Although facilitating the theory of montage, these ventures were primarily intended to staunch the flow of foreign films - given a 1923 examination of the Russian film industry discovered that 99 per cent of all films distributed in the Soviet Union were of
115

Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), 73.

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foreign origin, many of them German.116 Therefore, just as modernism supplied the necessary conceptual tools (and symbolic capital) to legitimate the examination of cinema in France, so too did the Russian field of power - although regulating practice in the field of cultural production permit a degree of creative autonomy that was politically expedient whilst enabling cinema to be constituted as a subject of considerable academic debate. Thus was produced a distinct theory of cinema and its audiences, proposing cinematic experience be constructed and regulated through the processes of editing (montage). In effect, Munsterbergs questions regarding the status of cinema as an art form were restaged, but in a different argumentative context. Rather than deeming the cinemas aesthetic quality to be dependent upon the selection and interpretation of its mimetic nature, montage theory emphasized the formal operations of the medium that, through the juxtaposition of images knitted together by the viewer into a coherent whole, produced (politicised) meaning. The possibility of meaning was deemed not to reside in the mimetic quality of the medium per se, but rather in the reconstitution of disparate singular images achieved through editing. As such, the montage theorists understood art to be explicitly related to politics, suggesting ideological efficiency to be a key indicator of aesthetic worth. However, to assume that films fashioned from montage theory achieved the political breakthrough in viewer sensibility and ideological orientation they intended is to ignore the realities of history. Sergei Eisensteins The Battleship Potemkin failed dismally upon its release in Moscow in 1926 - in direct competition with the American Robin Hood. As David Putnam makes clear, Soviet directors were criticized by their masters for making films which were more suitable for educated audiences abroad than for those mass audiences at home that the authorities felt should be the real target of state film-making.117 The reference to educated audiences as opposed to the masses is revealing, given that Eisensteins cinema promotes through inference and association an intellectual cinema that signifies beyond simple narrative concerns. In this sense, Eisensteins work (and montage theory in general), by attempting through differing levels of dissonant juxtaposition to produce conceptual understandings in the viewer as a means to ideological criticism (and awareness), illustrates the misunderstandings of the practical world that scholastic thought embodies - the difference Bourdieu understands between reasonable reason and theoretical, reasoning reason. Eisensteins approach functions as an interesting case study in this regard. His theoretical reflections upon the nature of the cinema suggest its role in raising consciousness as the direct route to social change, for he writes:

116 117

David Puttnam, The Undeclared War (London: Harper Collins, 1997), 105. Puttnam (1997), 106.

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(Montage) is exactly what we do in the cinema, combining shots that are depictive, single in meaning, neutral in content - into intellectual contexts and series. This is a means and a method inevitable in any cinematographic exposition. And, in a condensed and purified form, it is the starting-point for the intellectual cinema. For a cinema that seeks the maximum laconicism for the visual representation of abstract concepts.118

As Bourdieu argues, this scholastic logic of consciousness and its attendant philosophy of calculated, thoughtful action ignores (through a repression of its conditions of possibility) the practical, embodied reason of the everyday that it seeks to understand. The intellectual cinema of montage theory, although attempting to appeal to the everyday masses, distorts that everyday in presupposing a consciousness characteristic of the scholarly posture, thus positing a thinking, rational actor shocked from the everyday into consideration of life distinct from its lived essence. The same criticism applies to the Bolshevik theory of Dziga Vertov, who, whilst arguing for the cinema to concentrate on the everyday man engaged in ordinary tasks (rather than the glossy representations of life typical of Hollywood), advocated a progressive interrogation of the social world via the power and mobility of the camera (in spatial, temporal and causal terms). Vertov describes this camera (or the kino-eye, and the cinema it ideally produces) as such:

I am kino-eye. I am a mechanical eye. I, a machine, show you the world as only I can see it. Now and forever, I free myself from human immobility. I am in constant motion. I draw near, then away, from objects. I crawl under, I climb onto them. I move apace with the muzzle of a galloping horse. I plunge full speed into a crowd.119

Like Eisenstein, Vertov assumes as universal dispositions that are the product of privileged social conditions. Although urging spectators to avoid the contagion of socially misrepresentative mainstream film (and its formal and thematic conventions) in order to embrace the fluidity of the kino-eye, Vertovs attempts at critiquing the social order through cinema are problematic given that he invests the camera with a physical and social ubiquity that enables him (in this instance as film maker) to be in several places and several times at once, to occupy simultaneously several physical and social positions (italics mine).120 Those for whom Vertov is seeking to provide illumination (of social stratification and domination) do not, of course, share this mobility in the
Sergei Eisenstein, The Cinematographic Principle and the Ideogram, Sergei Eisenstein, Film Form: Essays in Film Theory (London: Dennis Dobson, 1963), 30. 119 Dziga Vertov, Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 17. 120 Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), 131.
118

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reality of the everyday. Vertov presupposes of the dominated the spectatorial relation to the world indicative of the scholastic viewpoint, thus assuming theoretical reason to be the universal means of comprehending and negotiating experience, a substitution effectively hindering any consideration of the practical logics present in cinematic experience. Of this scholastic assumption, Bourdieu notes: I am, in the way that things are, situated in a place; I am not atopos, placeless, as Plato said of Socrates, nor rootless and free-floating.121 More importantly, such a substitution effectively cancels out any further comprehension of those social mechanisms of symbolic violence (such as taboo and exchange) that Bourdieu understands as sustaining the logics of practice specific to the everyday. The spectatorial, reflective critique posited by Vertov as manifested through a specifically leftist avant-garde cinema thus appears ineffectual - given misrecognition (for Bourdieu) is socially established in dispositions and beliefs rather than amenable to correction through outright conscious reflection. The 1920s saw a proliferation of avant-garde movements occur globally across cultural and intellectual realms of practice, united by common concerns and yet advocating a range of new approaches to the study of culture and society. Surrealism attempted to determine the similarities between cinematic experience and the Freudian dream state (in order to chart the potential of filmic representation in illuminating repression), but it nevertheless continued the scholastic predisposition to theorize in terms of monological consciousness. As Surrealist Louis Aragon wrote: (American crime films speak) of daily life and manage to raise to a dramatic level a banknote on which our attention is riveted, a table with a revolver on it, a bottle that on occasion becomes a weapon, a handkerchief that reveals a crime (italics mine).122 Here again, the living world (including people and objects) may be freed from an everyday context and heightened by being invested with the ineffable quality supplied through celluloid representation (note Aragons use of distinctive spatial terms indicative of the scholastic gaze [i.e. raise to a dramatic level] to characterise the Surrealist method). Again, the context, necessity and practical function of items, peoples, places and things (and their place within the actions that define the living world) are dispensed with, and, concurrently, the practical logics within which they are situated are also lost. As Ferdinand Alquie notes:

In surrealism the imaginary comes ceaselessly to break the framework of the given, to surpass it, to evoke an inaccessible to which the real itself must, nevertheless, be compared.123
121 122

Bourdieu (2000), 131. Paul Hammond (ed), The Shadow and its Shadow: Surrealist writings on the Cinema (London: British Film Institute, 1978), 29. 123 Ferdinand Alquie, The Philosophy of Surrealism (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1965), 124.

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Indeed, J.H. Matthews notes Andre Bretons celebration of the power of disorientation, experienced through the random viewing of films:

Referring to the cinema, (Breton) remarks: I think what we valued most in it, to the point of taking no interest in anything else, was its power to disorient [son pouvoir de dpaysement]. Disorientation, here, is understood to allude to the power of the cinema to take man out of his natural surroundings, be these material, mental or emotional (Breton) emphasizes the peculiar advantage of the cinema over books, or even plays, when it comes to facilitating the kind of release that surrealists seek from the discouraging spectacle of daily life.124

For the Surrealists, distance and capture is the explicit nature of the cinema in terms of the recording and sharpened rendering of the everyday into an object of contemplation; distanced, dreamlike meditation is therefore the defining element of the cinematic experience. Theorisation of the cinema (and cinematic experience) as an investigative tool for exposing and promoting the Unconscious was thus embedded in scholastic assumption most broadly through postulating the unconscious workings of the audience - a failing indebted to psychoanalysis, to be sure, but one nevertheless obscuring the distance between theoretical logic and practical logic and therefore reducing the cinema and cinematic experience to a rather blunt diagnostic tool. Surrealist film theory exhibited with other avant-garde examinations of cinematic experience a key concern with the effects of dominant representational modes upon audiences, a thrust in film theorization throughout the 1920s and 1930s that may be seen to reflect the intrusion of the field of power into more conventionally autonomous fields of cultural production, particularly in France and Germany. In Germany, for example, the establishment of Universum-Film AG (Ufa) in 1917 united government agencies and privately owned film companies in order to consolidate German film interests, produce effective propaganda and further German culture through filmic adaptation of recognised literary and theatrical works. Thus, fields pertaining to the military increasingly engaged with traditional literary fields via the mediation of politics, resulting in concerted attempts throughout the 1920s to create an overarching operation that could provide film distribution for European countries in the face of growing American dominance. However, the cross-pollination of ideas that resulted from this inter-mingling of fields also produced disciplinary crisis, as the autonomy of previously restricted domains of cultural and intellectual production became compromised. Indeed, even as Walter Benjamin celebrated the
124

J.H. Matthews, Surrealism and Film (Columbus: University of Michigan Press, 1971), 1-2.

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cinemas challenging of the privileged knowledges historically associated with the experience of cultural objects, the Frankfurt School attacked the cinema as harmful cultural refuse (and, by extension, those who sought to examine it). Whilst academic condemnation of the medium was obviously not new, intellectuals such as Theodor Adorno presented a rigorously Marxist appraisal of the medium, decrying its ability to attract, and distract, the masses (or, specifically, the proletariat) given its place in the diffusion of ideology. (Every visit to the cinema, Adorno famously wrote, leaves me, against all my vigilance, stupider and worse.)125
126

Criticism of this

kind was as much an attack upon social conditions conducive to both fascism and American capitalism as it was a response to the growing siege upon traditional cultural and intellectual fields by the logic of the market. As a result, scholasticism and aestheticism were implicitly pitted against the commodity form, (which becomes) the universal structuring principle for all forms of objectivity and subjectivity in capitalist society.127 Intellectuals thus proposing some form of understanding of (or alliance with) the working classes were marked as corrupt, and criticised for attempting traditional recognition in intellectual universes whilst accommodating directives from the field of power. One might suppose Adorno is addressing these infiltrators in his essay Commitment, written much later in 1962. Championing the politics of autonomous art, Adorno criticises cultural production with a specific revolutionary or critical stance, arguing that:

the notion of a message in art, even when politically radical, already contains an accommodation to the world: the stance of the lecturer conceals a clandestine entente with the listeners, who could only be rescued from illusions by refusal of it The uncalculating autonomy of works which avoid popularisation and adaptation to the market involuntarily becomes an attack upon themevery commitment to the world must be abandoned to satisfy the ideal of the committed work of art - that polemical alienation which Brecht as a theorist invented, and as an artist practiced less and less as he bound himself more tightly to the role of a friend of mankind.128

T. W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from a Damaged Life (London: Verso, 1978), 25. More specifically, the Hollywood cinema was an example par excellence of industrial standardization, in terms of part interchangeability and pseudo-individualization. See Bernard Gendron, Theodor Adorno meets the Cadillacs, Tania Modelski (ed), Studies in Entertainment: Critical Approaches to Mass Culture (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986). 127 Lambert Zuidervaart, Adornos Aesthetic Theory: the redemption of illusion (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press), 75. 128 Theodor W. Adorno, Commitment, Andrew Arato and Eike Gebhardt (eds), The Essential Frankfurt Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978), 341-347.
126

125

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Adorno here condemns those (dominated) intellectuals of the period as part of the machinery of the culture industry, their status as cultural arbiters of quality contaminated by commodity fetishism and the imperative to legitimise the banality and conformity of mass culture. Yet, in theorising disinterested, autonomous art as the ultimate form of committed art, Adorno again perpetuates a scholastic form of aesthetic universalism, which, although situated as a calculated response to the declining conditions of the cultural field, nevertheless testifies to his fears of a commitment to the world.

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2.2 Bazin, auteurism, film criticism.

The introduction of sound cinema in the late 1920s enabled not only a new level of synchronization between image and soundtrack in the cinema, it also allowed an aural depth previously lacking in terms of providing degrees of sensory realism. Indeed, the nature of realism in the cinema, in terms of the specific nature of film representation and the role of the cinema audience in organizing and responding to filmic material, greatly concerned one of the most influential of film theorists, Andre Bazin. For Bazin, the history of cinema is one of inevitable progress towards the attaining of a level of realism respecting the causal and temporal nature of the world (sound being another progressive step towards that point). Rather than mediation, reconstruction and the violence of montage, Bazin argued the inherent realism of the cinema should be respected and utilized to tell the stories that reality provides for it, without artifice or the intervention of stylistic codes that seek to disorder the common life-world recognizable to the average person. Thus the cinema must be subservient to the ways of reality, and resolute in its efforts to attain the greatest degree of verisimilitude possible. For Bazin this is a fact to be witnessed rather than a mere formula to be followed in practice, given the photographic image is the object itself, the object freed from the conditions of time and the space which governs itNow, for the first time, the image of things is likewise the image of their duration, change mummified as it were.129 The highest example of cinema for Bazin is therefore a perfect double to reality (even, in some sense, superior to it), and thus marked by some claim to truth. Bazins 1945 essay The Ontology of the Photographic Image notes how:

today the making of images no longer shares an anthropocentric, utilitarian purpose. It is no longer a question of survival after death, but of a larger concept, the creation of an ideal world in the likeness of the real, with its own temporal destiny.130

Whilst previous modes of representation (painting, for example) foreground man as an intermediary agent in their creation, photography allowed for the psychological evasion of time - given the exposure of film to light. Thus, for Bazin:

Andre Bazin, The Ontology of the Photographic Image (1945), Andre Bazin, What is Cinema? (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), 14-15. 130 Bazin (1967), 10.

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for the first time, between the originating object and its reproduction, there intervenes only the instrumentality of a nonliving agent. For the first time an image of the world is formed automatically, without the creative intervention of man.131

This understanding of the psychology of the image permitted Bazin to situate the cinema as an indifferent apparatus of light destined to provide the ultimate simulacrum of reality (the myth of total cinema) - an apparatus subject to ideological use only by those who ruthlessly violated its implicit properties of truthful representation. For Bazin, the cinematic techniques that delegate to an audience the ability to inspect the image as it plays before them (the long take or deep focus, for example), allowed for both the democratization of spectating as well as respect for the spatial, temporal and causal continuity of reality. For these reasons alone Bazin is important as a theorist concerned with the experience of cinema, but his approach to filmgoing is also plagued by the scholastic insistence upon distance, indeed celebrating the existence of an alternate world to the real (albeit one founded upon celluloid [mummified, as it were]). Cinematic experience is here, once again, examined as an invitation to depart from the moment, to extricate oneself from a position in the world and indulge in another. Such a theoretical framework is particularly interesting given Bazins celebration of such filmic movements as Italian Neo-Realism and its largely unsentimental depictions of social and psychological despair, and one wonders if his enthusiasm stems from an understanding of the films political connotations or delight in the mimetic power of the image. It appears to be both, for in The Evolution of the Language of Cinema Bazin notes that through the contents of the image and the resources of the montage, the cinema has at its disposal a whole arsenal of means whereby to impose its interpretation of an event on a spectator, which leads him to celebrate film makers such as Erich von Stroheim, F.W. Murnau and Robert Flaherty, in whose work is displayed the understanding that the camera cannot see everything at once but it makes sure not to lose any part of what it chooses to see, and which therefore is to be regarded as superior to montage as used by Kuleshov, Eisenstein (and) Gance (which) did not give us (an) event (only) alluded to it.132 This respect for the integrity of an actual event, of faith in reality, is odd given Bazins attraction to cinema as doppelganger of reality rather than respecting the integrity of reality per se. Indeed, his consideration of notable directors raised an important question: what is the role of the filmmaker in the filmic process as far as Bazin is concerned? Despite the understanding of the mimetic nature of the cinema, located in The Ontology of the Photographic Image is to be found the seeds of auteurism, given that the personality of the
131

Bazin (1967), 13.

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photographer enters into the proceedings only in his selection of the object to be photographed and by way of the purpose he has in mind.133 This provisional only would be explored by Bazin in his essay La Politique des auteurs (1957), ultimately to be expanded into a total disciplinary principle extended through the film journal he would co-found in 1951, Cahiers du cinema, and later wielded as a symbolic weapon by such future directors as Francois Truffaut, Eric Rohmer and Claude Chabrol. However, auteurism, as a broad movement, modified Bazins love affair with the camera itself and instead instigated a romantic preoccupation with those artists who were deemed able to manifest a unique sense and style via the filmic medium. The author was here understood as an individual who realizes a level of authenticity by disassociating himself (for the auteur is, as Truffaut wrote, a man of the cinema) from the determinations of the cinema industry in its basest form (and the world), to create a body of work defined by a marked personality, both thematically and stylistically. The auteur is no mere worker, nor should he be a slave to cinematic realism out of a natural respect for reality or out of deference to the ontology of the camera (as Bazin suggested). Obviously, authors in auteurist terms are to be regarded as artists, as manifesting a distinct sensibility irreducible to the power of the camera. The auteur approach thus grew to represent a number of strategic intentions and interests: a) to give cinema an air of respectability and status automatically accorded those artists engaged in traditional artistic endeavors, b) to function not only as a politique, but also as an outright hijacking of, in Bourdieus terms, the category of signs used in the process of consecration and legitimation (specifically in the case of French filmmakers) and, c) to topple the reigning symbolic hierarchy (at least as pertained to cinema in France) and to redefine the standards measuring cultural and symbolic capital in existing cultural fields. Indeed, Noel Carroll notes:

(Film critics grounded in auteurism) often act rather like conductors in the game of allusion. That is, by constantly noting allusions in their writings, they implicitly tell the audience that this is how to watch a film while simultaneously rewarding film-makers for their allusions in a way that invites more of the same. Needless to say, allusionism is also valuable to the critic because Andre Bazin, The Evolution of the Language of the Cinema (composite of three articles ranging from 1950 to 1955), Andre Bazin, What is Cinema? (Berkeley: University of California, 1967), 25-27. 133 Andre Bazin, The Ontology of the Photographic Image (1945), Andre Bazin, What is Cinema? (Berkeley: University of California, 1967), 13.
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it affords the opportunity to adopt the role of guardian of specialized knowledge.134

However, in terms of contributing to any understanding of the experience of cinema as regards the audience, auteurism prioritized the vision of the artist - explicitly evading the democratizing visual principles outlined in Bazins approved techniques for cinematic realism and instead developing a powerfully nave romanticism. As noted, auteurism was not simply a theoretical battle waged in aesthetic terms. As a strategic initiative to champion their own status as potential filmmakers, those French critics who later formed the backbone of the Nouvelle Vague envisioned far-reaching outcomes from their auteurist critiques. Whilst more attentive to the specifics of the cinematic medium, auteur theory openly deployed traditional critical methods and aesthetic assumptions without major correction, enabling the average critic familiar with a broad range of works a measure of academic status in applying an increasingly recognized critical tool. Rather than simply retelling plots or functioning as an extension of industry publicity, the critic could now conduct (sometimes elaborate) detective work as a new mode of critical evaluation, in order to trace directorial thematic concerns or stylistic idiosyncrasies across a body of films. Indeed, for the writers of Cahiers, auteurism represented a stance against both mainstream film production and the assumptions of reigning cultural arbiters akin to that taken by French avant-garde filmmakers and theorists of the 1920s. Auteurism would remain a stumbling block throughout the 1960s, confounding academics intent upon superseding a method based upon traditional modes of aesthetic appraisal and evaluation. Indeed, the sheer applicability of auteur theory tempered its academic appeal. With a deferred, if inferior, academic standing granted those writers drawing upon the approach within film journals and film appreciation societies, there was little possibility for the study of film to be regarded primarily as an object of intellectual attention and research in academia. Indeed, the adoption of a broad critical method by both academics and popular journalists, practiced with equal expertise, complicated outright the previous distinction (albeit increasingly shaky) between academic endeavor and popular entertainment. As Thomas Schatz has noted, auteurism itself would not be worth bothering with if it hadnt been so influential, effectively stalling film history and criticism in a prolonged state of adolescent romanticism,135 thus promising to successfully hijack the tools for symbolic domination so effectively - so completely - that Bazins fear of a cult of personality founded upon revered directors was realized. This is a significant development in the history of film
Noel Carroll, The Future of Allusion: Hollywood in the Seventies and Beyond, October, Summer (1981): 57 135 Thomas Schatz, The Genius of the System: Hollywood Film-making in the Studio Era (New York: Faber and Faber, 1989), 5.
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theory, in that an intersection arises between a number of different fields informing the study of film as cultural and (popular) object: the cultural field, the intellectual field, and the economic field, and the various practices undertaken within them, including publishing (popular and scholarly, private and public), film making (popular and avant-garde) and teaching (as pertaining to the intellectual field and the burgeoning area of film studies). What seemed previously to be disputes specific to certain fields, by no means simple but with somewhat definable parameters and obvious positions of allegiance and alignment, spilled over into a broad arena of struggle with diverse sets of logic, positions of power and, accordingly, various attempts at position-takings along various lines. Auteurism, so much a theory and a practice, complicated the differing realms of production. Given these chance conditions of history, the cumulative effects of auteurism shattered any singular logic from dominating the field of film studies, whilst nevertheless maintaining a level of determination over the passage and position-takings of those operating within the realm of the new film studies. In retrospect one might suggest that the strength of auteurism was linked primarily to journalistic practice (in both France and America), given its embedding in the production of popular criticism. Given this relation to the economics of publishing, one can suggest the terms surrounding film study had become firmly grounded in the marketplace, an association from which they could never be extricated entirely. Moreover, much of the auteur work conducted in America would indeed concentrate on the most commercially popular directors of the day, or, alternatively, those having produced work at the height of the Hollywood studio era throughout the 1930s and 40s. Hawks, Ford, Hitchcock, Welles, Huston, Sirk, Ray and a host of other directors, producing work closely tailored to the market and within established genres, were deemed models of auteurist filmic production against which all other evaluative decisions were to be made. In America, at least, auteurism was characterized by American critics concerned with American films, with the language of cinema celebrated by auteurs (including those in France) as almost distinctly American, in both form and content. The result of this attention to some of the most commercially successful filmmakers of the day, however, complicated the ease with which critics could bestow the aura indicative of high art (as described by Benjamin) upon such popular, market-driven products. One must assume that the breakdown of traditionally rigid boundaries delineating cultural pursuits was by this time so sufficiently advanced as to allow a measure of such position-takings, but only within circumscribed realms of cultural production. Alternatively, the strength of auteurism might be seen in its open applicability, theoretically offering a program for academics, critics, filmmakers, publicists and the overall film industry. The ethnocentrism of American auteurism bolstered the claims of the studios and the publicists, and elevated film reviewing and the act of viewing and consuming films in openly commercial contexts.

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Whilst auteurist debates were by no means free of hostility, elements of the practice, to a degree, enabled a form of mutual appreciation to reign unchecked. The theory of the auteur might thus be said to have enabled symbolic traffic between otherwise incompatible fields, for auteurism allowed for the existence of aesthetic practice as much as it acknowledged elements of commerce in that practice - a meeting of art and commerce thus perpetuating double truths, both deemed valid. For if the auteur can be identified as one who evades the system, his tools and canvas (the production capabilities of the studios and their various genres) can also be said to be a result of that system, allowing him the means to manifest his genius. Indeed, as Helen Stoddart notes:
(Commercial restrictions), as well as the necessary involvement of collaborators in film production (cinematographers, producers, editors and so on) were conceived of as so much background noise above which the voice of the auteurs brave spirit would always be heard.136

In order to escape such circular reasoning, the new academics of film required a new critical language that could oust auteurism and re-claim the examination of cinema from the hordes, and, indeed, the struggle against the growing Americanization of the French politique des auteurs would be fought through linguistics and debates over the specificity of cinema, from which auteurism itself had grown.
Helen Stoddart, Auteurism and Film Authorship Theory, Joanne Hollows and Mark Jancovich (eds), Approaches to Popular Film (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1995), 43.
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2.3 The structuralist critique.

In his 1948 essay The birth of a new avant-garde: la camera-stylo, Alexandre Astruc noted how:

the cinema is quite simply becoming a means of expression, just as all the arts have before it. After having been successfully a fairground attraction, an amusement analogous to boulevard theatre, or a means of preserving the images of an era, it is gradually becoming a language. By language, I mean a form in which and by which an artist can express his thoughts137

Astrucs essay, whilst previously claimed for auteurism, presented the possibility of a dual focus for the theoreticians of the cinema. But whilst structuralist criticism would indeed have much to say regarding the cinema as a means of expression, the artist was to languish in brackets on the sidelines of inquiry, if at all. This removal of the artist, auteur or director from the equation satisfied both the theoretical program of structuralism and the urgent need to dismantle the film culture that had sprung up around him. Indeed structuralism would rigorously introduce traditional methods of scientific inquiry to film study, achieving a new measure of definition for the theoretical category of film studies in direct opposition to the practice of film criticism. Thus was established a dividing line, with models of knowledge production and referencing proposed which observed that division. The structuralist approach to the cinema, which embodied the critical disposition of the scholar in outright, self-conscious terms as a strategy of differentiation, would therefore come to assert its distinction to mere film criticism in the form of references, citations and allusions to a body of filmic theory existing previous to the infiltration of auteurist thought. The realism that characterized investigation into the specificity of the cinema previous to the cult of the auteur, and which maintained a measure of influence given Italian postwar neo-realism and the ties between Bazin and the nouvelle vague, obviously became unacceptable as the structuralist method examined the structure of sign systems in their mediation, and indeed constitution of, the world. With meaning the product of the combination of signs operating within a conventional system, rather than by relation to an external referent, the theorization of cinema based upon its relationship to an external reality became questionable. Thus, rather than a theory of cinema examining the historical refinement of the filmic methods to represent reality, cinema under the tenets of structuralism came to be investigated in synchronic fashion, with its mechanical reproduction or duplication of reality deemed dependent upon specific codes involving the ordering of iconic and indexical signs. Cinema could therefore be characterized in regards to its specific

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articulation of the moving photographic image, with structuralist investigation attempting to identify the underlying rules and conventions in its production and combination of signs. Christian Metz was one of the first theorists attempting to discern the functional mechanics of cinema in this manner, and his procedures are perhaps the most fully developed application of this process to film. However, whilst outlining the rudiments of cinematographic grammar, his comparison of film to other discursive systems made clear the distinction that whilst:

students have always implicitly referred themselves to the normative grammar of particular languages (namely, their maternal languages) linguistic and grammatical phenomenon is much vaster than any single language and is concerned with the great and fundamental figures of the transmission of all information.138

For Metz, therefore, the cinema did not strictly qualify as a language in the restricted Saussurian sense, given a) the causal link between the cinematic image and recorded sound (the signifier) and the object photographed and the actual sound (the signified), b) the numerous semiotic differences between the filmic shot and the single word, c) the restrictions upon the ordinary speaker becoming fluent in filmic expression, as opposed to the (theoretically) open access to everyday languages, and d) the ability of filmmakers to invent new filmic utterances (i.e. formal innovations) and remain intelligible. This contrasted with everyday language, where signification outside of the conventionalized system is theoretically deemed to be incomprehensible (in Sausurrian terms). However, Metz nevertheless maintained that film functioned as a langage, a definite signifying process enabling communication, but without the explicit characteristics of a particular language system. Indeed, in Film Language (1968), he argued:

It does not suffice merely to observe that there is nothing in the cinema corresponding to the consecutive clause in French, or to the Latin adverb, which are extremely particular linguistic phenomena, are not necessary, and are not universal. The dialogue between the film theoretician and the semiologist can commence only beyond the level of such idiomatic specifications or such restrictive prescriptions. The fact that must be understood is that films Alexandre Astruc, The birth of a new avant-garde: la camera-stylo, Ecran Francais 144, 30 March 1948. Christian Metz, Problems of Denotation in the Fiction Film, Christian Metz, Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974a), 145.
138 137

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are understood. 139

Metz thus argued that only simplistically might the functional mechanics of language systems and the process of filmic representation be deemed similar (given that both produce meaning through the ordered presentation of signs). However, although deeming the analogy deficient, Metz nevertheless noted:

The concepts of linguistics can be applied to the semiotics of the cinema only with the greatest caution. On the other hand, the methods of linguistics - communication, analytical breakdown, strict distinction between the significate and the signifier, between substance and form, between the relevant and the irrelevant, etc. - provide the semiotics of the cinema with a constant and precious aid.140

Therefore, whilst not exhibiting the normative grammar of particular languages, narrative film was nevertheless theorized by Metz to transmit information in the manner of a language, in terms of exhibiting certain conventional relationships in its processes of signification. The smallest unit of meaning in film comparable to the letters and sounds (phonemes) used to produce the complex signification of words, sentences and paragraphs in language was therefore understood by Metz to be the shot - the one or more exposed frames in a series on a continuous length of film stock. The shot constituted films largest minimum segment, given the cinema is initially deprived of discrete elements. It proceeds by whole blocks of reality, which are actualized with their total meaning in the discourse.141 Combinations of shots produced a sequence (a sort of coherent syntagma within which the shots react (semantically) to each other142), the differences between which Metz proceeded to chart through syntagmatic categories. In this way, the codes specific to cinematic signification (principally on the denotative level) could be outlined. As noted, it is not simply a new theoretical method that is presented in Metzs understanding of cinematic signification. There also exists in Film Language a specific referencing practice that secures this new method as acceptable given its grounding in previous academic literature. Metz rigorously cites a number of other theoreticians, such Bela Balazs, Andre Malraux, Egdar Morin, Jean Mitry, Etienne Souriau and Roland Barthes. Indeed, as Metz himself notes, his linguistic analogy can also be seen as an investigation into the artistic devices of storytelling, representing a
Metz (1974a), 145. Christian Metz, Some Points in the Semiotics of the Cinema, Christian Metz, Film Language: A Semiotics of the Cinema (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974b), 107. 141 Metz (1974a), 115.
140 139

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development in narrative theory indebted to the Russian Formalists - although stripped of their concern with aesthetic evaluation and injected with a technical emphasis upon image processing and its contribution to causal, temporal and spatial sequencing in the signification of film narrative. This lack of attention to aesthetic value - given there is little in Film Language that can be used, unaltered, to evaluate film (which, of course, is not intended to be part of the program) - speaks volumes. With filmic investigation centered upon langue or langage, rather than the practice of cinema as an event (as parole), film critics were by extension implicated in the cinema institutions relations of exchange and thus deemed subject to its operations. With the combinatory rules of cinematic signification now the principle focus of attention, rather than the innumerable acts of filmic construction that involved the auteur, the line was firmly drawn. By advocating rigorously academic structuralist film analysis and theorization, the structuralists achieved the status of knowing subjects through the objectification of those who had increasingly come to occupy the position of experts of cinema - the auteurist breed of film critics. Bourdieu notes:

In class societies, in which the definition of the social world is at stake in overt or latent class struggle, the drawing of the line between the field of opinion, of that which is explicitly questioned, and the field of doxa, of that which is beyond question and which each agent tacitly accords by the mere fact of acting in accord with social convention, is itself a fundamental objective at stake in that form of class struggle which is the struggle for the imposition of the dominant systems of classification.143

At this point in history, film studies as a newly developing field had not yet achieved a hierarchic state of doxa, and whilst the drawing of the line represented by structuralist theory would create two distinct modes of theoretical and critical practice in film study, both nevertheless drew upon a history of literary or aesthetic theory rooted in the scholastic disposition. Auteurism regards the author or director as implicated in, but always in some (gifted) sense removed from the pressures, realities and banality of the everyday process of film making; similarly, structuralism assumes a disengaged position of investigation that examines the language of the cinema not as an instrument for self expression, but primarily as a code that necessarily precedes its manifestation in practice. Whilst the methods differ, both reduce film and its operations to objects of contemplation, to be
142 143

Metz (1974a), 115. Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977a), 169.

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engaged with upon a purely intellectual level - removed, or distinguished from, cultural and social contexts. Structuralism nevertheless would attempt to erect the differences between these two methods into a theoretical principle, introducing a decisively political dimension to theorization that would in effect create what Jim Collins describes as two autonomous film cultures.144
See Jim Collins, Architectures of Excess: Cultural Life in the Information Age (New York: Routledge, 1995).
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2.4 Psychoanalytic film theorization.

If, as structuralist theory proposed, the relationship between signifier and signified is purely arbitrary, with the signifier signifying by nature of its difference to other signs and thus functioning through convention, then practices which partake of the mechanics of language (such as film) are culturally relative and consequently predisposed to prevailing power structures and ideological systems. Accordingly, the ideological analyses of post-structuralist theory consolidated the distinction between film theorization and criticism introduced by structuralism. Indeed, attention to ideological structuration allowed for investigation of the supposed machinations of the cinema institution and its relationship with the cinema audience. By extension, film critics deploying the auteur method were openly situated as components of the film industry, for just as auteurism became a staple of popular film criticism, (so too) it became a structural component of new systems of film financing.145 In this sense, film criticism was roundly attacked as having provided the evaluative conditions under which financial backing for films became linked to a directors auteur status (which increasingly became linked to box-office merit). Thus, the shift into poststructuralism provided a political position in a state of symbolic warfare, with the intricate theory of subject positioning extending the rigour (and prestige) of linguistic theory whilst rejecting the romanticism of the auteur movement.146 Indeed, the embracing of the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan, justified as a logical step forward in combining structural linguistics and Freudian theory, provided both a rigorous investigative tool for research and a significant symbol for intellectual accomplishment. Lacanian theory conferred upon the individual conversant in its principles a distinctive quality in a field still subject to instability (and yet increasingly intellectualized). Post-structuralism was thus a marked attempt at consolidating the new orthodoxy in film studies, with existing alternatives deemed ideologically simplistic and thus suspect. The post-structuralist appropriation of Lacan turned upon his theorization of alienation in the formative stages of psychic life, where an infant is deemed to develop through a specular relationship to an image external to the subject - a Mirror Stage that posits a monological consciousness securing an outside world of objects in an attempt to attain bodily control via an inner psychic process. Lacan writes: We only have to understand the mirror stage as an
Collins (1995), 199. However, auteurism persists, albeit in a drastically diluted form. As Timothy Corrigan notes: Within the commerce of contemporary culture it has become, as both a production and interpretive position, more critically central yet massively different from what it may have been. Timothy Corrigan, A Cinema Without Walls: Movies and Culture After Vietnam (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1991), 135. See
146 145

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identification, in the full sense that analysis gives to the term: namely, the transformation that takes place in the subject when he assumes an image.147 This psychic tableau produces an ego predicated upon the concealment of the real subject by the imaginary image, a principle of introjection and alternating rhythm that is the foundation of relations between self and other in future everyday life. The incest taboo of the Oedipal phase represses the desire of the subject (forming the unconscious), introducing the realm of the Symbolic Order and defining what may or may not be spoken through the network of language. However, this myth of the (Symbolic) self never abolishes the primal sense of lack (i.e. the imaginary sense of unity), for it is predicated upon the emptiness of language, where signs not only presuppose the absence of the object they represent, but signify chiefly via difference to other signs. As Lacan notes: This passion of the signifier now becomes a dimension of the human condition in that it is not only man who speaks, but that in man and through man it speaks, that his nature is woven by effects in which is to be found the structure of language.148 Indeed, Lacan suggests the unconscious to be structured like a language given the place of the signifier and its binding of the child to the image in the manufacturing of the illusory ego, and also in the processes of displacement, condensation, metonymy and metaphor that Lacan (in rethinking Freud) understands as characterizing the workings of dreams. Adapted by those writing for such French journals as Cahiers du Cinema and the later Communications, Lacanian theory perpetuated the scholastic bias present in film studies, even if it fundamentally altered the concept of the monological consciousness. The prioritizing of psychic structuration through language explicitly projects the bias of intellectual meditation (the world positioned as an object of contemplation, as spectacle) into the practical world, theorizing subject formation as predicated upon perception (language providing presence for the subject through representing the visually absent) and thus ignoring any consideration of how understandings arrived at through language might rest upon an unarticulated understanding resulting from the bodily sense ingrained through bodily positioning in the physical world. The scholastic epistemocentrism of Lacan thus postulates an innate psychic condition for the subject, ignoring difference across social contexts and universalizing the conditions of existence specific to scholasticism. Lacanian theory (as read through Bourdieu) thus seems intrinsically the result of field structuration, of a position in social space giving rise to dispositions (and actions as a result of those dispositions) objectively matched to the conditions that inform it. Indeed, much has been made of Lacans dominated position in the field of psychoanalysis throughout the 1950s, with his prose style deemed
also Dudley Andrew, The Unauthorized Author Today, Jim Collins, Hilary Radner and Ava Preacher Collins (eds), Film Theory Goes to the Movies (New York: Routledge, 1993). 147 Jacques Lacan, Ecrits: A Selection (London: W.W. Norton and Company, 1977), 2. 148 Lacan (1977), 284.

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a reaction to those who had excluded him in 1953 from the International Psychoanalytic Association and from free interchange of ideas with the wider psychoanalytic community - (thus making) it impossible for Lacans work to be picked up and judged by anyone outside the group of believers who worked with him.149 Whilst it would be foolish to attribute the specifics of Lacanian theory entirely to either a) this episode, b) the ongoing struggle by the Societe Francaise de Psychanalyse (of which Lacan was a member) for peer recognition, or c) Lacans earlier affiliation with Surrealism, given Bourdieus theorization of the strategies typical of the intellectual field and of dispositions corresponding to position, they cannot be ignored. More incriminating is the theory of the Imaginary register, which enacts a number of scholastic fallacies by universalizing a particular case, producing a vision of the world that is favoured and authorized by a particular social condition, and forgetting or repressing these social conditions of possibility.150 If one approaches Lacanian theory by, as Bourdieu advocates, observing the effects produced on the observation, on the description of the thing observed, by the situation of the observer - to uncover all the presuppositions inherent in the theoretical posture as an external, remote, distant or, quite simply, non-practical, non-committed, non-involved vision,151 one can understand Lacans theory of the immobile child - removed from the world (given the lack of coordination of motor functions) and engaged in identification that results in the fabricated unity of the ego - as a mirroring of the relationship to the world implicit in the scholastic disposition. Both Lacan (positioned as scholar), and child, through a bodily condition of immobility, are marked by a (privileged) lack of inclusion in the world that is overcome through specular relations of power. In identifying with an image outside oneself, mastery is gained over ones unmastered and gender nonspecific body (previously a mass of drives and desires linked to the body of the mother), and yet one is also positioned subserviently to the object in which one is captured. The terms of this relationship appear remarkably similar to the socially stratified position of intellectuals - i.e. dominating those with lesser amounts of cultural and symbolic capital, whilst subordinate to those holding greater amounts of economic capital. As a member of the dominated fraction existing within the dominant class, Lacans theory of captivation in and through the external image may be criticized as resulting from the comprehension of the world produced in and through the relations of domination (and position-takings in response to this domination) indicative of the intellectual field an example of field logic mediating mental labour and thus subsequent knowledge production.
Eve Tavor Bannet, Structuralism and the Logic of Dissent: Barthes, Derrida, Foucault, Lacan (London: Macmillan, 1989), 12. 150 Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), 50. 151 Pierre Bourdieu, In Other Words: Essays Towards a Reflexive Sociology (California: Stanford University Press, 1990a), 60.
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As Bourdieu notes:

The social positions which present themselves to the observer as places juxtaposed in a static order of discrete compartments, raising the purely theoretical question of the limits between the groups who occupy them, are also strategic emplacements, fortresses to be defended and captured in a field of struggles.152

Lacanian theory thus cannot be divorced from Lacans historical position within the intellectual field. As Eve Tavor Bannet argues, it must be remembered that Lacan, a son of the high Parisian bourgeoisie, still desired what the creative tradition had taught him to desire; to be a free, creative and autonomous individual capable of genuine and meaningful encounters with others.153 This provided Lacan with a privileged social trajectory; however, the frustrating of such social (and corresponding career) expectations through his association with the outcast Societe Francaise de Psychanalyse (and the alienation from the International Psychoanalytic Association this entailed), certainly suggests Lacan occupied a dominated position within the established intellectual hierarchical order, and thus refused entry to what in all likelihood constituted the academic nobility. In failing to achieve alignment with the orthodoxy of his respective field, Lacans theoretical production can thus be seen to have embodied the assumptions inherent in the scholastic disposition - but in an altered and distorted form the result of his dominated intellectual position (that one might assume was also an affront to his social expectations.) If one accepts the characterization of Lacanian theory provided by Bourdieus critical framework, then it can accepted that theoretical production reflects the inculcated dispositions resulting from social class, for, as Bourdieu notes, intellectuals do not constitute a social class of their own and are thus subject (like all other groups) to the influences of their socio-economic upbringing (however mediated by the relations of academia). As David Swartz notes:

The struggle for symbolic power involves the capacity to name and to categorize, indeed the capacity to make social groups it calls for symbolic labour, which is precisely the work of intellectuals who, as symbolic producers, are strategically situated for shaping the character of class relations.154

Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (London: Routledge, 1984), 244. Eve Tavor Bannet, Structuralism and the Logic of Dissent: Barthes, Derrida, Foucault, Lacan (London: Macmillan, 1989), 24. 154 David Swartz, Culture and Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 219-220.
153

152

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The adoption of Lacan thus had specific benefits for film theorists, perpetuating a scholastic bias increasingly functioning as a symbolic weapon of differentiation in the field of film studies - in terms of defining who, exactly, was to be regarded as an appropriately recognized intellectual with the right to theorize film. Indeed, this state of symbolic warfare (as noted previously in regards to structuralist film theory) should not be dismissed as simply a form of jostling for position, but recognized as a manifestation of the inherent discrimination of taste that Bourdieu understands to be embedded in the evaluative dispositions specific to social classes. This inequitable system of pure aestheticism and vulgar sensation is embodied in terms of evaluation and criticism differently according to each field, but Bourdieu understands it to turn upon a:

fundamental refusal of the facile, in all the meanings which bourgeois ethics and aesthetics give to the word; that is, pure taste, purely negative in its essence, is based on the disgust that is often called visceral (it makes one sick or makes one vomit) for everything that is facile - facile music, or facile stylistic effect, but also easy virtue or an easy lay what pure taste refuses is indeed the violence to which the popular spectator consents (one thinks of Adornos description of popular music and its effects); it demands respect, the distance which allows it to keep its distance.155

It is important to recognize the appropriation of Lacanian theory by a certain breed of film theorists with regards to this fundamental differential taste structure, for it surfaced as one of the key methods of symbolic division wielded in order to draw a line of demarcation (as noted previously) between the privileged and the common agents within the field of film studies. Christian Metz, following his earlier structuralist investigations, embraced the melding of structural linguistics and Freudian theory pursued by Lacan. Indeed, in his later series of psychoanalytic essays (translated as The Imaginary Signifier [1977]), he proceeded to examine not only the cinema in terms of its appeal to unconscious desire, but also suggested the qualities required of the ideal film theoretician. His program began with an important caution:

If the effort of science is constantly threatened by a relapse into the very thing against which it is constituted, that is because it is constituted as much in it as against it, and because the two prepositions are here in some sense synonymous(The theoretician) is always in danger of being swallowed up in the very imaginary which is sustained in the cinema, which makes the
155

Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (London: Routledge, 1984), 486-488.

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film likeable, and which is thus the instigation for the theoreticians very existence ( = the desire to study the cinema to use more ordinary terms): to sum up, the objective conditions that give rise to the theory of the cinema are one and the same as those that make that theory precarious and permanently threaten it with sliding into its opposite, in which the discourse of the object (the native discourse of the cinematic institution) insidiously comes to occupy the place of discourse about the object.156

But this is not simply a theoretical caution, but constitutes a strike against a specific target, for as Metz continues:

This is the risk that has to be run, there is no choice; anyone who does not run it has already fallen victim to it: like certain cinema journalists, he gossips about films in order to prolong their affective and social indigence, their imaginary, that is, perfectly real power.157

The nature of this preliminary caution speaks volumes when one approaches Metz (and his adoption of Lacan) through Bourdieu. Metz requires the screen theorist to maintain a critical distance from the cinematic imaginary, to minimize the risk of perpetuating the discourse of the object (akin to the gossip of cinema journalists) and thus construct a discourse about the object. Identifiable here are two assumptions that result from an evaluative taste system specific to a certain social class, and broader intellectual dispositions. Firstly, the distance required by the film theoretician is an attempt to bracket the sensations and pleasures - the emotional response - to cinema. Whilst this critical distance has relevance for Metzs project in properly objectifying the cinematic imaginary, it also serves to erect and maintain a social distinction between two types of responses to the cinema (positioned to correspond to class). Metzs caution here extends the aesthetics of pure taste to condemn those journalists whose understanding of the cinema is hopelessly based upon an under-theorized submission to its charms, a stance indicative of the taste of reflection, as Bourdieu notes:

The object which insists on being enjoyed, as an image and in reality, in flesh and blood, neutralizes both ethical resistance and aesthetic neutralization; it annihilates the distancing power of representation, the essentially human power of suspending immediate, animal
156

Christian Metz, The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977), 5. 157 Metz (1977), 5.

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attachment to the sensible and refusing submission to pure affect, to simple aisthesis (sensation).158

Furthermore, in exercising the evaluative logic specific to a particular social position, Metz universalizes an exclusive form of aesthetic judgement, leading him:

to cancel out the specificity of practical logic, either by assimilating it to scholastic knowledge, but in a way that is fictitious and purely theoretical (in Metzs terms, the risk that has to be run), or by consigning it to radical otherness, to the non-existence and worthlessness of the barbarous or the vulgar (represented by Metzs condemnation of the gossip of cinematic journalism).159

Indeed, whilst Metz acknowledges the lure of the cinematic imaginary upon him, he still feels theoretically able (and, indeed, if one follows Bourdieus method, socially required) to suspend its effects and begin his study. Attention to Bourdieus theorization of the social judgement of taste illuminates how Metz makes this leap, but it does not excuse him methodologically, for as Bourdieu argues: We are no less separate from our own practical experience than we are from the practical experience of others160. Metzs methodology thus embraces the deficiencies typical of scholasticism, perpetuating profound errors that segregate the terms of experience (of, in this case, the cinema) between the world in which one thinks and the world in which one lives. This segregation contributes as much to defining the theoretician of the cinema as it does to understanding the nature of the cinema, for as Metz notes:

To be a theoretician of the cinema, one should ideally no longer love the cinema and yet still love it: have loved it a lot and only have detached oneself from it by taking it up again from the other end, taking it as the target for the very same scopic drive which had made one love itcarry the institution inside one still so that it is in a place accessible to self-analysis, but carry it there as a distinct instance which does not over-infiltrate the rest of the ego with the thousand paralyzing bonds of tender unconditionality. Not have forgotten what the cinephile one used to be was like, in all the details of his affective inflections, in the three dimensions of
158 159

Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (London: Routledge, 1984), 489. Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), 51. 160 Bourdieu (2000), 51.

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his lived being, and yet no longer be invaded by him: not have lost sight of him, but be keeping an eye on him.161

This near-exorcism of the body and sensation exemplifies the practical knowledge of the intellectual field, embodied as a predisposition to theoretically bracket off the real in order to perpetuate both social and symbolic differentiation. With these caveats in mind, The Imaginary Signifier may be approached in a new light. In extending Lacan, Metz was provided with the means to extend his structuralist polemic and continue the pointed criticism of cinematic realists (and those writers drawing upon them), whilst significantly re-theorizing cinematic experience. Suggesting that the cinema, through the heightening of visual (and aural) perception and reduced motor activity, produced an environment similar to that of the dream state (or day dream state), Metz attempted to chart the play of spectatorial fantasy resulting from the attenuation of the ego. Indeed, Metz suggests we understand various cinematic structures and phenomena because we have already encountered them in the course of our psychosexual development.162 The cinema is therefore configured as a psychic machine, requiring a) the technical elements of the medium (designating not simply the projector, but the idea of the camera and of capture that is implicit when a spectator is marked as occupying a position of reception), b) the environment of filmic projection (the darkened theatre, the rowed seating, and the symmetry between film screen and the projection originating from behind the spectators head), c) the film text (dependent on both narrative and cinematic conventions for visual illusion) and d) the conscious and unconscious processes of the spectator (which are understood to have been refined through the knowledge of cinematic practice).163 This understanding of cinema as psychic machine is strongly indebted to the theory of the basic cinematographic apparatus, as developed by Jean-Luc Comolli, Jean Narboni and Jean-Louis Baudry. Suggesting the cinemas representational devices to fundamentally serve the imaginary reality of the free market system, Comolli and Narboni argue (in their 1972 essay Preface to Young Mr. Lincoln):

When we set out to make a film, we are encumbered by the necessity of reproducing things not as they really are but as they appear when refracted through ideology. This includes every stage in the process of production: subjects, styles, forms, meanings, narrative traditions; all Christian Metz, The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977), 15. 162 Noel Carroll, Mystifying Movies: Fads and Fallacies in Contemporary Film Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 33.
161

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underline the general ideological discourse. The film is ideology presenting itself to itself, talking to itself, learning about itself.164

Indeed, Baudry, in Ideological Effects of the Cinematographic Apparatus (1971), suggests that the historical tendency of the cinema to traffic in fabrication and illusion (rather than the transmission of any essential reality) reflects the fundamental nature of the basic cinematographic apparatus itself, given the disguised selection of point of view and ordering of possible space that is produced by the camera, and the continuity given to disparate images by a spectator who knits unfolding images into a seamless, sequential whole. For Baudry, as for Vertov, this process alters the psychic nature of the subject, for if the eye is no longer fettered by a body, by the laws of matter and time, if there are no assignable limits to its displacement - conditions fulfilled by the possibilities of shooting and of film - the world will be constituted not only by this eye but for it,165 with the relational terms instituted by the cinema thus understood as constructing a subject that is fully consonant with the transcendental subject of Western philosophical idealism.166 Metzs indebtedness to these works167 is present in both his theorization of the cinematic imaginary, and his understanding of the cinema patron as a construct, a product of the cinematic apparatus. Through apparatus theory, Metz is provided a firm ground upon which to read the cinema through Lacan, and thus theorizes cinematic experience as a restaging of the passage through the Imaginary and Symbolic registers. The Imaginary Signifier therefore begins by theorizing the conditions of cinematic projection and reception, a space Metz understands as replicating the relations of Lacanian imaginary capture by ascribing to the cinema patron the ability to explore through heightened looking. As Metz writes:

When I say that I see the film, I mean thereby a unique mixture of two currents: the film is what I receive, and it is also what I release, since it does not pre-exist my entering the auditorium and I only need close my eyes to suppress it. Releasing it, I am the projector, Robert C. Allen (ed), Channels of Discourse, Reassembled (London: Routledge, 1992), 166. Jean-Luc Comolli and Jean Narboni, Preface to Young Man Lincoln, Screen 13 (1972): 3. 165 Baudry, Jean-Louis, Ideological Effects of the Cinematographic Apparatus, Philip Rosen (ed), Narrative/Apparatus/Ideology (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 292 166 Judith Mayne, Cinema and Spectatorship (London: Routledge, 1993), 46. 167 This indebtedness is important. Joan Copjec argues: It was through the concept of the apparatus - the economic, technical, ideological institution - of cinema that the break between contemporary film theory and its past was effected. Joan Copjec, The Orthopsychic Subject: Film Theory and the Reception of Lacan, October 49 (Summer, 1989): 55.
164 163

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receiving it, I am the screen; in both these figures together, I am the camera, which points and yet records.168

The first form of cinematic identification recognized by Metz therefore replicates the importance of perception outlined in Lacans theory of the Imaginary register, and is made with the act of looking resulting from the apparatus of projection (which delegates the power of looking to the spectator, who is thus awarded an almost transcendental position in relation to the visual field). The second form of identification, enabled by the first, is tied to the characters or events on screen. This hierarchy of cinematic looks correlates with Lacanian theory, for just as Lacan understands unconscious psychic activities (such as dreaming) to stage fantasies of the disordered body (restricted by the ego when conscious), so too does Metz suggest the cinematic imaginary offers figures for identification, allowing the constituent parts of the spectators own psyche (to be) paraded before her or him, as well as a sense of experiencing desire for the perfected images of individuals.169 The machinery of the cinematic apparatus, therefore, produces (a) transcendental (and) yet radically deluded subject, since it is the institution (and even the equipment) that give it this place.170 Thus, if for Lacan the concept of desire can be understood as emanating from lack, or the craving for presence within the Symbolic world of the absent object and the corresponding eternal search to locate substitutes to construct again the integrated whole of the Imaginary, then Metzs cinematic apparatus provides the arena in which this drama may be replayed. With absence projected into presence, the cinema (through constructing a sub-motor and hyper-perceptive state) restages the specular positioning of the child; however, whilst the cinema reactivates (through its construction of fictional presence through photographic verisimilitude) the imaginary unity of the absent image found in the mirror stage, it also highlights the absence of the spectator from the screen (given they are allocated a position where they can do little more than simply sit and gaze). The spectator, like infant, is thus situated between an illusion of imaginary unity and complete lack (corresponding with Lacans notion of the infants realization of difference from the mother). As Metz argues, the cinema is therefore both similar and different to the mirror of childhood, for it is always the other who is on the screen; as for me, I am there to look at him. I take no part in the perceived, on the
168

Christian Metz, The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977), 51. 169 John Ellis, Visible Fictions (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982), 43. 170 Christian Metz, The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977), 51-52.

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contrary, I am all-perceiving. All-perceiving as one says all-powerful.171 Thus, the play of discovery and loss is replicated, for as in Lacanian theory the spectator is understood to overcome the sense of their absence from the screen (and respond to lack) by becoming presence again (attaining subjectivity) through the realization of their central role as an omniscient, perceptual subject (an I) without whom the film could not be received, could not exist. Yet Metz pushes further to understand cinematic viewing as eroticised looking, both voyeuristic and fetishistic. He theorizes such visual pleasure as a male strategy undertaken to combat the fear of the sexual difference of the female other, and the fear of castration that the male feels as a result of that difference. Indeed, for Metz, the cinema creates a male form of cinematic subjectivity marked by sadistic voyeurism (given the cinematic devices that place the spectator in a masterful visual position) and fetishism (given the cinemas making perpetually present [via the image] what is physically absent [the object photographed]). As Stephen Neale argues:

Both must always exist together. Hence all those strategies of mainstream cinema for soliciting the look: eye-catching compositions, sets and costumes, the display of stars and dcor, and forms of movement and action.172

Thus, the imaginary signifier, in its emphasis upon the overcoming of distance and lack via the heightening of presence, is deemed to construct a pleasured male subject, gazing with impunity upon the other. Although unable (or unwilling) to situate his work with respect to social position (and the lifestyles choices corresponding to social position), Metzs position vis--vis social and symbolic space resonates throughout The Imaginary Signifier. Indeed, the essays collected in The Imaginary Signifier, whilst remarkably influential, repeatedly (impute) to (their) object what belongs in fact to the way of looking at it, (projecting) into practice an unexamined social relation which is none other than the scholastic relation to the world.173 Thus the key criticism of Metz (from a reflexive sociological perspective) is his inability to transcend the intellectualist bias embedded in the scholarly gaze, thus producing a theory of cinematic experience symbolically efficient (in securing the distance between film theory and film criticism), yet misrepresentative of lived cinematic experience (i.e. in terms of practical comprehension). The Imaginary Signifier is yet another artefact from the field of film studies that exists as a time capsule, speaking of struggles for scholarly recognition through its very language and methodology. Indeed, Metzs adoption of Lacanian
171 172

Metz (1977), 48. Stephen Neale, Genre (London: British Film Institute, 1980), 34.

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psychoanalysis, in terms of the focus upon the scopic drive, provides a number of advantages: a) the denial of any theorization of spectatorship grounded in bodily reactions, and b) the perpetuation of aesthetic distinction (the result of class distinction), and thus the possibility of symbolic profits. The Imaginary Signifier states:

It is no accident that the main socially acceptable arts are based on the senses at a distance, and that those which depend on the senses of contact are often regarded as minor arts [e.g. the culinary arts, the art of perfumes, etc]. Nor is it an accident that the visual or auditory imaginaries have played a much more important part in the histories of societies than the tactile or olfactory imaginaries.174

This position aligns Metz theoretically with an aestheticism typical of the culturally and intellectually elite, thus indicating either a) Metzs powerful field location, or b) Metzs dominated field location and the desire to shift from that location (in other words, an indication of an intended position-taking). Indeed, Metzs use of psychoanalysis might have corresponded more broadly with the rise of new petite bourgeoisie at the time, and their attempts at replicating the life style and inherent evaluative criteria exhibited by the new bourgeoisie. Bourdieu argues:

Psychoanalysis, the rationalizing mystique of the age of science, is freely interpreted to supply the legitimating discourse which gives the appearances of a rational foundation to the arbitrary (but socially necessary) presuppositions of an ethos. And the slide from ethics to therapy produces the need for the therapist of which it is the product; there is no doubt that the search for psychological health through recourse to specialists in the rational cure of souls (psychoanalysis, psychotherapists, marriage guidance counselors and so on) stands in a dialectical relation to the development of a body of professionals capable of producing the need for their own product, i.e. a market for the goods and services they are equipped to supply.175

If it can be suggested that Metz occupied a dominated position in the broader intellectual field (and certainly his inclination to study film suggests as much), then one might expect this position
173

Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), 53.

174

Christian Metz, The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977), 59. 175 Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (London: Routledge, 1984), 369.

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corresponded to a dominated position in the outer social order. Consequently, Metzs appropriation of Lacanian psychoanalytic theory may be understood as not only resulting from a specific academic disposition (or feel for the game), but also as a key response to social changes and the shift in ethos (as exemplified by the new petite bourgeoisie) occurring across classes at the time. As a realm of insecurity and change, newly infused with the need for profit, distinction, and corresponding symbolic domination and thus characterized by its use of cultural capital and symbolic capital that the cine-theorists now required of players for appropriate recognition (at least those who aspired to be theoreticians of the cinema), the developing field of film studies was clearly one of the cultural realms where those of intermediate position in the class structure laboured for definition - where agents with approximately equal amounts of cultural and economic capital sought to define themselves (as a result of either upward or downward social mobility). As Bourdieu notes:

In general, the indeterminacy of the new or renovated occupations means that the heterogeneity of the agents trajectories is particularly marked Unlike the declining petite bourgeoisie the members of (the new petite bourgeoisie) make contradictory choices which seem to express the antagonisms between the values of their original milieu and the values of their present milieu: some reject the qualities which most of the others put in top place (refined, stylish, amusing) while others reject the qualities most prized by the established petite bourgeoisie (level-headed, classical). These uncertainties or even incoherences no doubt exist in each of the members of the new professions, who have to invent a new life-style, particularly in domestic life, and to re-define their social co-ordinates. If the indeterminacy of a position favours bluffing or euphemizing strategies, there is a price to be paid in terms of the occupants uncertainty as to his social identity.176

Indeed, whilst The Imaginary Signifier suggests the embodiment of the scholastic gaze and its deployment for the strategic purpose of position-taking, the field of film studies ultimately came to
176

Bourdieu (1984), 359-360.

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subject this type of theorization to criticism, for as the study of film became a form of cultural consumption tied to the drive for symbolic distinction amongst the newer classes and class fractions, so too did its methodologies come to reflect lifestyle philosophies based around consumption, pleasure, and self-definition - in the form of film-feminism and ultimately postmodern theorization. As such, Metzs psychoanalytic writings might be seen as one of the final film theories embodying (and utilizing) the scholastic gaze in its most obvious form to win symbolic profits (albeit as a result of adaptation to the objective conditions of the intellectual field existing at the time), which, when contrasted with the newly emerging classes of the period, aligns it with the evaluative taste system indicative of the established (and then declining) petite bourgeoisie - the ageing class opposed by the rising new petite bourgeoisie. As such, The Imaginary Signifier may be understood as anticipating the new wave of film theorists who, whilst similar to Metz in labouring to consolidate film theory, would nevertheless move beyond his understanding of the cinema as imaginary signifier to explore the possibility of progressive pleasures within the experience of cinema.

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2.5. Psychoanalysis interrogated: Mulvey and feminist film theorization.

Feminist analysis represented yet another decisive moment in the theorization of cinematic experience, for it segmented cinema audiences with respect to gender, thus (theoretically) shifting emphasis from the singular cinematic experience to consideration of the differences across audiences (and thus experiences of cinema). Given Metzs perceived reduction of the difference in each individual into the straight opposition (of) masculine/feminine177, feminist theorists interrogated the potential of the imaginary signifier to reflect female psychic desire, thereby emphasizing the cultural construction of gender and the role of patriarchal cinema in perpetuating inequitable gender definitions. Claire Johnstons essay Womens Cinema as Counter Cinema (1973) represented one of the first articulations of this approach, arguing: It has been at the level of the image that the violence of sexism and capitalism has been experienced.178 Johnstons work greatly expanded feminist discourse in film studies by not only pinpointing sexual myths in narrative cinema and the perpetuation of female stereotypes, but also by investigating the prerequisites necessary for a genuine countercinema. However, the foundations of feminist psychoanalytic theory rested firmly upon Laura Mulveys Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975). Mulveys essay reconfigured the theory of the scopic drive to focus upon the cultural construction of the gaze, in order to highlight the ways in which (mainstream films) formal preoccupations reflect the psychical obsessions of the society which produced it and, further, to stress that the alternative cinema must start specifically by reacting against these obsessions and assumptions.179 Mulveys breakdown of the structure of looking in the cinema prompted an exploration of how male castration anxiety (induced by the perceived lack of women) is regulated through the cinematic structures of voyeurism and fetishism, with sexual difference mastered and woman rendered safe through the subordination of cinematic looking by the visual trajectories of character gazing operating within the fiction - thereby channeling identification in relation to the orders of gender, sexuality and social identity and authority marking patriarchal society.180 However, the approach of Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema continued to develop the armour of film theory. Mulveys methodology for the liberation of the female image condemns the
Claire Johnston, Anne of the Indies, Ann E. Kaplan (ed), Psychoanalysis and the Cinema (New York: Routledge, 1990), 71. 178 Claire Johnston, Notes on Women's Cinema (London: Society for Education in Film and Television, 1973), 2. 179 Laura Mulvey, Visual and Other Pleasures, (Houndmills: Macmillan, 1989), 15-16. 180 Stephen Neale, Masculinity as Spectacle, Steven Cohan and Ina Rae Hark (eds), Screening the Male: Exploring Masculinities in Hollywood Cinema (London: Routledge, 1993), 11.
177

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commercial institution of cinema, thus stressing the non-linear aesthetics of alternative cinema and its inherent rupturing of the filmic conventions necessary for the masculine gaze. This expands Metzs condemnation of film journalists and those under the sway of the discourse of the object, for in Mulveys estimation such discourse perpetuates gender subordination. Again, film criticism is implicitly criticized. And yet, in attacking both the construction of visual space and the active nature of the male character typical of commercial cinema, Mulveys theorization suggests a broader critique of established Western narrative traditions and genres. This positions her against Metz (who appears content to merely chart the characteristics of the scopic drive) but also against an aesthetic tradition in the arts, thus suggesting a corresponding position in the social-class structure. As a feminist intellectual of the 1970s, Mulvey can be understood as having occupied a dominated position within the intellectual field - indeed, perhaps doubly dominated - for as Bourdieu notes when analyzing the composition and construction of classes: The secondary principles of division (such as country of origin or sex), which are likely to be ignored by an ordinary analysis until they serve as a basis for some form of mobilization, indicate potential lines of division along which a group socially perceived as unitary may split, more or less deeply or permanently.181 Whilst difficult to speculate upon the state of gender relations in academia during the 1970s, film feminism as a derivation of broader movements tackling social inequality throughout the decade certainly constituted a decisive theoretical development in film theory, with previous film theory explicitly cast as being written by men, for men. However, other feminist theorists were quick to criticize Mulveys essay for its perceived theoretical pessimism. But Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema was not simply a response to Metz. The essay reflected the intellectual culture of the time, particularly the interest in Louis Althusser and Roland Barthes, whose works, Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes Toward an Investigation), and S/Z, (1971 and 1970, respectively), provided influential theories of subject recognition and positioning. Indeed, Mulvey clearly adapted Althusser for Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, employing the concept of ideology (interpellating) individuals as subjects182 through the demarcation and exclusion implicit in representational systems. The work of Barthes, however, was more problematic. Although S/Z theorized the codes through which representational systems were understood to legitimate a particular mode of reading (thus confirming an attendant mode of subjectivity), therefore providing a route to possible liberation from ideological systems (i.e. counter-readings, and, by extension, a countercinema, as explored in the work of Johnston
Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (London: Routledge, 1984), 107. Louis Althusser, Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses, Louis Althusser, Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (London: New Left Books, 1971), 162-163.
182 181

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and Marie-Claire Ropars), Barthes examination of the writerly text (the text that disrupts subjectivity) remained a stumbling block for the feminist agenda and film theory more broadly. For Barthes had suggested that readerly discourse (in theoretical translation, mainstream narrative film) exhibited writerly elements, complicating the ability of feminist film theory to easily correlate the writerly text with avant-garde film. Mulvey therefore continued to engage apparatus theory and the cinematic experience it proposed - an approach grounded in Lacan, Baudry and Metz and thus offering a critical language consecrated by the field of film studies. As a result, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema was unable to theorize what came to be understood as the pleasures or alternative identifications available to women (and by extension minority groups) within the cinema, for in adapting Lacan and Freud (as articulated through Althusser and Metz) Mulveys framework was too deterministic to allow for identification beyond the powerful male or castrated female. Unlike Johnsons work, Mulveys examination of visual pleasure (perhaps borrowing the tone of Althusserian and Lacanian theory as much as its content) does not provide the tools for liberation from patriarchy; rather, her essay seeks to:

bring closer an articulation of the problem to begin to make a break by examining patriarchy with the tools it provides to at least advance our understanding of the status quo, of the patriarchal order in which we are caught.183

In this sense, Mulvey articulates what film theorist Teresa de Lauretis understands as the:
Contradiction specific to, and perhaps even constitutive of, the womens movement: a twofold pressure, a simultaneous pull in opposite directions, a tension towards the positivity of politics, or affirmative action in behalf of women as social subjects, on one front, and the negativity inherent in the radical critique of patriarchal, bourgeois culture, on the other. It is also the contradiction of women in language, as we attempt to speak as subjects of discourses which negate or objectify us through their representations.184

Francesco Casetti has outlined in detail the rise of feminist film theory in the latter half of the 1970s, when annual meetings were established, such as the Edinburgh Film Festival, new journals
183 184

Laura Mulvey, Visual and Other Pleasures (Houndmills: Macmillan, 1989), 15. Teresa de Lauretis, Rethinking Womens Cinema: Aesthetics and Feminist Theory, Robert Stam and Toby Miller (eds), Film and Theory: An Anthology (Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, 2000), 317.

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were established, such as Camera Obscura (preceded, however, by Woman and Film [1970-1972]), anthologies were published that gave a clear picture of the theoretical framework, (and) positions for teachers opened at universities, in departments of Womens Studies.185 Thus, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema, however much implicitly criticizing previous psychoanalytic film theory, perhaps underestimated the theoretical need for feminist writers to break with the implicit misogyny and conceptual limitations of that tradition.186 One must assume that positions in film study were understood by film feminists at the time to be won principally through acts of subversion rather than through the adaptation (and thus conservation) of existing theoretical frameworks and their corresponding intellectual hierarchies. Feminist film theory thus required a systematic agenda, a program for immediate action to build a countercinema, rather than a prolonged discussion of theoretical preliminaries - which Mulvey appeared to be suggesting: There is no way we can produce an alternative out of the blue, she wrote, we are still separated by a great gap from important issues for the female unconscious.187 Throughout the latter half of the 1970s and into the early 1980s, examinations of female cinematic identification (supported by a network of film journals and growing academic positions) opened up threads of possibility that previous theory had ignored or closed down - specifically, the examination of film history (as opposed simply to the history of filmic texts) and, thus, issues regarding text and context. The situating of female spectators historically, rather than as constructed entities manufactured through the cinematic apparatus, enabled feminist theorists to examine the economic dimension of cinematic production, distribution and exhibition in conjunction with issues specific to the representational strategies of filmic texts, thus providing new conceptual horizons leading to reception theory and attention to the spectator as an entity functioning independently of textual determination. As Robert C. Allen notes, this development represented a most inclusive category of issues surrounding the confrontation between the semiotic and the social reception thus (having) at least four overlapping but theoretically and methodologically distinct components (being exhibition, audience, performance and activation).188 This new feminist agenda not only represented a departure from previous film theory in considering both a specifically feminist countercinema,189 and the relationship of that
Francesco Casetti, Theories of Cinema: 1945-1995 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1993), 226. Constance Penley, for example, champions a model of fantasy as a corrective to the cinematic apparatus. See Constance Penley, Feminism, Film Theory, and the Bachelor Machines, M/F no. 10 (1985). 187 Laura Mulvey, Visual and Other Pleasures (Houndmills: Macmillan, 1989), 15. 188 Robert C. Allen, From exhibition to reception: reflections on the audience in film history, Screen 31:4 (1990): 349. 189 For further examination of the characteristics denoting a specifically feminist countercinema, see Annette Kuhn, Womens Pictures: Feminism and Cinema (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982).
186 185

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countercinema to the avant-garde in terms of personal (female) expression,190 but also in suggesting a reevaluation of the conditions of the scholastic universe itself. By examining the historical nature of cinematic experience, feminist analysis complicated the distinction between film theory and film criticism, in the sense of analyzing the popular aesthetic (in terms of filmic consumption) for progressive political and social content. This approach constituted an attack upon the social and historical conditions that allowed for the continuing existence of the scholastic order, with traditional theorizations of cultural and social practice interrogated by feminist critics as manifestations of the symbolic division between the sexes. The feminist program thus troubled the assumptions of film theory and the scholastic reason (and history) upon which many of its most representative productions rested. Beyond examining traditional theorys complicity in the consolidation of a discriminatory taste hierarchy, the new concerns of feminist film theory exposed a) the forgetting of social history implicit in academia, b) the dispositional underpinnings of the objective scholarly posture and c) the scholarly logic that perpetuated the ongoing trade in symbolic capital. The work of Tania Modelski provides an example of this feminist program. Femininity as mas(s)querade: a feminist approach to mass culture (1986) and, as pertains specifically to cinema, The Women Who Knew Too Much (1988), explicitly examine the system of symbolic violence through which cultural products, and the discourses which both inform and legitimate them, are infused with inequitable gender definitions resulting from systems of social domination and recognition. These works represent a decisive critique and an important moment in the theorization of cinematic experience, given a) their rethinking of the required methodological steps for constructing film theory that avoids the assumptions of traditional scholarly discourse, b) their highlighting of the link between scholastic reason, scholastic fallacy and sexism, and c) their understanding of sexual inequality as, in Bourdieus terms, a naturalized social construction (genders as sexually characterized habitus)(a result of) the grounding in nature of the arbitrary division which underlies both reality and the representation of reality.191 Indeed, Modelskis work suggests feminist film theorys recognition of, as Bourdieu notes, the deceptive familiarity that binds us to our own tradition(our embodying of) the historical structures of the masculine order in the form of unconscious schemes of perception and appreciation.192 Lauretis, in her 1985 rethinking of womens cinema, also recognises that:
For further examination of the concept of personal self-expression via feminist film-making, see Pam Cook, The point of self-expression in avant-garde film, John Caughie (ed), Theories of Authorship (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981). 191 Pierre Bourdieu, Masculine Domination (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2001), 3. 192 Bourdieu (2001), 3-5.
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to ask whether there is a feminine or female aesthetic, or a specific language of womens cinema, is to remain caught in the masters house and there, as Audre Lordes suggestive metaphor warns us, to legitimate the hidden agendas of a culture we badly need to change feminist theory should now engage precisely in the redefinition of aesthetic and formal knowledges, much as womens cinema has been engaged in the transformation of vision.193

These works represent a rigorous examination of the traditions and social conditions of possibility that underpin intellectual production, and demonstrate how seminal works of apparatus theory, and, indeed, most preceding film theory, came to be systematically criticized in the increasingly consolidated domain of film studies by feminist film theorists. As Modelski noted: While men sleep and dream their dreams of omnipotence over a safely reduced world, women are not where they appear to be, locked into male views of them, imprisoned in their masters dollhouse.194
Teresa de Lauretis, Rethinking Womens Cinema, Robert Stam and Toby Miller (eds), Film and Theory: An Anthology (Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, 2000), 320-321. 194 Tania Modelski, The Women Who Knew Too Much: Hitchcock and Feminist Film Theory (New York and London: Methuen, 1988), 85.
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2.6. Rethinking the apparatus: innovation or convention?

In contrast to these feminist interrogations, a fair percentage of the questions posed, and, indeed, methodological assumptions made in alternative theorizations of the cinema continued to perpetuate the assumptions embodied in the works of Metz, reproducing in many ways the objective regularities of the field resulting from the predominance of psychoanalytic theorization (and the scholastic epistemocentrism it embodied). Indeed, psychoanalytic investigation, as a specific standard of knowledge production with associated profits, continued to shape theoretical practice as a natural orientation to solving cinematic problems. Thus, whilst the continued academic necessity for distinction required a measure of differentiation between investigative approaches and thus the obscuring of similarities, the terms of theoretical debate remained well within the conceptual range of previous theorizations. Rather than breaking new conceptual ground by, for example, disregarding the understanding of cinematic experience as a process whereby subjects are interpellated in accordance with the definition of self produced by and through the Symbolic, a good measure of film theory into the 1980s remained preoccupied with the psychoanalytic project, freely borrowing from its disciplinary language and conceptual framework. Whilst attempting to account for divergent moments of experience, and thus supposedly probing the power of the apparatus and its cinematic subject, these approaches nevertheless implicitly accepted and thereby extended the fundamental principles of apparatus theory. One example, as David Bordwell notes, was the theorization of local micro-histories of cinema-going, which traced the discourses and practices of agents at certain moments - at the hinge points of modernity, or in the course of our postmodernity, or at moments in which subcultures (struggled) with dominant culture.195 Such approaches suggested the existence of multiple projects and areas of academic interest; however, these micro-investigations into cinematic experience nevertheless continued to utilize Metzs theorization of secondary cinematic identification (identification with fictional characters), albeit in relation to issues pertaining to race, ethnicity and sexual politics in a wider conceptual arc beyond his original program. Indeed, although concerned with examining divergent forms of cinematic experience, many of the terms of reference and methods of investigation used to examine these more specific, local instances of filmic experience remained theoretically indebted to primary identification (identification with the camera and the act of looking) which in reality precluded any significant departure from the imaginary signifier irrespective of secondary identifications
David Bordwell, Contemporary Film Studies and the Vicissitudes of Grand Theory, David Bordwell and Noel Carroll (eds), Post Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies (Wisconsin: Wisconsin University Press, 1996), 10.
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pertaining to context, race or gender. Film theory thus exhibited a heightened degree of specialization across intellectual interests (thus allowing for differentiation across research), and yet this specialization hinged upon proper acknowledgement of established modes of theorization (thus providing disciplinary recognition). De Lauretis alluded to these objective regularities of the field when she suggested that there is indeed reason to question the theoretical paradigm of a subject-object dialectic, whether Hegelian or Lacanian, that subtends both the aesthetic and the scientific discourses of Western culture; for what that paradigm contains, what those discourses rest on, is the unacknowledged assumption of sexual difference that the human subject, Man, is the male.196 However, the symbolic power (and associated capital) of psychoanalytic argument (and its attendant theories of ideology) continued to maintain an uneasy dominance over film theory throughout the 1980s, with variants upon the theory of visual pleasure (and, by extension, displeasure) maintaining popularity in a discipline achieving greater cultural status, and thus further situated with respect to a hierarchical taste structure. As noted, this popularity may be at least partially attributed to the denial of sexual difference implicit in the apparatus model, a theoretical variation upon the intellectualist divorce that Bourdieu identified at the center of the scholastic gaze. The explicit theoretical bracketing of film criticism by apparatus theory, a divorce between the intellect, seen as superior, and the body, seen as inferior; between the most abstract senses, sight and hearingand the most sensuous senses197, thus correlated with the importance of abstraction and purity within the pure aesthetic, a taste duality increasingly defining positions within the field. Indeed, as film studies consolidated its position within academia, this implicit duality informing methods of consecration and legitimation also became officially informed by the assumptions of the educational system and the distinctions underpinning traditional academic discourses. This allowed for the sufficiently integrated player to, as Bourdieu understands:

attain the dexterity that Hegel referred to, the knack that hits on the right result without having to calculate, doing exactly what needs to be done, as and when it needs to be done, without superfluous movements, with an economy of effort and a necessity that are both inwardly felt and externally perceptible.198

de Lauretis, Teresa, Rethinking Womens Cinema, Robert Stam and Toby Miller (eds), Film and Theory: An Anthology (Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers, 2000), 320. 197 Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), 23. 198 Bourdieu (2000), 143.

196

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However, given the expansion of visual technologies indebted to the cinema across Western societies in the late 1980s and early 1990s, these distinctions became necessarily troubled. Film studies, configured by the theoreticians of cinema as ideally an investigation of filmic texts and experience in the abstract (explicit in the theory of the constructed cinematic subject as opposed to an actual historical agent), increasingly faced issues regarding context to such an extent that what was formerly assumed to be the principal object of inquiry (the joint construction of the cinematic subject by the exhibition circumstances of the cinema and the film text) was irrevocably altered. Structuration via the cinematic apparatus increasingly became questionable when sites of content delivery (satellite, pay television, digital video), and the attendant modes of reception they were deemed to have initiated, expanded drastically in the public sphere. The impact and complexity of new media almost immediately cast doubt upon the continuing production of any general theory of cinema and a correlating theory of cinematic experience.199 Indeed, traditional definitions of semiotic boundaries were increasingly exposed as arbitrary, given the play of filmic signification across a number of interrelated fields such as publicity, advertisements, toys, and computer games. Thus the feminist demands for smaller, local and more specific cinematic investigations, necessitating a shift in focus from the deterministic filmic apparatus and text (with the full power of Western aesthetic form behind it) to the operations (or play) of the (female) receiver and the work they effected upon the text, were aided by developments in technology.200 These shifts enabled an increase in film study addressing a mass audience, opening the field to greater heteronomous pressure and allowing those producers making concessions to the market a greater presence (although symbolically diminished) within the field. This expansion in consumer visual technologies, combined with the general surrender of the humanities to the lure of popular culture, legitimated the development of reception theories in film studies, thus preventing the perpetuation of a theoretical autonomy based exclusively in scholastic reason. Film theoreticians unable to appeal to cultural reference points (and evaluative criterion) grounded in, and legitimated
For a discussion of the problems associated with constituting and defining audiences given new forms of cultural practice, see Janice Radway, Reception Study: Ethnography and the Problems of Dispersed Audiences and Nomadic Subjectivities, Cultural Studies 2, no. 3 (1998). 200 Indeed, Patrice Petro describes reception theory as a symptom of a general dissatisfaction with prevailing theories of subject-formation in film and literary theory. Patrice Petro, Reception Theories and the AvantGarde, Wide Angle Vol. 8, no. 1 (1987), 11.
199

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by, other cultural fields developed throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries - increasingly faced the possibility of reigning only over an autonomous sub-field of theoretical production, its strength drawn from its opposition to the increasing heteronomy of the broader field of film studies. Thus can be seen how film theory and film studies generally continued to function throughout the later 1990s in direct relation to the battle over cultural and social distinction. Although attempting to define itself as a distinct field of scholarly recognition (in an age where class inequalities were increasingly maintained through symbolic distinctions), the field came to function as a battleground representative of the broader struggles in cultural and social life. Thus, whilst cinema theorists desired exclusivity and the power of consecration, the field in the early 21st century is increasingly defined by double coding, where:

cultural products communicate with two or more different audiences - the general population and the elite. Having to recognize the demise of a homogenous audience, or a structured, clearly delineated set of audiences whereby any cultural production could easily be situated in relation to a master code, producers of texts - books, buildings, works of art or whatever - must take into account that different audiences will understand and evaluate works according to different and often irreconcilable assumptions.201

The presence of double coding in many ways indicates the impossibility of film theory ever functioning as a purely academic entity, instead suggesting the future of film studies to be one of continuing struggle for the accumulation of symbolic power in a field increasingly subject to heteronomous terms of exchange and recognition. Currently, the level of symbolic capital to be accumulated via fluency in theory operates on a case-by-case basis rather than with reference to an overarching system of value recognized broadly across the field; present hierarchies are more likely to be derived from symbolic distinctions operating outside but in tandem with the field (through educational institutions, for example), rather than being specific to it.202 This situation has prompted Bordwell to write: In the Post-Theory era, sharply focused, in-depth inquiry remains our best bet for producing the sort of scholarly debate that will advance our knowledge of cinema. Grand Theories will come and go, but research and scholarship will
201 202

Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993b), 27. As John Blewitt notes: In Britain the cultural and artistic status of film is somewhat ambiguous and uncertain. It is debatable whether a knowledge of films and directors constitutes a significant aspect of an economically transferable cultural capital. It certainly is the case in France and maybe Russia where the battle for film as art is won. John Blewitt, Film, ideology and Bourdieus critique of public taste, British Journal of Aesthetics 33 (4) (1993), 373.

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endure.203 Such a statement misinterprets the shift in the relations of power operating in the field throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s. Indeed, the notion of scholarly debate indicates which intellectual paradigms still function as markers of quality and of distinction within a restricted subfield, and correspondingly which approach to film is to be legitimated and recognized in the apparently new era of Post-Theory. Indirectly, therefore, as a result of being the product of a field with a specific history of position-takings, theorization of cinematic experience has been enmeshed within the arbitrary of scholastic reason, and in many instances, continues to be. The rise of heteronomous consecration within the field has hampered proper excavation of these conditions, with a) doxosophers secreting the intellectual doxa of (their) day204 (and thus the habits of thought of which Bordwell speaks) with little academic rigour or reflexivity in order to gain recognition via the media, whilst b) academics such as Bordwell increasingly appeal to traditional academic standards (and the fallacies present within them) as some form of corrective to the situation. However, what is required to overcome this stalemate is properly reflexive theorization and practice, in order to redefine the aesthetic and formal knowledges typical of film theorization and the scholastic practices embodying those knowledges (as de Lauretis suggested). Such redefinition will not only contribute to improved understandings of cinematic experience, but also strengthen film theory as a category within the discipline of film studies and thus the autonomy of the field overall.

David Bordwell, Contemporary Film Studies and the Vicissitudes of Grand Theory, David Bordwell and Noel Carroll (eds), Post Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies (Wisconsin: Wisconsin University Press, 1996), 29-30. 204 Pierre Bourdieu, Acts of Resistance: Against the Tyranny of the State (New York: The New Press, 1998b), 126.

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Chapter 3. The practice of reflexivity: problems and answers.

The I that practically comprehends physical space and social space (though the subject of the verb comprehend, is not necessarily a subject in the sense of philosophies of mind, but rather a habitus, a system of dispositions) is comprehended, in quite a different sense, encompassed, inscribed, implicated, in that space. - Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations
205

As Bourdieu made clear in discussions with Terry Eagleton: We have spoken too much about consciousness, to much in terms of representation. The social world doesnt work in terms of consciousness; it works in terms of practices, mechanisms and so forth. By using doxa we accept many things without knowing them206 To step beyond the fallacies indicative historically of film theorization concerned with cinematic experience - indeed to step beyond what is accepted without knowing in the field of film studies - therefore requires full consideration of the reflexive program presented by Bourdieu as a corrective to structuration via doxa and the determinations resulting from a specific cultural arbitrary. Such consideration requires the examination of positions occupied by a range of academics, journalists and doxosophers, and investigation of the dispositions embedded in the broad forms of scholastic thought that have allowed such positions to exist in their occupied state (dispositions sanctioning particular investigative procedures and aims above others). As examined in Chapter Two, the history of a specific strand of film theory suggests a battle for the consolidation of a specific habitus enabled by a certain cultural arbitrary (grounded in the scholastic disposition), a habitus which is characterised by the mutually reinforcing relation of an exclusively distinct position in the world and the orientation to the world which that position enacts and legitimates. However, to situate oneself (in practicing reflexive sociology) as a critic of this habitus not only entails exploring the ongoing battle to sustain it and the power it exercises over positiontakings within its domain (specifically its perpetuation of exclusionary terms of reference or prohibitive principles of evaluation, acceptance and rejection which function to sustain a system of recognition and appreciation), but also consideration of the naturalizing function of a successful cultural arbitrary and the limiting of alternative position-takings (i.e. alternative theorization) such success implies. How does one come to realise alternatives if structuration and adjustment (to follow Bourdieu) functions beyond conscious or unconscious comprehension,
205 206

Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), 130. Pierre Bourdieu and Terry Eagleton, Doxa and Common Life, New Left Review 191 (1992): 113.

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something you absorb like air, something you dont feel pressured by, (it being) everywhere and nowhere?207 What structural conditions are necessary for ones adaptation to this cultural arbitrary (the natural) to become the subject of consideration, criticism and change? Indeed, how can the learned ignorance constitutive of ones recognised social existence (and thus ones status) be negotiated? This endeavour is doubly difficult when one is a member of the field under examination, for as Bourdieu explains:

we are (then) obliged to confront, in dramatized form as it were, a certain number of fundamental epistemological problems, all related to the question of difference between practical knowledge and scholarly knowledge, and particularly to the special difficulties involved first in breaking with inside experience and then in reconstituting the knowledge which has been obtained by means of this break.208

Recognition of this problem is not exclusive to Bourdieu, of course, but whilst conventional principles informing the production of critical (scientific) knowledge require a level of abstraction and removal (both physical and mental) from the object of research, Bourdieu instead stresses in The Logic of Practice (1980, 1990) the need for a theory of immersion and inclusion in research programs (against traditional objectivist presuppositions) in order to account for practical knowledges - specifically what he deems illusio in social and symbolic worlds. Accounting for illusio involves recognising how players are interested in a specific game, in terms of the degree to which they feel it necessary to participate and compete. As Bourdieu notes: Social games are games that are forgotten qua games, and the illusio is the enchanted relation to a game that is the product of a relation of ontological complicity between mental structures and the objective structures of social space.209 Thus, illusio provides the player with the means to comprehend, to feel belonging and to respond appropriately within the game. However, whilst a critics material inclusion in the world - the particular position occupied and the knowledges it enables - may at first glance be theoretically bracketed in a somewhat simple manner, the influence of practical knowledge is exceptionally difficult to counter or suspend. Bourdieu notes how any critics first impulse is:

207 208

Bourdieu and Eagleton (1992), Page 115. Pierre Bourdieu, Homo Academicus (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), 1. 209 Pierre Bourdieu, Practical Reason (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998a), 77.

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to escape; our concern to escape any suspicion of prejudice leads us to attempt to negate ourselves as biased or informed subjects automatically suspected of using the weapons of science in the pursuit of personal interests, to abolish even the self even as a knowing subject, by resorting to the most impersonal and automatic procedures, thosewhich are least questionable.210

Indeed, Bourdieu is quick to emphasise how the intuition indicative of practical knowledge may be duplicitous: whilst it may contribute insider knowledge to demystifying the realm of the natural, objectification designed to reveal processes of structuration might also allow a newly informed criticism from the objectified (as to the intentions of the researcher). Nevertheless, he proposes reflexive research given:

there is no object that does not imply a viewpoint, even if it is an object produced with the intention of obliterating ones viewpoint (that is, ones bias), the intention of overcoming the partial perspective that is associated with holding a position within the space being studied. But our very operations of research, by obliging us to articulate and formalize the implicit criteria of ordinary experience, have the effect of rendering possible the logical verification of their own premises.211

Importantly, such an approach locates research within time and space, acknowledging that outcomes will be necessarily enabled, defined and contained by both the terms of procedure specific to academic universes and thus the very dispositions such research seeks to address and evaluate, unavoidably exhibiting in some form a degree of practical knowledge (a learned ignorance necessary for maintaining a position as researcher that is nevertheless qualified by falling under examination within the work of objectification). Such a necessary predicament is required not only to reap the rewards of reflexive analysis generally, but is also methodologically essential given the myriad forms of hierarchization operating within fields, including the different (as noted) codified norms or rules and practical schemata that manufacture and orchestrate belief through perception and appreciation - for the lived world of practice is informed by the symbolic alchemy that both divides and charms field occupants in any number of ways beyond the obvious, thus requiring a situated position and a reflexive knowledge that both appreciates (or feels) the terms of recognition in their practical state and yet enables an undoing or examination of that perception. This process also extends to ones positioning with reference to the primary habitus of formative
210 211

Pierre Bourdieu, Homo Academicus (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), 6. Bourdieu (1988), 6.

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socio-economic origin (which Bourdieu understands must also be accounted for as contributing to the researchers critical stance) and indeed this habitus may operate in relation to additional fields of influence, thus requiring a heightened reflexivity beyond what at first seemed appropriate. The critic is thus both the subject of objectification and yet becomes (and is, in reality, from the beginning) the object of objectification throughout the course of the program of study, which requires a level of reflexivity that is by no means simple to uphold. In deploying a theoretical framework that partially examines how ones own critical academic endeavour is informed by the corporeal sense of limits, borders and boundaries that are enacted when certain stimuli come into focus, and which necessarily shapes any critique that is ultimately produced, the critic is compelled to acknowledge their situated position - a position marked and determined by forces no less than those who fall under the scope of objectification. Critical research of this kind is therefore not an escape or liberation, but rather an exploration that suggests the critic refuse the infinitesimal acts of cowardice and laxness which leave the power of social necessity intact, to fight in himself and in others the opportunist indifference or conformist ennui which allow a social milieu to impose the slippery slope of resigned compliance and submissive complicity.212 To follow Bourdieu, then, is to suggest that the demarcation of social position, distinction and the attendant competencies the scholastic disposition demands (as pertains to the field of film studies) may be experienced and reproduced in and through a number of both conscious and unconscious forms (to use an intellectual dichotomy of which Bourdieu is critical), which he argues operate in relation to cues that elicit encoded inclinations or dispositions specific to an agents habitus, thus generating responses (either positively or negatively) to environment and context. This posits social positioning and distinction, in terms of competencies and knowledges, to be reproduced in behaviour through a type of immediate sensory shorthand functioning without the need for interaction (in terms of contact between bodies), and which ranges from the most automatic gestures of the apparently most insignificant techniques of the body to very abstract conceptualizations.213 Such an understanding of human action offers the possibility of explaining the longevity of enduring positions and position-takings in the field under study and its principal logic in new ways given the ability to open up investigation into the real, everyday details of practical logics that, as previously noted, are methodologically excluded from traditional objectivist analysis and scientific discourse. One thus comes closer to examining the sticky web of concrete situational and motivational perception that comes to serve two main purposes in any field: a) to
Bourdieu (1988), 4. David Swartz, Culture and Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 109.
213 212

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inform and reinforce a specific disposition to which such fields have given rise and that long after they continue to sustain, and b) to maintain exclusion via perceptual cues that enact against those alien to the terms of recognition instituted degrees of symbolic violence, through positing relationships of order and of ranking that are implicitly enforced through negative reactions (i.e. this place is not for me). To approach the field of film studies in these terms is therefore to examine position takings as manifestations of the symbolic battle occurring within the field (unfolding through renowned universities and publishing institutions, across particular countries and during specific historical periods) and thus to examine ones own position within that battle in terms of the traditions, perceptual cues and modes of recognition that have produced one as a researcher, student, combatant (or, indeed, symbolic victim). This consideration of the place from which the critic of the arbitrary speaks and acts is exceptionally important given it is where the battling forces of the field coalesce and are given expression; it is the place where the field is felt in the most immediate, personal sense - an example of consecration or excommunication, designating an agent either embraced or discarded. As Bourdieu continually makes clear:

everyone is characterised by the place where he is more or less permanently domiciled, (and) is characterised also by the relative position - and therefore the rarity, a source of material or symbolic revenues - of his locations, both temporary (for example, places of honour and all the precedences of all protocols) and permanent (private and professional addresses, reserved places, unbeatable views, exclusive access, priority, etc.).214

The distinctive worlds that inform the field of film studies, academia and journalism, are perhaps some of the key sites of social relations where such associations of distinction and symbolic domination come to bear, obviously in the form of scholarly titles, educational degrees, editorial power, publication status, peer-reviewed approval and the conferring of academic positions that reward, and suggest the implicit continuation of, specific dispositions, but also in structures and mechanisms that work upon agents in more obscure bodily terms. For these titles are also conferred upon recipients in affective terms through the relationship of being perceived, of responding appropriately to cues in order to recognise and be recognised by others. Analysis utilising the model provided by Bourdieu allows one to examine, for example, the importance of the seemingly insignificant occupation of everyday physical space - at the micro level in terms of offices, departments and buildings, or at the macro level in terms of campuses, publishing houses, borders and countries - as a cue to effect appropriate responses by an agent possessing the proper categories
214

Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), 135.

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of discriminatory perception. In recognising and responding to that which is asked of him or her (albeit with no explicit belief, possessed explicitly as such in relation to a possibility of non-belief, but rather as an immediate adherence, a doxical submission to the injunctions of the world215), the agent is both subject to and a participant in a process of symbolic violence. Bourdieus method allows one to examine a physical location in space and the cues it embodies as working to confirm or deny a symbolic and social position corresponding to a position within a field, with the structural truth inherent in exchange nevertheless obscured or repressed through both the practical logics broadly indicative of the everyday, and the prolonged socialisation achieved through immersion in a particular field. It is important to acknowledge the potential of such an understanding for the examination of the process of symbolic domination, for it allows a greater examination of the double truths of practice (the contradiction between subjective truth and objective reality216 that functions in the form of comprehension, and, more specifically, illusio) and the forms of possible alienation that may occur when these embodied truths are subjected to objective assessment. This element of double truth is often ignored in the examination of the worlds of academia and journalism, specifically as relates to the esprit de corps that results from illusio and which clearly manufactures and maintains a hallowed sense of loyalty and tradition that is held dear by universities, newspapers and academic journals (and which functions, to varying degrees of success, to repress the objective truth of domination that maintains their hierarchical structures). For Bourdieu, such notions of loyalty, heritage and tradition are conscious euphemisms that signify a deeper structural process of commitment and belief, the equivalent (in a more institutionalised form) of the proverbs he examined in Kabyle society and the laughter of bishops investigated within the modern Catholic church (i.e. slips of the tongue, albeit vague, that suggest an individual holds some form of intuitive understanding of the violence inherent in practices of symbolic exchange but also a correlating need to sustain it, in order to maintain a position in a field that enables them to be who they are). Bourdieu notes how this:

leads one to think that one is witnessing not a cynical liebut rather a gap between the objective truth, repressed rather than ignored, and the lived truth of practices, and that this lived truth, which hides, through the agents themselves, the truth brought to light by analysis, is part of the truth of practices in their complete definition.217

215 216

Pierre Bourdieu, Practical Reason (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998a), 103. Bourdieu (1998a), 95.

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The notion of illusio is therefore exceptionally important when undertaking a reflexive examination of the field in which one is situated, for illusio - incorporating a legitimated feeling of being, or belonging (being indeed due to belonging) to a specific social universe and world given ones immersion in the game - is composed of a bodily or corporeal sense of membership, of adequacy and at home-ness, as much as any conscious, reflective notion of belonging, which, when combined with the recognition of the game and its stakes, provides an (emotive) investment in the game that Bourdieu suggests is similar to the workings of the libido. Illusio, it would seem, is predicated upon ones secure position within a field and ones continuing predisposition (via habitus) to respond to the terms of recognition instituted within that field, but it may also be assumed that such belief rests upon acknowledgement that ones endeavours are worthwhile, and it is here that the degree of loyalty, in terms of belief, devotion and allegiance and their repression of structural truths, suggests degrees of illusio across different players. Illusio necessarily involves an element of confirmation of ones activities in the primary, or related, fields of play, either in overt terms (departmental respect, peer encouragement, research funding, front cover status, etc.), or in a more corporeal sense. This is where, following the previous example, the process of social position rendered through cues embedded in physical space can be understood as contributing to a players continuing desire to be part of a game and a field, as physical space encloses and surrounds a body that can be, as Bourdieu notes, impressed and durably modified, with physical space often defining in concrete, brute terms (buildings, furnished offices, impressively manicured campuses) the confirmation that the body must feel and respond to (in a corporeal manner) in order to feel legitimated. Esprit de corps is thus an unequally distributed form of symbolic capital, and may be understood as a form of loyalty charged with the aura of a specific academic or journalistic institutions history, producing specific cultural competencies and orientations to action differently according to the space in which it is generated. As will be examined further below, such loyalty is produced in relation to the process of recognition, following the act of one being recognised and valued, which then in turn suggests a reciprocal debt to be paid by the agent to the group that valued him/her. Indeed, the manufacture of esprit de corps involves a process of symbolic violence, the likes of which Bourdieu examined in relation to the Kabyle (and which operates broadly across all fields and spaces), where a process of affective enchantment is understood to obscure unequal power relations whilst providing a measure of solidarity and social standing for participants. This is an important element to consider when undertaking research into academic histories, and the theoretical traditions they perpetuate and uphold, for it opens up not only investigation into place and space and the loyalties they engender in both overtly conscious terms (academic traditions and
217

Bourdieu (1998a), 114.

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the differing genres of journalism) and bodily terms (the sense of belonging sustained by the various cues that reproduce social distinctions), but also their influence upon degrees of illusio in terms of positions and position-takings. In other words, any critique undertaken of established theoretical traditions, investigative procedures or general conceptual systems (pertaining in this instance to film studies), reflects a place in social and physical space and thus will suggest the degree of illusio one embodies or holds in relation to the field (and game) under study. This writer, occupying for a number of years a position in a broadly under-funded, second-tier University employing a limited cinema studies program (both in undergraduate and postgraduate terms), has thus been produced in relation to a number of principles of distinction and division to embody classificatory schemata that ultimately bear upon the degree of illusio held in relation to the broader game of film studies and the rules which condition its terms of play in more specific instances. This is as much a result of reaction to the unwritten corporeal codes of the University attended as it is to any explicit theoretical work or studies undertaken cumulatively in undergraduate or postgraduate courses (and not only with regard to film studies per se), and it obviously exists alongside, or as an outcome of, choices made in relation to a pre-existing habitus fashioned in response to more intimate familial ties and the perceptual categories brought about as a result of a specific socio-economic history and corresponding trajectory. Thus, given that a reflexive critical program must make reference to its own points of origin and the classificatory schemata it brings to bear on the object it places under study, in order to illuminate the situated and positioned nature of critical practice and the conceptual categories it may arbitrarily utilise, the following brief outline of the conditions that underpin, sustain and generate this writers position in relation to the field of film studies in both overtly conscious terms and corporeal, bodily knowledge (as much as can be outlined in a conscious, reflective manner) will aid in situating the investigation as a product of inclusion in the world. As Bourdieu stresses:

I am, in the way that things are, situated in a place; I am not atopos, placeless, as Plato said of Socrates, nor rootless and free-floating Nor am I endowed, as in folk tales, with the physical and social ubiquity (which Flaubert dreamed of) that would enable me to be in several places and several times at once, to occupy simultaneously several physical and social positions. (Place, topos, can be defined absolutely, as the site where a thing or an agent takes place, exists, in short, as a localisation, or relationally, topologically, as a position, a rank in an order.)218
218

Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), 131.

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3.1. Illusio and the practice of reflexive sociology.

Illusio is, as noted, to be taken in by the game specific to a certain field, typified by a sense of belonging (and, to varying degrees, security) that indirectly suggests the trials, strategies and labour constitutive of that game are worthwhile. It thus denotes an interest, and thus belief, in the stakes of a field, and recognition within that field to some degree. This would suggest that, whilst respective amounts of capital (of whatever kind) may differ between participants, there exist similarities between them, not the least being an overall belief in a field as valuable or important, a belief that functions in practice to condition entrance and exit. But what motivates players to access a specific and particular field here and now in order to realise the profits it offers, beyond the terms of evaluation (good and bad) indicative of the actual field itself? As Bourdieu notes, fields are in many ways subservient (in terms of their offering of positions and position-takings) to broader social histories in the form of habitual dispositions in players, which circulate outside fields of action in concurrent social worlds and thus strongly pre-empt movement and strategy within them. Thus, this tacit commonality between players that a specific game is worth playing, and thus might be seen to allow some type of gentlemans agreement in terms of play, is (to varying degrees) overridden by the dispositions of the broader habitus one brings to each specific game and individual field. For although Bourdieu suggests that each specific field labours to be autonomous in regard to outside influences, and refracts the dispositions of habitus through its own specific field logic, habitus, whilst a durable system of dispositions adaptable to different contexts, nevertheless tends to avoid situations that might trouble its terms of reference and evaluation, or its common sense perceptual categories. Likewise, recognition of the stakes of any game and the chance of winning them are not clearly marked upon entrance to a specific field (as odds are posted in horseracing), rather they are bound up with the partiality and preferences contained within ones primary habitus, thus not constituting a choice or calculation made in overtly conscious terms but embodied as an inclination to action. Indeed, a specific field is attractive primarily to agents for the reason that it offers a realm or site for the actualisation of the dispositions inherent in their specific habitus, for habitus is:

a potentiality, a desire to be which, in a certain way, seeks to create the conditions of its fulfilment, and therefore to create the conditions most favourable to what it isa number of behaviours can be understood as efforts to maintain or produce a state of the social world or of a field that is capable of giving to some acquired disposition - knowledge of an ancient or modern language, for example - the possibility and opportunity of being actualised. This is one

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of the major principles (with the available means of realisation) of everyday choices as regards objects or persons.219

The level of autonomy of any field will therefore legislate against the possibility, or preference, of entrance for some players, for if autonomy interferes with the enacting of a specific habitus and its related capitals and competencies, it is less likely to be deemed attractive by that player, or may even be excluded from consideration by the accumulated history that informs that habitus from the outset. The influence of the primary habitus therefore explains how field play may indeed be different between players holding similar capitals and exhibiting the same field illusio, in that ones principle social trajectory determines ones game. The principle of the dynamics of a field, Bourdieu writes, lies in the form of its structure and, in particular, in the distance, the gaps, the asymmetries between the various specific forces that confront one another.220 Indeed, these gaps and asymmetries, Bourdieu notes, are reinforced by relationships of homology across broader fields, giving extra-field force to field divisions. As David Swartz makes clear:

Homology of position among individuals and groups in different fields means that those who find themselves in dominated positions in the struggle for legitimation in one field tend also to find themselves in subordinate positions in other fields Field homologies reinforce patterns of conflict across different fields. The general overall effect is the reproduction of common patterns of hierarchy and conflict from one field to another.221

Examples of the influence of the primary habitus over strategies undertaken in a specific field are most openly detected when an agents actions are not perfectly adjusted to the regularities and demands of the situation, as opposed to the agent with an implicit feel for the game, for the gift (or, alternatively, shortcomings) of a specific habitus is to be detected as much in the victors or successful participants in a field as much as in the losers. Successful positions and positiontakings are, it can be assumed, an outcome of both seamless adjustment to the terms of a field and its game, which Bourdieu argues is enacted, or practically undertaken, without explicit intention, and the specific types of capital that allow certain players this faultless form. Whilst different fields may indeed give equal weight to varying types of capital and thus might, in theory, allow for a more equitable distribution of potential chances at winning, Bourdieu makes clear that:
Bourdieu (2000), 150. Pierre Bourdieu and Loic J.D. Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 101.
220 219

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the strategies of the player and everything that defines his game are a function not only of the volume and structure of his capital at the moment under consideration and of the game chances they guarantee him, but also of the evolution over time of the volume and structure of this capital, that is, of the social trajectory and of the dispositions (habitus) constituted in the prolonged relation to a definite distribution of objective chances.222

Thus, the winning disposition of the field, the triumphant habitus, draws from a specific social history a feel for the game that enables the utilisation of capital in the most beneficial ways, a type of natural ability resulting from the transmission of history and the innate competence embedded in habitus. Importantly, Bourdieu qualifies this theory in Pascalian Meditations by stressing the degrees of integration between habitus and specific conditions, that the feel for the game in terms of the adjustment, in advance, of habitus to the objective conditions, is a particular case, no doubt particularly frequent (in the universes familiar to us), but it should not be treated as a universal rule.223 Obviously, the greatest successes in our social world, with its multiple fields (and subfields), do not realise (nor should their situatedness give them any need to care) that the actions and practices that they deploy so spontaneously are the product of incorporated social structures and histories, and there is seemingly no statistical evidence or, indeed, experimental research circumstances, which might suggest what percentage of these effortless successes are a result of alignment between a specific habitus and the objective conditions which allow for its maximum realisation. Indeed, Bourdieu argues such agents display a learned ignorance of both positions and position-takings and the social histories that inform and give rise to them, an ignorance that allows them the natural skill that outright calculation is never able to match. One measure, however, of the degree to which the habitus is thoroughly integrated into the conditions of a field is outlined in Bourdieus Pascalian Meditations, where it is suggested that an examination of the levels of happiness in actors may suggest to what degree their habitus is realising its ultimate potentiality in relation to a field and the terms of play and strategies it allows. As Bourdieu explains:

The paradoxes of the distribution of happiness are fairly easily explained. Since the desire for fulfilment is roughly measured by its chances of realisation, the degree of inner satisfaction that the various agents experience does not depend as much as one might think on their David Swartz, Culture and Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 130-132. 222 Pierre Bourdieu and Wacquant, J.D., An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 99.
221

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effective power in the sense of an abstract, universal capacity to satisfy needs and desires abstractly defined for an indifferent agent; rather, it depends on the degree to which the mode of functioning of the social world or the field in which they are inserted enables his habitus to come into his own.224

It is therefore the degree of correlation between structures (fields) and embodied history (habitus) that offers one the potential to examine and, indeed, predict the functioning of a specific habitus (or player) within the borders of a certain field. One might, for example, investigate levels of contentment in order to gauge the degree to which a particular field is occupied by those embodied with the appropriate habitus to truly realise its profits, compared with those lacking any degree of feel for the game that would allow them a position, and by a position, a contented existence in the world they have come to inhabit. This is not to infer, as Bourdieu also makes clear, that habitus cannot adapt to different contexts and therefore be enacted only in a limited number of circumstances. It is of course the transposable nature of habitus that secures for its bearer both a degree of stability across different social worlds and their corresponding fields, and the ability to function in those fields in a competent manner. And this is also not to suggest that profits are won in a field only as a result of a perfect fit between the feel for the game and the terms of the game itself, for it may be through a deliberate transformation of the prevailing rules of a game that a victory, or increase in capital, is achieved. However, habitus turns upon an embedded, taken for granted bedrock of unspoken and essentially unthought principles and premises that allow actors a grounded understanding of the world and their place in it, not simply to function in rudimentary ways, but to generate a prolonged sense of self and of personal identity which exist in tangible terms. And furthermore, this confirmation of what is right, good and appropriate operates in the greater sense at the level of the body, a mixture of automatic affective reactions combined with bodily comportment that is the result of incorporation, of bodily hexis. Habitus, therefore, is:

characterised by a combination of constancy and variation which varies according to the individual and his degree of flexibility or rigidity. If accommodation (sic) has the upper hand, then one finds rigid, self-enclosed, overintegrated habitus (as in old people); if adaptation predominates, habitus dissolves into the opportunism of a kind of mens momentanea, incapable of encountering the world and of having an integrated sense of self.225

223 224

Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), 159. Bourdieu (2000), 150. 225 Bourdieu (2000), 161.

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To properly examine ones field position (and corresponding game as a result of that position) in a reflexive manner it is therefore necessary to investigate instances of rigidity and flexibility in habitus and the forms of practice and play fluctuating levels of integration engender in actors. Such an examination of the variable types of field integration, and the homologies of position (i.e. dominant or subordinate) they suggest across the broader social world, is especially necessary given the lack of broad examination into social backgrounds (outside the principal field under scrutiny) that is often missing in the critical application of Bourdieus theory. Bourdieus focus throughout his career upon intellectuals and their positions of deep alignment within their respective fields (the product of which is symbolic violence perpetuated under the guise of scientific objectivity) has always been combined with a broader theory of social distinction and differentiation, thus stressing that specific field legitimation is often an indicator of wider legitimation and power in the social world. When undertaking analysis it is therefore necessary to understand a) the degree to which one exhibits a feel for the game in relation to the field in which one is positioned, b) to what level ones habitus can be understood as integrated with respect to the dispositions, competencies and practical knowledges the field calls upon or demands from an occupant, and c) the actions, practices and responses, as both player and critic, one generates as both a result of the level of integration and corresponding feel for the game one holds and the position within the field such integration has enabled. These steps should be seen as a practical program of self-critical investigation honouring the thrust of Bourdieus work, for as he himself states:

My main problem is to try and understand what happened to me. My trajectory may be described as miraculous, I suppose - an ascension to a place where I dont belong. And so to be able to live in a world that is not mine I must try to understand both things: what it means to have an academic mind - how such is created - and at the same time what was lost in acquiring it. For that reason, even if my work - my full work - is a sort of autobiography, it is a work for people who have the same sort of trajectory, and the same need to understand.226

Drawing upon Bourdieu therefore provokes an examination of the conditions informing ones role as both player and critic (in terms of both the social histories one embodies and the intellectual assumptions one holds, and the resulting degree of integration within the field) thus providing a foundation from which to reflexively assess this position in social space and better comprehend the structuring influences informing ones orientation to criticism and, indeed, final research outcomes.
226

Pierre Bourdieu and Terry Eagleton, Doxa and Common Life, New Left Review 191 (1992): 117.

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It must therefore be determined what circumstances allow or generate the differing levels of integration within a field, and the resulting degree of illusio one therefore holds in relation to that field. The most obvious differences in integration result from the nature of ones habitus in terms of flexibility or rigidity (although one assumes there are degrees involved in each), but what must be determined are the conditions and inclinations that allow or suggest to an agent the degree of variation they may embrace in adapting to circumstance and context. Firstly, Bourdieu notes that unusual crisis points in social relations, such as where fields and different life-worlds collide (as during revolution, geographic colonisation, advanced technological development and the accompanying social uncertainty such changes generate) produce such variation, but this forced type of adaptation does not account for how certain forms of habitus can and do respond in quite variable ways to new experiences in less hazardous environments. The ability of certain agents to accommodate circumstance and legitimately adapt and revise key principles of their habitus (never radically, as Bourdieu notes), or, alternatively, to remain largely fixed in the classificatory schemata and practical knowledge of their primary habitus, must be understood as issuing from the habitus itself - a specific aspect that allows or generates variation or rigidity in differing degrees. As components of a habitus are generated largely from the conditions associated with socio-economic position, it can also be assumed that this tendency to flexibility or rigidity in habitus is also a product of socio-economic influence. As Bourdieu has made clear in relation to modes of aesthetic perception and appreciation in his cultural theory, the aesthetic gaze and the nave gaze result from the varying distances to economic necessity and the demands of the material, everyday living world that each habitus comes to reflect (and encode), not simply in conscious terms of likes and dislikes but in bodily response. Similarly, it can be suggested that the tendency to variation or rigidity in habitus is a response to the practicalities and tangible demands of everyday living and economic necessity (or not, as the case may be). Whilst each separate social universe and the fields of play it traverses demands an agent maintain some form of commitment to its logic (to maintain at least some sense of position and thus a presence in that field), those agents whose variations of habitus are less likely to result in their immediate life world crashing to a halt in material, immediate ways are more obviously able, and being able more likely, to adapt and change as they see fit. Obviously, this suggests possession of a degree of capital, either economic or cultural, which is somewhat expendable or, at least, available for use in such experimentation. When this is extended generationally, such a disposition to risk, chance, modification or alteration may become encoded as part of a specific habitus, given the accompanying superfluous capital to support it. Agents who openly adjust to the demands of contexts in terms of fads, trends, new beliefs, styles, etc. (and the routine changes in ones orientation to the world such pursuits suggest),

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might therefore be understood historically with reference to Gares classification and tracing of class composition across the 20th century in his Postmodernism and the Environmental Crisis (1995). Utilising Gares classifications, it can be suggested that agents exhibiting such dispositions to flexibility belong to what is understood as being the new service sub-class:

(a) new fraction of the petite bourgeoisie Sharing the internationalist consumer tastes of the new bourgeoisie, celebrating consumption as the end of life, they have intruded into and increasingly subverted the hegemony of both the old bourgeoisie and the working class together with the pattern of classifications which had crystallized out of the confrontation between them, and subverted the emerging class consciousness of the salariat. Members of this new sub-class are characterised by their decentred identities. Even when they are economically successful, they seldom identify with the occupations through which they make their living. 227

Indeed, such agents are openly concerned with the modification of the life-world in which they operate, in terms of what Gare understands as a therapeutic morality that legitimates the professions they create for themselves (related to health, lifestyle and psychological counselling), thus creating an arena where such inclinations are expressed, encouraged, supported and guarded through acts of consecration and legitimation (degrees, licences, etc) suggestive of established educational institutions. Secondly, different fields encourage flexibility (or rigidity) to varying degrees. Certain fields, given interlocking relations with other fields of power, are able to maintain a degree of stability based around an entrenched hierarchical structure that shuns the benefits of adaptation and rewards adherence to tradition. Other, more fluid fields, given to influence, multiple forms of logic and states of play permanently in motion, encourage adaptation and aggressive play due to either a) the lack of a formalised structure that monitors position-takings and accumulation of capitals, and/or b)
227

Arran E. Gare, Postmodernism and the Environmental Crisis (London: Routledge, 1995), 17-18.

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overdetermination by a field of greater power. Those individuals of the flexible habitus are thus likely to exhibit two characteristics resulting in part from a position in the broader social network: a) they will occupy a position in a field as a result of adaptation and risk taking, responding appropriately to change in order to secure further position-takings as situations of chance arise, and b) they are more likely to encounter the problem of securing a durable identity structure, lacking the traditional bedrock upon which to function which characterises those bearing the rigid habitus. If one suggests revision and flexibility can be encoded as a structural component in a certain habitus, due to socio-economic position and the inclination to adaptation and modification this suggests for those who occupy it, then so too is rigidity a product of position, of being situated in a specific place. Agents with more to lose from adaptation, when the possibility arises of shifting their position to accompany trends or new beliefs, are more likely to remain rigid in their place equally for reasons of maintaining alignment with a social world that both produces and sustains them. For example, those bound by the reality of employment or the practicalities of daily life, with immediate concerns over the realities of wages or earning a living, are less likely to court the change, and expend the capital, that would jeopardise their tenuous position. As Gare notes, the traditional working class in the core zones now have to compete with workers in the peripheral regions of the world-economy and with migrant workers. As a consequence, increasingly high proportions of people from working-class backgrounds are either unemployed or are engaged in casual work, and, crucially, this growing powerlessness of the old bourgeoisie and the working class itself (is) enough to undermine the confidence of their members in narratives defining and celebrating their destiny as primary agents of history.228 However, rather than a clean break with history, it can be assumed that the undermining of these defining narratives will provoke inflexibility before adaptation, for agents with much to lose will tend to maintain their position through reference to the familiar rather than embracing the uncertainty of change (indeed, their habitus may predispose them to do so). Rigidity in the habitus, as with flexibility, is thus a product of the history inherent in social position, which, given the conflict and change in class constitution and power throughout the 20th century especially, suggests increasing reserve from those occupying such a position and the habitus (and corresponding choices) it produces. However, this attempt at charting the broader social influences of the primary habitus upon specific fields, in terms of rigidity and flexibility (and the various positional points in between these two opposite poles of practice), must be contextualized in order to establish perspective for examining the form of habitus perhaps characteristic of the modern era: the contradictory habitus. Whilst Gares understanding of the new forms of class composition no doubt allows one to

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historically situate the phenomenon of the flexible habitus, it is important to emphasise that any form of reflexive analysis must take account of broader structural factors informing social conduct in order to understand the general conditions influencing position-takings and practice within a specific field, especially when this relates to the composition of habitus and the intended aim of understanding ones own unique dispositions and social history. Major social changes reverberate throughout all fields and come to intricately sway position-takings and play, and so an examination of habitus is not complete without a broader appraisal of what social theorists have come to understand as a challenge to the fundamental premises of the Western worlds social, political and cultural system - namely, reflexive modernization (understood as the possibility of a creative [self-] destruction for an entire epoch: that of industrial society).229
228 229

Gare (1995), 9-12. Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens and Scott Lash, Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994), 1-2.

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3.2. The contemporary habitus: contradiction and alignment.

Ulrich Beck has provided perhaps the most provocative reading of this second modernity that has resulted from the victory of capitalism, which (for our purposes here) may be understood as involving the dissolution of the structured structures and structuring structures typical of industrialization. Elements of modernization such as higher levels of education, increased forms of labour mobility, individualization amongst former social groups and gender equality usher in the:

reflexive modernization of industrial society on cats paws, as it were, unnoticed by sociologists, who unquestioningly continue gathering data in the old categoriesprecisely because such small measures with large cumulative effects do not arrive with fanfares, controversial votes in parliament, programmatic political antagonisms or under the flag of revolutionary change.230

For Beck the outcome of such incremental shifts over time, occurring not due to outright crisis but by the progressive program of modernization, is that attachment to traditional social class as a structuring factor in determining ones life-world is destabilized or undermined, but not, however, replaced with any of the type of certainties previously available (to some degree) within social and economic formations specific to feudal or industrial society. As a result of social, political and economic risks outstripping the capacity of traditional foundational structures to contain and manage them, and a rise in public discourses examining such issues formerly contained and managed privately:

(people) are being expected to live with a broad variety of different, mutually contradictory, global and personal risks the self is no longer just the equivocal self but (becomes) fragmented into contradictory discourses of the self. Individuals are now expected to master these risky opportunities, without being able, owing to the complexity of modern society, to make the necessary decisions on a well-founded and responsible basis, that is to say, considering the possible consequences.231

However, rather than understanding the effects of such developments in terms emancipation, freedom, or individuation for the individual, Beck situates this description of social uncertainty within the modern welfare state, itself a product of the instrumental rationality inherent in
230

Beck, Giddens, Lash (1994), 1-2.

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industrialisation, and a structuring structure which nevertheless continues to inform the contradictions of the second modernity. Thus whilst on first examination the process of individualization may be misunderstood as a process whereby the individual maps his or her own life-world beyond, and often against, traditional social parameters that have fallen into question and are subject to dispute, Beck suggests that individualization is a structural conceptit means institutionalised individualism. Most of the rights and entitlements of the welfare state, for example, are designed for individuals rather than for families. In many cases they presuppose employment. Employment in turn implies education, and both of these presuppose mobility. By all these requirements people are invited to constitute themselves as individuals: to plan, understand, design themselves as individuals and, should they fail, to blame themselves. Individualization thus implies, paradoxically, a collective lifestyle.232 This rethinking by Beck of the structural factors functioning in contemporary society at first reading appears to conflict with the theory of durable dispositions and structured and structuring formative social experiences (in terms of habitus and recognition) developed by Bourdieu, especially the notion of the rigid habitus. Becks work suggests increasing homogenisation via industrialization (and its accompanying lifestyle) as state and/or private institutions manage the social and corresponding cultural needs of an increasingly large portion of the worlds population, rather than the diverse (but no less structured) understandings of the world that are produced through the varied forms of habitus. However, Becks stress upon education, mobility and competition in the social world at the beginning of the second modernity correlates with Bourdieus theory regarding the maximization of symbolic capital and the battle for distinction, which suggests that whilst the new risk society produces individualization that may be fundamentally homogenous, it is still apparent, at least in perceptual terms, that a system of social differentiation still exists. As Bourdieu notes: To exist within a social space, to occupy a point or to be an individual within a social space, is to differ, to be different. According to Benvenistes formula regarding language, to be distinctive, to be significant, is the same thing, significant being opposed to insignificant.233 Importantly, Bourdieu stresses that such a notion of distinction is predicated upon a system of acknowledgement and recognition that allows for differences to be perceived:

a difference, a distinctive property only becomes a visible, perceptible, non-indifferent, socially pertinent difference if its perceived by someone who is capable of making the
231 232

Beck, Giddens, Lash (1994), 3. Ulrich Beck, World Risk Society (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999), 9.

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distinction - because, being inscribed in the space in question, he or she is not indifferent and is endowed with categories of perception, with classificatory schemata.234

Thus, one may agree with Becks outline of individualization to the degree that the structuring structures of the contemporary world born of industrialization have become fractured (paradoxically) as a result of the program of industrialization and capitalism achieving full realisation, whilst accepting that pre-established categories of discrimination, differentiation and exclusion based upon education and employment (grounded in formative socio-economic positioning and conditioning) still strongly exist within the modern world. Whilst there is no doubt that some of the distinctions inherent in these modes of differentiation do resonate less in the contemporary age than previously, the overall structure of social space remains determined by a relational system correlating social position with social practice. The disembedding or reembedding Beck identifies in risk society of the social constructs of industrialization (family, gender differentiation, labour roles) appears to have resulted from the breaking down of the learned ignorance that once characterized participation in social fields, most probably as a result of previously autonomous fields becoming more responsive to the demands of the free market (which provides a broader understanding of the conditions informing the flexible habitus). And yet, conservative politics grounded in (and celebrating) the established categories of discrimination and differentiation indicative of traditional social roles, lifestyles and worldviews have continued to maintain a strong footing in the contemporary Western world, providing the conditions for the existence of a rigid habitus. Thus can be seen both the emergence of the conditions of the risk society and its corresponding movement towards social and cultural shifts, and yet the lingering appeal of traditional structuring structures (as befits a reactionary program of conservative risk management) and the power such social and cultural norms still hold in the contemporary mind. The power of Becks work at this stage therefore lies in his examination of the meeting point between what he understands as unambiguous and ambivalent modernity (the latter signifying the present era). In considering political conservatism, trade unions and other structures based upon the maintenance of traditional social formations, he notes how:

a double world is coming into existence, one part of which cannot be depicted in the other: a chaotic world of conflicts, power games, instruments and arena which belong to different epochs On the one hand, a political vacuity of the institutions is evolving and, on the other
233 234

Pierre Bourdieu, Practical Reason (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998a), 9. Bourdieu (1998a), 9.

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hand, a non-institutional renaissance of the political. The individual subject returns to the institutions of society.235

However, this understanding of what Beck terms sub-politics, functioning outside of the traditional arena of politics as a result of the increase in public discourses concerning risks and risk management and a loss of faith in traditional political processes, must be seen as operating within a system of social differentiation based on corporeal conditioning as much as incorporating conscious reflective action. Thus, whilst Beck may claim that in a society without consensus, devoid of a legitimating core, it is evident that even a single gust of wind, caused by a cry for freedom, can bring down the whole house of cards of power236, this implies a state where the habituation grounded in the biological individual is overcome, where bodily hexis is swept away by personal reflection born of insecurity and wider institutional instability. Whilst Beck concedes many forms of sub-politics undoubtedly draw upon traditional structuring devices, his understanding of the new activities and identities that function as part of the individualization process fails to appreciate the inscription of social differentiation on the body of the individual, the dispositions which (are) as durable as the indelible inscriptions of tattooinga psychosomatic action (often) exerted through emotion and suffering, psychological or physical, particularly the pain inflicted when applying distinctive signs - mutilation, scarification or tattoos - to the surface of the body itself.237 This leads him to both criticise and yet be bound by the conventional approaches to understanding social practice that Bourdieu is attempting to overcome, specifically the binaries of subjectivism and objectivism. Beck writes of:

radical changes and new departures (taking place), not completely unconsciously, but not fully consciously and in a focussed way either. They rather resemble a collective blind person without a cane or a dog but with a nose for what is personally right and important and, if scaled up to the level of generality, cannot be totally false. This centipede-like non-revolution is under way.238

However, this revolution is plagued by a paralysis that results from the contradictory discourses and competing power positions indicative of what Beck understands as the slow breakdown of
Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens and Scott Lash, Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994), 16-17. 236 Beck, Giddens, Lash (1994), 19. 237 Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), 141. 238 Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens, and Scott Lash, Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994), 21.
235

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traditional forms of social order and political process, the range of positions and beliefs one must defend and discard in the flux of social movement, for change is the law of modernity to which everyone must submit at the risk of political demise.239 Thus, Becks work, whilst uneven and inconclusive if approached through the theoretical framework of Bourdieu, nevertheless provides a (provisionally) broad picture of the social milieu of the contemporary era, and more importantly (for our purposes here) an outline of the phenomenon he terms contradictory multiple engagement and the mediating institutions needed to address such a fluid social environment of near paradoxical positions and position-takings. Whilst Beck has examined more the inability (or unwillingness) of broad social and economic institutions (specifically the corporate world) to reorient their practices in light of the ambiguity of contemporary political processes and the splintered group formations that characterise a world of new stakeholders previously non-existent in decision-making systems (such as environmental groups, media outlets and the general public), his underlying characterisation of the contemporary period suggests the impossibility of outright, unproblematic consensus ever being achieved in the modern social world. This bears upon any examination one may conduct into how individuals are integrated within a field, and more specifically the effect this has upon modern forms of illusio. Whilst one may examine both flexible and rigid instances of habitus, Becks understanding of how everyone thinks and acts as a right-winger and left-winger, radically and conservatively, democratically and undemocratically, ecologically and anti-ecologically, politically and unpolitically, all at the same timeeveryone is a pessimist, a passivist, an idealist and activist in partial aspects of his or her self240 clearly outlines a third type of habitual structuration characteristic of the contemporary period: a habitus defined by its functioning within contradictory positions. As an aid to understanding the contemporary social world and thus the processes that come to bear upon integration within a specific field, a number of characteristics of this contradictory habitus may be supposed. Drawn and stressed between allegiance to two (or more) conflicting modes of practice, and the social positions informing them, whilst negotiating the logic specific to a certain field, or fields, of play, it is demanded of agents embodying this form of habitus that they apply multiple schemes of recognition and appreciation to situations, which, rather than aid them in their practice, come to highlight oppositions or paradoxes (this may indeed be the experience of the agent defined originally through a traditionally rigid habitus who is forced by circumstance to adapt). Whilst Bourdieus overall theorisation of habitus and the conditions of its (largely) secure
239 240

Beck, Giddens, Lash (1994), 26. Beck, Giddens, Lash (1994), 21.

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alignment to a related social space (in terms of practice being adjusted in advance to the conditions it will encounter due to lengthy historical immersion and the dispositions it produces) suggests this state of contradiction to be somewhat rare, he also notes that:

dispositions (being) out of line with the field and with the collective expectations which are constitutive of its normality (occurs) when a field undergoes a major crisis and its regularities (even its rules) are profoundly changed. In contrast to what happens in situations of concordance when the self-evidence linked to adjustment renders invisible the habitus which makes it possible, the relatively autonomous principle of legality and regularity that habitus constitutes then appears very clearly.241

This appears to be the case in the modern social world that Beck describes, as previous relations of symbolic violence - such as where an agent applied to the acts or requests of the dominant the appropriate perceptual categories to recognise respect, affection, admiration or love and in doing so maintained the unequal distribution of symbolic power - have become strained or fractured. The damaged mystical enchantment of relations in a particular field, so often enshrined in the general, accepted logic that may come to inform and dominate it, therefore produces or allows an agent (or agents, if the crisis in the field is significant) who is less responsive (Bourdieu uses the term sensitive) to relationships previously secure due to the long-term production of a sense of belief, and the practical investment in that belief, allowing them the possibility of being taken in by the logic of an opposing field. Simultaneously, the principle belief mechanism specific to the first field functions, albeit to varying degrees. And, just as symbolic violence is maintained through emotive, affective relationships, trading upon a sense of debt, obligation or, indeed, love, so too can it be assumed that the paradoxical situation in which a habitus is then situated produces a response that is contradictory to its core - emerging in emotional reactions that cannot be clearly marked as either affection or hatred, anger or love. Bourdieu notes how methods of domination, given their basis in bodily responses rather than a conscious, calculating intention to obey (or not), are often:

betrayed in visible manifestations, such as blushing, inarticulacy, clumsiness, trembling, all ways of submitting, however reluctantly, to the dominant judgement, sometimes in internal conflict and self-division, the subterranean complicity that a body slipping away from the directives of consciousness and will maintains with the violence of the censures inherent in the social structures.242
241 242

Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), 160. Bourdieu (2000), 169-170.

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One can suggest that it is also through such instances of bodily hexis that paradox as a result of contradiction is signified, although this would only result after a period of time, for as Bourdieu suggests (as opposed to Beck), the body is more inclined to maintain its durably inscribed and habitual responses than the mind, for whilst making things explicit can help, only a thoroughgoing process of counter-training, involving repeated exercises, can, like an athletes training, durably transform habitus.243 And this is to say nothing of the investment the insecurely aligned habitus maintains with each of the conflicting positions he or she holds, and the immediate importance for welfare, social standing and personal identity each position contains. Nevertheless, Becks work suggests just such a condition emerging in the modern social world, with the first step towards mapping what he understands as the ambivalent tone of the contemporary era being the ability of the people to say farewell to the notion that administrations and experts know exactly, or at least better, what is right and good for everyone: demonopolization of expertise.244 The next step, endured rather than consciously undertaken, can be assumed to be the corresponding diminishing of bodily comportment that results from this lack of a structural hierarchy, and the slow process of bodily reorientation of which Bourdieu is, admittedly, highly sceptical. Whilst one assumes this slow demystification that a paradoxical presence in different social positions and fields to be traumatic, this does not suggest that an agent therefore attempts to overcome or transcend the problem in terms of release, or a clean break. Rather, a number of possible outcomes present themselves: the agent may be a) predisposed to change and alteration (embody a flexible habitus) and act accordingly, after some measure of deliberation, b) reject the position less likely to impact most severely on his/her immediate social world and attendant sense of identity, and embrace the demands pertaining to the more important position, or c) maintain the position in spite of insecure alignment, sustaining practices that accommodate what Bourdieu understands as a system of double truths, repressing the objective truths and paradoxes of the
243 244

Bourdieu (2000), 172. Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens and Scott Lash, Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994), 29.

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situation (which have to come to the agents attention, in whatever manner [corporeal or conscious]) rather than simply overlooking them, and instead abiding by (in terms of ceding to the attraction of illusio or the pull of bodily hexis) the lived truths of the situation, which, as paradoxical as they may be, is undoubtedly common to all social agents who participate (for example) in the economic universe and in one of the anti-economic sub-universes (we might think of party activists and of all volunteer workers).245 This is partly to enter into taboo, to avoid the making explicit of the truth of institutions (or fields) whose truth is the avoidance of rendering their truth explicit,246 the likes of which Bourdieu has examined in relation to the economy of offering and volunteerism indicative of the Catholic Church, which involves (objectively) an economic transaction of time and offering recognised only in terms of faith and devotion, in which terms the practice makes the sense which produces its truth. This last type of response to the conditions that arise due to an unaligned habitus is perhaps closer to the surface of comprehension than has been formerly realised. Bourdieu understands this:

structural double game with the objective definition of practice (to be seen) in the most ordinary forms of behaviour The transfiguration is essentially verbal: to be able to do what one does by making people (and oneself) believe that one is not doing it, one must tell them (and oneself) that one is doing something other than what one is doing, one must do it while saying (to oneself and others) that one is not doing it, as if one were not doing it.247

This kind of euphemistic practice seems to waver between conscious repetition approaching some form of self-hypnotism, and a process of bodily coordination through habit produced in and through euphemisms that contribute to creating the very context and environment that will then operate independently of conscious thought to train, coach and convince. One might assume this approaches the ritualised training of the mind and body indicative of various religious groups, intent upon correcting practice through deprivation, repetition and techniques involving self-injury, but Bourdieu makes clear that even the most ordinary everyday practices accomplish as much, given that they are conducted within a context which encourages and rewards, for the work of self deception (is) a collective work, sustained by a whole set of social institutions of assistance, the first and most powerful of which is language, which is not only a means of expression, but also a principle of structuration functioning with the support of the group which benefits from it.248
245 246

Pierre Bourdieu, Practical Reason (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998a), 113. Bourdieu (1998a), 113. 247 Bourdieu (1998a), 115. 248 Bourdieu (1998a), 119.

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However, to understand how the contradictory habitus may come into being, in terms of instances of paradox occurring in the relationship between a habitus and a series of fields, one needs to examine why this process of euphemism (the structural double game) functions appropriately for some individuals and yet not for others. Field logic (in theory) functions largely as exclusionary logic in operating to confirm its own practices against others, which at first appears to suggest only one logic may be maintained by an individual at any one point in time. But as noted previously, all individuals maintain multiple belief systems (to varying degrees) that allow them to function in multiple social worlds, without revising key principles of their formative habitus. And yet, there are those that suffer from being unable to manage the requirements of conflicting positions. Why? Bourdieu provides a hint of an answer in Practical Reason (1998) where he describes how, in the religious enterprise, relations of production function according to the model of family relations: to treat others as brothers is to put the economic dimension of the relationship in parentheses. Religious institutions work permanently, both practically and symbolically, to euphemize social relations.249 It can be provisionally suggested that the situation required for the existence of the contradictory habitus is thus the breakdown, or lack, of this previously permanent work to euphemize social relations. As misrecognition involves the emotion of believing (and Bourdieu has stressed the full religious connotations of these terms), it follows that different degrees of belief are necessary to sustain different individuals, as individuals are partial to varying forms of emotional attachment as a precursor to belief and involvement - a phenomenon Bourdieu examined in his aesthetic theory in terms of the sensuous nave gaze and the cold aesthetic gaze (emotional orientations which correspond to social position). Large processes of symbolic violence, as Bourdieu noted with regard to the Catholic church, are built upon historically refined terms of misrecognition which operate not only to obscure the objective reality of worship, but also to cloud the religious contradictions which sustain the practice of belief: the paradox of the emotional exaltation of prayer and the rigidly enforced clinical detachment from the body that is demanded of the pious and chaste. Such a system encompasses and appeals to both the different aesthetic attitudes (and spans the variations between the two), ensuring its continued success. However, smaller fields rely less on inclusive belief mechanisms. When the autonomy of such fields is compromised, they are less able (given the dilution of logic by outside influence) to manage the level of practical and symbolic euphemization necessary to maintain a broad level of illusio amongst players. In other words, the perception of the dominant by a percentage of the dominated is fractured, as the belief mechanisms fall short of generating the appropriate faith necessary for their outright emotional subjugation. The repairing of such belief is by no means a simple,
249

Bourdieu (1998a), 119.

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straightforward occurrence, if indeed it is at all possible. Proverbs and other devices, as Bourdieu has noted, sometimes function to release the tension of such a position, allowing a degree of conscious referral to the condition that, however, is still secured by the habituated body. As Bourdieu (quoting Bernard Williams) stresses in The Logic of Practice (1990), even if it is possible to decide to believe p, one cannot both believe p and believe that the belief that p stems from a decision to believe p; if the decision to believe p is carried out successfully, it must also obliterate itself from the believer.250 Illusio is the process that makes a mockery of the decision to believe, for rather than conscious decision initiating such structures of belief Bourdieu stresses the natural disposition towards accessing cultural goods and engaging in social practices encoded in ones habitus (i.e. body) that provides a susceptibility to specific forms of perception and evaluation and allows a degree of predetermined alignment between a certain individual and the terms of (mis)recognition indicative of a specific field. In examining the contradictory habitus, as noted, one is therefore examining a habitus still operating by the terms of misrecognition specific to one field, and yet attracted (in a corporeal sense rather than in conscious, reflective terms) to the terms of another field which contradicts the first (in an objective sense). What examples may be given? One reading of Bourdieu suggests that the contradictory conditions of practice experienced under prostitution may function somewhat as a working model. Bourdieu writes:

Numerous street prostitutes say that, contrary to appearances, they prefer street prostitution, an expeditious sale of the body which allows a sort of mental reserve, to hotel prostitution which, insofar as it mimics - with a high degree of euphemization - free encounters, requires a greater expenditure of time and effort in pretending (hotel encounters), which appear to be more respectful of the person (than street encounters), are experienced as much more alienating because the prostitute must talk to the client, pretend interest in him, and the freedom in alienation which provides the benefit of thinking about something else disappears for the
250

Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990b), 49.

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benefit of a relationship which recalls some of the ambiguity of nonmercenary love affairs.251

Such a situation requires individuals to situate themselves between two contradictory worlds (the worlds of domestic sexual exchange and market sexual encounters, as Bourdieu terms them), where the practices of courtship specific to one (the domestic) are feigned to such an extent they threaten to break the safeguard of anonymity of the second, rupturing the logic that prevents the objective exploitative truth of the situation from being revealed. This is perhaps the definitive contradictory situation, for the belief that underpins the process of misrecognition necessary for the functioning of the individual between such fields is challenged continually, and yet must hold in order for the practice to be executed. Obviously, other instances of the contradictory habitus may experience contradiction in less immediately stark terms, but this example gives some indication of how ambiguity functions with respect to the habituated body, and the necessary euphemisms which function to manage that ambiguity.
251

Pierre Bourdieu (quoting Hoigard, Cecile and Finstad, Liv), Practical Reason (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998a), 123.

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3.3. Situating oneself.

Thus, one cannot speak of bad faith as a characteristic of the contradictory habitus, for the term implies the conscious attempt to believe against ones wishes to actually do so. Especially necessary for the social relations that constitute a practice such as prostitution, and all lesser forms of contradiction, is the conditioned body that maintains through habit and bodily hexis the alignment to a field that conscious decision-making cannot accomplish. And it is here that tracing and examining the contradictory habitus is difficult, because it is not simply a conscious, calculating, spoken confusion that marks a position of contradiction in relation to a series of fields, but the near imperceptible fluctuations in the body that signal stress and pressure. This is crucial when attempting to examine ones own position in relation to a field and the production of an academic critique of its history and logic, for the very impulse to produce such a critique must first be examined. From where, how and for what reason are the first questions that immediately come to mind when determining the point of origin of the critical impulse, but if one follows Bourdieus writings then it is necessary to suppose that criticism is born of discomfort, used here both in the traditional sense and more specifically in terms of bodily discomfort. This suggests a lack of integration, the loss of the feel for the game (the physicality of the expression here particularly useful) - although it is important to examine other possibilities before proceeding. Indeed, one may suggest a number of probable answers to the question of the cause of ones critical impulse when following Bourdieus conceptual framework: a) critique is an attempt at securing profits within the boundaries of a specific field in order to improve ones position, which implies that the logic(s) or regularities of procedure that inform the field are broad enough to accommodate dissenting opinions and allow them credit, b) critique represents the natural inclination of a specific habitus to explore and critically assess its surroundings as but one component of its labour for profit, c) the critique is misunderstood, it being simply a reaction to beliefs, objects of value or practices previously assumed valuable or important being redefined - given shifts in positions across the field and the influence of new forms of capital, or d) critique is but one overt manifestation of an unaligned or contradictory habitus, unable to practice a form of double logic, and plagued by multiple logics which frame perception of positions and position-takings within the field and thus finding them open to some level of criticism. To conclusively decide between these four options presupposes a broad level of understanding of the field generally, in terms of its occupants, its logic, its history, its relationship to other fields and thus its level of autonomy - in short, knowledge of a veritable maze of data, as Bourdieu has noted (when writing of the field of cultural production):

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It is difficult to conceive of the vast amount of information which is linked to membership of a field and which all contemporaries immediately invest in their reading of a work: information about institutions - e.g. academics, journals, magazines, galleries, publishers, etc. - and about persons, their relationships, liaisons and quarrels, information about the ideas and problems which are in the air and circulate orally in gossip and rumour. (Some intellectual occupations presuppose a particular mastery of this information.).252

And when one considers the extent to which a) an agents primary habitus influences positions and position-takings in a given field, b) the research involved in the tracing of its conditions of formulation occurring across a number of fields operating outside the principal field of interest and c) an understanding of how the field refracts influence from other dominant fields and possible homologies, the data obviously doubles or triples. Nevertheless, some tentative answers may be put forth. In order to distinguish the critical impulse from other attempts at mere ambition, it is necessary firstly to appreciate the methodological terms within which the current research project operates. First, it must be remembered that the project being undertaken is broad in its critical aims, rather than specific: it seeks to gain a general knowledge of the conditions informing the knowledge productions indicative of the field of film studies, rather than attack a specific target. Thus, it does not seek to bring into disrepute established practices simply for the sake of acquiring capital or field position in relation to other positions held - indeed, as will be noted below, the position held by this writer in regards to the field is small, if not totally insignificant. Second, the adoption of Pierre Bourdieus critical framework for investigation suggests an intention to conduct objective (and, crucially, reflexive) examination, rather than traffic in slanderous, theoretically fashionable or overtly disruptive criticism that seeks a more conventional means of attaining recognition in a field plagued by such techniques. Third, reflexive sociology is, at its core, wary of established institutions and intellectual productions, bracketing dispositions and implicit attitudes (scholarly or otherwise) in order to examine the workings of the objectifying agent as much as the phenomenon under study. The consequences of such a practice in intellectual circles may indeed be damaging rather than productive, as Bourdieu admits: The sorcerers apprentice who takes the risk of looking into native sorcery and its fetishes,
252

Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993b), 31.

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instead of departing to seek in tropical climes the comforting charms of exotic magic, must expect to see turned against him the violence he has unleashed.253 Fourth, the profits to be won from situating ones intellectual practice within traditional scientific methods of objectivity far outweigh the possible peer recognition gained from supporting a reflexive practice that intrinsically questions the fundamental nature of objectivity which is a precondition of intellectual endeavour (scholasticism). The challenging of the traditional epistemological break at the heart of objectivist theory initiated through such a practice puts into doubt the whole symbolic world in which one exercises the right to act as an academic, intellectual or student in the broader social world. Appreciating these basic components (and effects) of the reflexive method will thus allow a more measured appraisal of this writers critical impulse and its possible origins. Very broadly, then, one can first understand the conditions that produce criticism of the field of film studies to have resulted from a number of factors both specific to the field itself and as a result of broader movements in the contemporary period (as outlined previously with reference to Beck). Beyond the apparent ambiguity of the broader social world, the internal instability of the field may be understood as the long term result of the division that broadly occurred (as traced previously) when advocates of a purely theoretical approach to the cinema endeavoured to realign the study of film as a rigorous intellectual pursuit rather than simply and only a practice based upon evaluative procedures resulting from film criticism (and indebted to journalism). In Bourdieus terms, this effectively constituted a struggle for the dominant principle of hierarchization, for with film criticism necessarily aligned with both the publishing world (magazines, newspapers) and the commercial institution of cinema (in terms of evaluating film as a product for consumption), film critics were understood as extending the demands of the economic field (and, by extension, the political field) into the field of film studies, and thus subjecting the field indirectly to the heteronomous principal of hierarchization. Alternatively, film theoreticians, reacting to the crisis that has enveloped the humanities since the 1960s, attempted to legitimise the study of film scientifically (and, by extension, their positions) by applying to film structuralist and psychoanalytic theory, thus endeavouring to instate the autonomous principle of hierarchisation that would allow them dominance over the field irrespective of the demands and influence of the market. This ultimately resulted in, theoretically, an outright break between the two approaches to film. However, as in most fields, the boundaries are less strict than they appear to be. As noted, both approaches drew from, and continue to draw upon, the history of literary and aesthetic theory rooted in the scholastic disposition, which in practice has always allowed a degree of common ground in conceptual technique and evaluative standards that have paved the way for regular traffic between
253

Pierre Bourdieu, Homo Academicus (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), 5.

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the writing of film criticism and the construction of film theory. Former film critics who hold academic positions within universities and yet continue to write film reviews for commercial publications, as well as popular critics who openly adapt theoretical systems (intended to examine film distinct from its conditions of reception) to the demands of the readership to which they are inclined to cater, have become, if not common, much less rare than they once were. Nevertheless, the battlelines in symbolic terms have always remained present, if somewhat obscured - resulting in a field exhibiting three specific categories (as noted in Chapter 1), albeit with degrees of crossover. Indeed, these blurred edges have been intensified as a result of the rigorous study of popular culture in academic institutions and the corresponding devaluation (or, at least, reappraisal) of the symbolic capital associated with fluency in the texts and traditions of high culture. As Gare notes, the very existence of intellectuals is constituted by the ability of its members to uphold the reality of grand narratives which defines them as a vanguard254, and yet, as Bordwell makes clear in Contemporary Film Studies and the Vicissitudes of Grand Theory, this is becoming an increasingly impossible task given the growing calls in film study to think not:

in terms of this or that film but rather of a cinematic event - all institutions, activities, texts and agents that might pertain to cinema. (Thus), both film production and reception open out onto an infinite cultural space The cinema event is constituted by a continuing interchange, neither beginning or ending at any specific point.255

Bordwell further suggests that this approach produces revelations - funny and bizarre anecdotes; breath-catching remarks made by nave historical audiences; vivid examples of decentred spectacle, anti-hegemonic resistance, or the shocks of modernity - (that) exude a charm that the more ascetic and text-centred subject-position theory lacked.256 This not only in effect devalues the traditions and assumptions associated with subject-position theory and the intellectual traditions it can be seen to have upheld (as examined earlier), but it also, ultimately, produces research outcomes more saleable and attractive to the everyday, non-academic, audience. As noted, this has resulted in a field that still exhibits the residue of 30-40 years of positions and position-takings. The field is one where multiple types of perceptual categories, or in Bourdieus
Arran E. Gare, Postmodernism and the Environmental Crisis (London: Routledge, 1995), 21. David Bordwell, Contemporary Film Studies and the Vicissitudes of Grand Theory, David Bordwell and Noel Carroll (eds), Post Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies (Wisconsin: Wisconsin Press, 1996), 12. 256 Bordwell and Carroll (1996), 12.
255 254

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terms, eyeglasses, function, producing strains of logic that appear, on the surface, paradoxical, such as the insistence of certain mass market magazine film critics upon standards of criticism drawn from literary models of analysis and evaluation (in order to ensure the perpetuation of proper values) that, historically, mass publishing brought into disrepute. And yet Jim Collins notes in Architectures of Excess: Cultural Life in the Information Age (1995) that academic critics have, at the same time, claimed this higher ground of public interest, by positioning their critical discourses outside the taint of superficial evaluation most often framed in terms of thumbs, popcorn boxes, stars and hankies.257 But this is only to outline the more discernible operations of the field and the perplexing terms of reference and evaluation that operate within it. For although Bourdieu suggests that fields charged with the assumptions and dispositions of the scholastic universes do not require the kinds of practical knowledges demanded in sporting or artistic realms, there exists a definite implicit collusion (the residue of history) that informs the operations of the field of film studies which, whilst indeed functioning in theoretical terms (through, amongst other techniques, referencing, citations and allusions, as examined earlier) also operates as a form of physical discrimination, in terms of what may be understood as collusio. Given the overtly social dimension that accompanies the worlds of academia, journalism, film previews, publicity launches, film festivals and the jostling for financial aid issuing from film funding bodies, the associated circuit of gossip, rumour and chat which accompanies such a universe (and which, in its most blatant form, is retold in gossip columns in entertainment magazines) is but one indicator of the implicit system of behavioural correction and adjustment that informs all fields, and which Bourdieu understands as:

an immediate agreement in ways of judging and acting a practical experience of the transcendence of the group, of its way of being and doing, each agent finding in the conduct of his peers the ratification and legitimation (the done thing) of his own conduct, which in return, ratifies and, if need be, rectifies, the conduct of others.258

Whilst it is difficult to outline a bodily logic specific to the field of film studies itself (given that across the different categories specific to the field it undoubtedly draws upon a range of logics which function across broader fields of fashion, music, literary production and all fields linked either directly or indirectly through the blanket term entertainment), it must be assumed that behavioural situations which, on the surface, seem highly casual or even senseless are indeed
257

Jim Collins, Architectures of Excess: Cultural Life in the Information Age (New York: Routledge, 1995), 206.

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structurally directed, with a system of normative rules that ensure that specific formations are maintained (the pecking order) and perceptive and evaluative categories recognised (and misrecognised). Thus to function in the field of film studies is to attune ones practices to the demands implicitly made through citations, allusions, textual styles, publishing opportunities, intellectual traditions, references (filmic, textual, social, cultural or otherwise), with reference to the various contexts in which such field literacy and logic function and with respect to others assuming positions in the interaction. Following Bourdieu, one can assume that in entering such a field one is predisposed to do so, which, given the theory of practical logics, makes an outline of what exactly constitutes this logic near impossible. Given that ones functioning within a field amounts to a number of successive actions, assumptions and practices adapted to the objective conditions of that field and spontaneously enacted with no discernible conscious intention or recollection, one is left to outline the characteristics of that environment through a deductive method of objective examination that determines ones current position, capital holdings and history of position-takings in order to predict ones probable logic when situated within it. This writers postgraduate position at a second tier University with a limited (indeed, virtually non-existent) film studies program, within a dominated department that has endured a) the elimination of traditional subjects (such as literary studies and branches of philosophical investigation), b) staff losses and, c) diminished funding (as a result of the broader movement across Australia towards the economic rationalisation of tertiary education) might, at first glance, appear to be irrelevant from any consideration of the field of film studies per se, and yet it is these very conditions that have mediated the position held in regards to the field and which have coloured the construction and interpretation of it in practice. The theoretical intellectual traditions one situates oneself within (absorbed through texts, reading lists, films, journals, essays) that exist across countries, borders and times are nevertheless introduced through the immediate, everyday conditions of the University - an illusio the institution attempts to maintain with respect to, if not (in this case) its academics, then at least its students. However, given the recent budgetary attacks upon tertiary studies and the overall devaluation of the model of traditional academic endeavour by successive Australian governments, the patchy illusio of the University does little to prepare one to function appropriately within a specific disciplinary field (i.e. to become immersed within the game). These conditions of disenchantment legislate against ones smooth integration, and, accordingly, the position held by this writer in regards to the field amounts to a space on the periphery, enough to both feel and acknowledge the perceptual categories demanded of its occupants and yet remain at a distance, both symbolically and in actual space (the
258

Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), 145.

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geographic isolation of Australia and its limited film studies culture contribute to this sense of deficiency and detachment). As a postgraduate student, rather than an academic, critic, or, perhaps, teacher, this writers holdings of capitals specific to the field is limited, with the restricted level of cultural capital held compromised by association with a second-tier University. This negative downgrading of cultural and symbolic capital results from the general dominance of both academic and journalistic discourses (and attendant perceptual categories) that function within the field. Scholars (whose positions are founded upon the practices of distinction) are fundamentally hostile to capitals gained via education at a former technical institution and the relationship to the practicalities and logics of the daily world such an institution indeed encourages, for as Bourdieu notes, the intellectual field contributes to the reproduction of the prevailing power structures across broader society, and thus is immediately critical of agents whose attainment of capital challenges traditional modes of legitimation and consecration. Whilst it is unclear to what extent this habitus is mediated by the logic specific to the field of film studies, it is clear that a critical viewpoint not appropriately adjusted to the regularities and misrecognition of the game, combined with compromised cultural capital, is bound to be marginalised or ignored by the reigning cultural arbiters of the field. However it must be stressed that the logic of the field still touches and conditions this writer, in the sense that the traditional model of critical thinker still functions as a role deemed appropriate, necessary and desirable by this habitus. As will be developed below, this disposition to pursue academic endeavours is nevertheless framed by a dominated, lower socio-economic position in the broader social world, and, following Bourdieus theory (and statistical examination of) homologies across fields, can thus be seen to channel this aspiration towards the subordinate faculties of an already substandard University, specifically the Arts faculty. Although simplistically this suggests a structural match between this writers habitual aspirations and the possibilities of realisation, it also has produced in practice an unaligned, possibly contradictory, habitus which functions in response to paradoxical terms of recognition and appreciation. Thus, this research program, whilst inevitably a form of symbolic production which must be provisionally investigated as a strategy for the maximization of capital and scholarly recognition as much as a reflexive practice of examination, is fundamentally plagued by the contradictions (and ambiguities, to use Becks term) between this writers socio-economic history, the intellectual field (as compromised in Australia), the cultural field (as pertains to film studies) and the broader social world.

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3.4. Between the primary habitus and the intellectual field.

To outline the characteristics of the primary habitus that informs in the most durable sense this writers position and corresponding evaluative categories and strategies (as much as can be consciously reflected upon and represented in concrete terms) requires a juggling act between objectivity, proximity and reflexivity that, as Bourdieu admits, is always matched by a level of compromise. How can we not regret, he writes, that it is socially impossible to expound and explain what I believe to be the real logic of historical action and the true philosophy of history by making full use of the advantages inherent in the relation of belonging, which would enable us to combine information gathered by the objective techniques of scientific enquiry with the profound intuitions gained from personal familiarity?259 Impossible, perhaps, but an objective and broad appraisal of this writers background, following Bourdieus method, may provide a starting point from which further examination can be conducted. Firstly, as the product of a lower middle class/middle class socio-economic background, the economic and cultural capital associated with such a position involves an alignment with others holding similar capitals in terms of volume and structure, which produces and reinforces specific dispositional strategies and implies future position-takings both available for occupation and, perhaps more importantly, acceptable for occupation. In other words, a limited volume of both economic and cultural capital, and within those limitations more cultural than economic capital in structure, defines for this writer a specific social position and thus corresponding choices in terms of lifestyle, material acquisitions and practices. Thus, in relation to Bourdieus graphical representation of social spaces and their equivalent social practices in his Practical Reason (1998)260, this writer occupies a position at the middle to lower end of the negative Y axis (designating negative capital volume inclusively representative of all forms of capital), combined with a middle to lower position in regards to the structure of economic capital on the negative X economic axis (thus designating lower economic capital but higher cultural capital), suggesting greater potential and inclination to adopt practices and evaluative standards indicative of such a position. One cannot hope to outline the myriad influences, in both conscious and corporeal terms, which inscribe ones socialisation in formative years,261 but Bourdieu makes clear that the operations of habitus, and the immediate social world or field which informs it, function to drive agents to aspire to the very boundaries that define them, to appropriate and aspire to that which was ultimately
259 260

Pierre Bourdieu, Homo Academicus (California: Stanford University Press, 1988), 3. See Pierre Bourdieu, Practical Reason (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998a), 5.

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inevitable, given the priming inherent in social position, which prompts him to write that one could describe each singular form of a specific habitus (of the artist, writer, or scientist, for example) as a kind of compromise formation (in Freuds sense).262 Socialisation is thus to be understood as the encoding of limits, primarily through acts of recognition, which Bourdieu makes clear involves the situating of oneself in response to others to achieve a being-perceived and thus a presence and durable influence in an established grid of relations. This is not only undertaken in response to the demands of the immediate social environment the agent finds himself or herself within (and the range of methods for recognition each respective social arena calls forth), but against the backdrop of socio-economic history (in the form of familial histories, traditions, places of worship, holiday destinations, marketplaces, etc) which comes to be encoded or translated in the spaces, places and geographical terrain that shape in physical terms the sense of the world, and its natural boundaries, for the agent. The public school, as opposed to private education, public transport as opposed to private ownership of vehicles, dinner instead of tea - all the minutiae of social existence which inform conscious understandings, and encompass the body spatially to work upon it in the formative years, are markings that impress upon ones existence in innumerable ways, defining in concrete terms the aspirations and imaginary universes of possibility available for later pursuit. In some sense, the being-perceived of which Bourdieu writes echoes Foucaults examination of selfcorrection and internal policing made with reference to Benthams Panopticon in his Discipline and Punish (1975), it being a perpetual process of recognition which is carried out by the solitary agent irrespective of direct, physical contact with other bodies. For being-perceived, whilst affirming in terms of social recognition, is a process implicitly bound up with the exercise of symbolic domination and force, encoded in the appropriate dispositions an agent enacts and applies to the physical (and thus social) world when responding to appropriate cues. As Bourdieu notes:

The child can only discover others as such on condition that he discovers himself as a subject for whom there are objects whose particularity is that they can take him as their object. In fact, he is continuously led to take the point of view of others on himself, to adopt their point of view so as to discover and evaluate in advance how he will be seen and defined by them. His being is a being-perceived, condemned to be defined as it really is by the perception of others.263

For a sample examination of the techniques of bodily conditioning, see Chris Allen, Bourdieus Habitus, Social Class and the Worlds of Visually Impaired Children, Urban Studies Vol. 41, no. 3 (2004). 262 Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), 165. 263 Bourdieu (2000), 166.

261

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This primary illusio, an investment in a game because it is the only game possible, and which is so effective and natural because it is so omnipresent, is the bedrock upon which later decisions, reflections, choices, revisions and adaptations will take place for the agent, and through which future position-takings will be both filtered and formulated. As Bourdieu stresses, an individuals being in the world (and being-perceived in the world) just is (so to speak) - an immediate sense of being, of presence - but this being is fixed in the formative years (as it always will be) within the objective regularities of social structures that it will indeed incorporate:

The purely social and quasi-magical process of socialization, which is inaugurated by the act of marking that institutes an individual as an eldest son, an heir, a successor, a Christian, or simply as a man (as opposed to a woman), with all the corresponding privileges and obligations, and which is prolonged, strengthened and confirmed by social treatments that tend to transform instituted difference into natural distinction, produces quite real effects, durably inscribed in the body and in belief.264

As previously noted, Bourdieu understands this system of socialization to be highly charged with affectivity, observing how:

the child incorporates the social in the form of affects, socially coloured or qualifiedIn the present state of the division of labour between the sexes, symbolic prizes such as honour, glory and celebrity are still offered mainly to men, boys (being) the privileged recipients of the pedagogic action aimed at sharpening sensitivity to these prizes; they are (therefore) especially encouraged to acquire the disposition to enter into the original illusio of which the family universe is the site.265

Irrespective of gender differentiations (examined further below) such an understanding anchors the theory of habitus within the realm of emotion and sensitivity, which gives the correction of ones actions (when habitus is challenged beyond its principle frames of reference) an immediately felt twitch or reaction encoded bodily. One can also assume that such bodily emotional reactions are also matched by a corresponding conscious examination of these reactions, which interprets ones responses in relation to typical societal norms. For example, trembling, anxiety and general panic, whilst experienced in their bodily forms as instances of correction, surely must be understood as being accompanied by a socially constructed interpretation of what these corporeal actions signify,
264 265

Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990b), 58. Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), 167.

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which in effect functions to doubly dominate the individual. Positive bodily reactions, for example joy, elation or happiness, also function in this double sense, for although symbolic domination may indeed operate fundamentally through bodily mechanisms unavailable (theoretically) to conscious reflection, all symbolic systems manufacture to some degree interpretations of such affective responses when they occur in dominated individuals, thus reinforcing their power. An example: the intense elation felt through the body of a believer comes to signify a joyous divine presence in most religious systems, rather than what can objectively be understood as an instance of secure alignment between player and field (a product of the misrecognition resulting from field illusio), thus generating the interpretation of emotion specific to that field. Therefore, although Bourdieu does not characterise the dispositions and attendant affective enchantment inherent in habitus in narrative terms explicitly, being-perceived is as much bound up with locating oneself in regard to a history and tradition as it comes to be represented in such concepts as honour, respect, allegiance and the feeling of pride. Such terms designate the correct (and correspondingly incorrect) bodily emotions one must feel in order to situate oneself appropriately in relation to convention, custom or ritual - to either achieve confirmation or experience denial. Bourdieu has not denied the act of conscious decision making when habitus confronts situations beyond its principal frames of reference, or even within a reinforcing environment, and such an awareness of double domination through signification provides an understanding of how bodily reactions are not simply experienced, but also interpreted (although this interpretation may be near imperceptible, as with ones fluent use of speech and language). Indeed, if habitus is the outpouring of history in response to the circumstances of the moment, it is akin to automatically writing the story as one both reads and experiences it (given that the future amounts to the inevitable realisation of structured hopes and desires). Like the underlying drive for recognition which characterises the actions of the agent in that moment, situating oneself in regard to history is, for Bourdieu at least, akin to situating oneself within a hall of mirrors, for social history is not only encoded in the form of cues that extend into everyday life through agents endowed with the appropriate perceptual categories to recognise them, it may also be understood as a network of reflections through which the agent of the moment can align practices to accord with tradition, and in doing so be recognised by others to exist as a tangible presence in the here and now. This reflective network includes photographs, art, letters, books, etc. as much as bodily cues, and such objects provide a conscious, specific understanding of the past beyond notions of honour, loyalty or pride, which in effect attach corporeal understandings, interpreted in the context of a field, to concrete representations. Indeed, Bourdieu understands this process of labouring for recognition by others so as to be able to define oneself, in reference to the sense of

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self encoded in histories, narratives, traditions or backgrounds that inform any social situation, as a work of socialisation of drivesbased on a permanent transaction in which (the child) makes renunciations and sacrifices in exchange for testimonies of recognition, consideration and admiration.266 This is what makes the practice of symbolic violence and domination so effective; as Bourdieu notes, it is the automaton within us that responds in the appropriate manner to cues and custom, making other arguments regarding hegemonic power (such as Althussers theorisation of ideological State apparatuses maintained by the dominant powers) inappropriate to convey the very banal sense of submission, control and restraint that is the product of mere socialisation, rather than manufactured and produced explicitly for the purposes of supervision and management. To consider ones primary habitus is to therefore analyse and outline the various ways one instinctively acts, thinks, chooses, feels and evaluates in regard to the desire of being perceived, with reference to the formative socio-economic conditions of ones upbringing and the system of social norms that come to interpret those experiences for the individual. Whilst Bourdieu writes that:

the obscurity of the dispositions of habitus, in which are embedded the schemes of perception and appreciation which, below the level of the decisions of the conscious mind and the controls of the will, are the basis of a relationship of practical knowledge and recognition that is profoundly obscure to itself267

which suggests that any systematic grasp of these perceptual and practical categories of being and acting is impossible, one can piece together a sketchy composite picture of the terms and conditions of ones identity through consideration of affective experiences (feelings or senses of good and bad, of right and wrong, of what is taken for granted as simply self evident, the natural and proper understanding of the world, feelings of respect, love or allegiance) and practical inclinations in terms of bodily comportment (how one holds oneself, posture, manner, facial tics, the instances where one feels at home, etc.). Indeed, in plotting ones immediate
266 267

Bourdieu (2000), 167. Bourdieu (2000), 171.

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material and cultural holdings with regard to Bourdieus grid of Social Space and Symbolic Space from his Practical Reason (as noted previously), and through this calculating the practices one is disposed to engage in (upon average), an understanding can be obtained of the general characteristics of the habitus one embodies. It can thus be noted that, with a currently limited amount of economic capital, and yet a nominal degree of cultural capital (three undergraduate degrees in arts and secondary education), this writer can hope to occupy (that trajectory of hope the product of habitus itself) a position throughout life consistently towards the upper left region of the grid, as part of the salariat, which Bourdieu theorises as securing above average levels of both cultural and economic capital, and maintaining corresponding social practices accordingly. However, such an outline clearly does not represent the realities of class fractions and their equivalent social practices in Australia, for as Gare notes:

The salariat, which for a long time was the fastest-growing class within Western countries, has been divided between increasingly affluent administrators and increasingly poor and insecure professionals and clerical workers Those who are engaged in providing services - teachers, academics, medical practitioners working for a salary, librarians and social workers - have suffered radical reductions in real income and conditions with reduced job security while bearing increasingly heavy loads of work.268

Bourdieus grid, in this sense, does not entirely reflect the local changes resulting from globalisation and the ambiguity of the contemporary period examined by Beck, but it does suggest the general trajectory of this writers habitus, at least in terms of aspirations, even if those aspirations are not matched by the conditions necessary to realise them. It might be suggested that these inclinations, dispositions and aspirations still function, in terms of discrimination and recognition, because the habitus is refracted through the orientation to the world traditionally indicative of the student, where it is normal to entertain ideas for possible futures rather than recognise the realities of the world beyond education (certainly Bourdieus theory would broadly support such an understanding - at least in elite or privileged Universities). However, such conditions are changing, as students of all ages situate themselves between employment and ongoing education in order to maintain a position in the world. Bourdieus conceptual grid in this instance suffers from the lack of a broader appraisal of the changing world conducted, for example, by Beck. It is unable to recognise the problems of an agent
268

Arran E. Gare, Postmodernism and the Environmental Crisis (London: Routledge, 1995), 9.

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operating within fields susceptible to major change, and, particularly in this instance, caught between the logic and methods of recognition functioning across two distinctive fields: the laws of the principal social world of ones existence, and the terms of recognition indicative (broadly) of the intellectual field. The heritage and tradition of the former, encoded corporeally and consciously, clashes with the ad hoc (given the conditions of tertiary education in Australia) grappling for capital and distinction in the latter. In Australia, the breakdown of the intellectual field, resulting from the fields outright domination by the field of power (and economic logic) and the subsequent explicit revealing of formerly euphemistic scholarly logic and practice, has allowed intellectuals to become more concerned with the overt maximization of capitals beyond what was traditionally understood as the focus of academia (even if, objectively, this focus euphemistically masked pursuit of economic capitals). Thus, the aspirations encoded through the formative habitus, specifically the traditional understanding of the potential profits to be won in the intellectual field irrespective of ones level of ownership of inherited cultural capital, have become frustrated in a field which is increasingly dictated by economic logic and the corresponding power of ones position in broader, differentiated social universes, given the increasingly generic (and trivialised) nature of academic qualifications. The possibility of those individuals not holding the appropriate dominant class aesthetic (and corresponding economic capital) to gain academic respect and recognition given these conditions is seemingly rapidly diminishing. Bourdieu has examined such a situation in Distinction, where he writes:

The overproduction of qualifications, and the constant devaluation, tend to become a structural constant when theoretically equal chances of obtaining qualifications are offered to all of the offspring of the bourgeoisie (regardless of birth, rank or sex) while the access of other classes to these qualifications also increases (in absolute terms). The strategies which one group may employ to try and escape downclassing and return to their class trajectory, are now one of the most important factors in the transformation of social structures the strategies agents use to avoid the devaluation of their diplomas are grounded in the discrepancy between opportunities objectively available at any given moment and aspirations based on an earlier structure of objective opportunities.269

As previously noted, Bourdieu understands recognition of symbolic distinctions such as honour to be aimed at men (boys [being] the privileged recipients of the pedagogic action aimed at
269

Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (London: Routledge, 1984), 147-150.

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sharpening sensitivity to [such] prizes270), which suggests an increasing level of frustration in regards to this (male) writers position between two shifting fields previously linked by a trajectory of social progress that is no longer able to be realised, and yet nevertheless still functions given encouragement from both fields (the expectations indicative of the primary social world are still encouraged by the intellectual field, which, however, no longer maintains the conditions to realise and provide for such social hopes).271 Given the greater holding of credentials amongst the general population, what Bourdieu terms the market in educational qualifications has become bloated, with modes of distinction supervising the field having less resonance - the nobility which such holdings traditionally designated holding less value as currency in both the intellectual field and the broader social world. Nevertheless, agents holding such qualifications attempt to maximize them as best they can, or as well as the primary habitus may allow. This is where the coping mechanisms of the flexible and rigid habitus come into effect, and where instances of the contradictory habitus come to the fore. As Bourdieu argues:

victims of devaluation are disinclined to perceive and acknowledge the devaluing of qualifications with which they are closely identified, both objectively (they constitute an important part of these peoples social identity) and subjectively, which propels them to embrace relatively autonomous markets in which the value of qualifications declines at a slower rate.272

This is predicated, of course, upon the ability of an individual to recognise devaluation and act accordingly (i.e. embody some level of flexibility in the habitus). Otherwise, a position is created where a field exerts an influence over an agent dispositionally structured to recognise it, but it does not function to generate profits for them, given the devalued nature of their educational capital and broader capital holdings. Thus, the individual is torn between the structuration of the primary habitus and the lack of recognition or position within a field that nevertheless remains fixed as a part of that individuals habitual trajectory. This is the position of the current writer - i.e. limited practical knowledge of the intellectual field and its disciplinary sub-fields (knowledge taken for granted by those blessed with inherited cultural capital) and thus a poor understanding of the strategies needed to perform a revaluation of inherently inferior academic qualifications. Indeed, the corporeal binding of this writer to an earlier
Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), 167. For a discussion of careers counseling, trajectory and habitus, see Gunnel Lindh and Einar Dahlin, A Swedish Perspective on the importance of Bourdieus Theories for Career Counseling, Journal of Employment Counseling Vol. 37, Issue 4 (2000).
271 270

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social formation distinctly different to the shifting circumstances of the contemporary intellectual field creates what Bourdieu understands as an hysteresis effect, where the holders of devalued diplomas become, in a sense, accomplices in their own mystification, since, by a typical effect of allodoxia (misapprehension), they bestow a value on their devalued diplomas which is not objectively acknowledged.273 The social trajectories encoded bodily in this writers habitus are thus not able to be realised in the intellectual field, and yet they still produce orientations to action, perception and evaluation which remain mystified by the symbolic mechanisms of academia. Unable to be reoriented conclusively (given the limited range of alternatives to action resulting from the realities of the socio-economic conditions encoded in formative years), such ambiguous dispositions appear to be becoming the rule rather than the exception in the contemporary social landscape, as Becks work has suggested. Indeed, as the dissolution of previously rigid cultural borders, ethical and moral codes (and senses of time and space) occur in the contemporary social world, such instances of ambiguity point towards a large scale breakdown of symbolic systems, or at least an increasing awareness of the histories of euphemization and relations of domination and exploitation that formerly remained unknown or repressed for the average agent through affective modes of recognition. Thus, what Bourdieu describes as the cheating of a generation in Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste can be seen to inform this writers orientation to, and characterisation of, the field of film studies and the intellectual field more generally. It is this ambiguous disposition to action, this frustrated practical knowledge, that provides the conditions in which the learned ignorance typically informing the field of film studies has come to be objectified. This chapter has explored this writers orientation to criticism, providing a reflexive, objective re-positioning of the subject of objectification that traditionally orders the hierarchies of knowledge and understanding informing research. As such, adherence to the doxa (and related scholastic fallacies) characterising the field of film studies has been somewhat suspended (in the sense of scholastic thought being interrogated in its dispositional state), thus illuminating the functioning of a specific cultural arbitrary and the practices this arbitrary legitimates. This is not to suggest the learned ignorance of the field has been eradicated; rather, the dispositional structuration identified as evident in much film studies practice has been qualified given the idiosyncratic position this writer occupies with respect to both the field and the broader social world. It is this situation that has allowed adaptation to a specific cultural arbitrary to be considered and criticised, a situation by no means available to
272 273

Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (London: Routledge, 1986), 142. Bourdieu (1984), 142.

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all given that it reflects a place in physical and social space marked by a troubled state of illusio and a specific socio-economic history and corresponding trajectory. David Schwartz suggests Bourdieu demands reflexivity for two reasons: First, reflexivity is necessary for doing good scienceThe second objective points to a moral obligation to extend the chances for unfettered critical examination and communication to others.274 The idiosyncratic occupation of a place on the periphery that provides this writer with a distinct perspective upon the fallacies of scholastic production cannot be assumed to be available to all; therefore, extending the chances for unfettered critical examination and communication to others requires a more systematic methodology - a general, practical reflexive procedure. In order to move into new areas of investigation transcending the limitations of previous film studies research, it is therefore necessary to map out the specifics of this procedure, thus recognising the situated nature of research in understanding the mechanics of real social practice, and the problem of cinematic experience.
David Schwartz, Culture and Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1997), 217.
274

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Chapter 4. Reflexivity in action: objectification and the problems of conversational analysis.

This acute feeling for what Weber called the Vielseitigkeit, the many-sidedness, of social reality, its resistance to the venture of knowledge, was doubtless the basis of the thinking that I have been constantly engaged in on the limits of scientific knowledge. - Pierre Bourdieu, In Other Words: Essays Towards a Reflexive Sociology. 275

If all social actors are characterised by, as Bourdieu states, the rarity of the relative position they occupy (and thus the material and symbolic revenues associated with that position), what practical course of action does reflexive sociology offer in order to bracket socialisation and provide greater access to the lived truths of practice - without the distortion resulting from the application of social categories of perception that typically inform acts of objectification? If nothing else, social realitys resistance to the venture of knowledge can be seen to result at least partially from all (the) kinds of distortion (that) are embedded in the very structure of (a) research relationship.276 Therefore, whilst adjustment to a specific cultural arbitrary (i.e. scholarly logic as enacted in the field of film studies), and the possibility of reflexivity with respect to that arbitrary has been examined at some length in Chapter 3, it is also necessary to consider how this learned ignorance manifests itself within the observer/observed relationships that structure the empirical component typical of research investigations. Given that all research fundamentally presupposes social interaction, and that this interaction occurs within and across fields (thus operating with respect to specific stakes and interests), Bourdieu makes clear that empirical work is therefore always subject to the principles of vision and division that classify and differentiate practices unfolding within the social world. Indeed, empirical research is where two different relationships to the world meet in a process of objectification - one theoretical, the other practical.277 Whilst rendered as simple differences in cultural tradition, the distance from the world implicit in scholarly objectification, and the proximity to the world characteristic of the objectified, is a difference in distance from necessity (that) has to be understood, failing which one is liable to attribute to a gap between cultures or mentalities what is in fact an effect of the gap between social conditions.278 This
Pierre Bourdieu, In Other Words: Essays Towards a Reflexive Sociology (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990a), 21. 276 Pierre Bourdieu et. al., The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999), 608. 277 Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990b), 14. 278 Bourdieu (1990b), 14-15.
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problem of distance at the heart of scholarly objectification thus raises a number of questions with respect to the current research program, which engages in two (related) practices of objectification: objectification of the field of film studies and objectification of the practices specific to cinematic exchange. Attention to Bourdieus examination of the practical application of reflexive sociology The Weight of the World: Social Suffering In Contemporary Society (1999) - is crucial here, providing the proper epistemological and methodological tools with which to measure a) the reflexive quality of the current program, b) its possible contribution to analysis of the logic of practice (cinematic experience) and c) the complexities of, and issues pertaining to, the fieldwork which necessarily underpins that analysis. In presenting the findings of a substantial research program mapping the nature of different forms of social suffering in contemporary French and American society, The Weight of the World functions as both as an examination of social despair, and as a meditation upon properly representing this embedded suffering in the everyday practical sense. The works prefatory sections and conversation transcriptions labour to reveal through case study format the nuances in speech and manner that suggest adjustment to specific conditions of existence, stretching in degree from la grande misre (suffering tied to material poverty) to la petite misre (ordinary suffering resulting from a contradictory position with respect to two or more conflicting fields) that is so ubiquitous in, as Bourdieu states, the order of things. The work therefore provides a template for the reflexive theorisation of practice, and yet the epistemological desire to reflexively comprehend the objectification of the situated practical sense (through the second objectification of the act of objectification) does not conclude Bourdieus program. Whilst reflexivity is indeed an attempt to properly objectify the social foundations of research and the objectification it practices, it is also an attempt to provide a comprehensive understanding of the socially situated being of the objectifier and their degree of possible relations with the objectified of the research situation or setting. In this sense The Weight of the World considers the problems of reflexive sociology beyond the realm of epistemology, examining the play between participation and observation that is fundamental to fieldwork. In order to examine and contextualise these issues with respect to broader sociological discourse (both in an epistemological and methodological sense), it is therefore necessary to adopt (as Bourdieu indeed insists) a sociogenetic point of view upon his work in order to recognise the space of possibilities in relation to which it developed and the complexities of research practice that reflexive sociology is therefore obligated to address. The fieldwork approach taken in The Weight of the World engages a qualitative form of data collection labelled conversational analysis, a form of analysis which plays between the procedures typical of the in-depth interview, and what is termed participant observation, a research

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technique that designates a range of practices spanning traditional (i.e. objective) scientific neutrality (dividing observation from participation) and degrees of (subjective) engagement or immersion in the field under study (participation as opposed to mere observation). As utilised by Bourdieu, the interview dimension of the conversational analyses presented in The Weight of the World is (to a degree) unstructured, drawing upon interpersonal devices common to ordinary conversation but attempting to construct a relationship of active and methodical listening, as far removed from the pure laissez-faire of the nondirective interview as from the interventionism of the questionnaire.279 This form of non-violent communication attempts to counter the inequality typically underpinning an interview relationship - particularly the disparities between interviewer and interviewee that for Bourdieu are ultimately reducible to social differences (i.e. the position of each party with respect to the distribution of capitals in the social world, a distribution most immediately represented in the interview context by the interpersonal competencies resulting from the possession of linguistic capital). Indeed, in attempting to overcome techniques of symbolic violence, there occurs a definite back-and-forth swing between traditional objectivity (removal) and wilful subjective engagement (immersion) in Bourdieus interview technique, ensuring the conversational analyses of The Weight of the World move beyond traditional definitions of the indepth interview. As Bourdieu states:

In practice, this seemingly contradictory position is not easy to sustain. In effect, it combines a total availability to the person being questioned, submission to the singularity of a particular life history - which can lead, by a kind of more or less controlled imitation, to adopting the interviewees language, views, feelings, and thoughts - with methodical construction, founded on the knowledge of the objective conditions common to an entire social category.280

This submission to the singularity of a life history (albeit with methodical construction) is demonstrated throughout The Weight of the World by research design that utilises the knowledge obtained through social recognition in order to grasp the particularities of the practical sense; Bourdieus research team were encouraged to select respondents from within their own respective social worlds so as to induce reflexivity by confronting the order of things and feel for the game encoded in both the theoretical and practical relationship to the world.281
Bourdieu et. al. (1999), 609. Bourdieu et. al. (1999), 609. 281 Attention to these issues perhaps echoes (albeit with significant differences) previous attempts to adapt social history to film study. See Mary Beth Haralovich, The Social History of Film: Heterogeniety and Mediation, Wide Angle Vol. 8, no. 2 (1987).
280 279

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This altering of the roles of interviewer and interviewee fundamentally restructures the interview relationship, edging the technique closer to the practices indicative of participant observation. (Indeed, Bourdieus description of conversational analysis in An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology [1992] as participant objectivation suggests recognition of these similarities.) Participant observation traditionally attempts to attain a balance between the poles at either end of the methodological spectrum of fieldwork, allowing for both the variables of immersion to be properly qualified by the objectivity of traditional scientific method, and the rigidity of controlled research to be balanced by the subjective complexities of field experience. Michael Quinn Patton has outlined at length these different elements of field research in Qualitative Research and Evaluation Methods (2002), distinguishing the activities assembled under participant observation with respect to six dimensions. The first dimension (1) identifies the role of the observer in the situation or setting under study, which Patton charts along a sliding scale from full participant in the setting, to part participant/part observer, to onlooker observer. These differences reflect how social, cultural, political and interpersonal factors can limit the nature and degree of participation in participant observation,282 suggesting that the practices constituting fieldwork often adjust to the realities of context rather than rigidly adhering to theoretical expectations established prior to conducting observation. However, H.M. Collins makes clear that the options along this continuum are better approached as a range of compromises where the ideal solutions are not open to fieldworkers. The ideal solutions lie at either end of the continuum.283 Indeed, Collins examines the disparity between the ideal and the practical by mapping out two approaches in participant observation - termed unobtrusive observation and participant comprehension - to demonstrate how these approaches reflect the assumptions of different epistemological and methodological traditions, and how these traditions necessarily guide the production of results. Patton maps the assumptions inherent within these two practices in the second dimension of his table, which measures (2) the degree to which the insider perspective - or the outsider perspective - is prioritised in fieldwork, again across a continuum: from insider [emic] perspective dominant, to a balanced perspective, to outsider [etic] perspective dominant. The differences between the emic and etic perspectives concern the relative importance they bestow upon experiencing and (perhaps) believing in the situation or object under study (i.e. feeling what Bourdieu terms the practical sense, the belief of one engaged in an unfolding game), and thus to
Michael Quinn Patton Qualitative Research and Evaluation Methods (California: Sage Publications, 2002), 266. 283 H.M. Collins, Researching spoonbending: concepts and practice of participatory fieldwork, in Colin Bell and Helen Roberts (eds), Social Researching: Politics, Problems, Practice (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984), 56.
282

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what degree there is a level of interaction with that object. The etic perspective ensures that observational distance is maintained (with a strong sense of analytical objectivity), with the scientific rationality of the observer dominant in the representation of the object under study. The emic perspective is perhaps best represented by Collins theory of participant comprehension, which aims for native competence where:

the investigator him/herself should come to be able to act in the same way as the native members as a matter of course rather than remember or record the details of their interactions The stress is not on recording events but on internalising a way of life. Once this has been achieved, observation may as well be done on the investigator as other native members, for he/she should be like a native member.284

One assumes the subtle variations between these perspectives to be representative of general practice, given that the etic perspective may engage in varying levels of participation (albeit participation of a more discreet kind), whereas the emic perspective still requires an objectifying distance given the need to represent research findings in recognisable academic language. The third dimension of Pattons table differentiating approaches in participant observation determines (3) who conducts the (fieldwork) inquiry, which ranges from solo researchers or teams of professionals, variations in collaboration and participatory research, to the people in the setting being studied. This facet of fieldwork is defined by research design which engages either the etic or emic perspective (or variations between the two), for as Patton notes, participation and collaboration in conducting research suggests:

the researcher or evaluator becomes a facilitator, collaborator, and teacher in support of those engaging in their own inquiry. While the findings from such a participatory process may be useful, a supplementary agenda is often to increase participants sense of being in control
284

H.M. Collins (1984), 61.

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of, deliberative about, and reflective on their own lives and situations.285

Obviously, degrees of collaboration and participation in research presuppose (to some degree) an emic approach, which therefore suggests a researchers investment in or degree of social proximity to the situation or setting under study. Whilst for Collins this was integral to participant comprehension, collaborating with, or indeed teaching research subjects invites significant modification to a research relationship. Clifford Geertz argues:

The trick is not to get yourself into some inner correspondence of spirit with your informants. Preferring, like the rest of us, to call their souls their own, they are not going to be altogether keen about such an effort anyhow. The trick is to figure out what the devil they think they are up to. In one sense, of course, no one knows this better than they do themselves; hence the passion to swim in the stream of their experience, and the illusion afterward that one somehow has.286

Whilst proximity in a research situation suggests some degree of familiarity with a specific social world, and thus the ability to engage with subjects through recourse to the practical sense (in Bourdieusian terminology), collaboration with the people in the setting being studied risks (at the most extreme poles), either total overlap between investigator and respondent, where nothing can be said because, since nothing can be questioned, everything goes without saying (or) total divergence, where understanding and trust would become impossible.287 Pattons fourth differentiating dimension concerns the degree of (4) disclosure of the observers role to others, stretching from overt full disclosure, selective disclosure, to no disclosure (covert). Whilst disclosure engages the question of ethics, the degree of disclosure in any research situation also shapes the terms of the research relationship and its results. For Collins, participant comprehension required visibility (as) inevitably the starting pointIn participant comprehension seemingly incoherent congeries of beliefs, should they be found among the group under investigation, would not be treated as an irritating nuisance but, at least initially, as a sign that
Michael Quinn Patton, Qualitative Research and Evaluation Methods (California: Sage Publications, 2002), 269. 286 Clifford Geertz, From The Natives Point of View: On The Nature of Anthropological Understanding, Keith Basso, H. Keith and Henry A. Selby (eds), Meaning In Anthropology (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1976), 224. 287 Pierre Bourdieu et. al., The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999), 612 (footnote 4).
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native competence had not yet been achieved.288 Disclosure here is a precondition of learning; varying degrees of instruction by the subjects under study is required in order for the researcher to achieve some measure of native competence. Alternatively, lack of disclosure (whilst increasingly rare in contemporary research) ensures the situation under observation is not altered by the presence of the researcher. However, disclosure also extends to the final publication of research results, as Helen Roberts notes: There are three principle audiences for research: the subjects of the research; the expert community whether of academic (the scientific experts) or policy-makers (the practical experts); and the broad world of public opinion, which includes both the relatively powerful opinions of politicians and journalists, and the normally powerless opinions of the general readership.289 Indeed, research subjects may have research findings represented to them by agents and institutions unrelated to the researchers - via the trivialising and distorting eye of the popular media, for example. The fifth dimension differentiating the practices of participant observation turns upon the (5) duration of fieldwork and observation, ranging from the short, single observation, ongoing observation over a period of time, to long term, multiple observations. For Patton, the critical point is that the length of time during which observations take place depends on the purpose of the study and the questions being asked, not some ideal about what a typical participant observations must necessarily involve.290 Indeed, fieldwork duration often reflects the degree of reliance upon primary or secondary resources, and the related possibilities for qualitative or quantitative methods (or a combination of both). More importantly, fieldwork duration reflects an etic or emic research perspective, and a related level of disclosure. Shorter, single observations are more likely to be etic in perspective, theoretically allowing for full disclosure (i.e. the researcher being represented as such to subjects), but also diminishing the possibility of social investment in the situation or setting under study. Alternatively, ongoing and long-term observations (and, particularly, fieldwork which engages varying levels of participation - such as the research work of H.M. Collins) allows for the possibility of social bonds and recognition between researchers and research subjects. Indeed, longterm fieldwork that engages the subjects as insiders, positioning them to collect data and conduct research in a collaborative sense, also allows for reciprocal social bonds and/or the possibility of
H.M. Collins, Researching spoonbending: concepts and practice of participatory fieldwork, Colin Bell and Helen Roberts (eds), Social Researching: Politics, Problems, Practice (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984), 61. 289 Helen Roberts, Putting the show on the road: the dissemination of research findings, Colin Bell and Helen Roberts Colin (eds), Social Researching: Politics, Problems, Practice (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984), 202. 290 Michael Quinn Patton, Qualitative Research and Evaluation Methods (California: Sage Publications, 2002), 275.
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displacement and alienation for the subject when the research program is completed. Additionally, the duration of fieldwork often requires a significant investment on the part of the researcher, which may impact socially upon their wellbeing. And this is to say nothing of the demands of, as Roberts noted, expert communities (either academic [scientific] or practical [policy makers]) which typically require research to be carried out within specified time periods, perpetuating a publish or perish mentality that may compromise research quality and thus prohibit insight into complex social formations. The sixth and final dimension identified by Patton concerns (6) observational focus, or the scope of a particular research program. This is deemed to range from a narrow focus upon a single element, to an evolving, emergent focus, to a broad, holistic view of the situation under study. Observational focus obviously depends upon the duration of fieldwork, with short-term observation suggesting a narrower focus and longer periods of fieldwork allowing for a broader sociological perspective. However, whilst the conditions informing a research program may allow for long-term fieldwork, research design (in terms of aims, purpose, objectives, etc.) may prioritise a narrow focus, thus producing more detailed findings given intense observation over time, but without the possibility of broader generalisation. For Patton:

the extent to which a research or evaluation study is broad or narrow depends on purpose, the resources available, the time available, and the interests of those involved. In brief, these are not choices between good and bad but choices among alternatives, all of which have merit.291
291

Quin Patton (2002), 228.

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4.1. Reflexivity in practice: The Weight of the World.

Bourdieus research method as articulated in The Weight of the World, in terms of the problems he outlines with respect to non-violent communication, objectification, the techniques of interviewing and the hazards of interview transcription, may therefore be properly contextualized by attention to the common elements of fieldwork strategy and procedure, and the epistemological and methodological problems they embody. Both the benefits and the limitations of his methodology (and the theoretical framework informing it) can thus be appropriately evaluated, with the potential of reflexive sociology to provide insight into the lived practices of cinematic experience then measured. As noted, Bourdieus fieldwork approach engages a technique that can be argued to theoretically balance between in-depth interviewing and participant observation; this approach objectifies the relationship typical of sociological research, interrogating the nature of the exchange relationship between objectifier and objectified. In Sociology in Question (1993), he notes:

The sociologist occupies a position (across a range of struggles): first as the possessor of a certain economic and cultural capital, in the field of the classes; then, as the researcher endowed with a certain specific capital in the field of cultural production, and more, precisely, in the sub-field of sociology. He always has to bear this in mind, in order to try to allow for everything that his practice, what he sees and does not see, what he does and does not do (for example, the objects he chooses to study), owes to his social position.292

This recognition of the situated nature of the objectifier with respect to specific field interests defines Bourdieus approach to the problem of fieldwork and the broader production of sociological knowledge, and it constitutes recognition of what is at stake in the production of sociological knowledge, how:

the struggle over social classifications is a crucial dimension of the class struggle, and it is the route through which symbolic production intervenes in the political struggle. Classes exist twice over, once objectively, and a second time in the more or less explicit social representation that agents form of them, which is a stake in struggles.293

292 293

Pierre Bourdieu, Sociology in Question (London: Sage Publications, 1993a), 10. Bourdieu (1993a), 37.

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This emphasis upon the nature of social representation allows Bourdieu to not only consider intellectual universes (which he suggests maintain a virtual monopoly over the production of representations in the social world) but also the specific circulation of interest that occurs between objectifier and objectified in the research relationship - for both parties are not disinterested. Both objectifier and objectified are situated with respect to field universes and associated stakes and interests; indeed, the research relationship (like any social relationship) is subject to the tragic consequences of making incompatible points of view confront each other, where no concession or compromise is possible because each one of them is founded in social reason.294 Emphasis upon the social conditions of possibility that underpin practices of representation thus situates fieldwork with respect to the game of legitimation and recognition (i.e. the struggle to impose a specific cultural arbitrary). Indeed, the associations charted by Bourdieu between representation, class interest and political struggle highlight the political dimension of the research relationship, and the responsibilities of the objectifier (i.e. the sociologist/intellectual) in terms of political activism. As Bourdieu notes:

Ones chances of contributing to the production of truth seem to me to depend on two main factors, which are linked to the position one occupies - the interest one has in knowing and making known the truth (or conversely, in hiding it, from oneself and others), and ones capacity to produce it If the sociologist manages to produce any truth, he does so not despite the interest he has in producing the truth but because he has an interest in doing so - which is the exact opposite of the usual somewhat fatuous discourse about neutrality. This interest may consist, as it does everywhere else, in the desire to be the first to make a discovery and to appropriate all the associated rights, or in moral indignation or revolt against certain forms of domination and against those who defend them in the scientific world.295

Bourdieu therefore suggests that the possibilities for (and, indeed, limitations upon) the production of truth in research turn upon the possibilities and limitations specific to a researchers position in the world (i.e. the social conditions that inform that position). As Bourdieu makes clear in The Weight of the World, the objectifier traditionally specifies the terms governing the research relationship, starting the game and (setting up) its rules, and is
294

Pierre Bourdieu et. al., The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999), 3. 295 Pierre Bourdieu, Sociology in Question (London: Sage Publications, 1993a), 10-11.

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usually the one who, unilaterally and without any preliminary negotiations, assigns the interview its objectives and uses. (These, on occasion, may be poorly specified - at least for the respondent).296 It is here that the discourse of neutrality is most apparent, with the protocols of research observed in an effort to abide by traditional standards of objectivity. Bourdieus program of active and methodical listening is an attempt to reduce the possibilities for symbolic violence inherent within this power relationship; given that the social differences implicit in the theoretical relationship to the world (in opposition to the practical relationship to the world) are traditionally encoded at base level in both the organizational and procedural aspects of the research interaction, the fundamental structure of the research relationship must be addressed. Bourdieus approach therefore clearly understands the role of the observer as one of full participation in the situation or setting, given that the objectifiers game (in terms of the stakes with respect to which the objectifier functions) is crucially important in understanding the research relationship and how it comes to frame the object under study. Bourdieu here suggests that one
297

can never simply be an observer in the traditional

sense, for one is fully present in the world under research - or, more specifically, the world that one constructs for research, and not in the most routine sense (i.e. the methodological parameters that guide conventional scientific investigation) but through the learned ignorance of theoretical knowledge, an ignorance resulting from adjustment to specific conditions of existence. Indeed, even if a researcher does adjust to the realities of context when out in the field (as H.M. Collins suggests), that reality is still framed by the devices specific to the scholastic viewpoint. Bourdieus intention here is to point to the limits imposed on all theoretical knowledge by the social conditions of its performance. If there is one thing that men of academic leisure find hard to understand, it is practice as such, even the most banal, whether its that of a football player or a Kabyle woman performing a ritual or a Barn family marrying off its children.298 This recognition of the social differences informing research practice necessarily leads Bourdieu in The Weight of the World to, as noted, encourage the objectifiers submission to the singularity of a particular life history, a submission nevertheless shaped by methodical construction founded on the knowledge of the objective conditions common to an entire social category. Whilst such a statement appears to simply balance reflexive research practice within the recognisable parameters of observation and participation, Bourdieus suggestion to his research investigators in
Pierre Bourdieu et. al., The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999), 609. 297 The one here designating agents who practice objectification whilst being situated within intellectual fields, and thus structured with respect to those fields. 298 Pierre Bourdieu, Sociology in Question (London: Sage Publications, 1993a), 42.
296

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The Weight of the World to choose their respondents from among or around people they knew or people to whom they could be introduced by people they knew299 clearly signifies his intention to draw upon the practical sense in order to bridge the distinction between participation and observation. Thus, Bourdieu promotes both a) a balance between the insider (or emic) perspective and the outsider (etic) perspective - although recommending a degree of social proximity between researchers and interviewees or respondents clearly weights the perspective towards the insider, and b) a degree of collaboration in the research relationship (or practical collaboration in the Bourdieusian sense, given the grounding of this research relationship in a compatible practical logic). Again, however, this traditional opposition significantly limits Bourdieus intentions, for although he suggests his researchers conduct research through the orientations of the practical sense, his use of the concept of controlled imitation - where researchers adopt the interviewees language, views, feelings, and thoughts - emphasises the methodical construction of the research equation, and thus the degree of objectification of the logic informing the researchers immediate social world that is required. This is one of the problems associated with representation; in Sociology in Question, for example, when discussing the problems activism and scholasticism encounter in representing the social world, Bourdieu notes:

The spokesmens problem is to offer a language that enables the individuals concerned to universalize their experiences without thereby effectively excluding them from the expression of their own experience, which amounts to dispossessing them This universalization necessarily moves through concepts; it therefore contains the danger of the ready-made formula, automatic autonomous language, the ritual word in which those of whom one speaks and for whom one speaks no longer recognise themselves.300

Clearly, Bourdieus conception of research attempts to overcome this problem by recourse to the common understandings enabled when objectifier and objectified share a similar practical sense, a relationship entirely distinct from the undue participation of the subject in the object [which] is never more evident than in the case of the primitivist participation of the bewitched or mystic anthropologist, which, like populist immersion, still plays on the objective distance from the object to play the game as a game while waiting to leave it in order to tell it.301
299

Pierre Bourdieu et. al., The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999), 610. 300 Pierre Bourdieu, Sociology in Question (London: Sage Publications, 1993a), 38. 301 Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990b), 34.

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However, extensive attention to the structure of the research relationship (through adjustments intended to minimise as best possible the fundamental distance that necessarily structures a relationship founded upon a process of objectification) is not enough to cancel out that distance. Communication mediated by the practical sense is a desirable scenario, but Bourdieu does not assume it to be possible in all instances of social research. In lieu of similarly structured participants in a research relationship, Bourdieu argues that research must make sense to the objectified, i.e. respect and appeal to their practical sense through a:

generic and genetic comprehension of who these individuals are, based on a (theoretical or practical) grasp of the social conditions of which they are the product: this means a grasp of the circumstances of life and the social mechanisms that affect the entire category to which any individual belongs (high school students, skilled workers, magistrates, whatever) and a grasp of the conditions, inseparably psychological and social, associated with a given position and trajectory in social life.302

This approach extends beyond Pattons dimension of disclosure, for the problem of making a research process make sense to the objectified requires the researcher to systematically put themselves in the individuals place (to use Bourdieus turn of phrase), presupposing:

extensive knowledge of the subject, sometimes acquired over a whole lifetime of research, and also, more directly, through earlier interviews with the same respondent or with informants (The published interviews of The Weight of the World) represent only a moment albeit a privileged moment - within a long series of exchanges and have nothing in common with the limited, arbitrary and random encounters of surveys carried out in a hurry by researchers lacking any specific competence.303

Clearly, therefore, Bourdieu advocates long-term fieldwork with ongoing interaction in order for researchers to thoroughly comprehend the situated nature of their subjects; this ongoing negotiation of a specific life-world thus allows for recognition of the generic and genetic determinants informing social existence, and exposure to the conditions shaping a subjects mode of practical comprehension.
302

Pierre Bourdieu et. al., The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999), 613. 303 Pierre Bourdieu et. al. (1999), 613.

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Generic and genetic comprehension, based on a theoretical or practical grasp of social conditions, is therefore a precondition to enabling constant improvisation of pertinent questions, genuine hypotheses based on a provisional, intuitive representation of the generative formula specific to the interviewee, in order to push that formula toward revealing itself more fully.304 Thus whilst Bourdieu promotes a rigorous comprehension of the lived experiences tied to a specific social position, he also uses the term comprehension to denote the impact of the world under scrutiny upon the researcher, given that they too experience inclusion as bodily beings, and therefore must also be understood to be impressed upon and modified by their exposure to this worlds regularities. Indeed, a researchers comprehension is what allows for their constant improvisation in the research relationship, an improvisation that requires anticipation of the regularities of this social world and how it shapes the terms of social existence for those under study. Bourdieu suggests in The Weight of the World that this comprehension is a form of willed submission, an attempt to incorporate the structures and regularities of the objects world in order to know it. The difference, one assumes, is that whilst the individual under study engages a practical sense to act as one should (s dei, as Aristotle put it) without positing or executing a Kantian should, a rule of conduct,305 the researcher, whilst anticipating the regularities of his/her subjects social world on some level, nevertheless acts as a situated agent would in that scenario (in the sense of what would be probable or likely), given these dispositions do not function in a self-evident or natural form, but are much more clearly represented as options - i.e. (to use Bourdieus phrase) intentional acts of conscious decoding. The Weight of the World thus examines the requirements for the proper comprehension of the practical sense and the procedures to be undertaken in order to illuminate it. Bourdieu variously defines this theoretical equivalent of the practical knowledge that comes from proximity and familiarity306 as a forgetfulness of self, requiring an attentiveness to others and a self-abnegation and openness rarely encountered in everyday life307 in order to properly understand the other beyond the economised half-understanding typical of everyday interaction and the customary techniques of demystification underpinning scientific research. Whilst this forgetfulness of self provides for the objectifier a far deeper understanding, and thus adequate representation of, the other, it also allows that other possibilities for self-representation and articulation of the place wherein they exist. More broadly, forgetfulness of self exemplifies Bourdieus understanding of
304 305

Pierre Bourdieu et. al. (1999), 613. Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), 135. 306 Pierre Bourdieu et. al., The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999), 614. 307 Bourdieu et. al. (1999), 614.

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the role and responsibilities of the intellectual in social life, particularly their duty to figure out ways to analyse and act in the social world simultaneously(to expose the arbitrariness of doxa) by bringing the undiscussed into discussion, objectifying unformulated experiences and making them public.308 For Bourdieu, then, conversational analyses of the kind he presents in The Weight of the World constitute fundamental examples of good intellectual practice, of academics engaging in the complexities of the social world and thus coming to terms with contemporary political struggles. He indeed notes:

The welcoming disposition, which leads one to make the respondents problems ones own, the capacity to take that person and understand them just as they are in their distinctive necessity, is a sort of intellectual love: a gaze that consents to necessity in the manner of the intellectual love of God, that is, of the natural order, which Spinoza held up to be the supreme form of knowledge.309

The Weight of the World is therefore an open challenge to intellectuals that they labour to provide the conditions for the practical sense (in terms of embodied, lived experience) to be properly comprehended and represented in political and social discourse - this proper comprehension requiring prolonged attention to, and systematic understanding of, those who live and enact it on a daily basis.
Carol A. Stabile and Junya Morooka, Between Two Evils, I Refuse to Choose the Lesser, Cultural Studies 17 (2003): 334-335. 309 Pierre Bourdieu et. al., The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999), 614.
308

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4.2. Research in practice: cinematic experience and reflexive fieldwork.

The theory of the welcoming disposition and its forgetfulness of self (and the procedures that allow for its realisation in research practice) is thus an attempt by Bourdieu to situate research in social space, whilst acknowledging the differentiation of that space given the unequal distribution of economic and cultural capital. Approaching the social world and the actors situated within it therefore requires a rigorous examination of the social differences and associated mechanisms of construction and representation that frame and direct social investigation. As such, reflexive sociology exhibits a dual focus: the researchers submission to the singularity of (the objects) life history that is based upon the methodical knowledge of the objective conditions common to an entire social category is matched by the second - no less methodical - objectification of the researchers situated position (a process of objectification that may, or may not, allow for the submission that Bourdieu is requiring in order to properly allow for a researchers forgetfulness of self). In order to consider how the method of The Weight of the World may assist the current research program in approaching actual beings living in a material world (i.e. investigating the nature of cinematic experience in the field), it is therefore necessary to consider whether the route taken in previous chapters has allowed for the orienting assumptions of this researchers social position to be objectified and comprehended, thus providing a properly reflexive position permitting the enacting of the welcoming disposition in fieldwork. The previous examination of scholastic fallacy in film studies (Chapter 2) presupposed a relationship of objectification between this author and the field of film studies (or, at least, the history of the field as pertained to the issue of cinematic experience). To suspend the forgetting of history implicit in being situated within this field (however peripherally), the author embraced the program of objectification outlined in reflexive sociology, a program deemed available to agents functioning in fields that allow exploration of the unthought categories of thought which delimit the unthinkable and predetermine the thought.310 However, rather than being a property of the field, the reflexivity enacted was identified as resulting from the authors being situated between the compromised logic of academia and the inclinations of the primary habitus (as noted in Chapter 3).311 The resulting criticisms of theoretical traditions in the field of film studies, and the alternative
Pierre Bourdieu and Loic J.D. Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992), 40. 311 For further examination of Bourdieus concept of positional suffering, see Carmel Desmarchelier, Altered Habitus of Mature Age Students, Michael Grenfell and Michael Kelly (eds), Pierre Bourdieu: Language, Culture and Education - Theory into Practice (Berne: Peter Lang, 1999).
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theoretical understandings of cinematic experience offered in their place, are not, however, immune from reflexive consideration. Indeed, they are subject to the reflexive programs objectification of the act of objectification, the second act of objectification forcing one to address the questions that are concealed by all theoretical knowledge(calling) into question the presuppositions inherent in the practice of the objective observer who, seeking to interpret practices, tends to bring into the object the principles of his relation to the object.312 This research programs initial act of objectification (of the field of film studies), and the subsequent alternative theorisation of cinematic experience resulting from this act of objectification, may therefore be recognised as a product of this authors complicated situatedness, a position embodying both the unstable logic defining contemporary Australian tertiary education, and the dispositions specific to a certain socioeconomic history. This program necessarily engages in a measure of distortion, inheriting the preconstructed categories of thought and principles of vision and division defining this position. (Indeed, it deploys pre-constructed concepts [cinema institution, cinema patron] that, whilst properly recast through Bourdieus theoretical framework, nevertheless resonate with associations resulting from a history of film study [associations tied to the symbolic profits gained from their sustained use]). The program undertaken, and the theoretical and methodological framework engaged in that program, is therefore inflected by the internalised tension resulting from one who occupies a place subject to powerful contradictions.313 Indeed, the criticism of deploying a degree of pre-constructed (albeit corrected) categories also applies to this authors adoption of Bourdieus sociological program, which, whilst subject to criticism, must also be situated as a product of Bourdieus position in the fields that encompass and define him. The most immediate criticism of Bourdieu (and by extension those who adopt his framework) is, as Richard Jenkins notes, that while Bourdieu wants to relativise, as fair sociological game, the intellectual enterprise and field in which he is a participant, and to situate his work as its product, he also wants that work, his view of that field, to be accepted as the authoritative one.314 Whilst Bourdieu might simply respond that his need for recognition in intellectual fields corresponds to his specific social position, the dispositions tied to that position, and the position-takings that result from it, an (admittedly charitable) justification for his work (and, indeed, this authors program of study) is that he has attempted, as previously quoted in Chapter Three, to:

312 313

Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990), 27. Pierre Bourdieu and Terry Eagleton, Doxa and Common Life, New Left Review 191 (1992): 121. 314 Richard Jenkins, Pierre Bourdieu (London: Routledge, 2002), xvii.

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put together the two parts of my life, as many first-generation intellectuals do And so to be able to live in a world that is not mine I must try to understand both things: what it means to have an academic mind - how such is created - and at the same time what was lost in acquiring it. (My work) is a work for people who have the same sort of trajectory, and the same need to understand.315

As Bourdieu makes clear, his reflexive impulse results from existence in a world that is not his, an outcome of his position as a first-generation intellectual: he is situated in such a way as to be inclined to confront (and through that confrontation understand) the conflict informing his position. Two approaches might be taken to this line of justification in an effort to avoid the standard criticism of Bourdieu that he wishes to have his cake and eat it, too. On the one hand, those who occupy positions of contradiction can be recognised as holding a privileged position of insight, enabling an informed appraisal of the conditions permitting intellectual existence and the knowledge productions reflecting that existence. This does not deny Bourdieus interest in achieving recognition, but it does require that he be judged at a high standard - in terms of the degree to which he exemplifies in his own practice the standards he demands of other intellectuals. Alternatively, a critical attitude might simply express a rejection of the inaccessible: i.e. the inability to achieve recognition through traditional means of consecration given a lack of cultural effortlessness (the fish in water ease exhibited by agents properly adjusted to play the game of academia). The predisposition to reflexivity might therefore be criticised as the choice of the inevitable, reflecting a resigned (albeit critical) acceptance of a position on the periphery of the intellectual world given compromised capital. The criticisms inherent in practicing reflexivity might therefore signify submission to doxa - or at least a need for recognition by the intellectual hierarchy, and thus some degree of legitimation - but a submission that is nevertheless plagued by tension and suffering (rather than the properly incorporated doxic attitude that exhibits a selfconfidence verging on triumphant unawareness of ignorance).316 Indeed, by extension, the current research program might be understood as the product of this authors (compromised) practical sense of the space of possibles available for position-taking within the field of film studies. This practical sense therefore inclines the author to - paradoxically - vie for recognition through a process of demystifying the hierarchy of legitimation he wishes to be subject to. In this sense, the predisposition to reflexivity might be seen as the feel for the game of the suffering.
315 316

Pierre Bourdieu and Terry Eagleton, Doxa and Common Life, New Left Review 191 (1992): 117. Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), 36.

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To what degree, therefore, can the procedures outlined in the current research program be said to provide the degree of reflexivity required by any subsequent researcher intending to utilise the programs understandings of cinematic experience to conduct fieldwork in the manner Bourdieu advocates? There are two facets to this question. Firstly, the current research program has been tirelessly concerned with the problems associated with intellectual situatedness, thus being somewhat idiosyncratic (whilst nevertheless striving to objectively map the dispositions and position-takings specific to a certain social position). It is to be hoped, however, that the current program is impartial (in abiding by the terms of Bourdieu reflexive method), even if informed by this authors situated suffering. Indeed, the procedures undertaken by the current program should assist other researchers with similar disciplinary interests - irrespective of their situated status simply given the programs constant labour to fully comprehend and reveal the habits of thought specific to a certain position in social space. Secondly, how workable is the current programs understanding of cinematic experience? Can the process of cinematic exchange presented in the following chapters be properly charted and validated through fieldwork and the test of real world inquiry? The greatest obstacle in understanding the mechanics of cinematic experience as a real social practice turns upon the distortion that occurs when the logic of social practice is rendered explicit i.e. when the objective or economic truth of an exchange is revealed, thus constructing actors as engaged in outright calculation rather than functioning through dispositional structuration. The difficulty in mapping cinematic experience in real world terms therefore turns upon the researchers ability to a) reflexively comprehend their practices of objectification and thus b) fully comprehend the terms of cinematic experience by constructing a theoretical equivalent of practical knowledge. For Bourdieu (as noted), the ideal form of this relationship would require compatibility in practical logics between researcher and research object; however, the generic and genetic comprehension of the socially situated being of the objectified (in terms of the researcher objectively mapping the dispositions and corresponding position-takings available to an individual or social group - i.e. their overall trajectory in social life) might possibly provide for the researcher the necessary theoretical equivalent of practical knowledge (a form of felt understanding) required to understand the research objects mode of practical comprehension. This would allow for a research relationship where interview questions are adjusted to correspond with the (objectively identified) dispositions of the objectified, thus allowing for the researchers constant fine-tuning of the research interaction in order to respond to the shifting conditions of the research context (this might be manifested in terms of phrasing, tone, manner - in short, conversational improvisation fully attentive to the socially situated nature of the objectified). This mode of generic and genetic comprehension in fieldwork

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practice, i.e. (to recap) a grasp of the circumstances of life and the social mechanisms that affect the entire category to which any individual belongsand a grasp of the conditions, inseparably psychological and social, associated with a given position and trajectory in social life,317 is the primary means of understanding and properly representing the cinematic experience, given that cinema consumption must be approached as occurring in relation to an unarticulated background of knowledge and comprehension (including educational qualifications and specific perceptual logics exclusive to a certain class habitus) that the average cinemagoer undoubtedly engages. The nature of cinematic experience, in terms of techniques of recognition and appreciation that are embedded in actors bodies rather than available to conscious reflection, obviously presents difficulties for field research engaging traditional methods of scientific investigation. Existing research into the nature of cinematic experience indeed demonstrates the complexities of gauging spectator response, audience taste and the film-going experience, for as Melvyn Stokes notes: Reconstructing histories of audiences requires a wide range of empirical and interpretive skills in (the) interrogation of a multiplicity of source materials.318 However, whilst generic and genetic comprehension suggests cinematic experience be contextualized with respect to everyday social practices, this comprehension is entirely dependant upon the researchers engaging with the socially situated real world being of the object in order to a) anticipate the regularities of this social world and therefore respond with appropriately adjusted research procedures (i.e. interviewing techniques) that b) function to properly illuminate the practices of that object in a manner attentive to the complexities of practical logic. Bourdieus emphasis upon the practical logics of recognition and appreciation informing all forms of human action (and thus the cinematic experience) therefore discounts overt reliance upon such conventional types of film studies data as marketing analyses, audience opinion polls, diaries, letters or film reviews. Rather, reflexive sociology insists that an agent occupies a position in social space that, given objective mapping of the dispositions specific to that position, allows for the prediction of subsequent position-takings. Aspects of this positiontaking may well be present in the data informing previous audience analyses, but reflexive sociology insists that a theoretically constructed form of social proximity to the object under study is an absolute precondition to adequately understanding practical situatedness. Therefore, whilst first-hand evidence of the kind listed above provides supplemental material that may assist a properly reflexive researcher in understanding the circumstances of life informing a specific social position, researcher comprehension (of the kind outlined in The Weight of the World) is dependent
Pierre Bourdieu et. al., The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999), 613. 318 Richard Maltby and Melvyn Stokes (eds), American Movie Audiences: From the turn of the century to the early sound era (London: British Film Institute Publishing, 1999), 9-10.
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upon a forgetfulness of self that is fashioned from direct research contact with the object under study, rather than an examination of traces of that object left behind. This approach also contains a residual benefit in avoiding the typical problems associated with historiographical inquiry. As regards the reconstruction of historical film audiences, Janet Staiger notes how:

on a historiographical level, (problems exist): what is counted as data and how this relates to description and theorization. Where or how do we find any acceptable or useable evidence of what we seek to know? Certainly in this case the notion of raw data goes out the window. Any so-called evidence is so enmeshed in the first place within the processes of its existence that even its availability makes it suspect Marketing analyses, audience opinion polls, film reviews, interviews and letters to editors of periodicals are bound within an apparatus of perpetuating the pleasure of the cinematic institution. Even if we acknowledge mediation and distortion, these stumbling blocks can never be fully overcome.319

However, the benefits of Bourdieus methodological framework are counterbalanced by real problems. Historical inquiry is difficult given Bourdieus emphasis upon direct research contact (conversational analysis) in order to comprehend the practical sense, and the theory of corporeal knowledge itself presents fundamental problems for fieldwork. As Staiger notes:

A primary problem is to develop a method that would provide evidence of a spectator response. After all, we are dealing with an interior object - the subjectivity of an individual. It is one thing, for example, to claim a textual device disautomatizes our perception; it is another to prove it or, furthermore, to imply a particular effect from such an event.320

Obviously, Bourdieus concept of habitus is an attempt to overcome this understanding of the subjectivity of the individual (and the associated methodological problems it may cause) by emphasising the structured nature of human action, in terms of bodies that incorporate objective, external structures and thus perform actions or engage perceptions through dispositional structuration. By interrogating the scholastic viewpoint on the body, he therefore goes some way towards returning the inhabited, materially knowledgeable body to its proper place in research. However, there still remains the problem of providing evidence of a (habituated) response. Indeed, as previously noted, David Swartz, although acknowledging that the concept of habitus suggests
Janet Staiger, The Handmaiden of Villainy: methods and problems in studying the historical reception of a film, Wide Angle 8, no. 1 (1986): 21. 320 Staiger (1986), 21.
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there may be an underlying connection or common imprint across a broad sweep of different types of behaviour, including motor, cognitive, emotional, or moral behaviours, also nevertheless laments that this very appealing conceptual versatility sometimes renders ambiguous just what the concept actually designates empirically.321 Staigers situating of response within the subjectivity of the individual reflects the traditional scholastic preference for the theory of monological consciousness; nevertheless, her demand for empirical evidence is warranted. Indeed, Stephen Prince argues: Research on real viewers will need to be placed within a theoretical framework, but any theory of spectatorship which fails to deal at some level with the empirical evidence on spectatorship should be suspected of being insufficiently grounded.322 However, as a model, the fieldwork examples of The Weight of the World provide a wealth of empirical evidence that can be seen to result from proper application of the reflexive sociological method. Obviously, recognising the interview transcriptions of The Weight of the World as evidence requires acceptance of a) Bourdieus theory of the practical sense and dispositional structuration, b) that the ability of a researcher to practice the welcoming disposition is a precondition to engaging with the situatedness of the research object, and c) that the capacity of the reflexive researcher to transcribe the evidence of conversational analysis in a way that thoroughly represents the process of that analysis (and its insight into the object under study) is dependant upon a) and b). Indeed, conversational analysis requires the researcher to attend to the indicators that mark dispositional structuration in a research object, to read in each discourse not solely the contingent structure of the interaction as a transaction, but also the invisible structures that organize it.323 This practice of reading, whilst, on one level, subject to hermeneutic criticism, nevertheless is thoroughly anchored by, and subject to, the researchers full genetic and generic comprehension of the situated nature of the interviewee (i.e. comprehension of the minutiae of social existence that affect and define the category to which that interviewee belongs, and both the psychological and social conditions that necessarily accompany it). This program of reflexive sociology therefore differs entirely from the subjectivism (and objectivism) implicit in previous theorizations of spectator response, audience taste or the film-going experience. As a result, its rules of evidence also differ, requiring a broadened understanding of the cinematic experience as engaging processes of recognition and appreciation embedded corporeally in agents.
David Swartz, Culture and Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 109. 322 Stephen Prince Psychoanalytic Film Theory and the Problem of the Missing Spectator, David Bordwell and Noel Carroll (eds), Post Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies (Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1996), 72. 323 Pierre Bourdieu et. al., The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999), 618.
321

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4.3. Models of reflexive fieldwork and implications for mapping cinematic experience.
This emphasis upon the genetic and generic comprehension of the situated nature of the object under study clearly distinguishes the conversational analyses of the reflexive sociological method from other approaches to cinematic experience. Indeed, this approach is not to be mistaken for a variation upon discourse analysis, engaged elsewhere to answer similar questions regarding cinema going.324 Clearly, Bourdieu understands The Weight of the World to differ given its attention in research design to the theoretical construction of the objects practical sense and the subtleties of symbolic violence embedded in research work. Indeed, two of Bourdieus contributions to The Weight of the World (Jonquil Street and The Order of Things)325 provide illustrations of genetic and generic comprehension and attempt to model (in case study form, combining both narrative and analysis) reflexive conversational analysis. In the introduction to The Order of Things, for example, Bourdieu outlines the context of the research situation, describing the two young men from the north of France who are interviewed (Ali and Francois, both with immigrant backgrounds), and positions the reader to recognise elements of the transcribed interview that indicate the inert violence in the order of things326 that define the situated conditions of the men under study. Direct reference is made to the posture, manner and tone of the respondents that indicate the ways in which Ali and Francois have incorporated objective, external structures and thus engage with the world in a way that disposes them to make a virtue of necessity and reject what is necessarily unavailable to them. Important to understanding incorporation in both these case studies is Bourdieus recognition of the research relationship in shaping the conduct of the respondents; in Jonquil Street this is manifested in the interviewees dress and fear of being interviewed separately, in The Order of Things, Ali and Francois listen while looking elsewhere, as if to hide their discomfort - they are not used to so much consideration.327 Such case studies model reflexive practice. Whilst admittedly the outline and interview content of each case study in The Weight of the World is brief, Bourdieu makes clear in his concluding essay
324

See both Martin Barker and Kate Brooks, Knowing Audiences: Judge Dredd, Its Friends, Fans and Foes (Luton: University of Luton Press, 1998) and Martin Barker and Kate Brooks, Bleak Futures by Proxy, Melvyn Stokes and Richard Maltby (eds), Identifying Hollywoods Audiences: Cultural Identity and the Movies (London: British Film Institute, 1999). 325 See Pierre Bourdieu et. al., The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999), 6 and 60, respectively. 326 See Bourdieu (1999), 64. 327 Bourdieu (1999), 61.

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that extensive preparation was required in order to fully grasp the generative formula specific to the interviewees, and how the terms of the research relationship necessarily met the learned ignorance of the interviewees specific social world. Therefore, when attempting to outline the specifics of cinematic experience, a researcher must firstly objectively map the space of possibles specific to the fields (disciplinary, social, etc.) to which they belong, possibles which incline them to frame research in a particular manner. As demonstrated in previous chapters, this is by no means a simple exercise, but is a necessary precondition to reflexively situating any ensuing research as a product of the researchers own situatedness. Indeed, this process of objectification also allows a researcher to fully evaluate the ramifications of conducting research upon a specific social group with which he/she may have some degree of affiliation; preliminary investigation of this kind therefore provides insight into the degree of overlap in schemes of perception and recognition that may exist between researcher and potential object of study. However, comprehending practical knowledge, either through theoretical construction or reliance upon some degree of familiarity with the research object, still requires prolonged engagement and exposure to a specific life-world. In researching the process of cinematic exchange, a researcher is therefore required to a) identify - i.e. comprehend - the generative formula of a specific social group that results from the incorporation of objective structures, and b) identify and give examples of those instances where the logic resulting from this incorporation engages with the terms of recognition and appreciation established by the cinema institution. Conversational analysis is then engaged to clarify how a specific habitus is appropriately structured to consume the experience of cinema - with genetic and generic comprehension providing a level of access to what Staiger termed (in the tradition of monological subjectivity) the (interior) subjectivity of an individual. As Charles Taylor notes, the monological tradition posits a human agent who is in contact with an outside world, including other agents, the objects she or he or they deal with, her or his own and others bodies, but this contact is through the representations she or he has within.328 However, it needs to be emphasised yet again that Bourdieus method of comprehension is based upon a thorough rejection of this mentalist vision, which is inseparable from belief in the dualism of mind and body, spirit and matter, (originating) from an almost anatomical and therefore typically scholastic viewpoint on the body from outside (emphasis mine).329 The tradition of monological subjectivity that frames Staigers investigation of the cinematic experience therefore simply cannot allow for access to the interior of an individual, but abandoning this tradition and its
Charles Taylor, To Follow a Rule, Craig Calhoun, Edward LiPuma and Moishe Postone (eds), Bourdieu: Critical Perspectives (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993), 49. 329 Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations (Routledge: Polity Press, 2000), 133.
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assumptions allows for the insights of reflexive sociology and, more importantly, its ability to grasp the nature of incorporation (through comprehension) and thus illuminate the practices specific to cinematic experience. Indeed, the comprehension reflexive sociology provides is not an ability to read the thoughts or representations of the world outside that issue from a subjects mind, but rather to theoretically construct the corporeal knowledge that provides a practical comprehension of the world quite different from intentional acts of conscious decoding that is normally designated by the idea of comprehension330 - a corporeal knowledge resulting from dispositions attuned to the regularities of a specific social world that may (or may not) include cinema going as one possible avenue of action. This differs entirely from audience response investigation (which typically maps response through reference to conscious representations of the cinematic experience by the average cinema-goer), for the incorporation that gives rise to social existence produces an experience of the world that is one of bodily anticipation, in the manner of the forth-coming and the unfolding. Bodily comprehension is neither explicitly defined nor consciously willed, eluding the traditional research emphasis upon one critical instance in human action (such as a decision to attend cinema) or, indeed, extracting the cinematic experience from the other social practices that accompany it within everyday social life. Taylor provides a useful description of corporeal knowledge that assists in demonstrating the difference between subjectivist evidence, and the actions of the habituated body identified through reflexive sociology. He notes that:

embodied knowledge is a form of understanding, a making sense of things and actions, but at the same time is entirely unarticulated, and, thirdly, can be the basis of fresh articulation (Intellectualism) leaves us with the choice only of an understanding which consists of representations or of no understanding. Embodied understanding provides us with the third alternative we need to make sense of ourselves. At the same time, it allows us to show the connections of this understanding with social practice. My embodied understanding does not only exist in me as an individual agent; it also exists in me as the co-agent of common actions.331

Cinematic experience is one example of this embodied social understanding, for, as will be explored further in the research program, it functions as an exchange between parties both situated
From Bourdieu, Pierre, Pascalian Meditations, Pages 135, Routledge: Polity Press, 2000. Charles Taylor, To Follow a Rule, Craig Calhoun, Edward LiPuma and Moishe Postone (eds), Bourdieu: Critical Perspectives (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993), 50-53.
331 330

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with respect to a common illusio and thus similar terms of recognition and appreciation. The unarticulated nature of this exchange defies explanation or testimony through representation, thus requiring a researcher demonstrating some degree of comprehension to engage in conversational analysis attentive to the expression that is exhibited through bodily hexis. This requires (as will be explored further) a preliminary mapping of a) similarities between an individuals formative (primary) habitus and the conditions of the cinematic arbitrary, b) the degree of cultural and social capital such a habitus presupposes and thus the level of correspondence with the logic of the cinematic arbitrary, and c) the degree of disparity between the dominant cultural and social logic of the period and the mode of exchange and recognition exhibited by the cinema institution during that period. These preliminaries (investigation into which are informed by comprehension) provide a solid foundation upon which adequate conversational analyses may be conducted: i.e. extended interview sessions with selected cinema patrons to discern the bodily modalities of the learned ignorance present during cinema going. These bodily modalities of learned ignorance are not easily traced, for generalization is difficult given that embodied knowledge is so tied to the variable instances of incorporation that make up the social world. However, as Bourdieu notes:

In contrast to the scholastic universes, some universes, such as those of sport, music or dance, demand a practical engagement of the body and therefore a mobilization of the corporeal intelligence capable of transforming, even introverting, the ordinary hierarchies. (One) would need to collect methodically all the notes and observations which, dispersed here and there, especially in the didactics of these physical skills - sports, obviously, and more especially the martial arts, but also theatrical activities and the playing of musical instruments - would provide precious contributions to a science of this form of knowledge.332

The comprehension Bourdieu requires of the reflexive researcher therefore depends upon the capacity to a) feel (or incorporate to some degree) the bodily logics of a specific social world, and b) recognise that feeling in some objective manner (in order to represent it adequately in research terms but with a full understanding of the stakes that inform the felt recognition of the situated player). However, even though Bourdieu claims to provide examples of embodied knowledge in The Weight of the World, it is sometimes difficult to understand how he definitively attributes specific interview responses to corporeal adjustment. Indeed, some of the introductions to the case
332

Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations (Routledge: Polity Press, 2000), 144.

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studies are simply suggestive, lacking concrete statements that link the theory of habitual dispositions to the research evidence cited. In Double Binds,333 for example, Bourdieu (with Gabrielle Balazs) describes and interviews Francis T., an avant-garde social worker working with drug addicts on the outskirts of Paris. To some degree a product of the streets himself, Francis T. speaks of an old reflex which leads him at night to go listen to the drug addicts in the places where they get together.334 Bourdieu emphasises the phrases old reflex and places where they get together in his introduction, leading the properly attentive - and, one assumes, sympathetic reader to accept the interviewees old reflex as evidence of an habitual predisposition resulting from adjustment to previous conditions of existence. Whilst one (charitably) assumes Bourdieu is engaging in such textual highlighting upon the basis of research findings not included in The Weight of the World (or perhaps through his own comprehension - as reflexive researcher - of Francis T.s situated position), his research would be more convincing if this correspondence between theory and empirical evidence was more adequately clarified. Indeed, conversational analysis of this kind exhibits a low level of reliability, given that insights necessarily result from a comprehension that is (in most cases) theoretically constructed by the researcher, and thus complicates the objective representation (and justification) typical of traditional scientific languages. Given such analysis generally focuses upon small sample sizes, it also cannot be understood as broadly representative of the greater population. Different kinds of cinematic experience, for example, may be deemed to reflect the idiosyncrasies tied to varied forms of incorporation and the capitals specific to that incorporation; therefore, any conclusions resulting from a reflexive examination of cinema-going may be cautiously deemed representative of cinematic exchange as entered into by a specific habitus (i.e. a cinematic experience reflecting the conditions of existence specific to a certain social group). Comprehension as practiced by the reflexive researcher is thus necessary to illuminate the infinitesimal bodily fluctuations of the properly structured habitus situated with respect to the unfolding games of a specific field; these manifestations of bodily hexis and corporeal intelligence are obviously highly idiosyncratic and defy simple generalisation (although, if Bourdieu is correct, similar manifestations of bodily hexis and thus comparable cinematic experiences will be observed across agents incorporating similar conditions of existence). Comprehension is therefore situated in direct opposition to scholastic
333

See Pierre Bourdieu et. al., The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999), 206. 334 Bourdieu (1999), 207.

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insight, for it recognises that:

for a habitus structured according to the very structures of the social world in which it functions, each property (a pattern of speech, a way of dressing, a bodily hexis, an educational title, a dwelling-place, etc.) is perceived in its relation to other properties, therefore in its positional, distinctive value, and it is through this distinctive distance, this difference, this distinction, which is perceived only by the seasoned observer, that the homologous position of the bearer of this property in the space of social positions shows itself.335

A key criticism of the process of comprehension therefore concerns the ability of the researcher to adequately present research findings or conclusions in a manner accessible to a range of audiences, whilst maintaining a level of precision in reproducing through written language (including interview transcriptions) the nature (i.e. generative formula and its manifestations) of a specific life-world. The Weight of the World indeed suffers, as Bourdieu admits, from a lack of phonetic transcriptions with appropriate clarifications for the reader; each interview would benefit from expansion and case-by-case theoretical reflection upon everything lost in the transition from the spoken to the written form, that is, the voice, pronunciation (notably in its socially significant variations), intonation, rhythm (each interview has its own tempo which is not that of reading), gesture, gesticulations and body language, etc.336 Overcoming these limitations might involve videotaping interviews, which would restore some of the elements lost in this translation. However, videotaping would also introduce a host of methodological problems turning upon the nature of the camera, its effect upon the research situation and how a researcher might frame televisual evidence to illuminate aspects of social structuration. In this respect, the method of comprehension as utilised in reflexive research practice, whilst fully necessary for an appreciation of the situated nature of research objects in corporeal terms, is still subject to typical problems turning upon representation.
335

Pierre Bourdieu, In Other Words: Essays Towards A Reflexive Sociology (California: Stanford University Press, 1990a), 113. 336 Pierre Bourdieu et. al., The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999), 622.

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4.4. Conclusion: the limitations of reflexive understanding.

As Rosalind Brunt notes: At a theoretical level, researchers in cultural studies have tended to construct audiences as imagined communitiesrather than concern themselves with actual beings living in a material world.337 Bourdieus willingness to engage with the complications arising from the study of actual beings throughout his career is testimony to the rigorously reflexive nature of his sociology, although the empirical applicability and efficiency of his theoretical and methodological framework remains subject to a degree of criticism. Indeed, the full limitations of his research design may only come to the fore in actual practical application; nevertheless, this examination of the theory of comprehension and the difficulties embedded in reflexive fieldwork raises questions regarding the ability of reflexive sociology to overcome the problems of qualitative research, and validate the understanding of cinematic experience to be presented in the following chapters. On one level, Bourdieus understanding of the habituated social actor is entirely reasonable when it is appropriately qualified, for example when he states: The existence of a dispositionis a basis for predicting that, in all conceivable circumstances of a particular type, a particular set of agents will behave in a particular way (emphasis mine).338 However, Bourdieus method for reflexively engaging with the situatedness of these habituated agents in order to illuminate their predisposition to behaving in a particular way appears subject to the traditional problems undermining fieldwork. Whilst his attention to corporeal knowledge sheds light on the problems of fieldwork overly indebted to the theory of monological subjectivity, Bourdieus own research alternative (comprehension) lacks adequate explanation, in terms of systematic instructions for the aspiring reflexive researcher. The methodological aspects of reflexive sociology therefore offer a productive, if problematic, alternative to previous theorisations of cinematic experience, in terms of avoiding imagined communities or theorisations of the spectator as an outcome of the cinema apparatus. An approach to cinematic experience engaging reflexive methodology demands real world comprehension with the situated experience of cinema patrons, providing the possibility for a wealth of information on hitherto unexamined corporeal knowledges and the logic underpinning cinematic practice. If Bourdieus published work does not offer complete clarification of all the methodological complexities involved in researching the cinema experience in the field, it nevertheless clears the way for examining the cinema experience with a new set of orienting principles and theoretical
Rosalind Brunt, Engaging with the Popular: Audiences for Mass Culture and What to Say about Them, Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula Treichler (eds), Cultural Studies (New York: Routledge, 1992), 69.
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understandings - all the better to begin to understand the experience in its embodied, habituated form.
338

Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations (Routledge: Polity Press, 2000), 149.

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Chapter 5. Cultural value and the judgement of taste: in defence of Bourdieu.

The program of research thus far has proceeded along a specific path. By illuminating the logics informing knowledge production within the field of film studies, it has been argued that theoretical approaches to the question of cinematic experience should be recognised as position takings intended to reap specific profits. Historically, such profits have been won by appealing to the dispositions indicative of scholastic reason, thus perpetuating what Bourdieu terms scholastic fallacies and contributing to the consolidation of a specific hierarchical structure within the field. In order to negotiate the cultural arbitrary thus imposed, it has been argued that the practice of reflexive sociology allows for ones learned ignorance (and the dispositions contained therein) to be somewhat suspended, permitting reflexive theorization attentive to scholastic fallacy and symbolic violence and thus more likely to adequately represent an object under study. Examinations of the field of film studies and the limitations of conventional sociological objectification were thus necessary prerequisites to investigating the experience of cinema, clearing the way for further research fully cognizant of the limitations of knowledge production. With this excavation complete, the following two chapters will focus upon the problems involved in outlining the experience of cinema itself. In proposing that a) the differences between types of cultural activity may be explained with reference to the distribution of various forms of capital in a given social universe, and b) that this distribution enables both individuals and groups to enact specific modes of perception, recognition and appreciation with respect to cultural practices and items (in an attempt to increase the volume and structure of their pre-existing capitals), Bourdieu provides a framework for exploring the complexities of practice that overcomes the fallacies identified as indicative of previous theorization. As such, the current research program does not attempt to outline a new system of classificatory types of cinematic experience independent of historical circumstance, as has often been the aim of previous reception or spectatorial theories. (Indeed, Bourdieu notes: One cannot grasp the most profound logic of the social world unless one becomes immersed in the specificity of an empirical reality, historically situated and dated, but only in order to construct it as an instance (cas de figure) in a finite universe of possible configurations.339) Rather, engaging Bourdieus modus operandi involves outlining the practical functioning of agents with respect to a
Pierre Bourdieu, Concluding Remarks: For a Sociogenetic Understanding of Intellectual Works, Craig Calhoun, Edward LiPuma and Moishe Postone (eds), Bourdieu: Critical Perspectives (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993), 273-274.
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certain field of action (cinema patrons and their consumption of the experience specific to the cinema), without, however, turning into necessary and intrinsic traits properties which belong to (a) group at a given moment in time because of its position in a determinate social space and in a determinate state of the supply of possible goods and practices.340 This method therefore highlights the constitution of a bodily hexis that results from extended consumption of the cinematic experience (i.e. the incorporation into the body of durable techniques of recognition and appreciation characteristic of a certain social arena), but it does not understand this process to exist independently of wider systems of recognition and appreciation. Specific forms of hexis function with respect to an entire universe of interrelated social practices that operate to maintain and extend fundamental class distinctions and differentiations. Therefore, in outlining the nature of cinematic experience in Bourdieusian terms, one is required to examine its relationship to entrenched hierarchies of cultural value traditionally theorized as corresponding to the lifestyle idiosyncrasies of specific social classes. Although this approach assists in overcoming the problems of previous film theorization, investigating cinematic experience through Bourdieu immediately invites a host of other problems. For many cultural theorists, Bourdieus reflexive sociology is inherently controversial, at least partly due to its fundamental critique of the practices of academia. His work has attracted criticism for criticising a) the efficacy of pre-existing theorizations of cultural value in explaining the processes of the contemporary social and cultural world, and b) the practices of intellectual examination and attendant scholarly discrimination that such theorizations may be seen to embody. The problem, therefore, in drawing upon Bourdieu in research of this kind is that one is immediately situated in relation to such criticism and, perhaps more importantly, is thus obliged to consider the theoretical questions that inform it. However, whilst lengthy, addressing such problems can be beneficial, with extended consideration contributing to a deeper understanding of the denser elements of Bourdieusian theory, allowing for more confident interpretations of his conceptual arguments. The following chapter will therefore examine these issues of cultural consumption and value that bear upon Bourdieus theoretical framework, as a necessary prerequisite to outlining the techniques of recognition and appreciation that inform the experience of cinema, which will then be more fully investigated in the final chapter.
340

Pierre Bourdieu, Practical Reason (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998a), 4.

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5.1. Thinking in progress: the epistemological and social concerns of Bourdieu.

Bourdieu is of value to contemporary theory (because) of the contribution he makes to helping us understand how non-reproductive practices come about and are made possible. Tony Schirato and Jenn Webb, Bourdieus concept of Reflexivity as Metaliteracy.341

Much of the criticism of Bourdieu focuses upon the general principles of his method that are not exactly unique - i.e. his scrutiny of academic habits of intellectual practice. As John Frow notes in Cultural Studies and Cultural Value (1995), much of the research addressing social and cultural practices and the systems of cultural value that inform them often engage with the scholarly process of theorizing those practices, particularly addressing the implicit intellectual judgements that frame the procedures of objectification typical of academia. Like Frow, social and cultural research often attempts to pose in a rigorous way the question of what is entailed in speaking for others: the question of the enunciative interests of intellectuals.342 As with Bourdieu, Frow and other cultural theorists understand intellectual production as contributing to the construction and perpetuation of systems of cultural evaluation, distinction and corresponding modes of consumption, thus being implicated (and interested) in the very systems of cultural consumption and aesthetic judgement it seeks to uncover and examine through the guise of objectivist modes of inquiry. However, there is a key disagreement between Frow (and theorists like him) and Bourdieu, a difference that has major implications for any application of Bourdieusian theory. Frow argues for the instability of traditional systems of cultural evaluation and discrimination across the social world, whereas Bourdieu does not accept (in the manner of Frow, at least) the dissolution of historical modes of cultural exchange and their attendant systems of belief and recognition. Indeed, more than a simple difference of opinion, this disagreement in theorizing the functioning of the social and cultural world can be seen as the fundamental division that differentiates Bourdieus work from many of the other conceptual debates produced and conducted under the disciplinary banner of Cultural Studies. This fundamental division greatly impacts upon the application of Bourdieusian theory to understand the experience of cinema, for the institutions and practices constituting that experience have been extensively theorized as being highly responsive to the very crisis in value, recognition,
Tony Schirato and Jen Webb, Bourdieus Concept of Reflexivity as Metaliteracy, Cultural Studies 17, 3/4 (2003): 540. 342 John Frow, Cultural Studies and Cultural Value (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 15.
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appreciation and corresponding consumption that Frow understands as indicative of contemporary cultural practices. Indeed, a research program examining cinematic experience through Bourdieu faces a host of conceptual problems that turn upon questions of class, distinction and the contemporary status of historically enshrined hierarchical orders of cultural consumption. The Bourdieusian theoretical framework is obviously not immune to all of the criticisms arising from these debates, but often the terms of those debates are loaded in favour of dissenters. Bourdieus published work is dense and wide-ranging, with central arguments (repeatedly refined and examined over time) often informing the application of his theoretical framework to more specialised areas of interest. The full force of his arguments and attendant justifications of his position are thus often distributed across a number of works, requiring a degree of reflection and consideration from readers, a problem which resulted in Bourdieus characterization of some of his critics as adepts of fast-reading.343 Indeed, Bourdieu has reflected at length upon the problem of the critical reception of his ideas, suggesting misunderstandings have resulted from the inability of commentators to apprehend and comprehend the mode of intellectual production that undergirds my research (and) the epistemological and social conditions under which (that is, at the same time, with which and against which) (my research) was elaborated.344 To properly practice reflexive sociology and apply Bourdieusian theory, one must therefore be attentive to the broader theoretical and practical intentions of Bourdieus sociology (dispersed across a number of publications) and yet also be aware of the depths of its misinterpretation - given its distribution across differing conditions of reception. Indeed, one assumes this misinterpretation has also resulted from the perception of Bourdieus political commitments (details of which are exhibited more directly in his public addresses, lectures and popular articles). To conduct Bourdieusian cultural analysis with a full appreciation of the rationale behind Bourdieus modus operandi thus requires one to acknowledge and, to some degree, share his commitment to resisting the principles of the market and the logic of the economy over cultural life, in order to defend the broader concept (and political program) of autonomous cultural production (and the more equitable modes of recognition and appreciation such autonomy is deemed to promote in social and cultural life). However, even a casual appraisal of the criticisms of Bourdieu reveals that it is partly this commitment (and the way in which Bourdieu comes to understand the conditions necessary for autonomy) that renders his theoretical principles unsuitable for writers intent on dismissing the ongoing existence of traditional cultural hierarchies in what they understand to be an increasingly postmodern world. Indeed,
Pierre Bourdieu, Practical Reason (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998a), 93. Pierre Bourdieu, Concluding Remarks: For a Sociogenetic Understanding of Intellectual Works, Craig Calhoun, Edward LiPuma, and Moishe Postone (eds), Bourdieu: Critical Perspectives (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993), 264.
344 343

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Bourdieus thought turns, in many ways, upon the understanding that the effects of traditional cultural hierarchies continue to function and circulate in contemporary society, even if the institutions historically understood as informing those hierarchies do not. It is important to illuminate and examine this problem early on, given that it bears greatly upon the conclusions Bourdieu formulates in relation to contemporary cultural production (and the mode of analysis this research program embraces). Bourdieus theoretical and methodological work is not static, nor can it be divided discretely or fragmented, as each part is always informed by the broader project of combating economic and symbolic determination upon a number of levels (in the intellectual field, in cultural production, in everyday life) - a project best undertaken, he understands, through the application of the principles of reflexive sociology (most immediately at the level of intellectual production). This is a guiding principle that should orient all reading of his work. As he notes:

By endeavouring to intensify awareness of the limits that thought owes to its social conditions of production and to destroy the illusion of the absence of limits or of freedom which leaves thought defenceless against those determinations, (reflexivity) aims to offer the possibility of a real freedom with respect to the determinations that it reveals. Any advance in knowledge (of a field), with its power relations, its effects of domination, its tyrannies and its clienteles, also advances the theoretical and practical means of mastering the effects of the external constraints and of the internal constraints which pass on their efficacy (such as those of competition for celebrity, but also for grants, public or private contracts, etc.) and which may also, paradoxically, weaken the capacity for resistance to heteronomy.345

To systematically practice reflexivity, then, is a necessary precondition to achieving a level of autonomy from either symbolic or economic determination (or at least a thorough recognition of its influence). Commitment to this principle in Bourdieus work thus presupposes an antagonistic stance against those forms of cultural production undertaken explicitly for the market (given the logic such production is understood to promote), and by extension those mass cultural practices (constructed in relation to market goods and services situated close to the heteronomous pole in the field of cultural production) that usurp the ability of the historically dominated to achieve any level of self-representation or self-determination in social and cultural affairs. In the broader body of cultural theorization, references to the capacity of the dominated to engage in self-representation (or achieve a level of autonomy in practice from cultural and social
345

Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), 121.

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determination) often turn upon, implicitly or explicitly, the concept of folk culture. As many critics have noted, the Bourdieu of Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (1979) is unable to allow for such a concept, given his quite rigid theorization there of the dominated as forever subject to the imposed cultural arbitrary (and representational practices) of the dominant, unable to formulate any significant self-representative response to the world that does not reflect their dominated virtues of necessity born of adaption to conditions of deprivation and cultural enslavement. Accordingly, theorizations of folk or, indeed, popular culture are dismissed in Distinction as the product of scholastic fallacies of thought - key examples of the inability of intellectuals to a) comprehend the logic of practice and b) reflexively examine their subjective position (produced through the habits of thought typical of the academic world) in relation to that logic. As Bourdieu notes:

(When) putting himself in the place of a worker without having the habitus of a worker, (the intellectual) apprehends the working-class condition through schemes of perception and appreciation which are not those that the members of the working class themselves use to apprehend it because it is less easy to state the actual relation to the condition one is describing (without necessarily being able to feel it) than to put ones own relation to it in the description.346

A key objection to Bourdieus theory of cultural domination proceeds from this apparently simplistic opposition between two discrete class and cultural formations347, which ignores what commentators such as Frow understand as the fluidity of contemporary cultural exchange occurring across previously traditional realms of cultural production and consumption, as well as perpetuating an understanding of the dominated as condemned to live out their lives through the dispositions and aspirations which (perpetually) enslave them. Indeed, Frows major criticism of Bourdieu is that he is thus:

unable to theorize relations of domination as relations of contested hegemony The totalizing grip of the dominant norms, understood as a unitary set of values, allows for no possibility of critique and social transformation.348

346

Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (London: Routledge, 1984), 372-374. 347 John Frow, Cultural Studies and Cultural Value (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 45. 348 Frow (1995), 45-46.

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As a result, Frow questions Bourdieus ability to:

stand outside and above the game of intellectual competition, outside the political imaginary, outside the categories of a dominant and all-embracing cultureWritten from an impossible perspective, a point that transcends the social space, Bourdieus project ends up like the king in medieval social taxonomy, who, by setting himself up as the absolute subject of the classifying operation, as a principle external and superior to the classes it generatedassigned each group its place in the social order, and established himself as an unassailable vantage point.349

Whilst Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste is in many ways open to these criticisms, it might be suggested that Bourdieus inability (in this phase of his thought) to properly render dominated experience without adequate reflexivity is what requires him to present this entirely negative reading of relations of domination. Indeed, whilst Bourdieus descriptions in Distinction of the practices of the dominated suggests recognition of the mystifying fallacies of sociological construction and the impossibility of representing the practical lives of the people (with traditional objectification thus recognised as an example of the scholarly modes of thought through which access to an object is attained rather than direct, unmediated contact with that object), the work is unable to attain the reflexivity which characterises the research program of the later The Weight of the World (1999). This is the key problem of Distinction; without the tools necessary for a reflexive construction of the research situation (in the most practical, hands-on sense of the term), Bourdieu is left little else but to err on the side of domination and construct culture as subject entirely to the dominant cultural arbitrary. In retrospect, when one approaches Bourdieus publishing history as a work in progress, some of the problems of Distinction can be recognised as steps towards the theorization of participant objectivation as contained in The Weight of the World, anticipating the shifts in Bourdieus thought that would occur later in his work. Indeed, Bourdieu notes how:

Some of my readers synchronize, in a way, different moments of my work They thus uncover apparent contradictions that would vanish if they replaced each of the theses or hypotheses in question back in the movement, or even better, in the progress of my work; if, more precisely, they strove to reproduce the evolution (or the chain) of thought that led me to change progressively without for that ever effecting a resounding self-critique (I think here of the
349

Frow (1995), 46- 47.

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progress leading from the substantialist concept of class to the relational notion of class position, which was a crucial turning point, and thence to the notion of social space).350

In contrast, and although still highly critical of the scholastic habits of thought perpetuated by the intelligentsia when examining cultural systems (and their corresponding tendency, as a dominated fraction of the dominant class, to empathize with the conditions of domination indicative of the dominated classes), the Bourdieu of (most generally) the 1990s is far more concerned with determining the structural conditions necessary for the development of autonomous arenas of cultural and social practice by and for different social groups. Systematically addressing the arguments pertaining to domination via cultural enslavement, Bourdieu argues in such works as Free Exchange (1995) that (political and social) mobilization is possiblebased on a sort of elevation of the collective consciousness351 - a monumental shift in outlook which obliges him to revisit (and re-examine) his previous models of symbolic domination and social structuration. Consequently, in such works as Practical Reason (1998) and Pascalian Meditations (2000), he returns to the representative fallacies of academic theorization and intellectual culture as a necessary prerequisite to examining the possibilities for the dominated to achieve representation and autonomy, and it is these elements of re-examination (or clarification) that must be recognised in order to adequately comprehend the implications of Bourdieus social and cultural theory as it is presented in later works - although this re-articulation never entirely disqualifies the principles informing his previous theoretical formulations. Rather, there is a greater emphasis given in these works upon the tools and actions necessary for the systematic deconstruction of the self-evident classificatory systems of the social world (and the place of the academic in relation to such cultural arbitraries), albeit with an acceptance of a) the continuing correlation between objective structures and incorporated structures that produce the repressive effect of twofold naturalization, and b) the increased concentration of symbolic and economic power in an increasingly global economy. Accordingly, Bourdieu strikes a critical balance that never evades the complications of his earlier arguments, but alters his attitude toward their breadth and scope. He notes:

Social science, which is obliged to make a critical break with primary self-evidences, has no better weapon for doing so than historicization, which, at least in the order of theory, makes it possible to neutralize the effects of naturalization, and in particular amnesia of the individual Pierre Bourdieu, Concluding Remarks: For a Sociogenetic Understanding of Intellectual Works, Craig Calhoun, Edward LiPuma and Moishe Postone (eds), Bourdieu: Critical Perspectives (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993), 264. 351 Pierre Bourdieu and Hans Haacke, Free Exchange (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1995), 100.
350

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and collective genesis of a given that gives itself with all the appearance of nature and asks to be taken at face value, taken for granted. But - and this is what makes anthropological inquiry so difficult - the effect of naturalization also applies to thought itself: the incorporations of the scholastic order can, as has been seen, impose presuppositions and limitations on thought which, being embedded in the body, are beyond the reach of consciousness.352

Beyond the limitations of scholastic thought, the process required to be undertaken both for and by the dominated (dependent upon specific historical conditions) to begin to illuminate these primary self-evidences of the social world (and thus its systems of symbolic violence) is extensively addressed by Bourdieu in Pascalian Meditations - particularly the leap from the embodied structuration and experience of the social world to the political level of representation (from praxis to logos, from practical sense to discourse, from practical vision to representation, that is, access to the order of specifically political opinion).353 This attempt to transcend and objectify naturalization is by no means a potentiality inherent in all social circumstances. Even when informed by a program of reflexive sociology (adapted to the languages and dispositions of differing social contexts) that provides a level of critical examination of a groups respective illusio, the ability to realise a level of self-representation in the social world still remains dependent upon a) position (and possible future positions) in a field (or fields), b) the structure of capital distribution specific to that field (defining both objective relations between players and the fields broader parameters of play), and c) the degree of autonomy of the field in relation not only to structural influences with immediate relevance to field action, but to the most general principles of vision and division that inform the broader social and cultural world. And the battle itself, if and when engaged, is waged primarily in (politically) disruptive terms against those self-evidences and categories of thought through which the social world is constructed and experienced, without directly identifiable lines of battle (or resistance) in the immediately conventional sense. Thus, in these later works, Bourdieu calls for professional practitioners of the work of making explicit354, i.e. intellectuals or other similarly qualified representative social actors with the appropriate symbolic capital to decisively locate, critique and interrupt established symbolic systems of recognition and appreciation on behalf of the dominated, in order to allow for the more equitable transmission and exchange of different forms of capital (required for greater levels of social and cultural self-representation). This rough sketch of a potential program of practical and symbolic counter-action and reconstruction leads Bourdieu to criticise conventional academic political engagement and its
352 353

Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), 182. Bourdieu (2000), 185.

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embedding in various forms of cultural theorization, and through that criticism, outline the requirements for the properly reflexive practice required by those intellectuals electing to represent the dominated and their experience of the social world - a practice which:

cannot be reduced to an objectification incapable of giving its due place to the effort of agents to construct their representation of themselves and the world, sometimes against all objective data; and it cannot be reduced to a recording of spontaneous sociologies and folk theories - which are already too present in scientific discourse, smuggling themselves in.355

Thus, what is required is the critical ability to hold together, so as to integrate them, both the point of view of the agents who are caught up in the object and the point of view on this point of view which the work of analysis enables one to reach by relating position-takings to the position-takings from which they are taken.356 This complex program of action is by no means unproblematic, but it is important to note that Bourdieu himself regarded this objectification of the act of objectification as:

the most significant product of my whole undertaking, not for its own sake, as a theoretical contribution to the theory of practice, but as the principle of a more rigorous definition, less dependent upon individual dispositions, of the proper relation to the object which is one of the most decisive conditions of truly scientific practice in the social sciences.357

Thus, Bourdieu does not envision his methodology to function in isolation from his broader concern with the operations of social and symbolic power, particularly as practiced by and through scholastic universes. Rather, the objectification of the act of objectification provides insight into how the exercise of power (of which sociological research is but one example) turns upon differences in social conditions, given that these differences enable the distancing implicit in objectification (i.e. freedom from necessity and practical engagement making possible the theoretical posture) and the ensuing ignorance of both practical logics and methodological error that results from traditional sociological investigation. For Bourdieu, objectification of the act of objectification therefore provides a very concrete, very pragmatic, vindication of the possibility of a full sociological objectivation of the object and of the subjects relation to the object - what I call
354 355

Bourdieu (2000), 188. Bourdieu (2000), 188-189. 356 Bourdieu (2000), 189. 357 Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990b), 15.

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participant objectivation.358 With this model of participant objectivation, one can distinctively situate Bourdieus development of reflexive sociological practice (and its application to the particular systems of symbolic violence in the cultural arena) in relation to more traditional folk theories of culture - in terms of the question of cultural expression and cultural autonomy - for it is through reference to this traditional body of academic literature and the problems of cultural activity it explores that the explanatory power of reflexive theory can best be appreciated.
Loic J.D. Wacquant, Towards a Reflexive Sociology: A Workshop with Pierre Bourdieu, Sociological Theory, Vol. 7 (1989): 43, as quoted in Richard Jenkins, Pierre Bourdieu (London: Routledge, 2002), 47.
358

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5.2. Autonomous cultural representation: possible?

The term folk culture itself (and its attendant theorization) most traditionally designates or concerns a) a culture genuinely reflecting the experiences of the people in the form traditionally understood as predating mass industrialization, b) a system of cultural and social representation predating and to some degree informing what in other critical theory is deemed the popular culture of the contemporary moment, and c) a system conceptually differing to that of mass culture. Usually aligned with celebratory examinations of cultural formations specific to earlier historical situations, the concept often serves to illustrate the comparative deficiencies of the present social and cultural age, thus presupposing a) a declining cultural and social sphere (a judgement often issuing from any number of assumed universal standards), and b) a simple sociological method of evaluation and examination corresponding to a largely transparent social realm (in terms of easily identifiable social structures accessible to traditional investigative procedure). Broadly representative of the debate regarding folk and popular culture, these general conceptual characteristics are regularly disputed in cultural theory, with the discussion (at least as conducted in relation to Cultural Studies) typically undertaken with reference to Bakhtins theory of the carnival. Bakhtins examination of the blurring, or collapse, of traditional cultural and social boundaries (and of regulated arenas of cultural inversion identified as functioning historically within specific hierarchical social formations), underpins a good portion of examinations of cultural practice, although the specifics of his work are often suppressed in order to meet the individual idiosyncrasies of each instance of cultural criticism. The most obvious example is the work of contemporary cultural theorist John Fiske, who has selectively utilized Bakhtins work to theorize folk (and more specifically popular) culture as demarcating a realm of cultural practice explicitly engaging the interests of the peasantry, the working classes, and the dominated in oppositional fashion to the cultural domination (and practices) of high culture. There is no assumed fall from a previous era of cultural integrity here, nor the deterministic suggestion of a broader system of social (and corresponding cultural) domination; rather, the commodity consumption that is cautiously approached under the term mass culture by more circumspect cultural theorists is embraced by Fiske as the resource through which the masses both consume, and represent to themselves, their meanings and their pleasures. Indeed, for Fiske, modes of consumption characteristic of the contemporary period perpetuate a distinguishing social system of nomadic subjectivities (best) described in terms of peoples felt collectivity (rather) than in terms of external sociological factors such as class, gender, age, race,

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region or what have you.359 This allows John Fiske (as intellectual) to theoretically construct himself as John Fiske of the people, aligning himself (due to feelings of affinity) with the social groups constructed through his academic observation. Consequently, he argues that:

nomadic subjectivities (can) move around (a highly elaborated social structure), realigning their social allegiances into different formations of the people according to the necessities of the moment all social allegiances have not only a sense of with whom, but also of against whom: indeed, I would argue that the sense of oppositionality, the sense of difference, is more determinant than that of similarity, of class identity, for it is shared antagonisms that produce the fluidity that is characteristic of the people in elaborated societies.360

Whilst the Bourdieu of Distinction would argue in return that the kinds of differences Fiske identifies merely condemn the dominated to virtue of necessity logic, an oppositionality (thats not for the like of us) which merely reinforces determination through habitual exclusion, his broader criticism would no doubt address the scholastic error of Fiske (a deficiency also identified by Frow) to find no methodological mistake in unproblematically aligning oneself with subordinate groups (in the sense of being able to speak both for and, perhaps more damningly, with the people). As Bourdieu has noted, this newly sympathetic popular critic (or scientist, or sociologist) is thus able to authoritatively identify categories of evaluation, appreciation and recognition that in reality are only representative of a certain social group (those academics holding appropriate symbolic and cultural capital) to be deemed characteristics of the people, allowing for theorizations of fluid social allegiances and negotiated competencies existing in the everyday social world. This critical error - of repressing the very social distance through which one achieves the status of academic and which enables one to authoritatively wield the power to construct others as an identifiable object requiring examination (and, indeed, representation) - is cited in The Craft of Sociology (1968) as perhaps the most immediate deficiency of academic interventionism informing instances of theorization:

Failure to subject ordinary language, the primary instrument of the construction of the world of objects, to a methodological critique entails the risk of mistaking objects pre-constructed in and by ordinary language for data the schemes used by sociological explanation have to be tested by being made completely explicit in order to avoid the contamination to which even the
359 360

John Fiske, Understanding Popular Culture (London: Routledge, 1989), 24. Fiske (1989), 24.

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most purified schemes are exposed whenever they have a structural affinity with ordinarylanguage schemes.361

This weakness in Fiskes work is alarmingly representative of the large body of cultural theory examining the specifics of contemporary cultural exchange and popular realms of practice, which (at least from the perspective of reflexive sociology) disqualifies the greater portion of it, given that Bourdieu is theoretically unable to allow for broad arguments turning upon fluid cultural sensibilities, and is highly sceptical of the politically representative capabilities of non-reflexive academics. Unfortunately, a proportion of Bourdieus critics appear to align themselves with this understanding of (largely) unfettered cultural interaction, or deem it to be conceptually favourable when examining issues of class and social inequality in contemporary society, with the bulk of the criticisms of reflexive sociology proceeding from this basic conceptual assumption (a position which legitimates to varying degrees a methodology of speaking for and with an object under examination). Closer, perhaps, to Bourdieu in approaching folk culture through Bakhtin is John Docker, who in Postmodernism and Popular Culture: A Cultural History (1994) is critical of the methods of Fiske (and others) in attempting to understand the broader workings of culture, insisting that cultural theorists are:

always in danger of essentialising Bakhtin, producing a portrait of a simple, lyrical, optimistic utopian, who naively conceives carnival as folk, rural, and local, to be admired solely as a culture emerging from below and as a critique of high culture(but Bakhtins) Rabelais and His World does not celebrate the folk as folk, but the interplay during the Renaissance of folk culture with more formal modes of literature and thought Bakhtin himself, we might observe, retains in his historical argument (a sense of) hierarchy, as if an intensely admirable, but elemental, popular folk culture can only come to consciousness in more developed, educated forms.362

This is nearer to Bourdieu at least conceptually, in the sense of suggesting any instance of dominated culture to always function in relation to hierarchical structuration (and one could further introduce here Volosinovs understanding of the evolution of behavioural ideologies into established ideologies to suggest the intermingling of various forms of discourse in the
361

Pierre Bourdieu, Jean-Claude Chamboredon, and Jean-Claude Passeron, The Craft of Sociology (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1991), 21-24.

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construction of a heterogeneous social realm), but such a position still begs the question of the reflexive quality of Bakhtins (and Volosinovs) theorization(s), and thus their cogency. Indeed, whilst Bakhtins understandings of cultural practice appear open to a reading conducted with reference to Bourdieus theories of field and capital, it is the theorization of culture as pertains to its construction and examination through the fallacies of intellectualist knowledge production that remains Bourdieus primary evaluative tool for scrutinising theoretical constructions of culture and cultural practice, and the critical stumbling block that denies simple alignment between Bourdieu and other writers examining the characteristics, and functioning, of culture. There thus remains Bourdieus own reflexive theorization of culture, attentive to the problems associated with the scholastic disposition, and most completely articulated (for the requirements of this research program) in his later writings. In these works Bourdieu comes to ponder the debate specific to the concept of folk and popular culture not in isolation from his broader societal concerns but rather as it relates to the possibility of (by no means uncomplicated) forms of authentic cultural expression and representation. Authentic here specifies cultural activity informed by, and undertaken within, a social realm characterised by some measure of autonomy, and thus providing the possibility (again, ideally) for individuals to enact modes of cultural evaluation and recognition inherently expressive of the social needs and desires of specific groups, independent of the kinds of determination and influence that is understood to result from a cultural arbitrary subjugating all cultural practice to the logic of disinterest and distinction. Whilst open to a broad range of criticisms beyond those previously noted, Bourdieu (throughout these later works) can be interpreted to be at least suggesting that those concepts traditionally associated with the definition of folk culture - in the sense of a realm of social and cultural practice understood to function through the dispositions of the everyday habitus faced with the practicalities of the immediate world rather than through methods of consecration, distinction and legitimation - outline a system of cultural activity less inclined to perpetuate prevailing power structures in turning upon a system of recognition maintained by a system of cultural gatekeepers, or symbolic arbiters, of taste. In functioning through those groups objectively less educated, and thus less inclined through habituation to engage with cultural items or practices upon any secondary level of interpretation or comprehension beyond the everyday code (and thus involving no level of initiation and consequent distinction), folk culture as an ideal system of cultural activity and appreciation turns less upon an imposed cultural arbitrary, or the interested (enacted as disinterested) perpetuation of systems of recognition and evaluation. The Bourdieu of Distinction obviously is inclined to stress
John Docker, Postmodernism and Popular Culture: A Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 187-188.
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that such a culture is impossible, given that the evaluative systems enacted by the dominated are there theorised as functioning purely in failed opposition to (and thus through a dominated recognition of) the legitimate cultural systems of the dominant, without any real consideration of the possibility for historical circumstances allowing a break in the dispossessed, dispositional logic that perpetuates such domination through habitual exclusion. In later works Bourdieu progressively shifts from this position, but is still circumspect in his theorizations; after outlining the susceptibility of previous theoretical productions concerned with the conditions necessary for autonomous cultural practice to criticism, he remains exceptionally wary when discussing in any absolute terms the structure and function of folk (and more broadly popular) culture. He stresses with caution that:

In short, popular culture resembles Lewis Carrolls snark, in that the very categories with which one pursues it in order to conceptualize it, and the questions one asks of it, are inadequate When the dominated quest for distinction leads the dominated to affirm what distinguishes them, that is, that in the name of which they are dominated and constituted as vulgar, do we have to talk of resistance? In other words, if, in order to resist, I have no other resource than to lay claim to that in the name of which I am dominated, is this resistance? Second question: When, on the other hand, the dominated work at destroying what marks them out as vulgar and at appropriating that in relation to which they appear as vulgar (for instance, in France, the Parisian accent), is this submission? I think this is an insoluble contradiction: this contradiction, which is inscribed into the very logic of symbolic domination, is something those who talk about popular culture wont admit. Resistance may be alienating and submission may be liberating. Such is the paradox of the dominated, and there is no way out of it.363

Paradoxes aside, the later Bourdieu implies the possibility of something theoretically akin to at least the conceptual principles of folk culture in terms of outlining the conditions necessary for the universalization of the conditions of access to the universal and thus what he understands as the elevation of the collective consciousness - the equitable distribution of, or access to, the symbolic tools for constructing representations of the broader social world, as examined in such works as Sociology in Question (1993), Free Exchange (1995), On Television (1996) and Acts of Resistance: Against the New Myths of Our Time (1998). It is this political impulse for examining, outlining and constructing the necessary conditions allowing greater social self-representation, albeit with genuine appreciation for the procedures and determinations specific to the practice of symbolic

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violence as it is conducted through both institutionalised and practical means, which suggests Bourdieus commitment in later works to postulating the conditions necessary for the existence, and functioning of, a realm of practice approaching in conceptual form that which is traditionally examined as folk culture. This is, however, simply to present a somewhat broad examination of Bourdieus position. To combat and examine the criticisms of his work best exemplified by the works of John Frow, it is important to address each specific problem in turn, examine the responses Bourdieu supplies in the later works in relation to his overall program of reflexive sociology and assessment of the structural conditions desired for autonomy, and then integrate these understandings into an investigation of cinematic experience. The resulting understandings of this experience will therefore be a) more observant of the demands resulting from the practice of reflexivity, b) attentive to the problems and debates associated with cultural examination (and, by extension, Bourdieusian cultural examination), and thus c) more successful as an instance of knowledge production. And given the previous outline of the academic debates over cultural value and practice in which Bourdieu, by virtue of his theoretical and social concerns, is implicated, such a research position will also implicitly recognise that (as a sociologist, one) constantly has to situate oneself between two roles - on the one hand that of the wet blanket, the Cassandra, and on the other hand that of the accomplice of utopian thinking.364
363 364

Pierre Bourdieu, In Other Words (California: Stanford University Press, 1990a), 154-155. Pierre Bourdieu, Sociology in Question (London: Sage Publications, 1993a), 60.

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5.3. Rethinking habitus: ambiguity, mismatch, struggle.

Bourdieus cultural theory has therefore generally been critically received as delimiting a social world where cultural consumption functions with regard to a single hierarchy of cultural value (and corresponding processes of appreciation and recognition), an understanding shaped largely through readings of Distinction. But his later works make clear that, whilst he understands this hierarchy to function, complete practical adjustment to it (via the habitus) is by no means an uncomplicated affair. For Frow, the hierarchical ordering of recognition and appreciation implicit in cultural consumption has collapsed, in the sense that:

high culture is fully absorbed within commodity production (with) the relation to the market (thus unable to) be used as a general principle of differentiation between high-cultural and low-cultural products the mass media have come to play an increasingly dominant role in the transmission of cultural values [Whereas] once high culture was unequivocally the culture of the ruling class, this hierarchical structure is no longer the organizing principle of the cultural system.365

But whilst Bourdieu does continue to understand the relation to the market as a general principle of differentiation, the subtleties of his work as regards this problem have been greatly overlooked, thus necessitating a degree of clarification that will assist in revealing the complexity of his position. Unlike other commentators, Frows objections to Bourdieu deserve more attention given their grounding in empirical research. Beyond the openly theoretical Cultural Studies and Cultural Value, Frow, Bennett and Emmisons Accounting For Tastes: Australian Everyday Cultures (1999) - a substantial study of Australian cultural tastes - represents a major critique of Bourdieu whilst nevertheless being theoretically and methodologically inspired by Distinction. It investigates both a national survey of cultural practices and preferences of 2756 adult Australians (conducted) in late 1994/early 1995(and) a pilot study centred on Brisbane and its neighbouring postal districts366 to determine the relationships between the patterns of participation in (different) fields of cultural practice.367 In doing so, Accounting for Tastes criticizes Bourdieus understanding of a single hierarchy of cultural consumption perpetuating opposing perceptual logics. Indeed, whilst Frow,
John Frow, Cultural Studies and Cultural Value (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 23. Tony Bennett, Michael Emmison, and John Frow, Accounting for Tastes: Australian Everyday Cultures (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 1-2. 367 Bennett, Emmison and Frow (1999), 2.
366 365

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Bennett and Emmison agree with Bourdieu that in so far as cultural practice organises relations of distinction, it tends to be organised as a series of dichotomies368, they are unwilling to reduce these diverse dichotomies to a single core structure of which everything else would be the expression.369 In opposition to Distinction, Frow et. al. interpret the survey results cited in Accounting for Tastes as suggesting binary perceptual logics to be largely ineffectual (in Australia), with no hierarchical system of value recognised by all agents as designating legitimate (and correspondingly illegitimate) practices, and no discernible homologies across cultural activity with respect to this hierarchy.370 They thus suggest the problems in reducing cultural consumption to one overarching hierarchy (in Australia), arguing that the cultural field that we have investigated is marked by a plurality of scales of value, in many of which age or gender or regional location, rather than social class, play a dominant role.371 At first glance, Cultural Studies and Cultural Value and Accounting for Tastes articulate a convincing theoretical and methodological position defined in opposition to Bourdieus cultural and social theory (as exists in Distinction). Indeed, Frow et. al., whilst appreciating the historical and regional differences separating Distinction and Accounting for Tastes, nevertheless broadly criticise Bourdieu for a) his theorisation of (static) structured and structuring structures whilst allowing for strategic practice, b) the characterisation of habitus resulting from this theorisation and yet c) his lack of consideration for mass-mediated contemporary conditions.372 However, the conclusions of Accounting for Tastes, and the criticisms of Bourdieu they are deemed to validate, at least partly appear to result from the methodology of Distinction being applied with little correction to the conditions of contemporary Australian culture. Australia of the 1990s (as opposed to France of the 1960s) is more likely to be responsive to those practices routinely labelled as popular advancing up the hierarchical ladder of legitimacies (albeit with significant symbolic transformation), to coexist with traditional artefacts of high culture in designating status and cultural worth. In contrast, the Australian Everyday Cultures survey cited in Accounting for Tastes includes sections on Domestic Leisure and Tastes and Preferences that, whilst replicating the methodology of Distinction, deploys its historically dated categories of cultural differentiation without adjustment (i.e. classical versus popular music, formal versus thematic emphasis in art and photography, etc.). The use of such categories assumes the designation of value implicit in their binary oppositions to be historically static. However, specific instances of popular music, for example, have ascended the
368 369

Bennett, Emmison, and Frow (1999), 263. Bennett, Emmison and Frow (1999), 263. 370 Bennett, Emmison and Frow (1999), 263. 371 Bennett, Emmison and Frow (1999), 269. 372 Bennett, Emmison and Frow (1999), 12-13.

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levels of legitimation Bourdieu outlines in Photography: A Middlebrow Art (1965), with music videos having long emphasised formal experimentation at the expense of thematic coherency (as is typical in abstract or experimental art) - with, one assumes, no alienating of specific sections of their audience (given their ongoing broad popularity). These problems of Accounting for Tastes are also problems of Distinction, to be sure, but although Frow et. al. criticise Bourdieus limited references to the functioning of popular culture in that work, their questionnaire does little to correct these deficiencies for the 1990s. Therefore, in extending the assumptions of Distinction as regards certain cultural forms and practices, Accounting for Tastes presupposes the ongoing power historically of those forms and practices as signs of distinction and status, ignoring shifts in legitimacy and the practices that may now denote legitimacy (and thus distinction). The further criticisms of Bourdieus cultural theory in Accounting for Tastes result from a particular reading of the theory of habitus (upon which Bourdieus aesthetic system of preferential consumption depends), a reading which emphasises habitual structuration and the binding of dispositional trajectories rather than instances of improvisation, alteration or mismatch in practice. Whilst it is widely recognised that Bourdieu has long attempted to overcome the limitations of both of these theorisations of practice and the academic habits of thought they perpetuate, his attempts in later works to elucidate the principles of habitus in a manner consistent with his investigation of the possibilities for social and cultural resistance remain largely unacknowledged. Bourdieu is clear in Pascalian Meditations (2000) that habitus should by no means be understood as functioning in an entirely coherent fashion, and that the theory of outright dispositional structuration should not be assumed to account for all instances of practice. Rather, given specific historical conditions of alteration and change, habitus may come to function in a variety of different ways, specific to the social conditions experienced by the agent (or social group) under examination. At the most extreme pole, Bourdieu suggests that habitus may operate in a paradoxical manner (albeit to varying degrees), influenced by opposing, or multiple, systems of recognition and appreciation. One understands this situation to be somewhat rare, reflecting the slow disintegration (or adaptation) of a specific instance of habitus in the face of sweeping changes to a corresponding life world. In making this concession, the possibility of differing levels of structural mismatch occurring in practice is provided for by Bourdieu, whilst still adhering generally to the theory of dispositional structuration. By allowing concessions of this kind but still maintaining in essence his former position, Bourdieu manages to avoid the danger of advocating a realm of open exchange and practice in the contemporary cultural moment. Particularly, he avoids the egalitarian attitudes that most often inform the notion of disintegrating cultural hierarchies, and criticises the inordinate academic

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attention given to mapping these apparently competing discourses and logics in the cultural realm. Rather, Bourdieu stresses that shifting objective structures and the apparent loosening of cultural gatekeeping as identified by critics such as Frow do not necessarily constitute a dramatic alteration in the relations of, and procedures specific to, symbolic violence and habitual practice (especially when such systems are embedded historically across cultures and thus function as largely self-evident in practice). Indeed, he stresses tirelessly that, as much as habitus can display a mismatched quality that suggests the complication of previous hierarchical modes of cultural and social activity, this mismatch still turns upon a degree of structural continuity encoded in a series of practical logics that are the product of formative conditions of socialisation. Bourdieu notes:

I have discovered a lot of suffering which (has) been hidden by (the) smooth working of habitus. It helps people to adjust, but it causes internalised contradictions One may very well be adapted to (a) state of affairs, and the pain comes from the fact that one internalises silent suffering, which may find bodily expression, in the form of self-hatred, self-punishment.373

To over prioritise an open realm of exchange at the expense of the deeper conditioning structures informing practice encourages, as Bourdieu suggests, an understanding of cultural activity that highlights (and constructs academic interpretations of) resistance, evasion and breakdown (in relation to historically functioning cultural hierarchies), rather than investigating the ongoing structuration that such resistance may conceal. Here Bourdieus examination of Algerian peasants is instructive, for whilst he understands such peasants to function through a mixture of both traditional dispositional strategies and the modes demanded of them in the face of modernity, he makes clear that the price paid for their enacting of these newer modes increasingly takes the form of the breakdown of traditional social formations and results in experiences of alienation and dislocation. To speak of a) semiotic guerrilla warfare, b) the renegotiation of meanings, pleasures and identities ( la Fiske) or c) an increasingly open arena of cultural exchange in this context is to dramatically misread the realities of lived experience and, perhaps worse, contribute another layer of mystification to social and cultural practice when such understandings are dispersed as fact across intellectual fields. As Bourdieu notes, this is one manifestation of the key problem of intellectual theorization (mistaking the academic understanding of actions and practices as observed via research to be the exact same experience and understandings of the agents observed), which is not to suggest one ignore definite changes in social environments and relationships of cultural interaction and
373

Pierre Bourdieu and Terry Eagleton, Doxa and Common Life, New Left Review 191 (1992): 121.

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consumption but that one should (reflexively) situate them within the proper context of their lived experience, and with due consideration for those who live that experience. As Bourdieu makes clear:

Habitus is not necessarily adapted to its situation nor necessarily coherent moreover, even if dispositions may waste away or weaken through lack of use (linked, in particular, to a change in social position or condition), or as a result of heightened consciousness associated with an effort of transformation there is an inertia (or hysteresis) of habitus which have a spontaneous tendency (based in biology) to perpetuate structures corresponding to their conditions of production.374

Thus, the acknowledgement of the phased alteration of the dispositional structurations inherent in habitus, or the instances of mismatching that involve, for example, the futile enacting of a range of practices deemed outdated in the face of altered objective circumstances, is an important concept for Bourdieu, and one which - contrary to criticism - he does address. Indeed, as Bridget Fowler notes, this understanding of mismatch and alteration in habitus greatly informs his historical examination of cultural practice:

Bourdieu emphasises that the statutory signs of distinction in matters of cultural goods were abolished in the nineteenth century with the increased writing for the market done by the de Kocks, Feuillets and others. However, he stresses that consumption today is still informally structured despite the removal of all fetters or Chinese walls against the free movement of
374

Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), 160.

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commodities.375 376

One key problem in the critical reception of Bourdieu is, therefore, the basic assumptions made as regards the theory of habitus. Whilst conceptually his approach is indeed weighted toward the continuing structuration of social life through practical dispositions, Bourdieus examination in his later works of mismatched instances of practice suggest the concept may well be fluid enough to accommodate the general intellectual desire for theoretical models less given to perpetuating what are often understood as the polar oppositions of rigid structuration and open improvisation, whilst still observing more generally the theory of dispositional structuration and its corresponding relationship to hierarchical forms of cultural consumption. Indeed, in these later writings, the structural mismatches Bourdieu identifies across different forms of habitus and practice (the obstinate habitus, for example) are implied to be a very real necessity for the continuing practical survival of increasingly outdated value systems still predicated upon such concepts as freedom and autonomy (independent of outright determination and the logic of the market). That Bourdieu is left to bestow upon such instances of non-integration and mismatch the task of upholding such ideals not only indicates his unwillingness to expect any systematic sense of commitment to these principles from, for example, the intellectual field, but it also places the possibility of mismatch (and the potential for resistance that in some instances may be seen to accompany it) at the very centre of the theory of habitus (or, more specifically, at the point of interplay between habitus, field and capital as they are subject to the conditions of history). These subtle additions to his work are sometimes glossed over in criticism and commentary, and they deserve greater recognition.
Bridget Fowler, Pierre Bourdieu and Cultural Theory: Critical Investigations (London: Sage Publications, 1997), 49. 376 Indeed, Douglas B. Holt notes: As popular goods become aestheticized and as elite goods become massified the objectified form of cultural capital has in large part been supplanted by the embodied form. Given the deteriorating classificatory power of objectified tastes, cultural elites in advanced capitalist societies now attempt to secure distinction by adapting their consumption practices to accentuate the embodied form. Douglas B. Holt, Does Cultural Capital Structure American Consumption?, Journal of Consumer Research Vol. 25, Issue 1 (1998), 5.
375

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5.4. Autonomy and folk culture.

It is with this reappraisal of habitus in mind that one can situate Bourdieus particular references to the people and the concept of folk culture in relation to his commitment to the ideal of social and cultural autonomy. Firstly, Bourdieus theorization of the nave gaze as embodying a system of social and aesthetic recognition that subordinates questions of style and form to utilitarian needs (and is thus an expression of the commitment to representing [and honouring] the practicalities and immediate experiences of everyday life) suggests that a cultural practice explicitly representative of the people would be based more specifically in this system of aesthetic evaluation and recognition. And it is because this system (most simply) honours the significance of the common good, rather than perpetuating a system of recognition through institutionalised distinction based upon contempt for the everyday, that obliges Bourdieu, given his political commitments, to in some sense defend it - even if throughout his work he gives little attention to the characteristics of a specifically popular culture (although, as suggested earlier, it might be assumed this lack of attention reflects more his unease with the conventional theorization of the concept rather than a complete negation of the possibilities for its existence). Bourdieus implied preference for this particular system of social and cultural recognition, however, is not based upon a simple understanding of the common good, or a nave celebration of the traditional worker as an agent functioning beyond the constraints of official culture, but can be explained with reference to the principles of reflexive sociology and its proper practice. For it is the construction of distance via removal from the conditions informing immediate practice that suggests the adoption of an objective point of view, and the implied sense of distinction that corresponds to that point of view. The aesthetic gaze is founded upon such a conditional relationship to the world, as is the methodology informing traditional intellectual theorization, and it is the negation of this very basic impulse of the break that Bourdieu outlines as the first principle to be observed in conducting reflexive practice. The nave gaze, and the immediate conditions that inform it, can be seen to be founded upon the inability to accomplish this break, and thus immediately suggests itself as a mode of cultural and social evaluation and recognition closer to the ideal of undistorted societal communication Bourdieu seeks to inform not simply social science and broader intellectual practice, but the everyday lives such systems address, construct and define through their wielding of symbolic power. Frow is quick to denounce this appraisal of the nave gaze, and criticises Bourdieu for:

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inherently adopting the language of the popular aesthetic itself part of the problem (being) that Bourdieu is not interested in giving a detached account of aesthetic codes. Despite the sociological apparatus and despite the commitment to a rigorously scientific relativism, his text is at this point almost explicitly interventionist the implicit supposition that one class stands in a more natural, less mediated relation to experience than do others is a romantic obfuscation.377

Bourdieu would counter that his understanding of the less mediated relationship to experience held (generally) by the working classes (in opposition to the dominant classes) is hardly the naive assumption Frow suggests it to be, for it is not theorized entirely as an intrinsic property but rather depends historically upon the degree to which symbolic violence (as perpetuated through both the education system and, in more recent times, the new therapeutic morality promoted through magazines, television, etc.) robs the dispossessed of their ability to symbolize themselves and their experiences through a representative self-identity, for as he notes in Distinction:

The most fundamental principles of class identity and unity, those which lie in the unconscious, would be affected if, on the decisive point of the relation to the body, the dominated class came to see itself only through the eyes of the dominant class, that is, in terms of the dominant definition of the body and its uses.378

Whilst in Distinction Bourdieu allows no realistic chance of collective resistance given the probability of these conditions, his theorization of the immediate bearing of domination upon and through the bodies of the working classes, and thus the immediately tactile, or bodily, relationship to the world they are condemned to live out (denied the break through distance which would allow them the contempt for the physical, the immediate and the sensual which is indicative of the dominant) does not necessarily rob them of the potential for self-representation and political power. Indeed, Bourdieu hints in Distinction at the political potential of such an experience and its corresponding lifestyle:

It should not be forgotten that a class which, like the working class, is only rich in its labour can only oppose to other classes - apart from the withdrawal of its labour - its fighting strength, which depends on the physical strength and courage of its members, and also their
377 378

John Frow, Cultural Studies and Cultural Value (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 34. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (London: Routledge, 1984), 384.

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number, i.e. their consciousness and solidarity or, to put it another way, their consciousness of their solidarity.379

This (albeit slight) attention by Bourdieu to considering the conditions necessary for a consciousness of solidarity in Distinction surfaces far more significantly in Sociology in Question (1993), when, in regards to the question of a possible counter-culture, he notes:

All movements which challenge the symbolic order are important inasmuch as they call into question what seemed to go without saying - what is beyond question, unchallenged. They jostle the self-evidences the possession of the weapons necessary for defending oneself against cultural domination, the domination that is exerted through and in the name of culture, ought to be part of culture. It would have to be a culture capable of distancing culture, of analysing it, and not inverting it, or, rather, imposing an inverted form of it. In a word, it would mean proliferating the weapons of defence against symbolic domination and I dont think it impossible that one day a group might be able to take on such a task of reconstruction.380

As demonstrated earlier, this development in Bourdieus work is exceptionally important given that it signifies growth from earlier understandings of working class representation based in the recognition of labour power to a legitimate consideration of the construction of alternative systems of symbolic exchange as a means of fighting (most immediately) linguistic violence. This development is consolidated in later works through the examination of (possible) collaborative actions between symbolic producers in the cultural field and certain labour groups that attempt to universalize the conditions of access to the universal in the face of developing globalisation and the discursive power of neo-liberalism. Indeed, this shift from the sense of outright class determination to the more measured examination of the probabilities for resistance, progressive social formations and confrontational activities, accompanied by the subtle reappraisal of the theory of habitus, is extensively considered in such works as Acts of Resistance: Against the Tyranny of the Market (1998), Practical Reason (1998), The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society (1999), Pascalian Meditations (2000) and Masculine Domination (2001).381
Bourdieu (1984), 384. Pierre Bourdieu, Sociology in Question (London: Sage Publications, 1993a), 2-3. 381 For an extended examination of Bourdieus greater presence in public and political life throughout the 1990s, see David Swartz, From critical sociology to public intellectual: Pierre Bourdieu and politics, Theory and Society Volume 32, Issue 5 (2003).
380 379

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Given this contextualization, Bourdieu cannot be said to be adopting the language of the popular aesthetic. Rather, he appears to value such an aesthetic given his need (examined far more explicitly in these later works) to consider in:

practical terms (i.e. a sociologically realist manner) the conditions that would need to be fulfilled to keep political practices permanently subjected to a test of universalizability, so that the very workings of the political field force its actors into real mobilization strategies. (This) would be a question of establishing social universes where, as in the Machiavellian ideal republic, agents had an interest in virtue, disinterestedness, and devotion to public service and common good.382

It appears that those instances of Bourdieus writing referring to the conditions of autonomy and recognition traditionally associated in broader cultural theory with folk culture provisionally suggest such a realm to exhibit at least some of the traits of this moral social universe, in the sense of a cultural system concerned with representing and articulating the immediate experiences and needs of the dispossessed and dominated - and only those, given that individuals in such a social formation might be understood as having an immediate interest in the common good simply because they are, as Bourdieu notes in Distinction, bodily impacted upon by the conditions of their existence to such an extent that they are compelled through suffering to represent and examine (through cultural activities) such conditions of domination and the nature of their immediate lived world. Indeed, the conditioning power of illusio - the practical comprehension which is that of the body linked to a place by a direct relationship of contact(and) quite distinct from the intentional act of conscious decoding383 - might well be understood to be at its most limited in such a living environment, given that corporeal knowledges entrenched through years of embittered experience may strongly function to negate (or cancel out) the manufactured desire of the dominated to see themselves through the eyes of the dominant. Again, for the Bourdieu of Distinction, the possibilities for the existence of such a realm of social (and thus cultural) practice are largely nonexistent; as he notes:

It is no doubt in the area of education and culture that the members of the dominated classes have least chance of discovering their objective interest and of producing and imposing the problematic most consistent with their interests. Awareness of the economic and social
382 383

Pierre Bourdieu, Practical Reason (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998a), 144. Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), 135.

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determinants of cultural dispossession in fact varies in almost inverse ratio to cultural dispossession.384

However, attention to the later works reveals that access to education, even if institutionally perpetuating the hierarchical logic of legitimate culture, is suggested by Bourdieu to at least provide the tools for the possible recognition of dispossession and domination (to distance culture and analyse it, as previously quoted), a condition which, in the contemporary world, is understood to be agitated by the increasing attainment of educational qualifications (and thus attendant social and cultural expectations) that are not matched by opportunities in the labour market (suggesting the possibility of conflict resulting from disenchantment). One might therefore argue that the possibility for recognition of cultural domination by the dominated is increased when a) the shifting composition and structural organization of fields produces instances of mismatched habitus which prompt confrontation between contradictory systems of cultural evaluation and corresponding modes of practice, b) higher educational qualifications in the broader population complicate the ability of the dominant to construct and perpetuate a system of cultural legitimacy, and c) symbolic producers in cultural fields in some way resist the homogeneity both required and implied by the logic of economic competition to produce more representative (and socially conscientious) cultural texts. There is, then, no explicit passage in Bourdieus work postulating a precise program of social action that would produce this social universe (which he likens to the ideal republic) outright; rather, the reflexive steps of examination required of intellectual practice appear to imply a slow revolution from the top down, in the sense of symbolic producers aligning their practice in relation to the principles of reflexive sociological theory and thus, in effect, contributing to the construction of the conditions under which equitable social communication and recognition may occur. Obviously, Bourdieu is less than inclined to believe this will eventuate, relying instead upon smaller, individual academic interventions in public movements and moments of resistance (such as his own), that will at least (break) the appearance of unanimity which is the greater part of the symbolic force of the dominant discourse.385 There is no doubt that acts of resistance intended to mobilise specific social groups are clearly intended to incorporate collaboration between symbolic producers (specifically their capacity in constructing - or disrupting - classificatory systems) and revolutionary groups, but one can read Bourdieu as suggesting that the greater revolution to occur
Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (London: Routledge, 1984), 387-390. 385 Pierre Bourdieu, Acts of Resistance: Against the Tyranny of the Market (New York: The New Press, 1998b), viii.
384

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within the entrenched systems of vision and division that enable the immediate power relations of the everyday world to function requires a more secure grounding, a greater degree of coordination on a scale simply beyond his capacity to envision. Nevertheless, this apparent pessimism is lessened somewhat if one breaks with conventional understandings of freedom of action and thought. The first step in reconstructing systems of symbolic domination, Bourdieu suggests, is to question traditional conceptions of freedom and determination, or any understanding of social formations as potentially free from all structuration and influence. In Other Words: Essays Towards a Reflexive Sociology (1990) frankly states that sociology frees us from the illusion of freedom, or, more exactly, from the misplaced belief in illusory freedoms,386 and in the same text Bourdieu makes clear that it is this very sense of illusory freedom that is displayed in the assumptions of a range of cultural theorists who interpret the needs and desires of the people to be immediately and unquestioningly concerned with issues of equality, participation and access. For Bourdieu, the mistaken application of the intellectual aesthetic, born of a dominated position within the dominant class, thus creates a false agenda of liberation in examinations of cultural exchange that is so simplistic as to be unworkable, let alone likely to be realized. Bourdieu, as previously noted, suggests that one only examine or outline the potentiality of certain social and cultural formations to yield (in some form) cultural practices representative of the peoples will. Thus, whilst the logic of the presumed world, coupled with the given constitution (or state of play) of the field(s) in which an agent functions, conspires to limit chances for an agent achieving some measure of critical distance from the cultural and social world that surrounds and penetrates them, this logic does not entirely eradicate those chances. And yet, the closest approximation to the possibility of distance in Bourdieus writings (beyond systematic social revolution) is tied to instances of incoherency or mismatching in the habitus - a possibility entirely unsuitable for critical (and cultural) theories founded upon the vestiges of humanism and an idealistic program of liberation.
Pierre Bourdieu, In Other Words: Essays Towards a Reflexive Sociology (California: Stanford University Press, 1990a), 15.
386

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5.5. Bourdieu goes to the movies: A) Film studies and reflexive sociology.
It has been important to acknowledge how Bourdieus final works engaged with the problems of cultural consumption in the contemporary era and the systems of evaluation and recognition assumed to govern that consumption, for in doing so one becomes increasingly aware of a) the scholastic practices of discrimination that inform research examining cultural and social processes, and the precautions necessary for suspending them, and b) how general understandings of Bourdieus published works have been shaped by their reception in intellectual fields. Indeed, understanding the evolution in Bourdieus thought also allows a greater understanding of his political commitments, as the two do not function in isolation, requiring one to accept his reappraisal of earlier works in light of his participation in public affairs (both in France and internationally). However, whilst Bourdieus complex approach to the problems of cultural value and practice may thus be contextualized, there remains the question of the compatibility of his theoretical framework as specifically regards film studies. Situating Bourdieus thought with respect to the issues typical of Cultural Studies provides some indication of the problems within his work (or, perhaps, the problems resulting from the critical reception of his work), but measuring its applicability to film studies also raises a number of problems that require consideration. The first objection to Bourdieus approach as relates explicitly to the theorization of cinematic experience undoubtedly pertains to the perceived generality of his analytical system. Bourdieus concepts are obviously not specific to the institution of cinema when compared, for example, to Christian Metzs examination of the imaginary signifier, or David Bordwells cognitive theorization of spectatorship. Nevertheless, Bourdieu argues in Distinction that his:

model of the relationships between the universe of economic and social conditions and the universe of lifestyles seems to me to be valid beyond the particular French case and, no doubt, for every stratified society, even if the system of distinctive features which express or reveal economic and social differences (themselves variable in scale and structure) varies considerably from one period, and one society, to another.387

Previous criticisms notwithstanding, the relational method of analysis that Bourdieu adopts to
387

Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (London: Routledge, 1984), xixii.

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examine the capital inequalities and resulting cultural differences of the social world provides a more secure theoretical footing than previous approaches to the question of cinematic experience in part due to its awareness of the limitations of scholarly discourse and the bias of traditional objectivist or subjectivist approaches to human action and practice. In contrast, for example, the objectivism of Metz (in terms of his apparatus model) or the subjectivist strain in the works of Bordwell (which seeks to understand human thought, emotion, and action by appeal to processes of mental representation, naturalistic processes and [some sense of] rational agency388) implicitly introduce a host of conceptual and methodological problems into their respective examinations of the experience of cinema by situating theoretical arguments within largely conventional intellectual traditions. Indeed, whilst criticisms of the generality of Bourdieus model (and questions regarding its application to issues specific to the cinema) may be balanced by highlighting its theoretical and methodological reflexivity, the inclusive (i.e. relational) qualities of the theory of habitus, field and capital (and the understandings of cultural practice they allow) also provide justification for the utilization of his method, given that they allow the researcher to look beyond:

each practice or pattern of consumption in and for itself (and instead) deal with a set of social positions which is bound by a relation of homology to a set of social positions (the practice of golf or piano) or of goods (a second home or an old master painting) that are themselves characterized relationally.389

These elements of Bourdieus method assist in overcoming one of the key deficiencies of previous theorizations of cinematic experience: scholastic enclosure, including the adherence to disciplinary boundaries that function to maintain a hierarchical system of academic power detrimental to a greater understanding of sociological phenomena. Reflexive sociology interrogates these disciplinary limitations, and by extension the understandings of social and cultural systems they produce. This is exceptionally important when examining cinematic experience, for, as Miriam Hansen has made clear, the consumption of cinematic products is not an isolated social practice that can be definitively investigated with tools specific to a singular discipline. She notes how the cinema is both a public sphere in its own right and part of a larger public sphere with many different publics intersecting in the institution of cinema.390 This is not to suggest that theorizations of cinematic experience have always sought to evade engagement with the world existing beyond the
388

David Bordwell and Noel Carroll (eds), Post Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies (Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1996), xvi. 389 Pierre Bourdieu, Practical Reason (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998a), 3-5.

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cinema. As Bordwell has argued, film studies two large scale trends of thought: subject-position theory and culturalismare both Grand Theories in that their discussions of cinema are framed within schemes which seek to describe or explain very broad features of society, history, language and psyche.391 The application of Bourdieus reflexive sociology to the study of the cinema, however, allows the possibility (when properly adjusted to consider the specificities of the cinematic experience) for filmic consumption to be examined as both a unique form of positiontaking with distinctive properties of its own, and yet also properly theorized against a range of other social and cultural activities all functioning in relation to the distribution of different forms of capital and the corresponding lifestyles, evaluative systems and capacities for recognition they enable (and circumscribe). The second objection to approaching the experience of cinema through Bourdieu extends from the first: his limited critical examination of those fields of large-scale production (operating within the overall field of cultural production) engaging those areas of cultural activity functioning with regard to popular, or mass, culture. That Bourdieu has preferred to examine the master schemes (the habitus and corresponding methods of recognition and appreciation) through which he understands all cultural products and practices to be recognised and consumed has not exactly endeared him to cultural theorists more observing of (and indebted to) disciplinary boundaries and the requirements of the theoretical (and practical) logics they exhibit. Indeed, Bourdieu has been criticised for the perceived inadequacies of his cultural and social theory when explicitly examining institutions or practices identified as beyond his expertise. For example, Bourdieus examination of those fields distinctly concerning media production and consumption extends only as far as the criticism of journalism in On Television (1996, 1998), where he expresses disdain for those fields of media/cultural production functioning primarily in relation to the heteronomous principle of hierarchization, and which, he understands, perpetuate hierarchical systems of production and exchange indicative of the market, increasingly polluting and thus jeopardising the autonomy of those fields observing restricted cultural production. In this sense Bourdieus assessment of the institutional structures informing media production functions as part of his broader examination and criticism of the field of cultural production - an example, perhaps, intended to illustrate the ongoing battles by differing social groups to acquire and wield the tools for the symbolic representation of the contemporary social world (in a politically expedient manner, as he notes) - but this hardly
Hansen Miriam interviewed by Laleen Jayamanne & Anne Rutherford, The Future of Cinema Studies in the Age of Global Media: Aesthetics, Spectatorship & Public Spheres, UTS Review Vol. 5, no. 1 (1999): 97. 391 David Bordwell, Contemporary Film Studies and the Vicissitudes of Grand Theory, David Bordwell and Noel Carroll (eds), Post Theory: Reconstructing Film Studies (Wisconsin: Wisconsin University Press, 1996), 3.
390

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seems a foundation upon which to specifically address the cinematic experience. His theorization of, and concern for the universalization of the conditions of access to the universal might be deemed imprecise for not always providing the level of insight and expertise required by advanced academic disciplines, nor giving the required amount of attention to the historical arguments informing and shaping a field of study (even though Bourdieu has outlined the scholastic fallacies he deems characteristic of academic activity most generally). Indeed, from the perspective of film studies, Bourdieus need to detect the broader social functions of apparently arbitrary cultural practices might be deemed too overarching to tease out the fundamentals of the cinematic experience. One can assume that the greater (veiled) criticism here pertains to the practice of symbolic violence, particularly the impact of Bourdieus own specific interests and academic power upon his chosen areas of study (and more importantly the impact upon those academics functioning in relation to such areas), irrespective of (for his critics) his claims to apparent reflexivity. However, the defence against these types of criticisms - whilst complex - is quite reasonable, when informed by a proper understanding of Bourdieus intentions (as previously outlined). Bourdieu argues that those forms of production and corresponding practice intrinsically structured and defined by blatantly economic logic, with a specific market orientation deemed to pose a threat to both the present and future existence of those cultural fields and activities concerned with the examination and perpetuation of truth, discovery and equality independent of commercial imperatives and interests, must be the primary targets of a socially conscientious sociology, thus requiring a broader program of attention and action beyond the immediate concerns (and, one might suggest, petty infighting) of certain academic disciplines. Whereas traditional theorization is partially blinded by the feel for the game that indirectly adjusts intellectual production to adhere to the regularities of the academic field, Bourdieus theoretical framework presupposes constant reflection upon the world in which one thinks and acts. Rather than engaging in an apparent epistemological sleight-of-hand (i.e. deeming his position to be somewhat beyond the strategies for distinction he defines as essential to the intellectual field), Bourdieu makes systematic reflexivity a precondition of intellectual production, thus subjecting his own method to rigorous objectification. Outlining these objections indirectly raises the question of why, beyond these (obvious) reservations, previous film theory has been reluctant (in any systematic form) to approach the experience of cinema (and its study) in the manner that Bourdieus cultural theory provides? Certainly, publications exist that appear strikingly similar to Bourdieu. In Identifying Hollywoods Audiences: Cultural Identity and the Movies (1999), Richard Maltby criticises the aestheticism of film theory and criticism generally and the underlying cultural assumptions about the autonomy of

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art and the aesthetic poverty of mass taste392 such criticism exhibits. For Maltby, the perversity of this intrinsic aestheticism has resulted in little critical attention to (or empirical examination of) audience response and reception, and he notes that:

we may well recover a more complete picture of how the industry as a whole understood its audiences when film historians explore the archival records of distribution and exhibition, and produce more accurate accounts of the specific contexts of picture-going to amplify our understanding of the diversity both of Hollywoods audiences and of the programmes they viewed.393

Whilst Maltby does not explicitly suggest that film theorization represses the social conditions of possibility necessary to allow its instances of critical production to exist, it can of course be suggested that the aestheticism he identifies, particularly the apparent need to produce theorizations of film form and style across academic circles when an entire century of film audiences (and their experience of cinema beyond the consumption of filmic texts) remains largely unexamined, can be explained by the need for intellectuals to invest in the reigning system of aesthetic classification and distinction that functions in cultural and intellectual fields - an investment that critically informs their particular social position and contributes to the ongoing maintenance of the value of their cultural and symbolic capital. (Maltby indeed makes explicit reference to Bourdieu in the introduction to Identifying Hollywoods Audiences). Overall, however, Bourdieu appears quite alien to film studies, unless he is smuggled in via an interdisciplinary appeal to Cultural Studies. One is left to assume that, given any critical investigation of the cinematic experience through Bourdieu and his method of reflexive sociology necessarily requires reflection upon the researchers position in both the intellectual and cultural fields, the threat of revealing arbitrary distinctions, modes of contemplation and systems of evaluation indicative of the intellectual and scholarly realms is simply too great. Alternatively, the lack of empirical research into the cinematic experience might also be seen as a direct result of the ongoing symbolic battle between what Jim Collins has termed the two autonomous film cultures informing cinema studies: the practice of film reviewing and the production of film theory. Whilst film reviewing in effect attempts to elevate a popular form (and thus challenge traditional notions of aesthetic distinction and differentiation), film theory has, for the most part (at least as pertains to the subject of cinematic consumption), fought back in a
Melvyn Stokes and Richard Maltby (eds), Identifying Hollywoods Audiences: Cultural Identity and the Movies (London: British Film Institute Publishing, 1999), 3.
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retaliatory fashion by suggesting mainstream narrative film (and, by extension one assumes, the cinematic experience) to be a conduit for the ideological conditioning of its potential audiences. It can be suggested that this disciplinary tendency has arisen given the disintegration of previously autonomous cultural and intellectual fields under modern capitalism, with film theory precariously required to position itself against the culture industry as a means to achieve legitimisation in intellectual fields traditionally averse to any scholarly examination of popular texts or related social practices. In attempting to address the conditions of consumption specific to the cinema whilst simultaneously avoiding contamination by the object and the machinations of the culture industry, film theory perpetuated an aestheticism that prioritised form and style (particularly celebrated in avant-garde film) over any concern with the historical realities of commercial film audiences and their experiences. Indeed, as Maltby notes, film theorists essentially accepted Hollywoods belief that the motion picture industry knew less about itself than any other major industry in the United States394, in order to justify the theory that mainstream cinema produced films (and, again by extension, cinematic experiences) exclusively for a broad, undifferentiated public (i.e. for the lowest common denominator, the masses). The reality, was of course, very different, which is not to suggest mainstream cinema did not attempt to regulate its audience(s), but rather that the industries associated with commercial incarnations of cinema across different countries and historical periods have all sought, or managed, to regulate not only filmic consumption but cinematic experience by appealing to the desires informed by the distribution, in terms of volume and structure, of capital amongst possible viewing groups. Indeed, a key example of this system of differentiation was classical Hollywood, as Maltby notes that:

rather than Hollywood maintaining a view of the audience as an undifferentiated mass, the industry sought to provide a range of products that would appeal to different fractions of the audience, and to include a set of ingredients that, between them, would appeal to the entire range of different audience fractions. The evidence of this discourse on the audience suggests that the industry assumed that it addressed a number of quite clearly differentiated groups of Stokes and Maltby (1999), 3. Richard Maltby, Sticks, Hicks and Flaps: Classical Hollywoods generic conception of its audiences, Melvyn Stokes and Richard Maltby (eds), Identifying Hollywoods Audiences: Cultural Identity and the Movies (London: British Film Institute Publishing, 1999), 23.
394 393

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viewers, and that the categories of difference altered over relatively short periods of time.395

Indeed, this differentiation extended to the experience of cinema itself, in terms of the varied exhibition contexts (1st, 2nd and 3rd run theatres) sustained under studio rule. Reflection upon film studies in such a manner inevitably raises (yet again) the question of whether, if one suggests a range of differentiated perceptual practices being called forth by cinematic experience, such a process can be seen to amount to a popular culture. Thomas Schatz, for example, has made just such a claim with regards to film genres and genre films, understanding the development across history of generic elements (iconography, characters, etc.) in commercial film as resulting from the circuit of exchange between audience and film maker (i.e. popularity shaping product), with film genres thus examined as a form of collective cultural expression.396 On the surface, therefore, it might seem that the difference between Schatz and Bourdieu is simply one of perspective. However, Bourdieus theoretical framework stresses (even with his later reformulations) that the perceptual processes engaged by the experience and consumption of cultural products turns upon the choice of the necessary, with this matching of expectations to objective probabilities thus predisposing individuals situated within a specific socio-economic environment to (most often) avoid that which is beyond the terms of their experience and correspondingly will the inevitable. This concept of the willing of the inevitable thus constitutes a major difference between the understanding of audience choice informing work like Schatzs, and the dispositional form of choice that Bourdieu broadly theorizes as the outcome of systems of domination extended and reproduced through socialisation. Indeed, whereas Schatz might be seen to have accepted what has been termed the discourse of spectatorship constructed by Hollywood, Bourdieu notes how:

we could say of certain populist exaltations of popular culture that they are the pastorals of our epoch As an inverted celebration of the principles that undergird social hierarchies, the pastoral confirms upon the dominated a nobility based on their adjustment to their condition and on their submission to the established order (think of the cult of argot or slang, and, more generally, of popular language, of the passeiste extolling of the peasants of old or,
395 396

Maltby (1999), 25. See Thomas Schatz, Hollywood Genres (New York: Random House, 1981).

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in another genre, of the glorifying descriptions of the criminal underworld, or, today, of the veneration of rap music in certain circles).397

It is clear that in stressing the contrast between the nave/popular gaze and the aesthetic disposition Bourdieu clearly understands the perceptual strategies employed by different social groups in those moments of cultural consumption theorized most basically as popular to be understood as variable manifestations of the binary system of taste discrimination, and thus in very general terms an expression of hierarchical class relations rather than the choice identified by Schatz. If indeed audiences do collaborate with filmmakers, the terms of this collaboration reflect the existing distribution of capitals amongst social groups at a specific moment in history. For critics such as Scott Lash, however, the limited references in Distinction to television although just one example of cultural practices that present the minimum of direct economic barriers to participation, (and thus) the better to study the less visible barriers erected by the structured distribution of competences and dispositions derived from the habitus398 - complicates Bourdieus theorization of differentiated cultural competencies functioning in the contemporary social world. This criticism might also be sustained by attention to cinema, if one were to accept the traditional understanding of the medium as another inexpensive entertainment obliterating rather than engaging the traditional patterns of consumption between classes. However, whilst Lash argues that the the detailed work of Barwise and Ehrenberg (1998) has shown there is no evidence that members of the dominant fraction of the dominant class watch demanding, minority, cultural programs, whereas the popular classes watch less demanding, lowest-common-denominator pap399, there has been little attention paid to, as Bourdieu would surely stress, the different levels of comprehension and recognition functioning across the deciphering grids utilised in the consumption of these programs throughout different social groups. The broad availability of a cultural item to different social groups does not in itself cancel out the theory of cultural competencies, and practices such as the consumption of television (and cinema) exist alongside, and indeed are informed by, more traditional systems of informally structured distinction even when relatively inexpensive and thus deemed accessible. As Bourdieu notes: Where some only see a Western starring Burt Lancaster, others discover an early John Sturges or the latest Sam
Pierre Bourdieu and Loic J.D. Wacquant, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology, as quoted in Bridget Fowler, Pierre Bourdieu and Cultural Theory: Critical Investigations (London: Sage Publications, 1993), 152. 398 Craig Calhoun, Edward LiPuma and Moishe Postone (eds), Bourdieu: Critical Perspectives (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993), 187. 399 Calhoun, LiPuma and Postone (1993), 188.
397

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Peckinpah.400 Although regularly addressed as a singular activity when in actuality functioning within an entire series of related activities, lifestyles and taste preferences, the experience of cinema (along with other accessible media such as television) is perhaps deemed disruptive of established cultural hierarchies simply because it appears so self-evident and natural, so recognised in the experience it offers, that it becomes increasingly difficult to recognise the elaborate process through which it courts patrons with promises of capital maximization.
400

Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (London: Routledge, 1984), 28.

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5.6. Bourdieu goes to the movies: B) Cinema, capital, patron.

The difference in tone and approach between Bourdieu and the theory underpinning film studies suggests why reflexive sociology has largely been deemed unsuitable for the study of the cinema, a difference that echoes Bourdieus incompatibility with many contemporary cultural theorists. To engage Bourdieus theoretical framework thus involves defining a new entry point, in this case approaching movie-going as related intrinsically to an agents occupation of a position in space, and the taste classifications, styles and dispositions that correspond to that position historically. Thus, given that social and cultural practices are a product of history and thus open to alteration and change, this research program will attempt to define the practice of cinema consumption as it comes to function through the interplay between a) the cinema institution and b) cinema patrons properly adjusted to conform to the logic of this institution whilst nevertheless pursuing capitals specific to their socio-economic position. These patron strategies for the pursuit of capitals, which can be mapped according to systems of habit and recognition embedded within the habitus, nevertheless are enacted differently throughout time, in part due to their meeting, and functioning in relation to, an evolving cinema institution. This confrontation of strategic actor and evolving institution generates the cinematic experience, an immediate experience of situatedness that is bound up with living socially and which entails the forgetting of history which history itself produces, obscuring the collision between histories embedded in objective structures and those embodied in subjective dispositions. Thus the nature of cinematic exchange - the game that it proposes and the play of those entering into it - will be subsequently theorized as a situation (or position) offered for sale by the institution of cinema that offers to confirm, deny and/or reward specific social and cultural competencies via engaging the principles of vision and division identified by Bourdieu as functioning broadly across the social world. However, although the commercial cinema relies on continual patronage and rewards that patronage through various stabilised mechanisms, this approach does not assume it to be a static institution or process. Firstly, whilst the standardisation and regulation of consumption necessary for the ongoing functioning of the commercial cinema obviously needs to be continually maintained, it will be argued that although certain individuals and social groups are positioned to pursue the experience of cinema, their attendance is predicated upon a belief in that experience as a possible site for capital accumulation. Given that, as Bourdieu notes, the value of a species of capital (e.g. knowledge of Greek or of integral calculus) hinges on the

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existence of a game, of a field in which this competency can be employed401, the cinema cannot be approached as a monolithic institution that regulates outright all action within its borders in the manner typical of the screen theory dominant in film studies throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. Whilst it may indeed attempt to condition the gift exchange and actions of participants within its boundaries in order to deliver the experience ostensibly sold with the purchase of cinema tickets, the attraction of the cinema must also be understood as resulting from the belief of players that they may:

transform, partially or completely, the rules of (its) game through strategies aimed at discrediting the form of capital upon which the force of their opponents rests and to valorize the species of capital they preferentially possess.402

The illusio produced through the belief in the value of this game and reinforced through being immersed practically in the game does not result in an audience entirely structured through all the interrelated codes specific to the institution of the cinema. Rather, to follow Bourdieu is to argue that cinematic exchange, experienced as it is through the habitus and the capitals available to instances of habitus, involves the pursuit of a varying range of capitals in order to differentiate (and in that differentiation confirm) the social standing of individuals and groups within their respective social formations. The cinematic experience stimulates the categories of thought and modes of distinction corresponding to different social groups. These categories are addressed given cinemas consumption at the micro level through the framing devices specific to the individual socio-economic histories each of us embody, which include such fundamental sensory forms as touch, taste, smell and bodily comportment. The experience of cinema may thus draw out a range of reactions in individuals, fluctuating between strategically oriented action or awkwardly mismatched response, in direct relation to the volume and structure of each viewers capital and their structuration in regard to the logic perpetuated by the cinematic institution; it offers perceived chances for the application and extension of capitals - chances unevenly distributed across players, but nevertheless recognised, as Bourdieu states, by players functioning within the field as worthwhile. Indeed, as will be developed below, the possibility of maximizing capitals is highly regulated and constructed by the cinematic institution, which has mastered the archetypal terms of symbolic violence Bourdieu first identified within the Kabylian social realm.
Pierre Bourdieu and Loic J.D. Wacquant, The Logic of Fields, An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 98. 402 Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992), 99.
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Again, it must be stressed that whilst it is the intention of this research program to understand the cinematic experience with reference to the relations of systematic homology that Bourdieu identifies as functioning within the social realm, this approach is intended to be predictive of encounters, affinities, sympathies, or even desires403 (as Bourdieu understands his classificatory scheme). Mapping cinematic experience in this way thus acknowledges the interrelationship between the processes of stability and regulation pursued by the cinema institution, and the strategies of audiences functioning with respect to that institution. The notion of field provides the necessary conceptual flexibility to address this relationship, given the concept was expressly constructed to address the problem of structuration in action in broader sociological theory. The key shift away from film studies here involves presupposing a realm of possible negotiation and strategy (in the Bourdieusian sense) rather than an outright system of determination, and thus positions this research program against any particular theorization of cinema that suggests the regulation of audiences to be the only distinctive characteristic of its existence, or that commercial cinema, whether deemed classical or otherwise, structures or conditions its audience entirely beyond their ability to engage in activities structured through their respective capital holdings. Indeed, fields are theorized as both structured spaces of play, and realms where player actions and positiontakings may push exchanges beyond that structuration; thus, it is obvious that all fields fluctuate between these oppositional states (and anywhere in between) subject to the effects resulting from the historical distribution of capitals to various social groups. Whilst Bourdieu does of course suggest hierarchical reproduction as the norm across the majority of fields (resulting from broader homologies of domination throughout the social world), theoretically the allowance for the historical distribution of capitals suggests all fields are always potentially open to flux and change. For even though David Swartz suggests that an unintentional consequence of engaging in field competition is that actors, though they may contest the legitimacy of rewards given by fields, nonetheless reproduce the structure of fields404, one may counter that misrecognition of this kind is contingent upon the specific distribution of capitals in broader society historically and the degree and quality of struggle against the reigning methods of symbolic consecration and legitimation that ownership of such capitals allow. Whilst Bourdieu would no doubt accept this at least provisionally, even in the later works he fundamentally stresses reproduction (through habit) rather than outright revolution and change (at least in everyday relations as opposed to formal political or social movements), and this position may be seen to stem as much from his commitment to the theory of
Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992), 10. David Swartz, Culture and Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1997), 126.
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habitus (albeit subtly altered) as from his later examinations of large symbolic systems of violence. Indeed, as will be seen, this tension between structuration and the potential for the maximization of capitals (and thus the possible redefining of boundaries informing structuration) is at the heart of the symbolic system of exchange specific to the experience of cinema. In The Field of Cultural Production (1993), Bourdieu notes how:

perception is a mediate deciphering operation The work of art (like any cultural object) may disclose significations at different levels according to the deciphering grid applied to it; (for example) the lower-level significations, that is to say the most superficial, remain partial and mutilated, and therefore erroneous, as long as the higher-level significations which encompass and transfigure them are lacking.405

Such an approach therefore suggests the task of understanding cinematic experience turns upon a proper understanding of these different levels of the deciphering grid, and, particularly, how the cinematic experience appeals to a broad range of deciphering competencies. Indeed, it involves consideration of the process by which these deciphering (and corresponding behavioural) systems are managed by the cinema and directed in subtle ways. In order to fully acknowledge the complexities of this process, it has been necessary to properly contextualize Bourdieu with respect to both issues in cultural theory and film studies, for in doing so one is aware of the host of problems invited by theorizing cultural practice and the degree to which Bourdieus program of reflexive sociology has been received in intellectual fields debating those problems. Indeed, by outlining the evolution of Bourdieus thought, this chapter has attempted to provide categories of perception and appreciation that allow his published works to be appropriately recognised as ongoing contributions to the study of cultural practice, whilst nevertheless acknowledging that this work contributes to the international circulation of ideas concerning Bourdieu, which has indeed become, as Bourdieu feared, a huge collective artefact, transcendent to those who believe they are participating in its production and its reception and of whom it would be hard to say whether they are mystifiers or mystifieds, cynics or innocents.406 Nevertheless, this groundwork provides a strong foundation for examining cinematic experience through reflexive sociology.
Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993b), 217-218. Pierre Bourdieu, Concluding Remarks: For a Sociogenetic Understanding of Intellectual Works, Craig Calhoun, Edward LiPuma and Moishe Postone (eds), Bourdieu: Critical Perspectives (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993), 263.
406 405

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Chapter 6: The cinematic experience.

Whether we call it willing suspension of disbelief or just plain submission, in the darkness of the theater most audiences choose to give themselves over, if only for a time, to the images depicted and the imaginations that have created those images. - Bell Hooks, Real to Reel: Race, Sex and Class at the Movies.407

The experience of cinema is characterised by a specific economy of exchange between institution and patron, turning upon the successful construction of a bodily hexis engaging specialised categories of recognition and appreciation. However, these principles of vision and division that allow for a specific form of cinematic cultural competency do not function in isolation from broader systems of legitimation and consecration; indeed, the power of cinematic symbolic exchange is itself dependent upon legitimation by broader cultural and economic orders. Given that the cinematic institution traffics in cultural products and activities, it requires belief in the social value of the cinematic experience - in the recognised social value of the cinematic experience. The cinema therefore depends upon legitimation from the broader field of cultural production, so as to receive a measure of consecration from (varied) cultural gatekeepers in order to offer an experience of value and in doing so appropriately adjust patrons to recognise that value. In order to examine the exchange practices typical of the cinema, the following chapter will therefore map the foundations of cinematic misrecognition and the external structures that support and enable it. An overview of the key moments in the history of cinematic exhibition will then be presented, in order to illuminate the contradictory economies of belief that inform cinematic exchange, and the system of misrecognition it engages. This will be followed by an investigation of the mechanics of gift exchange and the characteristics of the symbolic economy (as identified by Bourdieu in his studies of Kabylian society), in order to properly elucidate cinematic experience as a practice in more detail. However, as made clear in Chapter 4, theorizing the actual lived experience of practice is especially complex; engaging with cinematic experience in a properly reflexive manner therefore requires consideration of the distortion implicit in sociological objectification. The chapter will thus present a theoretical understanding of cinematic exchange whilst attending to the epistemological issues that arise when conducting fieldwork, thereby providing a theoretical framework for future reflexive film research whilst identifying the practical problems associated with representing instances of socially situated action occurring within the economy of cinematic exchange.

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407

Bell Hooks, Real to Reel: Race, Sex and Class at the Movies (London: Routledge, 1996), 3.

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6.1. Orders of legitimacy in cinematic recognition.

The mechanics of enacting and perpetuating symbolic violence in a systematic, institutionalized form are given explicit attention in Reproduction: In Education, Society and Culture (1977). Here Bourdieu (with Jean-Claude Passeron) outlines a theory of symbolic violence by proceeding from the following equation:
Every power to exert symbolic violence, i.e. every power which manages to impose meanings and to impose them as legitimate by concealing the power relations which are the basis of its force, adds its own specifically symbolic force to those power relations.408

This allows the theorization of pedagogic action as:

symbolic violence insofar as it is the imposition of a cultural arbitrary by an arbitrary power (it is), objectively, symbolic violence insofar as the power relations between the groups or classes making up a social formation are the basis of the arbitrary power which is the precondition for the establishment of a relation of pedagogic communication, i.e. for the imposition and inculcation of a cultural arbitrary by an arbitrary mode of imposition and inculcation (education).409

As Bourdieu and Passeron make clear, the operation of pedagogic action thus implies some degree of pedagogic authority, the power and right (invested in some form of body, recognisable or otherwise) to introduce and enforce (objectively arbitrary) meanings that are recognized as legitimate and, to varying degrees, essential (so as to function largely independently of authority but still imply its necessity). Typically, Bourdieu and Passeron theorize pedagogic authority as operating through habit and the impact of everyday routine upon a class or group, with such a mode of control evaluated by the degree to which it requires direct force to maintain the arbitrary order it imposes through a condition of unequal power relations. Such systems of habituated order may never dispense entirely with the enacting of correction through explicit force, but based as they are upon corporeal recognition (achieved through habituation and adjustment to order), Bourdieu and
Pierre Bourdieu and Jean- Claude Passeron, Reproduction: In Education, Society and Culture (London: Sage Publications, 1977b), 4. 409 Bourdieu and Passeron (1977b), 5-6.
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Passeron stress that:

in real learning situations (including language learning) recognition of the legitimacy of the act of transmission, i.e. of the pedagogic authority of the transmitter, conditions the reception of the information and, even more, the accomplishment of the transformative action capable of transforming that information into a mental formation (training).410

To understand the cinematic institution as both attempting to construct meanings and experiences (and perpetuate them as legitimate) whilst functioning to conceal the relationships of power that inform and empower the production of those meanings and experiences is not new. However, in approaching the cinema institution and the experience it offers through Bourdieus theorization of cultural reproduction and violence, the economy specific to cinematic exchange and the practical euphemisms (encoded in instances of pedagogic action) that function at its centre may be understood with reference to the broader consolidation of specific social hierarchies that cultural production engenders. Thus, how the cinema institution constructs and maintains the relations necessary for its own particular form of pedagogic communication (a specific communication attempting to regulate the consumption modes and practices of its audiences) may be approached initially in relation to two factors upon which Bourdieu and Passeron understand the exercising of symbolic violence and pedagogic action to depend:

1) the degree to which the state of the balance of power hinders the dominant classes from invoking the brute fact of domination as the principle legitimating their domination, and 2) the degree of unification of the market on which the symbolic and economic value of the products of the different (pedagogic actions) is constituted.411

The pedagogic authority of address specific to the cinema (in terms of its level of recognition and perceived authority across the social world, and thus what it may be assumed to contribute to the ongoing stability of the dominant powers) is thus historically variable, dependent upon to what degree capital distribution across fields informing the cinematic institution and its practices is homologous, and thus the (again, historically variable) relative necessity of the dominant to exercise outright force (or not) in maintaining the stability of their position. It may be provisionally assumed that historically a range of powers and structural relationships have contributed to the success of the pedagogic authority of the cinema, with the system of recognition it attempts to engage with
410

Bourdieu and Passeron (1977b), 19.

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audiences partaking of (at least partially) other systems - symbolic or otherwise - functioning in the contemporary world. It is important to examine the level of the cinematic institutions reliance upon (and degree of definition through) these external legitimating structures, in order to arrive at a greater understanding of its internal logic and the characteristics of the economy of exchange it may be understood as attempting to engage through its pedagogic activities. Most obviously, the commercial cinema may be situated as both an institution and as a social practice in relation to the logic governing the cultural field, which immediately renders it doubly dominated (with regard to the ideal of autonomy) given not only the dominated position of the cultural field in relation to the field of power, but also due to the traditional logic of the cultural field (which honours disinterested symbolic production rather than outright economic exchange). More specifically, Bourdieu identifies three key organizing principles of the cultural field that determine the level of consecration and legitimation of a cultural artifact or practice, and/or its potential for future legitimation (or exclusion). Firstly, the cinema institution may be situated within a series of binary associations that (somewhat simplistically) determine its position in rather broad terms: it is situated near the heteronomous pole (as opposed to the autonomous), is traditionally designated as mass and/or popular culture (as opposed to high culture), partakes of rather conventional narrative forms (as opposed to associative structures or abstract modes), and is systematically an industry (rather than an amateur enterprise). Secondly, with regard to the distinction between the popular and the commercial at the heteronomous pole, the cinema institution is concerned with the popular, nurturing an ongoing relationship with an existing audience that requires selective demographic attention rather than pursuing the outright commercial in the manner, for example, of blatant advertising (as Robert B. Ray notes, [this] calculus has always been a delicate one: the temptations of rationalization on the one hand, the requirements of seduction on the other).412 Thirdly, the cinema industry and the cinematic experience may be situated in relation to the hierarchy of cultural legitimacies that evaluates cultural practices and works more specifically according to systems of expression and their corresponding legitimating discourses. Bourdieus Photography: A Middle-brow Art (1965) outlines the spheres of this hierarchy: the sphere of the arbitrary (characterized by non-legitimate authorities of legitimation - such as glossy magazine editors or advertising agencies), the sphere of the legitimizable (characterized by competing authorities that claim legitimacy - such as critics or clubs), and the sphere of legitimacy with universal claims
Bourdieu and Passeron (1977b), 14. Robert B. Ray, How a Film Theory Got Lost and Other Mysteries in Cultural Studies (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2001), 2.
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(characterized by legitimate authorities of legitimation - Universities and Academies).413 Although Bourdieu refers to cinema in Photography, the concept as it is used by him is unclear: it may designate the practice of attending the cinema and viewing filmic material or, more likely, denote the act of critical examination and interpretation by the appropriately learned. Nevertheless, Bourdieu assigns cinema a position within the sphere of the legitimizable, noting that:

Jazz and cinema are served by expressive means which are at least as powerful as more traditional cultural works; there are coteries of professional critics with erudite journals and radio and television discussion platforms at their disposal which, as a sign of their pretension to cultural legitimacy, assume the learned and tedious tone of university criticism, taking on its cult of erudition for erudition sake, as if, haunted by the issue of their legitimacy, the only thing they could do was to adopt and exaggerate the external signs of statutory authority of the guardians of the monopoly of the cultural legitimacy, the professors.414

This situating of the cinema institution within the cultural field by Bourdieu (writing in 1965) gives some general understanding of its degree of legitimacy and cultural status (and thus some understanding of the logic that may be seen to accompany its patronage), but at close reading it appears (like other examinations) to bracket the consumption of filmic texts (to varying levels) away from the experience of cinema per se. Indeed, the passage quoted describes attempts by professional critics with erudite journals to elevate, one may assume, filmic texts and their cultured interpretation, not the experience of consuming commercial cinema as a popular entertainment. Alternatively, therefore, one might chart the commercial cinema as both legitimizable in terms of its filmic texts (that aspire to recognition from the sphere of legitimacy415), but still functioning in the arbitrary form as a social practice in terms of its consumption (i.e. characterized chiefly through its relations to the popular and the commercial). However, whilst functioning in relation to the arbitrary mode, the institution still attempts a communicative system of recognition and acknowledgment that draws upon the codes of practice suggestive of the highest
Pierre Bourdieu, Photography: A Middlebrow Art (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1965), 96. Bourdieu (1965), 97 415 The complexity of cinematic signification (and terms of its indebtedness to the legitimated arts) is noted by Peter Wollen: Cinema is, of course, a form of art employing more than one channel, more than one sensory medium, and uses a multiplicity of different types of code. It has affinities with almost all the other arts. Peter Wollen, Readings and Writings (London: Verso, 1982), 96.
414 413

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level of legitimation - whilst still being firmly directed by blatantly commercial interests. Specifically, the cinema experience is sold, and attempts to be recognized, as a cultural practice with significance for a broad range of social groups, and endeavours to circulate in both filmic texts and the experience of cinema itself a quality of sensitivity and cultivated refinement. Historically, the huge cathedral-like auditoriums of the mainstream commercial cinema, with their increasingly luxurious interior designs, uniformed ushers and strict regulations defining appropriate consumer behaviours, have attempted to emulate what is (at least popularly) regarded as the opulence and manners associated with class and taste (a development thus fundamentally at odds with the aristocratic asceticism attributed by Bourdieu to the gatekeepers of cultural legitimation, intellectuals). The cinema institutions pedagogic work therefore attempts to inculcate a form of logic and recognition within the audience characteristic of a dispersed (and paradoxical) position of legitimacy across the orders of cultural legitimation. The cinema institution manifests the idiosyncrasies of this position in a number of ways. Most immediately, although partially subject to fluctuations in power distribution across the cultural field (and the erratic acts of legitimation such distribution sometimes engender), its authority may come to function quite independently of higher modes of consecration if no legitimation is forthcoming, given its positioning in at least two spheres of legitimation. Thus, for example, arbitrary legitimation may suffice in maintaining patronage during periods of open hostility to cinematic consumption from the higher cultural orders (as in the earliest years of popular filmgoing). And, whilst attempting to maintain a largely discrete mode of recognition and appreciation with its patrons, the institution is also responsive to those instances of positive evaluation and legitimation which may contribute to greater stability within its borders (prestigious reviews, instances of academic recognition, government support, awards or prizes). The benefits of the dispersal of this legitimation, however, have also denied the cinema institution alignment with a singular (external) cultural logic, barring absolute consecration by any historically reigning symbolic arbiter of taste (or at least a reigning body with any formidable amount of symbolic power). Indeed, due to a) an inability to definitively claim a genealogy not grounded in forms of mass entertainment, and b) an ongoing relationship with a heteronomous market (and the indiscriminate commercial audience such a relationship is theoretically deemed to signify), the cinema institution appears condemned to function with compromised legitimacy. This lack of a definitive legitimacy in the cultural realm of critical recognition is further extended by another organizing principle of assessment that contributes to differentiation of the legitimating spheres: the degree of specific consecration of the audience, i.e. its cultural quality and thus its

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supposed distance from the center of specific values.416 This principle of assessment may be said to consist of two component elements, given the broader framework for legitimation and consecration as outlined by Bourdieu, and both must be met in order for the cinematic institution to achieve a greater level of recognition. Obviously, cultural judgement concerning the composition and perceived characteristics of the commercial cinemas audience must be positive. However, for this to occur, members of the cultural elite sympathetic to the experience of cinema must firstly acquire and maintain positions within the reigning system of cultural adjudication (reputable universities, for example). Secondly, there must be a demonstrable shift in the perceived competencies of, and capitals held by, the general cinema audience (or at least some explicit form of segmentation of that audience into hierarchical groups in order to construct the more desired cultural audience deemed to be at least compatible with the reigning cultural logics indicative of the higher realms of legitimation). Furthermore, this process of consecration is complicated by other distinguishing logics and classificatory schemes such as pertain to a) genre (a system that in itself presupposes desired audiences and implies correlating competencies held by those audiences), and b) the functional cycle of a cultural enterprise, i.e. the unit price of (a) product (a painting, a play, a concert, a book, etc.) and the cumulative number of purchasers(also) the length of the production cycle, particularly as regards the speed with which profits are obtained (and, secondarily, the length of time during which they are secured).417 These questions regarding the system of pedagogic authority the cinema institution has attempted to sustain with its audience (whilst occupying a paradoxical position in relation to orders of cultural legitimation), is necessarily complicated given changes both to the medium itself and shifts in the broader practices of entertainment occurring in the last twenty years. Given these changes, which specific historical instance of commercial cinema is to be taken as representative of cinematic experience most generally? Traditionally, the experience of mainstream, commercial cinema has been understood to consist of the public consumption (in the sense of mass experience) of a featurelength narrative film. More specifically, writers such as John Ellis have argued that commercial cinema (as opposed to television) functions as:

a public event which offers, through advertising, a narrative image to provoke the spectator to see a particular film. Its mode is that of the individual film text, the single event of film performance cinema proposes a curious and expectant spectator, anxious to find out, the
416 417

Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1993b), 46. Bourdieu (1993b), 48.

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resolution of whose anxiety becomes the point of intelligibility of the film, where everything falls into place.418

However, as Miriam Hansen makes clear, the institution of cinema that Ellis (writing in 1982) describes has altered, given the major changes in entertainment media and the cinema industry itself throughout the last 20 years. As she notes:

The spatiotemporal configuration of television within the domestic environment has broken the spell of the classical diegesis; the compulsive temporality of public projection has given way to ostensibly more self-regulated yet privatised, distracted, and fragmented acts of consumption. As critics have observed, an aesthetics of the glance is replacing the aesthetics of the gaze - the illusionist absorption of the viewer that is considered one of the hallmarks of classical cinema.419

Furthermore, Richard Maltby argues that contemporary movie production:

be seen as the creation of entertainment software that can be viewed through several different windows and transported to several different platforms maintained by the other divisions of tightly diversified media corporations.420

Indeed, Norman K. Denzin states that:

The postmodern terrain is defined almost exclusively in visual terms, including the display, the icon, the representations of the real seen through the cameras eye, captured on videotape, and given in the moving picture.421

Given these changes across consumption practices and audience composition, it is necessary to stress that what is of concern for this research program is the cinema experience offered by commercial, mainstream cinema, in terms of the filmic projection of material (including, but by no
John Ellis, Visible Fictions (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982), 24. Miriam Hansen, Early Cinema, Late Cinema: transformations of the Public Sphere, in Linda Williams (ed), Ways of Seeing (New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 1994), 135. 420 Richard Maltby, Nobody Knows Everything: Post-classical historiographies and consolidated entertainment, Stephen Neale and Murray Smith (eds), Contemporary Hollywood Cinema (London: Routledge, 1998), 24. 421 Norman K. Denzin, Images of Postmodern Society: Social Theory and Contemporary Cinema (London: Sage Publications, 1991), viii.
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means limited to, a principal filmic text, or, indeed, explicitly filmic material) in a public space for commercial purposes. This definition is not an attempt to ignore the effects upon traditional understandings of cinema by the aforementioned developments across the media industry and audience consumption practices, but it is intended to prioritise (and principally examine) the experience of commercial cinema rather than simply the consumption or experience of filmic texts. Ellis makes an exceptionally important point regarding what constitutes, in the popular mind, the experience of cinema (worth quoting in full):

Cinema marketing sells two rather distinct things: the single film in its uniqueness and its similarity to other films; and the experience of cinema itself It is necessary to distinguish the two performances whose expectation is sold at the box office. Cinema is enjoyed whether the film is or not (hence no refund on a dissatisfying film), and often people go to the cinema regardless of what film is showing, and sometimes with little intention of watching the film at all. Cinema, in this sense, is the relative privacy and anonymity of a darkened public space in which various kinds of activities can take place. Yet this is only a minimal definition of cinema as an institution. More central perhaps is the experience of watching a fiction (it usually is a fiction in entertainment cinema) with an anonymous group of people, who need have nothing more in common than the fact that they have been attracted to that particular place and that particular fiction. Cinema in this way becomes a very precise urban experience, that of the crowd with its sense of belonging and loneliness. Alternatively, cinema in smaller communities tends to perform a different function when most of the audience are acquainted with each other. Here the entertainment is related to particular characteristics of individuals or of the place itself.422

It might be argued that it is this element of the experience of cinema that has become increasingly important in terms of contemporary patterns of consumption, for certainly the expansion of media technologies allows (and encourages) access to filmic material in contexts other than the cinema far more easily than during, for example, the classical period, suggesting the continued attraction of cinema to be, at least in some degree, linked to the experience it offers independent of the films it exhibits. Bourdieu himself felt it necessary to investigate the role of habitus in shaping technology to accord with preexisting social differentiations and systems of evaluation, particularly (with regard to photography) in Photography: A Middlebrow Art. To recap, here Bourdieu identifies the schemes of perception specific to various instances of habitus as they come to be represented through

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amateur photographic practice; i.e. how a practice theoretically held to be culturally indiscriminate given the features of its associated apparatus (the camera) comes to be fundamentally circumscribed by social grouping and affiliation. He notes that:

if, in the abstract, the nature and development of photographic technology tend to make everything objectively photographable, it is still true that, from among the theoretically infinite number of photographs which are technically possible, each group chooses a finite and well-defined range of subjects, genres and compositions understanding a photograph whether it is taken by a Corsican peasant, a petit-bourgeois from Bologna or a Parisian professional, means not only recovering the meanings which it proclaims, that is to a certain extent, the explicit intentions of the photographer; it also means deciphering the surplus of meaning which it betrays by being a part of the symbolism of an age, a class or an artistic group.423

Obviously the cinema differs from amateur photography both in terms of production, distribution and modes of exhibition and consumption, and in its mode of address where it assumes a level of pedagogic authority in acts of symbolic violence (examined further below) that differs from the everyday, amateur use of the camera. Nonetheless, where Bourdieus (early) examination of photographic practice is most useful is in providing a template for the investigation of the social regulation of cultural practices, particularly those endeavours that fluctuate historically across orders of cultural evaluation in terms of their legitimacy. As he makes clear, all practices function in relation to modes of social recognition and appreciation, serving a social function to both unify and differentiate, and thus refer (even the most innocuous) to the broader system of social structuration and domination that consecrates or condemns them. Bourdieus understanding of the social determination of technologies424 thus indicates the scope required for the proper examination of cinematic experience: a) awareness of the general configuration of power relations functioning at any particular moment in history (and thus the systems of evaluation and recognition they provide [and enforce] for different groups across contemporary Western society), and b) acknowledgement of the systems of social structuration utilized and exploited in the experience (and consumption) of the cinema.
John Ellis, Visible Fictions (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982), 26-27. Pierre Bourdieu, Photography: A Middle-brow Art (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1965), 6-7. 424 Indeed, as Jonathan Sterne notes: Though Bourdieu rarely wrote about technology per se, his work is friendly to technological studies. Jonathan Sterne, Bourdieu, Technique and Technology, Cultural Studies 17, 3/4 (2003): 369.
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6.2. The emergence of the laws of cinematic exchange.

How does one therefore begin to characterize the economy of cinematic exchange and the logic that comes to inform the experience of cinema when the cinema institution is precariously situated across the orders of cultural legitimacy in such a manner? Indeed, how has the cinema institution survived recent shifts in consumer entertainments and leisure activities whilst continuing to maintain its appeal and influence? In ideal form, pedagogic authority is delegated and, as Bourdieu and Passeron argue, the more directly a pedagogic agency reproduces, in the arbitrary content that it inculcates, the cultural arbitrary of the group or class which delegates to it its pedagogic authority, the less need it has to affirm and justify its own legitimacy425. The cinema institution can be seen to lack this clearly delegated mode of authority indicative of traditional pedagogic bodies (exhibited by State education systems, for example) in being unable to align itself with the specific cultural arbitrary of one key dominant group, and thus, at least superficially, has needed to assert its value in response to each shift in the relations of cultural and economic power. As an openly economic entity engaged in cultural production, the institution is characterized by paradox, founded upon direct calculation and economics (a transgression of the sacred taboo upon calculation that defines symbolic transaction) whilst ensuring its ongoing existence through the production of cultural goods that require a measure of symbolic recognition in order to succeed. This paradox, whilst obvious, cannot be understated, and it is played out in all its contradiction across the many forms of production, distribution and exhibition that constitute the cinema industry. As Steven Bach rightfully states:

Its always All About Money, which is ignoble and all that, but movies simply cant be made without it. Ask any filmmaker. It is an art that is also an industry426

This art that is also an industry is thus broadly characterized by a position within two contradictory economies of belief and their attendant systems of exchange: the economic economy and its relationships of blatant, outright transaction, and the kinship (or symbolic) economy that labours to euphemize relations of outright material interest. The cinema institution is wedged between both, a position not entirely unique, but one that nevertheless generates a specific logic.
Pierre Bourdieu and Jean-Claude Passeron, Reproduction: In Education, Society and Culture (London: Sage Publications, 1977b), 29. 426 Steven Bach, Preface: The Center of Gravity, Thomas Schatz, The Genius of the System: Hollywood Film-making in the Studio Era (London: Faber and Faber, 1998), xiii.
425

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In order to arrive at a clearer understanding of the relationship the cinema institution maintains with its audience as a result of this position, it is here necessary to divide somewhat the logics that inform each element of the system that sustains the cinema industry. Obviously, there is a larger industrial and economic context that informs all elements of production, distribution and exhibition, and which, of course, fundamentally shapes the characteristics of exhibition. In spite of this, however, the cinema institution has maintained a relationship with audiences that exhibits the logic specific to the economic world reversed (to use Bourdieus phrase), where the logic and terms of exchange that characterize the economic economy are limited, and where the truth of prices is methodically euphemized. To this end, the institution has historically relied upon a range of promotional discourses that popularize and publicize the attraction of cinema, whilst suppressing explicit references to the order of blatant economics. How has this system come into being, and for what reasons? To answer these questions one must consider the historical development of the commercial cinema, particularly how it came to adapt the new (albeit limited) technologies informing film making in order to accord with preexisting public expectations (cultural and otherwise) regarding different types of entertainment and the social practices associated with specific leisure activities. As David Puttnam notes, by 1896:

there was no doubt that moving pictures were (firmly established) as an international attraction. But they had yet to attain a kind of coherent, stable structure that might enable them to develop as an industry Few investors were ready to risk money on such an apparently marginal business, particularly one stigmatized by its links to the ephemeral world of fairgrounds and penny arcades.427

As Puttnam makes clear, exhibitors feared that the business of moving pictures would be only a fleeting success, with indications that (as early as 1897) audiences were already tiring of the repetitive nature of basic, non-narrative films and thus the concept of moving pictures more broadly. A number of factors contributed to this problem. In being obliged to purchase and own their films outright (which resulted in the quick loss of novelty if they remained in one area too long), showmen were forced to travel widely in order to make profits. This ensured that, in the majority of instances, the exhibition of moving pictures remained largely in the fairground, or in ad hoc venues that were deserted as soon as the novelty of a particular salesmans wares became
427

David Puttnam, The Undeclared War (London: Harper Collins, 1997), 26.

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exhausted. Obviously the questionable nature of most of these venues (the most obvious being the nickelodeon) denied a) particular levels of class patronage and thus any permanent degree of social legitimation, and b) any lasting insight into audience tastes and preferences as they came to function across time. The American development of film rentals (and distribution networks) broke this impasse, allowing showmen to alternate their product in accordance with perceived audience tastes. Thus, with the profits realised by the ability to vary programming, travelling showmen were able to become legitimate exhibitors by investing in permanent movie-going venues (rather than requiring new audiences for their limited repertoire every few weeks). This shift constituted the beginning of durable relations between the cinema institution and its audiences, with the new attendance at the cinema in some sense superseding the logic specific to mere attractions (practices grounded in the ephemeral logic typical of fairgrounds and circuses).428
429

The newer cinema venues were stable,

robust structures, in their patronage if not in the material sense (many of which were routinely denounced as fire hazards). However, this permanence produced corresponding expectation and anticipation in audiences, introducing definite regularities into filmgoing practice and developing general characteristics of the cinematic experience and what this experience entailed.430 Given the structural infancy of the industry across all other levels of operation, the development of this relationship was exceptionally important. As the bulk of films were made by producers with little or no insight from distributors or exhibitors, and thus sold or rented without any intention to identify or accommodate the perceived wants of an audience (indicating the lack of structuration and organizational competency between filmmakers, distributors and those engaged in the development of cinema technologies), the new film exhibitors required audiences to become closely tied to the practice of cinema-going despite the insecurity of the other dimensions of the industry and the unknown quality of films that were available to be rented. In short, the capital necessary to finance permanent cinemas (in order to make the necessary shift from fairgrounds to newer forms of consumption) required exhibitors to precariously juggle the limitations of the developing industry against both the idiosyncrasies of the cinematic medium and audience demands. As exhibitors were discovering, the shift from the cinema of attractions required long-term marketing beyond the
Although Tom Gunning argues that attractions most frequently provide the dominant for film during this period and often jockey for prominence (with narrative films) until 1908 or so, the increasing stability of the relationship between exhibitor and audience shifted if not formal and thematic filmic content- then expectation and assumption beyond that specific to the fairground. See Tom Gunning, Now You See It, Now You Dont: The Temporality of the Cinema of Attractions, The Velvet Light Trap 32, Fall (1993): 4. 429 Alternatively, Miriam Hansen argues the early modern cinema extends to the introduction of sound. See Miriam Hansen, Babel and Babylon: Spectatorship in American Silent Film (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991).
428

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rudimentary hustling typical of fairground selling. It required an ongoing reciprocation from audiences beyond the simple exchange of money, in order to assure their continuing patronage in spite of the lack of a definite formula to please them. Indeed, Carl Laemmle (an early nickelodeon owner and later film mogul) characterized film exchanges and the general nature of the early film industry as: You paid your money, and you had no choice. For example, a subject of eight hundred feet cost eighty dollars and would be rented and re-rented until the characters became blurred to the naked eye.431 This dilemma faced by early exhibitors cannot be overstated. In lieu of any consistent formula for film content that might guarantee success (a problem compounded, as Laemmle indicated, by the limited material quality of film at the time), and with the costs associated with both owning and operating permanent cinemas, the bond between the audience and cinema needed to be developed in a manner whereby the appeal of the cinema did not function solely upon the film screened. Adolph Zukor is credited with the first attempts at upgrading both the reception context and the filmic quality of early motion pictures (quality in the sense of subject content rather than production values), to not only overcome the structural limitations of the industry at the time but, by doing so, lure a more stable middle class market to the cinema. Zukor began purchasing rights to popular stage plays after early success with the Sarah Bernhardt film La Rheine Elizabeth (1912), adapted from a celebrated stage play of the time. In readying the film for American distribution, Zukor specified that, wherever possible, the film be screened in established theatres rather than nickelodeons or arcades. Its success not only initiated the industry move into multi-reel films of a greater length, but also indicated the financial gains to be realised in utilising legitimate theatres for exhibition. With this release strategy, Zukor transferred both the comforts and cultural connotations associated with legitimate theatre to cinema consumption, and in a relatively short period of time many traditional theatres became converted especially for the screening of motion pictures. Such a development consolidated the concept of the film performance, which incorporated much of the live stage content of previous vaudeville shows and thus invited attendance at the cinema beyond the immediate quality of the film(s) screened. Indeed, although disputed among scholars, Robert C. Allens 1979 essay Motion Picture Exhibition in Manhattan, 1906-1912: Beyond the Nickelodeon argues:

430

Tom Gunnings The Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant-Garde; Wide Angle Vol. 8, nos. 3-4 (1986) provides an understanding of early cinemas modes of exhibition (in relation to the cinema of attractions). 431 Puttnam (1997), 54.

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the growth of small-time vaudeville indicates that the middle-class embraced the movies much earlier than is generally believed - several years before the advent of the feature film. The nature of small-time vaudeville, with its large, often ornate theatres, uniformed attendants, and long programs, makes it an important link between the storefront shows of 1906 and the picture palaces of the late teens.432

Nevertheless, while dispute remains over the exact time span marking the transfer from nickelodeons to more comfortable exhibition sites, it can reasonably be argued that the logic pertaining to cinematic experience shifted as a result of these changes. If one agrees with Allen, then the social and cultural assumptions functioning between both legitimate theatre and smalltime vaudeville can be seen to have provided the necessary contextual logic for the cinema to come into being, shaping its development and the logic that would come to inform its consumption. Socially established in dispositions resulting from the consumption of previous entertainment forms, this logic was necessarily a mixture of the pure and the commercial, given theatres position in relation to the literary and artistic fields of the time, and vaudevilles relationship to popular concert halls and the like. In bridging this gap and appropriating audiences from both forms (through both film content and exhibition circumstances), the cinema came to position itself in relation to a) the behavioural codes specific to previous forms of entertainment and b) modes of preexisting cultural distinction and the acts of deciphering associated with those distinctions, thus conducting itself with reference to pre-existing cultural and social logics. Such a position allowed film exhibitors to evolve a system of misrecognition that drew specifically upon its predecessors in entertainment, and more broadly from a history of creative production and the logics that had reigned historically across any number of cultural fields. Most simply, the system of misrecognition that arose drew upon the logic of disinterestedness, albeit in a highly idiosyncratic form. Given the social function of this logic, and the systems of structured relationships it had readily informed across a number of fields pertaining to the cinema and its exhibition circumstances (theatre, painting, and publishing, for example), symbolic exchange was a mode of social interaction that immediately impacted upon early film exhibitors. Indeed, early filmic experience was likened to the contemplation of great works of art in silent museums, and its representational power assessed in terms of its capacity to supersede painting in degrees of realism. It is not being suggested, however, that early film exhibitors (in needing to bind audiences more closely to the practice of cinema consumption irrespective of the films being exhibited) consciously
Robert C. Allen, Motion Picture Exhibition in Manhattan, 1906-1912: Beyond the Nickelodeon, Gorham Kindem (ed), The American Movie Industry: The Business of Motion Pictures (Carbondale and Edwardsville:
432

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imposed a mode of logic indicative of the cultural field upon their patrons. Rather, cultural production of any kind, then as now, was implicitly played out (and evaluated) in relation to the logic of disinterestedness, with the question of both the nature of cinema and the perceived quality of its audiences immediately situated in relation to a number of pre-existing discourses circulating across literary and artistic fields. Indeed, the cinema in its earliest incarnations was inextricably bound up with the problems, debates and social functions of cultural and aesthetic production and practice - a situation compounded by the increasing imposition of the logic of the broader market upon cultural production and the problem of popular entertainment. The cinema inherently lent itself to the mystification or social magic that Bourdieu identifies as indicative of fields of artistic production, given the peculiarities of the new medium. Early film exhibitors, fully accustomed to the hustle of the fairground which accompanied its transitory nature, were also very much aware of both a critical and popular audience exhibiting a discourse of wonderment, a kind of religious awe at the sheer magic of mimesis, at seeing a convincing simulacral representation of an arriving train or of the wind blowing through the leaves.433 This reaction was significantly different to that which informed patronage of dime museums, magic shows and the like, activities which had not been assigned any degree of legitimacy by higher cultural orders and were thus consumed in relation to the logic of the arbitrary. The experience of the cinema was more complicated. Indeed, film exhibitors were obliged to sell a new sensory experience that, in a similar fashion to conventional understandings of the consumption of art, had no immediately discernible use value or functional significance. The magic of the medium, its play upon light and projected resurrection of long absent figures and scenes, whilst constituting its appeal for audiences, created a definite problem for exhibitors - for the filmic experience appeared to lack a directly identifiable essence, at least in terms of a key object of sale (in the conventional sense). It was not durable, leaving only memories as a marker of its unfolding in time, and, whilst the popularity of the medium itself seemed assured, predicting popular film content (as noted) was difficult. Presented with the otherworldly or religious sense of the fantastic in cinema, and guided by a genealogy grounded in the economics of the carnival and the fairground, exhibitors responded as might be expected: they constructed an economy around the ineffable qualities of cinema by instituting a system that attempted to mediate between the tangible and intangible elements of the cinematic experience. This was a decisive moment in the history of cinema. Indeed, given different conditions of emergence, the medium may have come under the control of more strictly autonomous fields of cultural production, resulting in a cinema governed more by the logic of the
Southern Illinois University Press, 1982), 20. 433 Kindem (1982), 23.

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avant-garde and the experimental (which typically revels in the aesthetic power of the medium beyond its simple ability to represent and entertain). However, whilst an economy was erected around the new medium and a price determined for admission to the cinema, this price was inherently meaningless - for it did not rest upon conventional understandings of worth and value. As Bourdieu makes exceptionally clear:

the price, which characterizes the economy of economic exchanges functions as a symbolic expression of consensus regarding the exchange rate implied in every economic exchange. This consensus regarding the exchange rate is also present in the economy of symbolic exchanges, but its terms and conditions are left implicit. To refuse the logic of the price is a way to refuse calculation and calculability. The fact that the consensus regarding the exchange rate is explicit is what renders calculability and predictability possible: one knows what to expect.434

For film exhibitors, pricing attempted to secure both the objective worth of the experience of cinema and, perhaps more importantly (to follow Bourdieu), build expectations regarding its essence and content (an attempt to overcome the lack of a definite formula for film content to please audiences). But, if asked to define that actual essence and content, film exhibitors and audiences (not to mention early theorists of cinema) - then as now - remained completely uncertain. As Martin Barker and Kate Brooks note:

Why do people go to the cinema? What do they get out of the experience? Most importantly, what are the connections between these two things? If we answer our opening questions from the basis of cultural common sense, the first - why go? - would surely make reference to such standardized concepts as entertainment, fantasy and escapism. The trouble with these is their essential vagueness. Escape from what, toward what, with what success, for instance? These terms substitute for investigation and suppress the need for it.435

These answers, whilst reflecting the ambiguity of the contract undertaken between exhibitors and audiences, also directly indicate the degree to which the practice of consuming the experience of cinema occurs in relation to an unarticulated background of understanding, a sense of
Pierre Bourdieu, Practical Reason (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998a), 96. Martin Barker and Kate Brooks, Bleak Futures by Proxy, Melvyn Stokes and Richard Maltby (eds), Identifying Hollywoods Audiences: Cultural Identity and the Movies (London: British Film Institute, 1999), 162-163.
435 434

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comprehension that is beyond the capacity of conventional representation and justification. Bourdieu notes:

This leads one to think that one is witnessing not a cynical lie, as a Voltairean reading would have it, but rather a gap between the objective truth, repressed rather than ignored, and the lived truth of practices, and that this lived truth, which hides, through agents themselves, the truth brought to life by analysis, is part of the truth of practices in their complete definition.436

Again, it is not being suggested that the system of practice resulting from the economisation of cinematic consumption was a conscious program of action on the part of film exhibitors; rather, as noted, it developed as a response to a) the social and cultural conditions of the day against which the cinema found itself defined and evaluated, and b) the needs of early film exhibitors to situate the cinema (which contained no tangible product to, in effect, sell) within the context of a history of entertainments (and their related economies). In this sense, the cinematic economy is a curious hybrid, which reflects its paradoxical status as both business and art form. It functions with reference to two economies, for although the price of admission attempts to secure the objective value and worth of cinema in the manner indicative of the economic economy, the terms and conditions of that exchange (including any consensus upon value which objectified pricing conventionally designates) are not only left unspoken but remain entirely vague, mysterious and uncertain for the average consumer. Thus, cinematic exchange, as in the symbolic economy, turns upon a repression of the truth of the price and a taboo upon making things explicit. Whilst a pricing system does function, it is an attempt to concretize what Christian Metz terms the imaginary essence of the cinematic signifier - the cinemas dual character: unaccustomed perceptual wealth, but at the same time stamped with unreality to an unusual degree, and from the very outset.437 Approaching these problems through Bourdieusian sociology thus provides a better appreciation for the contradictions inherent in lived truths of practice (which here obscure the economic paradox at the crux of cinematic exchange), contradictions that, according to Bourdieu, function in even the most basic of human behaviours. Indeed, the imaginary centre at the heart of the economy of cinematic exchange appears similar to the belief system informing the Catholic Church. What Bourdieu understands as the economy of offering specific to the Church obscures a structural double-game that allows the perpetuation of double truths - both of which must be considered by objective research - but which in practice rely upon the suppression of their
436

Pierre Bourdieu, Practical Reason (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998a), 114.

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economic dimension to continue functioning. However, this suppression, Bourdieu makes clear, is never complete. As he notes of the economy of offering, the presence of economic forms of exchange in such practices (in the manner of religious publications intended for the market, fundraising, and the wealth inherent in real estate holdings) does not necessarily rupture the play of symbolic logic. Rather, outright exchange is subsumed or regulated under the greater enchantment resulting from symbolic violence, through a tiered system of operational distribution and management. Thus, partly due to the (then) influence of the logic of the cultural field, the economic necessities associated with managing real estate, and the infancy of film technology, film exhibitors instituted an economy of exchange specific to the cinema that traded upon the repression of calculation characteristic of the outright market, instead accentuating emotion, bodily response and the enchantment of the medium as the terms of exchange integral to the cinematic economy. Over the next 20 years, with the rise of integrated systems of production, distribution and exhibition, and thus the transition to vertically integrated management, this system would become more secure, with the ownership of the cinema industry shifting from a broad collection of independents to a ruthless oligopoly. Therefore, although the foundations for cinematic exchange were touched upon in the previous outlining of the historical conditions of its emergence, a greater investigation of the actual characteristics of this exchange will a) illuminate the specifics of the system that have come to characterize the experience of cinema, and b) also illuminate how the paradoxical position of the institution across the orders of cultural legitimation is properly managed through a system of recognition and response.
437

Christian Metz, The Imaginary Signifier: Psychoanalysis and the Cinema (Indiana: Bloomington University Press, 1982), 45.

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6.3. Recognition and response: the cinematic transfiguration of relations of violence.

The system of exchange specific to the cinema turns principally upon the manipulation of time, in terms of the dispersal of the process of exchange across time. Indeed time, and, particularly, the play upon tempo, is for Bourdieu a supremely important element of the exchange practices that he understands as structuring the basic symbolic happenings of the entire social world. He succinctly outlines this correlation between time and practices of a symbolic nature in Practical Reason (1998):

What was absent (from previous analyses of gift exchange) was the determinant role of the temporal interval between the gift and the countergift, the fact that in all societies, it is tacitly admitted that one does not immediately reciprocate for a gift received, since it would amount to a refusal. I asked myself about the function of that interval: why must the countergift be deferred and different?438

His answer is to stress the structured misrecognition of the realities of gift exchange that is enabled through deferral of a return gift, with the self-interest and relationship of indebtedness that exchanges of gifts (objectively) introduce into social affairs able to be collectively repressed through a socially instituted act of denial (a denial by no means conscious in the conventional sense) which renders the exchange symbolically as one occurring between equals. Indeed, Bourdieu makes clear that the giving of a gift implies a definite burden, in the full sense of dictating new responsibilities for the recipient: The initial act is an attack on the freedom of the one who receives it. It is threatening: it obligates one to reciprocate, and to reciprocate beyond the original gift; furthermore, it creates obligations, it is a way to possess, by creating people obliged to reciprocate.439 The objective truth of this exchange obviously weighs heavily upon actors functioning within a community, introducing relations that potentially threaten social harmony. To manage this problem requires what might be termed (in conventional language) unconscious diplomacy, i.e. the process of altering the perceived circumstances of the gift exchange (without insulting or offending both the gift giver and the recipient) in order to obscure the reality of the transaction. Through a play upon the time between the receiving and return giving of gifts, Bourdieu argues that in the Kabylian social realm both parties are able to repress the structural
438 439

Pierre Bourdieu, Practical Reason (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998a), 94. Bourdieu (1998a), 94.

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truth of the exchange given their broader socialization in relation to a common field structure. This repression (encoded in actors through the sharing of similar categories of perception) is aided by a range of euphemistic mechanisms that function to suspend the revealing of the reality of the exchange; in pre-capitalist economies these mechanisms are encoded more directly through habitus and the resulting taboo upon calculation such encoding enforces, whereas in contemporary societies this:

transfiguration (is) essentially verbal: to be able to do what one does by making people (and oneself) believe that one is not doing it, one must tell them (and oneself) that one is doing something other than what one is doing, one must do it while saying (to oneself and others) that one is not doing it, as if one were not doing it.440

Bourdieu makes clear in The Logic of Practice (1990) that this time delay marking the difference between gift and counter-gift is fundamental to the misrecognition informing Kabylian gift exchange, and is thus critical of sociological theorization that attempts to render misrecognition independent of considerations of time. For, as he notes, to abolish the interval is also to abolish strategy. The period interposed, which must be neither too short (as is clearly seen in gift exchange) nor too long (especially in the exchange of revenge-murders), is quite the opposite of the inert gap of time, the time-lag, which the objectivist model makes of it.441 One can suggest that Bourdieus use of the term tempo to describe the techniques of delay and response in the reciprocation of counter-gifts is intended to illustrate through musical association, and, indeed, this association helps to illuminate the techniques used by gift givers and recipients in their play upon time. He writes:

Until he gives back, the receiver is obliged, expected to show his gratitude towards his benefactor or at least show regard for him, go easy on him, pull his punches unless he is capable of transforming forced delay into strategic deferment. To put off revenge or the return of a gift can be a way of keeping ones partner-opponent in the dark about ones intentions Delay is also a way of exacting the deferential conduct that is required so long as relations are not broken off Everything takes place as if the ritualization of interactions had the paradoxical effect of giving time its full social efficacy, which is never more active than when nothing is going on, except time. Time, we say, is working for him; the opposite can also be true.442
440 441

Bourdieu (1998a), 115. Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990b), 106. 442 Bourdieu (1990b), 106.

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This manipulation of time delay and the manner in which Bourdieu theorizes it (through terms such as strategic deferment) resonates with musical connotations, given that the meaning (or interpretation of meanings) in music often proceeds from an understanding of tempo and its function in relation to various musical forms and genres (ballads, waltzes, etc.). Correspondingly, the manipulation of pace in gift exchange plays upon the power relationships (in the form of reciprocal burdens) that gift exchange may attempt to institute in the Kabylian social realm, altering the rhythm of the proceedings in order to improve an actors position. As Bourdieu importantly makes clear, acknowledgement of time management and the strategies that time allows for:

takes us a long way from the objectivist model and the mechanical interlocking of pre-set actions that is commonly associated with the notion of ritual we are a long way, too, from norms and rules. Doubtless there are slips, mistakes and moments of clumsiness to be observed here as elsewhere - and also grammarians of decorum able to say (and elegantly, too) what it is elegant to do and say; but they never presume to encompass in a catalogue of recurrent situations and appropriate conduct the art of the necessary improvisation that defines excellence.443

This allowance for the play of time in Bourdieus understandings of Kabylian gift exchange underpins his broader theorization of the symbolic economy, but it also constitutes the key difference between Bourdieusian sociological theory and previous structuralist explanations of human exchange practices. For Bourdieu, the actor socially predisposed to enter into gift exchange through the structuration of habitus is inclined to observe social laws, but through the feel for the game may toy with the terms of exchange in order to better their position (as much as the dominant social order will tolerate and allow). This fundamentally opposes Bourdieu to the gift exchange objectivism of Levi-Strauss, who reduces (agents) to the status of automata or inert bodies moved by obscure mechanisms towards ends of which they are unaware.444 Instead, Bourdieu argues that:

even when the agents dispositions are as perfectly harmonized as possible and when the sequence of actions and reactions seem entirely predictable from outside, uncertainty remains as to the outcome of the interaction until the whole sequence is completed. The most ordinary
443 444

Bourdieu (1990b), 107. Bourdieu (1990b), 98.

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and even the seemingly most routine exchanges of ordinary life, like the little gifts that bind friendship, presuppose an improvisation, and therefore a constant uncertainty.445

For Bourdieu, the fault of Levi-Strauss is his inability to account for the uncertainty that is always at the heart of practices subject to the unpredictable unfolding of time:

The uncertainty which has an objective basis in the probabilistic logic of social laws is sufficient to modify not only an experience of practice, but practice itself, for example by encouraging strategies aimed at avoiding the most probable outcome To reintroduce uncertainty is to reintroduce time, its orientation and its irreversibility, substituting the dialectic of strategies for the mechanics of the model, but without falling over into the imaginary anthropology of rational actor theories.446

Indeed, this emphasis upon the situated actor and the unfolding of time with respect to specific field logic highlights the deficiencies of non-reflexive scholastic objectification and its inability to account for an actors proximity to the world (in terms of time and its underpinning of positiontakings). Bourdieu argues that the slow outmoding of these exchange relations identified as functioning within the Kabylian social structure (and, more broadly, in precapitalist social universes) occurred when the relations specific to the economic economy (where outright calculation and exact equivalence in exchange is open rather than suppressed) gradually assumed dominance over the kinship system. However, he is quick to note that important elements of the kinship system have never been eradicated entirely by the laws of business and open self-interest, with various symbolic actions functioning to complement and inform outright economic exchanges. Indeed, the two logics are often inter-reliant and contribute to the stability and extension of different forms of capital in complimentary ways: In the great bourgeois families of advanced modern societies, and even in the categories of employers furthest from the family mode of reproduction, economic agents make considerable use in their economic practices for the reproduction of enlarged domestic ties, which is one of the conditions for the reproduction of their capital.447 In this sense it might be seen as merely academic to separate the two logics in their practice and application, for at the heart of both lies implied violence, coercion or force; importantly, however, the difference between the two modes is what comes to define and construct the exchange practices specific to a certain social
445 446

Bourdieu (1990b), 98-99. Bourdieu, (1990b), 99. 447 Pierre Bourdieu Practical Reason (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998a), 115.

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formation. For example, with one party to the exchange wielding a greater degree of power (in whatever form), the ability to impose relations of direct economic interaction (involving, in some instances, the outright threat of violence) might be deemed more attractive in being more immediate. If both parties are, if not exactly equal in specific capitals but of similar weight in overall power, then the euphemized mode of gentle symbolic violence might be more beneficial to the exchange, although requiring more time (and precision) in order to be instituted with any degree of longevity. Each mode presupposes a different process to the exchange, resulting in a different form to be observed, a different outcome (in the sense of the character or nature of the indebtedness or obligation produced) and thus, perhaps most importantly, differing probabilities for strategic response and the manipulation of tempo. These differences in logic and corresponding practice, however, are not only dictated by the characteristics of the basic parties to the act of exchange, but, as Bourdieu reveals, by broader social factors:

This essential ambiguity of all the institutions that modern taxonomies would incline one to treat as economic is evidence that the opposing strategies that may coexist, as in the masterkhammes relationship, are alternative, interchangeable ways of fulfilling the same function: the choice between overt violence and gentle violence depends on the state of the power relations between the two parties and the integration and ethical integrity of the group that arbitrates.448

Collective approval or disapproval notwithstanding, the mode pursued in instances of exchange also certainly turns upon, as previously noted, the nature or quality that interested parties wish to assign to that exchange. Obviously, broader circumstances and socialization will dictate in most cases the form of exchange that is pursued, but although terms of exchange that admit of calculation in an outright fashion may be more economical (in terms of preparation, execution and speed of response), modes of symbolic or soft exchange are (although time consuming and, as Bourdieu notes, requiring greater levels of personal attention to ensure ongoing domination):

more precious than goods or money, because, as the saying goes, they can neither be lent nor borrowed, such as time - the time that has to be taken to do things that are not forgotten, because they are done properly, at the proper time, marks of attention, friendly gestures, act of kindness. If authority is always seen as a property of the person it is because gentle violence requires those who exercise it to pay a personal price.449

448

Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990b), 126-127.

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Indeed, the economies surrounding the traffic of symbolic goods still explicitly exhibit the logic indicative of the Kabylian social realm, and, correspondingly, also incur the costs of maintaining such logic. As Bourdieu makes clear, this continuation of the logic of disinterest and the euphemization of social relations and exchange is no simple matter:

The historical situations in which the artificially maintained structures of the good-faith economy break up and make way for the clear, economical (as opposed to expensive) concepts of the economy of undisguised self-interest, reveal the cost of operating an economy which, by its refusal to recognize and declare itself as such, is forced to devote almost as much ingenuity and energy to disguising the truth of economic acts as it expends in performing them.450

Thus, whilst the euphemization of social relations may theoretically require greater time and effort than the exchanges indicative of the economic economy, this euphemization may generally be understood as sustaining greater relationships of symbolic indebtedness (honour, respect, fraternity, etc.) than those of the openly economic realm, indeed often functioning to augment the recognition that accompanies the ownership of more conventional (material) capitals and giving them greater weight beyond their purely economic application. Indeed, the practice of euphemization often accomplishes the binding of indebtedness far beyond the limited time of obligation that may be seen to inform most instances of outright economic exchange; in its most extreme form, symbolic exchange may manufacture conditions of reciprocation that draw upon emotions conventionally ascribed to love and romantic affection.
449 450

Bourdieu (1990b), 128. Bourdieu (1990b), 114.

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6.4. The cinematic experience.

When one applies these understandings of symbolic and economic exchange as outlined by Bourdieu to the cinematic experience, one is immediately struck by the similarities in the deferral of time in exchange and the relationships of enchantment that routinely function as components in the relationship between cinema institution and cinema audience. These similarities arise both due to the idiosyncratic nature of the cinema institution and the experience it sells, and the paradoxically dispersed position of legitimacy it maintains across orders of cultural legitimacy. The cinema institution (in order to maintain its position of power) is required to juggle a host of considerations, chiefly: a) the need to maintain a relationship of control and recognition with an ongoing audience, and b) the necessity of recognizing the dominant logics specific to a range of both cultural and economic fields in order to maintain some degree of cultural legitimation and economic viability. Historically, this control may be seen to turn upon regulation of the protocols informing the exchange between cinema institution and audience, protocols that denote a process of a) recognizing, and b) responding to, a call for gift exchange. Across this process there occurs instances of instituted delay that are necessary for the successful construction of a relationship between the cinema institution and cinema patron, a time interval suggesting, as Bourdieu writes in regard to the Kabyle, that the giver and the receiver collaborate, without knowing it, in a work of dissimulation tending to deny the truth of the exchange, the exchange of exact equivalents, which represents the destruction of the exchange of gifts.451 However, whilst the play upon tempo in cinematic exchange may be considered similar structurally to that identified by Bourdieu as crucial to the differentiation between outright exchange and the euphemization of exchange beyond its strictly economic nature in the Kabylian social realm, there is one important difference: the pedagogic authority of the cinema institution and its attempts historically to construct and regulate the conditions informing instances of exchange. Conventional understandings of cinematic experience suggest the principal moment of interaction between the cinema institution and cinema patron to be the straightforward exchange of money for cinema tickets. Obviously, scientific observation of a non-reflexive kind is inclined to emphasise these overt moments of transfer in cinema going given the tacit acceptance of a philosophy of consciousness and monological understanding. Indeed, as noted in Chapter 4, the fundamental structure of a research relationship may presuppose actor motivation and intention, with
451

Pierre Bourdieu, Practical Reason (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998a), 94-95.

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organizational and procedural aspects of the research interaction designed accordingly. However, the order of things as it appears to those occupying an entirely un-reflexive theoretical position in relation to a specific world of social practices is entirely different to the world experienced by the situated social actor: objective readings of practice may render explicit what functions entirely in taboo. As Bourdieus analysis of symbolic exchange suggests, symbolic interaction turns upon socially instituted forms of group misrecognition:

inscribed in (both) objective structures and mental structures If agents can be at the same time mystifiers, of themselves and others, and mystified, it is because they have been immersed from childhood in a universe where gift exchange is socially instituted in dispositions and beliefs.452

Given that the historical existence of filmgoing within Western society has positioned the consumption of cinema in relation to (as Bourdieu notes in regard to other cultural pursuits) both educational qualifications and the practical inclinations specific to broader class habitus, it can be suggested that socially instituted misrecognition also structures the practices informing cinematic exchange. However, whilst situating itself in relation to the multiple logics of the social world and accommodating those logics contributing to its ongoing stability, the cinema institution has itself developed a filtering process of adjustment and acclimatization in its exchange with patrons, refined over a century of filmgoing. The separation of this particular process from the innumerable legitimating discourses and modes of recognition and appreciation that inform social life does, of course, throw up an objectifying distance that necessarily lessens the practical binding patrons feel as natural and necessary in the habituated sense when they experience cinema (a practical binding that no doubt is informed by other misrecognitions that correlate with one another in an infinite chain of both conscious and embodied justification), but acknowledgement of this dilemma at least allows the following theorization to be considered against the backdrop of the unarticulated background that informs social life and necessarily provides the foundation for all social activities. Indeed, recognising this background is what makes Bourdieusian theorization so useful. Given that the feel for the game is theorized as natural given prolonged adjustment to the conditions which inform it, examination through Bourdieu specifies that each social agent be understood as engaging in multiple games every moment of their existence, with the corporeal logic arising from situatedness allowing a range of acts, movements and undertakings to occur simultaneously, with
452

Bourdieu (1998a), 95.

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no need for distinguishing between various tasks (at least in the practical experience of them). As he notes: The habitus entertains with the social world which has produced it a real ontological complicity, the source of cognition without consciousness, intentionality without intention, and a practical mastery of the worlds regularities which allow one to anticipate the future without even needing to posit it as such.453 Thus, cinematic experience should not be approached as a discrete operation existing as one single moment across a series of tasks combining to amount to overall practice. Rather, calculation and explicit strategy are eclipsed by the custom and habit encouraged by the cinema institution - an encouragement that will incline an agent to consume the experience of cinema given the idiosyncrasies of their situatedness and the value and worth that this position assigns to the consumption of cinema as a cultural and social act. Thus, what Bourdieu terms the primacy of practical reason must be considered as it comes to be enacted in relation to the cinema - the felt, lived and practiced experience of cinema and how such an experience comes to be taken up (or engaged) in a world overflowing with other possibilities of practice and chances for the maximization of capital. To examine the practical reason informing cinematic exchange requires investigation of the relationships of violence that construct and direct this reason. For Bourdieu, misrecognition is essential to the perpetuation of symbolic violence - misrecognition resulting from specific forms of communication (i.e. exchange) and the relationships of violence and subjugation such communication often embodies. As he makes clear in Practical Reason, the perpetuation of an unequal relationship is most powerfully achieved through the misrecognition of the equality of that relationship, resulting in a relationship of inequality being experienced as natural, obvious, and, in its most potent form, as alluring and loving by a lesser party. In gift exchange (the act of which constructs and defines roles for ongoing relationships), inequality is best concealed by, as previously noted, the socially instituted play upon time in the giving and receiving of gifts, which obscures obligation and insistence upon reciprocation, and thus (in its most successful instances and incarnations) produces misrecognition of the equality of a relationship. Employed to examine the realm of cinematic exchange, Bourdieus theorization immediately suggests cinematic exchange consists of a process whereby inequality is transformed into equality, response and commitment. How? The cinematic institution directs the principal call for recognition (to patrons structured to respond appropriately) by appealing to the terms of recognition and perception already established through the construction of what might be termed the cinematic market, which, like all symbolic markets,
453

Pierre Bourdieu, In Other Words: Essays Towards a Reflexive Sociology (California: Stanford University Press, 1990a), 11-12.

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advertises a range of profits to be had from investment in that market (or game). The power of these terms of recognition and perception, as well as the lure of the profits to be won, depend upon the prior establishment of relationships of belief and trust, and the perception of the enduring worth of the game and its stakes. The cinema institution, historically able to control the social conditions for imposition and inculcation through maintaining a relationship of pedagogic communication with its audience, has largely ensured that these conditions of belief are stable and highly durable, functioning during all instances of consumption of the cinematic product. Indeed, this process of exchange must be understood as commencing before any explicit exchange of goods, items, or oaths of friendship. (Exchange in this sense does not simply denote the traffic of tangible goods, but a call and response process of interaction that functions to enforce relationships of power and control above and beyond the obvious material components that may also exist in the exchange). In the case of cinematic exchange, the process begins well before a patron enters the actual cinema premises, a result of the penetration of cinema advertising (in a number of forms) across all manner of social environments throughout the Western world. John Ellis again provides a useful understanding of this first stage in the call for recognition, noting in Visible Fictions:

An idea of (a) film is widely circulated and promoted, an idea which can be called the narrative image of the film, the cinema industrys anticipatory reply to the question What is this film like? If anything is bought at the box office that is already known by the audience, it is this narrative image. Payment for a ticket is not an endorsement of a film, nor is it an endorsement of a particular performance of a film in a particular place. It is an endorsement of the narrative image of the film, together with the general sense of the cinematic experience. Payment at the box office of a cinema is an act of approving the promise that the film offers through the mechanism of the narrative image.454

The initiating call for recognition in cinematic exchange thus takes the form of an inherent promise encoded within a broadly circulated narrative image, issuing directly from the cinema institution and implying for those structured appropriately to receive and acknowledge such a call (through the long history of commercial cinema going in the West and, as will be discussed below,
454

John Ellis, Visible Fictions (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1982), 30.

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the practical structuration such consumption involves) an appropriate response. Depending upon the degree of dispositional structuration in potential patrons achieved through previous episodes of cinematic consumption (in terms of the internalization of the regularities specific to this game), a practical sense attuned to this call for exchange provides accurate recognition of its terms - or, at least, a practical sense of understanding that answers to the terms embedded within the narrative image. This call for response by the cinema institution, as with most social practices, does not result in simple mechanistic reaction on the part of concerned agents, as it might in a system of outright domination. For whilst the cinema institution has attempted to rigorously control the circumstances of exchange, the various instances of interplay between rule and agent (or institution and practice) given that they function against the uncertainties of time and the social world - constantly push the scope and strength of the cinema institutions symbolic power. For the consumption of cinema to be deemed attractive as a game (i.e. for there to be possibilities for the maximization of capitals), some chance for strategic action by players must be possible, to entice both agents already appropriately structured to act upon calls for response and the casual (or new) player. Indeed, what the cinema provides through its game of exchange is a universe of objective probabilities for the maximization of capital - a universe that is recognized to variable degrees according to the uneven capacities (i.e. capital holdings) of different social groups and the degree of their preexisting relationships with the cinema institution. Indeed, the beginning of cinematic exchange (the circulation of the narrative image) is, like all other practices, situated against the multiple logics and practices that constitute the background of the everyday. Just as capital is pursued, lost and gained in the flux of everyday life as a result of varying individual competencies, so too is the success of cinematic exchange subject to the capacity for recognition unevenly distributed across individual agents. For cinematic exchange is just one possible process of recognition and response that an agent might engage in, given their situatedness in a world overflowing with other possibilities of practice, engagement and chances for the maximization of capital. Therefore, it may be assumed that between the moment when the narrative image is recognised appropriately, and the moment where the experience of cinema is definitively pursued, there exists a number of stages of evaluative (and interpretive) classification wholly specific to an agents social affiliation and corresponding habitus (this classification in no way being the formal, logical and systematic type conventionally designated by the term). These stages allow in a practical manner such an experience to be evaluated (without involving a conscious act of evaluation) and then recognized as a potentiality for subsequent consumption (again, without conscious intention but rather as felt inclination), thus functioning in an embodied fashion to coordinate action. Such evaluation may not

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in itself result in the actual consumption of cinema - it may only function as simple recognition (no doubt one of many occurring constantly in social practice), depending upon a) each respective instance of habitus and the importance such habitus bestows upon the profits associated with the consumption of the experience of cinema, and b) the historical power of the cinema institution to appeal, through a variety of means, to this habitus. Indeed, it is important to stress here that such recognition and classification does not construct the possible experience of cinema as a project, a potential experience or act to be pursued in a conscious manner (incorporating a desired end corresponding to a consciously identified beginning, for the purpose of reaping - in a systematic sense - identified profits). Rather, as Bourdieu notes, such recognition occurs as one element of the practical logics of the everyday, practice that is therefore not:

in time but makes time (human time, as opposed to biological or astronomical time) In opposition to the indifference which apprehends the world as devoid of interest and importance, the illusio (or interest in the game) is what gives sense (both meaning and direction) to existence by leading one to invest in a game and its forth-coming, in the lusiones, the chances, that it offers to those who are caught up in the game and who expect something from it (the) project as a conscious aiming at the future in its reality as a contingent future must not be conflated with protention, a prereflexive aiming at a forth-coming which offers itself as quasi-present in the visible, like the hidden faces of a cube, that is, with the same belief status (the same doxic modality) as what is directly perceived.455

This prereflexive aiming at a forth-coming, this adjustment or feel for the regularities of a game enabled through embodied situatedness thus makes objective detection of the process of evaluative classification extremely difficult, as the felt belief in the forth-coming such recognition involves is by no means the result of a choice, a decision, or a product of determination in the conventional sense, and thus remains difficult to articulate, explain, or be adequately reasoned through recollection or retelling in the manner required of individuals surveyed through conventional scientific investigation (as the previous reference to the research findings of Barker and Brooks indicated). Protention is, instead, exhibited through manner, bodily comportment and the embodied sense an actor experiences when properly oriented to pursue the highly probable
455

Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), 207.

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(highly probable because of the embodied knowledge that suggests a tendency for certain experiences - and not others - to come to pass in a given social formation or field and thus to be pursued), and thus speaks through those infinitesimal behaviours a predisposed actor (through habitus) exhibits in their strategic practice. Such an understanding of practice, of recognition and appreciation as part of an embodied anticipation and identification of a forth-coming specific to a certain field, cannot be analysed scientifically by concentrating upon one critical instance (such as the moment of choice, action, or decision), simply because socio-economic structures informing each instance of embodied social existence produce an experience of the world that is assumed and expected (in corporeal terms) rather than solely calculated or explicitly defined. Indeed, scientific (or sociological) analysis founded upon a simple subjectivism is routinely conducted subsequent to action and its corresponding logic, in a markedly different (controlled) environment, and with emphasis upon the reconstruction or recollection of a singular moment in time (as a past decisionmaking), rather than respecting the game in its lived, unfolding and anticipated mode. Bourdieu writes:

The sense of the game is that sense of the forth-coming of the game, of what is to be done (it was the only thing to do or he did what was needed) in order to bring about the forth-coming state of the game that is visible there for a habitus predisposed to anticipate it, the sense of the history of the game, which is only acquired through experience of the game - which means that the imminence and pre-eminence of the forth-coming presuppose a disposition which is the product of the past.456

Bourdieus methodological concern with the submission of research to the singularity of a particular life history, which entails a thorough knowledge of the objective conditions informing a specific social category (as examined in Chapter 4), here provides some ability to identify protention and response to the cinematic call for exchange. With a generic and genetic comprehension of the situated nature of agents, the properly reflexive researcher may be able to either a) predict or identify those elements of the narrative image most likely to appeal to a specific instance of habitus, or b) recognise and detail a response through interview procedures trading upon the degree of social proximity between interviewer and interviewee (involving questioning and clarification). This first step in the work of transfiguring outright economic relations functions both through reference to broader cultural codes and to codes more specific to the
456

Bourdieu (2000), 211-212.

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cinematic experience; indeed, those agents lacking structuration via the codes of recognition and deciphering specific to the cinema institution may fail to recognise this first call, it being eclipsed by a broader series of forth-coming corporeal anticipations that no doubt occur near constantly in social life. Perhaps the narrative image is recognized but not pursued (given chance conditions limiting further response), or recognized and dismissed because it does not correlate with broader habitual anticipations. Or, the call for response may be heeded, with the categories of perception and appreciation perpetuated by the cinema institution corresponding with those enacted by the individual agent. In this instance, the call for response correlates with the regularities that inform and structure the specific instance of the social world as experienced by that agent, matching with the systems of (embodied) expectation that suggest to that agent certain actions and practices (and their corresponding profits) that may be reasonably expected to come to pass in the particular social universe they inhabit.457 Importantly, however, this felt recognition and subsequent position-taking (in order to meet that which is recognized as forthcoming) does not constitute complete and total assumption (in the corporeal sense) on the part of an agent, even when the agent is primed to respond to the cinema institutions call for recognition through previous cinematic experience and the broader dispositions of the habitus. As Bourdieu notes, for:

interest or illusio to be set up, the objective chances have to be situated between absolute necessity and absolute impossibility: the agent has to have chances of winning which are neither nil (losing on every throw) nor total (winning on every throw). In other words, nothing must be absolutely sure, but not everything must be possible.458

Thus, even though the cinema institution has laboured to institute relationships of symbolic violence that result in immediate adherence by cinema patrons to calls for recognition and response, even the earliest phase of cinematic exchange is informed by the chance conditions of existence which Bourdieu understands always play a role in social affairs (a role that may be diminished by genealogy and the social habituation that may load the dice in favour of an agent or, alternatively, an institution, but which exists nevertheless). In this respect, a researchers comprehension of the regularities of a specific social world may allow for greater understanding of
As Graeme Turner notes: A phrase often used by producers refers to a film finding its audience and this is (an) accurate description of what actually happens. Graeme Turner, Film As Social Practice (London: Routledge, 1998), 116 458 Bourdieu (2000), 213.
457

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the more idiosyncratic factors legislating against entrance into cinematic exchange, or, indeed, a more clinical understanding of the unpredictable in practice that may come to distinguish and differentiate players, providing insight into the differing levels of the feel for the game that assist individuals and groups in the maximization (or minimization) of their respective capitals as exchange unfolds. Development of the welcoming disposition in this manner may indeed allow for greater clarification of the processes of reproduction that perpetuate pre-existing social and symbolic orders, and their immediate influence over the practices associated with cinematic exchange. The cinema institutions first call for recognition thus does not immediately render response in objectively identifiable terms. If recognised, this call is responded to at a level beyond conscious comprehension, which, whilst it may subsequently be articulated in either everyday life or through research interviewing (I would like to go to the movies), functions at the level of habitual recognition, embodied in terms of a response to a forth-coming. This embodied response, however, is not the only immediate justification tending to secure further pursuit of the cinematic commodity. The appropriately attentive researcher must be aware of the more readily identifiable tools that exist to articulate this embodied response: film reviews, film publications, cinema publicity, gossip magazines and simple word-of-mouth exchanges, all of which shape the expectations held by a specific agent and reinforce the embodied sense of their willing the inevitable (i.e. adjustment to a filmic discourse aids in the concrete realisation of corporeal predisposition). Indeed, this discourse provides a measure of justification for responding to the narrative image, reinforcing (in the fashion of a feedback loop) an actors corporeal feel for the game and sense of self-possession, allowing for poise in ensuing instances of social action undertaken during the cinematic experience. To some degree, separating explicit justification from embodied response (and, indeed, embodied predisposition) for research purposes is redundant: clarification of these processes may allow insight in a traditionally objective sense, but it again highlights explicit intention (in the manner of various kinds of representation) as much as embodied sense. In lived experience, there may well be no distinction between the two that can be identified by the engaged actor; both the inclination to attend the cinema and the actual cinematic experience are broadly recognised social acts, classified in an objective, institutionalised manner by both the cinematic institution and other legitimating discourses of the everyday functioning within the social world. As Bourdieu states:

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The imposition of a recognized name is an act of recognition of full social existence which transmutes the thing named. It no longer exists merely de facto, as a tolerated, illegal or illegitimate practice, but becomes a social function, i.e. a mandate, a mission, a task, a role.459

Thus, the initial classification of cinema as an appropriate and probable practice for a specific individual or group occurs through both the embodied dispositions of the habitus, and through reference to the broader institutionalised characterization of cinema which may indeed alter across different social, political and economic systems. Thus, the mental machinery of which Christian Metz speaks, the internal coordination of cinema audiences that turns upon expectation and fulfilment, functions with regard to wider systems of structuration and legitimation objectively independent of the cinema institution, but which nevertheless contribute to the process of exchange initiated by that institution. However, the possibility of an agent responding to calls for recognition issued by the cinema institution is also dependent upon the degree of pedagogic authority maintained by the cinematic institution at any particular moment in time. This authority bears upon an agents degree of felt necessity for attending the cinema, in terms of the misrecognition of their responsibility and indebtedness to respond to the call for exchange. Again, fieldwork here needs to be able to identify an actors ongoing level of belief in the game of cinematic exchange, and their complicity in the perpetuation of a specific cultural arbitrary perpetuated by the cinematic institution. Indeed, despite a lack of specificity in the product it sells, no (at least broadly recognized) delegated authority, and the development of rival home entertainment technologies and reception modes, this institution has, by Bourdieu and Passerons definition, been extremely productive in its efforts to perpetuate an ongoing relationship with its audience in regard to two key standards of evaluation. They argue:

The specific productivity of pedagogic work, i.e. the degree to which it manages to inculcate in the legitimate addressees the cultural arbitrary which it is mandated to reproduce is measured by the degree to which the habitus it produces is durable, i.e. capable of durably generating practices conforming with the principles of the inculcated arbitrary (and) by the degree to which the habitus it produces is transposable, i.e. capable of generating practices conforming with the principles of the inculcated arbitrary in a greater number of different fields.460

Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (London: Routledge, 1984), 480. Pierre Bourdieu, and Jean-Claude Passeron, Reproduction: In Education, Society and Culture (London: Sage Publications, 1977b), 33.
460

459

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The enduring power of this pedagogic work is no doubt based in some part upon the cinemas offering of a process whereby distinctive capitals may be won (or lost), which relates to its general property as both a structuring structure (supplying an ability to comprehend, investigate and, perhaps most importantly, differentiate, in social life) and a structured structure (a medium through which to conduct and communicate this investigation). The application of such a tool is obvious in a social world permeated by calls to order via the recognition of distinctive (and thus differentiating) signs. Indeed, whilst not consecrated (in terms of the highest sphere of cultural legitimation), and thus not inherently displaying one key cultural logic allied to a particular social group which it attempts to reproduce and extend, the commercial cinemas system of specific structuration nevertheless exhibits a general complicity with certain recognizable doxa functioning within the Western social world, thus providing a structure through which specific senses of self, other, being and life may be produced, confirmed and anchored in relation to other differentiating systems. Nevertheless, this complicity only extends so far as in the institutions interests, for the pedagogic work of the cinematic institution is an attempt to legitimate its authority against other forms of competing logic. The institution attempts to reconstruct its arbitrary as a common necessity, and erase an objective understanding of the conditions informing the production of that arbitrary (a process that outright alliance with other orders may complicate). Indeed, the process developed through this pedagogic relationship, as Bourdieu and Passeron theorize, produces more and more complete misrecognition of the ethical and intellectual limitations which are correlative with the internalizing of that delimitation (ethical and logical ethnocentrism).461 The question of the degree of this misrecognition, in terms of how the inculcation of the cinematic arbitrary is achieved against the structuration embedded in both educational qualifications and the primary habitus, thus involves determining the success of the cinema institutions pedagogic work and the levels of integration it can be said to have encoded within its audiences. Fieldwork, however, must be careful not to assume or overstate this success. To follow Bourdieu is to suggest that the logic and mode of recognition specific to cinematic exchange (and, consequently, the consumption of the cinematic experience) is taken up with varying degrees of success by agents depending upon: a) similarities between a patrons formative (primary) habitus and the conditions of the cinematic arbitrary, b) the educational levels such a habitus presupposes and thus the level of correspondence with the logic of the cinematic arbitrary, and c) the degree of disparity between the dominant cultural and social logic of the period and the mode of exchange and recognition exhibited by the cinema institution during
461

Bourdieu and Passeron (1977b), 41.

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that period. As Bourdieu and Passeron make clear, the overall productivity and success of any pedagogic authority and its activities of structuration and recognition:

is a function of the system of relations between the cultural arbitrary imposed by that pedagogic authority, the dominant cultural arbitrary in that social formation, and the cultural arbitrary inculcated by the earliest phase of upbringing within the group or classes from which those undergoing the pedagogic authority originate.462

The relationship between cinema institution and patron thus does not suspend pre-existing social formulations of taste and aesthetic preference; rather, it refracts and aligns these preferences in a manner consistent with the logic of the institution. Thus, whilst the appeal of cinematic consumption certainly turns upon an agents desires to exhibit cultural competencies in a public space and thus increase their respective capitals, the strict management and direction of this process by the institution attempts to both construct, and maintain, a recognisable (and appropriately structured) audience in order to ensure its continued existence. The circulation of the narrative image and the various forms of agent response resulting from that circulation - a relationship open to fluctuations and differences across capital holdings and degrees of embodied structuration - is thus the phase of cinematic exchange most subject to chance and uncertainty, given that it largely functions outside of the material domain of cinematic exhibition and is thus principally reliant upon the (successful) establishment of previous relationships (and attendant modes of misrecognition) with interested agents. Fieldwork concerned with this phase of cinematic exchange should therefore be attentive to recognising socially defined structures of taste that pre-exist overt engagement with the cinema; one assumes generic and genetic comprehension provides a broad understanding of the social logic shaping the situated actor under study and thus an understanding of the forms of cultural taste and recognition developed through engagement with the cinematic institution, and those articulated through the logic of the primary habitus. The actual consumption of the cinematic experience is a process that is far more weighted in favour of the institution, given that the successful functioning of the first phase of exchange presents a cinema patron exhibiting categories of perception and appreciation (and thus modes of belief) sympathetic to the cinema institution and attentive to the terms of cinematic experience. Thus, all ensuing acts of recognition and deciphering occurring throughout the cinematic experience are negotiated and conducted with a base appreciation of these terms of exchange as established by the cinema institution. The promise of performance that John Ellis understands as inherent within
462

Bourdieu and Passeron (1977b), 29-30.

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the narrative image, when responded to appropriately by cinema patrons, thus constitutes the first step in an (ideally) ongoing relationship of misrecognition, an enduring production of a belief that exhibits specific categories of acknowledgment, understanding, and recall. An agent, if properly inclined to pursue the cinematic experience and visit theatrical premises, thus becomes more firmly situated within the relationships of exchange specific to theatrical exhibition proper (what might be termed the second phase of cinematic exchange). This phase is more secure for the institution, in that the preliminary stages of exchange have been initiated and responded to appropriately (an agent has answered the call for response, through being situated correctly), a process which thus provides the necessary foundation for the play upon exchange (in terms of delay, and manipulation of tempo) that will come to function during the actual experience of cinema. In this second phase, one assumes the relationship of misrecognition between patron and institution is grounded far more in embodied regulation (which encodes a range of corporeal understandings that function to adjust patron behaviour and response), given that agents are situated bodily within the confines of the theatrical premises of the cinema and thus come to function with reference to a definite practical sense that is continually reinforced. Indeed, rather than being nondescript individuals, presence at the cinema reconstitutes agents as patrons, a shift in classification that translates the indefinable sense associated with the practical schemes specific to cinema consumption into representation and discourse. The nature of this corporeal regulation specific to the occupation of a space within cinema premises requires some degree of historical examination, in order to appreciate the historical development of what Douglas Gomery terms non-filmic factors of exhibition. These elements of exhibition contributed greatly to the refinement of the relationship between the cinema institution and cinema patrons, amounting to a long process of bodily education and management (in the full physical sense of the term) that provided the foundation for ongoing misrecognition. Indeed, in his essay The Movies Become Big Business: Publix Theatres and the Chain-store strategy (1982), Gomery outlines the chain store exhibition strategies implemented by such American exhibitors as Balaban and Katz in Chicago in the late 1910s that came to constitute fundamental structural components for the successful management of film exhibition sites across the world. What Gomery terms the five important inputs included: suburban exhibition sites near residential areas, impressive theatres with prominently mounted exterior electric advertising and equally spectacular interiors (the facades and stained-glass windows of B&K theatres served to remind Chicagoans of conservative institutions likes churches or banksrest rooms were spacious, clean, and decorated with paintings and sculpture), seasonal air-conditioning and heating, highly supervised uniformed ushers (guaranteeing a conservative public image - much like a bank or a fine hotel), and live

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stage entertainment consisting of musicians, vaudeville entertainers and the like.463 This shift to chain store structural management, the corresponding expansion of scale economies surrounding the cinematic institution and distinctive chain name branding provided the foundations for greater demographic precision and coordination of audiences. Indeed, throughout the 1920s the run, zone and clearance system of release would be introduced (in its embryonic form) by the studios (following mergers with, or buyouts of, previously independent exhibition chains), a practice that ensured a high percentage of box office profits would be realised early in the theatrical run of a film, and thus kept by the exhibition outlets predominantly owned by the studios. For example, a high concentration of advertising during the first-run of a film, when it was initially released, attempted to stimulate consumer anticipation and obscure the reality of the higher prices charged for viewing the film early in its release phase. Through zoning contracts, the studios guaranteed that each new film was exhibited only in certain theatres within regional markets so as to engender degrees of product differentiation and directly channel audience traffic to specific exhibition sites. Finally, clearance referred to the period in which a film was understood to maintain an audience (and thus remain profitable) in its first-run, before moving to lower priced theatres, and gradually outwards into broader, peripheral areas of distribution and exhibition (and their corresponding audiences). Such techniques resulted in a greater uniformity of cinematic experience (albeit structured in relation to the run, zone and clearance system), and thus greater precision in a) the production and stimulation of audience expectation and anticipation, and b) the separation and management of audiences through increasing stratification. Examination of the history of these non-filmic factors of exhibition by Gomery (among others) points to a key deficiency in previous cinema studies research - namely, the investigation and evaluation of the filmic text independent of any real consideration of its unfolding in a specific time and place, thus overlooking the patron activities and understandings that function beyond the viewing of that text during the experience of cinema (understandings and activities early chainstore exhibitors wholly anticipated and catered for). Elaborate furnishings, seasonal airconditioning, live performances, etc., all managed centrally with a degree of uniformity across exhibition sites, produced ongoing expectations, assumptions and behaviours from cinema audiences in the manner of contemporary relationship marketing, which directly attempts to create an ongoing bond with customers that may be seen to obscure the actual point of sale or outright exchange of goods and services. Historically there was thus created by the cinema institution a
Douglas Gomery, The Movies Become Big Business: Publix Theatres and the Chain-store strategy, Gorham Kindem (ed), The American Movie Industry: The Business of Motion Pictures (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1982), 106-109.
463

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system of relations amounting to a discernible logic that was irreducible to any other specific field (although other activities and practices have come to partake of it) and which, on one level, was concretely tied to the material conditions of cinema exhibition and the embodied coordination and sense such conditions perpetuated through a patrons ongoing consumption of the experience of cinema. As Bourdieu notes in The Logic of Practice:

Inhabited space is the privileged site of the objectification of the generative schemes, and, through the divisions and hierarchies it establishes between things, between people and between practices, this materialized system of classification inculcates and constantly reinforces the principles of the classification which constitutes the arbitrariness of a culture The world of objects, a kind of book in which each thing speaks metaphorically of all others and from which children learn to read the world, is read with the whole body, in and through the movements and displacements which define the space of objects as much as they are defined by it.464

Indeed, as Bourdieu and Passeron noted in Reproduction, the ability of pedagogic authority to conduct symbolic violence in any lasting, durable manner depends upon the establishment of specific social and material conditions. The cinema institution created these conditions through the cinema theatre (or complex), which maintains a strictly regulated environmental space within which structural relations between the institution and the audience are transmitted and consolidated. Consider the formal procedures undertaken and observed when attending the cinema. Physically, it is an entirely structured activity with regulated spaces and times (a regulation that, as Bourdieu suggests, not only marks out the ritual social distinctions and groupings of a culture, but functions to extend and consolidate those distinctions through encoding them in material form), with the formal rules marked by clearly stated directives (no feet on seats, silence to be observed during screening, remain seated during session, no hot food or drinks permitted, mobile phones to be turned off) being only the most immediately obvious structural guidelines. Seating, spacing, dcor,
464

Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990b), 76.

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temperature, sound and lighting all contribute to the construction of a highly regulated space, which impacts physically upon the body of cinema patrons with consistent uniformity and homogenization. The materialization of objectified history in this manner regulates and produces more history, as Bourdieu notes, in shaping both the corporeal anticipations of patrons and subsequent instances of practice. Prolonged experience of such conditions contributes to the generation of practical belief, a belief founded upon habit and bodily adaptation. As Bourdieu notes:

Every social order systematically takes advantage of the dispositions of the body and language to function as depositories of deferred thoughts that can be triggered off at a distance in space and time by the simple effect of re-placing the body in an overall posture which recalls the associated thoughts and feelings, in one of the inductive states of the body which, as actors know, give rise to states of mind. Thus the attention paid to staging in great collective ceremonies derives not only from the concern to give a solemn representation of the group (manifest in the splendour of baroque festivals) but also, as many uses of singing and dancing show, from the less visible intention of ordering thoughts and suggesting feelings through the rigorous marshalling of practices and the orderly disposition of bodies, in particular the bodily expression of emotion, in laughter or tears.465

Thus, it is the unarticulated adjustment of behaviour that is not explicitly captured through representation that can be understood to continually secure the sense that agents exhibit in their practice when situated within the context of the cinema. Indeed, this sense might be sub-divided consistent with the various environments that typically accompany the consumption of the experience of cinema. Differing corporeal understandings can be seen to function according to a patron occupying a space, for example, within the actual cinema auditorium, standing in line to access the ticketing booth, waiting in the foyer either for companions or before entering the cinema auditorium for the commencement of a film, or dining in related theme restaurants and bars associated with a cinema complex - experiences all contributing to, and informing, the cinematic experience. These corporeal understandings result from the repetition of continued practice; given the bodys quality as (to use Bourdieus phrase) a memory pad, corporeal knowledges provide an ongoing organizing of experience that enables a streamlining effect in action. Indeed, the (largely) unknown quality of the film text is explicitly counterbalanced by the repetitive nature of the cinematic experience overall, providing a measure of stability in terms of the
465

Bourdieu (1990b), 69.

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procedures a patron can expect (both consciously and corporeally). The level of consistency ensured by these immediately physical factors of film exhibition thus contributes to the production of the feelings of confirmation, exclusion and belief (and associated) activities resulting from a) the level of integration of each cinema patron (i.e. their level of illusio in relation to the game proposed by the cinema institution), and b) the influence of the broader capitals (and corresponding competencies) each patron brings to the cinematic experience by way of primary structuration and habituation. In drawing upon a range of social and cultural classifications (and their inherent distinctions) to produce calls to order and demands for recognition (albeit classifications that do not explicitly contradict the logic produced by the cinema institution for its patrons), the structured space the cinema provides and the practices it sustains (historically embedded in the everyday lives of a broad range of social groups throughout the world) thus contributes to the transfiguration of the objective reality of cinematic exchange. Indeed, this transfiguration amounts to history turned into nature, with history (of the experience of cinema) obscured through generations of bodily conditioning. The casually vague understandings of going to the movies that exist in the contemporary period indicate just how successfully American exhibition practices have structured patron behaviour and expectation, given that previous to studio consolidation, film exhibition occurred in vaudeville theatres, opera houses, cafes, storefronts, summer parks, churches and church halls, YMCAs, department stores and schools466, and was undoubtedly subject to the multiple logics of practice that inform such environments. Indeed, as Robert Pearson and William Uricchio have noted, as early as 1907 this structuration was increasingly demanded by organizations functioning outside the film industry (namely the Church, but also cultural elites) that called for the stricter regulation of nickelodeon exhibition sites in order to protect children, with (many complaints) about hygiene, the possibility of eye damage, and the danger of fire and panic.467 When one considers the sheer amount of actions (involving posture, bodily contortion and muscle control) assumed and expected of a patron during their experience of cinema (directly resulting from the earliest developments in the regulation of cinema audiences), it becomes apparent just how bodily hexis isa durable way of standing, speaking, walking, and thereby of feeling and thinking (emphasis mine).468 The bodily hexis engendered by these conditions of cinematic
Melvyn Stokes, Introduction: Reconstructing American Cinemas Audiences, Melvyn Stokes and Richard Maltby (eds), American Movies Audiences: From the turn of the century to the early sound era (London: British Film Institute Publishing, 1999), 2. 467 Roberta E. Pearson and William Uricchio, The Formative and Impressionable Stage: Discursive Constructions of the Nickelodeons Child Audience, Melvyn Stokes and Richard Maltby (eds), American Movies Audiences: From the turn of the century to the early sound era, London: British Film Institute Publishing, 1999), 68. 468 Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990b), 69-70.
466

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consumption thus provides, through the postures and gestures of the body (in a way of using the body or the gaze, a way of talking, eating or walking)469, the dispositional foundation upon which gift exchange functions between the cinema institution and the cinema patron, a foundation that allows the play between gift and counter-gift to unfold. To summarize thus far: the first phase of cinematic exchange, involving the circulation of the narrative image and recognition from interested agents (implying coordination between the primary habitus and the logic specific to the consumption of cinema), combined with the bodily hexis engendered through the situating of cinema patrons within the exhibition environment of theatrical presentation, creates the conditions sustaining the interaction between the cinema institution and the singular agent. The economy of exchange specific to the cinema thus turns upon dispositional structuration that, as Bourdieu notes, whilst exhibiting a high statistical probability of success (in the form of correct adjustment by agents to the regularities of the game), is nevertheless open to misfire or miscalculation given its playing out across time (like all structured practices). Indeed, the passage of, and playing with, time is essential to the misrecognition attempted through cinematic exchange. Consider the deferral at the very heart of the cinematic economy: the cinema patron, appropriately responding to the call for response initiated by the cinema institution, is required to pay money to consume the experience advertised within the narrative image, but this initial offering of a gift does not immediately produce the experience implicit in the call for response. Rather, cinema patrons are invited to act according to the rules of exhibition (an invitation that ideally admits of no choice given that the regulation of behaviour is secured through bodily conditioning and the correlation between patron and institution of categories of perception and appreciation), and receive their counter-gift as it slowly unfolds in the manner of their experience of cinema. There is no tangible or discrete counter-gift that is presented; rather, as Bourdieu has traced through the Kabyle, there arise a multitude of smaller gestures of faith and consideration that neutralize the action of time and ensure the continuity of interpersonal relations.470 These might include gestures (or conversation) from uniformed ushers, complimentary services such as childcare crches, broader recreational activities (cocktail lounges), long previews and advertisements, etc., all functioning to defer the counter-gift. For Bourdieu, this process obscures the objective reality of the truth of the exchange (that each party is self-interested), whereas an instantaneous exchange would constitute the immediate return of an exactly identical object (clearly amounting) to a refusalThe interval between gift and counter-gift is what allows a relation of exchange that is always liable to appear as
469 470

Bourdieu (1990b), 103. Bourdieu (1990b), 107.

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irreversible, that is, both forced and self-interested, to be seen as reversible.471 Perhaps more importantly, this delay on the part of the cinema institution also allows for the strategic play upon time, in terms of controlling the tempo of the exchange and thus sustaining greater control over the process (and thus contributing to a greater degree of misrecognition). As Bourdieu makes clear:

We know how much advantage the holder of a transmissible power can derive from the art of delaying transmission and keeping others in the dark as to his ultimate intentions holding back or putting off, maintaining suspense or expectancy, or on the other hand, hurrying, hustling, surprising, stealing a march, not to mention the art of ostentatiously giving time (devoting ones time to someone) or withholding it (no time to spare).472

This delay system has the effect of binding patrons to a process of gift return that unfolds slowly and deliberately, playing between, as Bourdieu rightfully understands, suspense and expectancy. Indeed, this suspension of counter-gift return (thus denying completion of the act of gift exchange) shifts the entire process to a level of endurance, heightening the degree of anticipation (and tension) experienced by the cinema patron. In the Kabylian social realm, Bourdieu noted how the extended delay of a counter-gift involved a good deal of danger, with such delay approaching exploitation and misuse of the relations of exchange, and thus risking the repression of outright calculation. However, in the cinema, suspense and expectancy is a commonly accepted element of the experience, with what John Ellis understands as the enigma of the narrative image simply the first instance of deferment in a long process of delay and the prolonging of resolution. Indeed, this delay of counter-gift has expanded considerably in the contemporary period, given that it is increasingly important for the cinema industry to make a fetish of the cinematic experience for consumers whilst dispersing the encounter with an individual filmic text across other media forms. The little gifts that Bourdieu describes as binding through friendship in the Kabylian social realm (which function to obscure relationships of indebtedness and draw out exchange) have greatly expanded across the cinematic economy, the result of technological developments in communications and entertainment and increasing corporatisation and conglomeration across the media industry. On the one hand is the cinema institutions need to distinguish the necessity of the cinematic experience against its technological derivatives and by-products (computer games, merchandising), in order to generate profit in the exhibition sector (the success of which contributes to future production, distribution and exhibition). Conversely, there is the need for the cinema
471 472

Bourdieu (1990b), 105. Bourdieu (1990b), 107.

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institution (given its rank in systems of conglomeration) to initiate the social recognition of a film franchise, the bulk of the profits of which now exist beyond a films exhibition in the cinema. Thus, the institution must proclaim the necessity for the theatrical experience of a film (with advertising that often makes reference to the idiosyncratic pleasures of cinematic experience) whilst observing the contemporary divisions of the total market specific to a film franchise (i.e. the diversity among potential customers and their differing uses and encounters with the film product in its different forms, and thus the corresponding market segmentation that attempts to tailor to these distinctions). These little gifts (computer games, merchandise items, music videos) all refer to the economy of cinematic exchange in being derivatives of the experience of cinema, and in marking themselves as secondary to the principal experience, contribute through their very nature to an understanding of the cinema institutions deferral of the counter-gift as necessary and indeed natural. Thus, when a cinema patron enters the exhibition environment specific to theatrical presentation, they are appropriately placed to accept deferment of the counter-gift occurring within the process of exchange, in terms of having both the experience of cinema and of a specific filmic text delayed. The little gifts that anticipate cinematic experience - the narrative image, the stylization of theatrical presentation and experience - all function as euphemisms that contribute to obscuring the reality of gift exchange in the cinema. Indeed, although not entirely specific to filmgoing (many other acts of objectively blatant economic exchange, such as retail shopping, exhibit highly euphemized symbolic elements), this manner of exchange and deferral is unique in relying so heavily upon enchantments that exude a distinctly spiritual, or sacred, sense or quality. That resolution of the entire process of exchange and delay occurs with the final consumption of the filmic text is no mere coincidence, given that the representational strategies of mainstream narrative film mirror the entire process of cinematic exchange. As Frank Krutnick notes, narrative cinema provokes:

the expenditure of emotional energy and the taking of emotional risks in order to produce a sense of pleasurable satisfaction at the conclusion of the process. The process itself is a constant testing: a position of partial unity is held throughout the film by the viewer, who sees something of the truth throughout. But the film refuses to reveal all its truths until its conclusion, where everything falls into place for the spectator.473

473

Frank Krutnick, In A Lonely Street: Film noir, genre, masculinity (Routledge, London: 1991), 4-5.

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Such a mode of representation plays out delay until the very last, holding the cinema patron within a relationship of exchange with the cinema institution until they are discharged from the cinema premises, their emotions heightened, money spent and dispositional urges satisfied. However, this understanding of cinematic exchange, which implies a position of power for the cinema institution through playing with the terms of that exchange, must not be misunderstood as a relationship of exchange of unconditional certainty. Deferral of the counter-gift, whilst turning upon the proper socialization of cinema patrons with regard to the logic of cinematic exchange, is, like the entire symbolic system of recognition, exchange and deferral which functions in the cinema, subject to fluctuations and changes in relationships of power across other fields of influence. The potential cinema patron, inclined and primed to enter into relations of exchange with the cinema institution, is nevertheless subject to the injunctions inherent in their primary habitus, which are never overruled by the logic of the cinema institution. Indeed, all elements of the cinematic experience (location of exhibition sites, audience composition, dcor, the content of individual films, etc.) refer to broader systems of distinction and cultural differentiation, and are thus subject to alterations in those systems across time. Whilst the cinema institution attempts, through its relationship of exchange, to encode through disposition the ongoing patronage of the cinema, this patronage, like the institution itself, is subject to the historical distribution of capitals across different social groups. Whilst the practice of the attending the cinema may be designated as a potentiality for a specific social group (sharing a similar habitus), this potentiality may alter across time, depending upon the degree to which this group depends upon the profits available through the experience of cinema for the reproduction and extension of a) their existing capitals and, thus, b) their social position. Obviously, the degree of cultural legitimation of the cinema institution and the experience it offers is vital to its ongoing consumption by a range of social groups, but the dispersal of this legitimation across different cultural orders given ongoing symbolic battles for recognition by the institution (as previously noted) suggests that defining outright which social groups attend the cinema, and why, is always subject to the ebb and flow of history. Thus, the system of recognition and appreciation perpetuated by the cinema institution ensures the collective misrecognition of the gift exchange at the heart of cinematic exchange, obscuring the lack of any specific value to the experience of cinema whilst still attaching to it a price. The objective truth of cinematic consumption, its imaginary and intangible nature, is therefore intricately masked by socially instituted dispositions of exchange, ensuring patrons continue to attend the cinema and the cinema institution remains in existence. As Bourdieu understood of the Kabyle, the economy specific to the cinema constructs a consensus between parties that is systematically repressed or masked, thus allowing relationships of inequality to function given there is no outright

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admission of calculation by either side. The experience of cinema is therefore intricately bound up with the construction of what Bourdieu terms the communion or solidarity (enabled) through communication, which creates social ties474: the objective outcome of this solidarity is the designation of an agent as a cinema patron (both in the short and long term) - a participant in potential gift exchange and thus a recognised social actor who is properly positioned to win capitals (albeit those compatible with their respective competencies). This marking and all it confers upon the actor, both in terms of a being-perceived and a procedure for winning certain capitals, indeed functions as a method of differentiation, of distinction, in the social world (albeit a mode of distinction that is circumscribed within the terms of pedagogic communication maintained by the cinema institution), an occupied position that marks a place in social space that is significant (as opposed to insignificant and thus socially unrecognised). In fieldwork terms, identifying participation within cinematic exchange would entail constructing case study observations/interactions with interviewees (selected upon the basis of social proximity between researcher and subject) in order to determine the specific inflection of cinematic exchange a social actor experiences as a result of their situated practice. As Bourdieu demonstrates in The Weight of the World, attention to the posture, manner, tone and speech patterns of research subjects (informed by an understanding of the generative formula specific to the social construction of the interviewees) enables insight into what particular profits the cinematic experience offers those subjects and to what degree the cinematic arbitrary has been embodied by them in order to successfully pursue those profits (or not). Through the comprehension enabled by interview preparation and ongoing interaction with research subjects, an appropriately reflexive researcher may well be able to outline how an actors primary habitus comes to be refracted through the logic of cinematic exchange, in terms of to what degree the cultural arbitrary perpetuated by the cinema institution accords with, or extends, the principles of classification and taste divisions informing a specific social group (or, indeed, retards them). In this way, the language of distinction, the play of vision and division that results from the occupation of specific spaces within the social world, may be tentatively mapped in relation to cinema-going, providing insight into how embodied understanding and the pursuit of capital underpins cinematic phenomena. This understanding of cinematic experience therefore represents a decisive shift away from previous cultural and film theorization grounded (either explicitly or implicitly) in the fallacies of objectivism and subjectivism, providing a new understanding of the procedures of symbolic violence which engage cinema patrons as they occupy marked positions in social space and negotiate capital as a result of that position. That the cinema industry instituted such a system with
474

Pierre Bourdieu, Practical Reason (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998a), 100.

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its patrons may be seen as an historical accident, largely resulting from its position between conflicting economies of exchange, but this accident ensured that the cinematic experience remained one of the most enduring processes of symbolic exchange throughout the 20th century.

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Conclusion: The problem of, and possibilities for, future reflexive film study.
From his extensive work upon social theory, to his explicitly interventionist publications of the 1990s, Pierre Bourdieu offers a formidable intellectual resource for the reflexively inclined academic. Whilst his critique of systems of social stratification is wide ranging, his fundamental criticisms of the symbolic violence inherent within the representational practices of the intellectual field assists in laying bare the activities of the holders of the monopoly of the instruments of diffusion, thus clearing the way for the conditions of access to the universal to be available to all. For film studies, a discipline situated with respect to both the traditionally autonomous standards of the intellectual field and the demands of the open market, Bourdieus reflexive sociology provides three distinct benefits. First, it assists in producing understandings of cinematic phenomena that are entirely more reasonable as knowledge productions given their attention - through the rigorous practice of reflexivity - to field determination. Second, this attention to reflexivity (and the greater standards of scientific objectivity it introduces into academic practice) contributes to the ability of the field to achieve a greater level of autonomy from the heteronomous terms of the open market, which Bourdieu identifies as increasingly defining the logic of the media and publishing sector. Third, this emphasis upon reflexivity and the possible conditions of autonomy it may provide positions the field of film studies to achieve greater respectability across the broader academic community (thus providing the means to achieve a level of recognition historically sought after by the field, in terms of securing some enduring degree of legitimacy). Rather than an eclectic thinker lacking the specificity required by specialized fields of inquiry, Bourdieu therefore offers the tools for a comprehensive understanding of the situatedness of social life, providing the possibility for future film research that is fully cognizant of the mechanisms of symbolic violence. Indeed, reflexive sociology provides a program of inquiry essential for illuminating the complexities of cinematic experience - both as a knowledge production reflecting the terms of a specific cultural arbitrary, and as this experience exists in real world practice. By defining the key theoretical and methodological fallacies previously sustaining research across a range of intellectual traditions, Bourdieus program offers film studies the ability to approach cinematic experience with a dual focus, identifying the processes of symbolic violence that inform both academic knowledge production (and ensuing classifications of practice), and the practices of the habituated social actor engaging in cinematic exchange. This is a significant improvement upon previous approaches to the problem of cinematic experience, which display (albeit to varying degrees) the language of

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misrecognition that has resulted from adjustment to the conditions of possibility defining practice within the field of film studies (misrecognition that obscures the social conditions of possibility that enable a dominant logic to function in the field, and renders its arbitrary divisions as self-evident common sense). These arbitrary divisions have ensured that the discipline of film studies has - until recently - negated any systematic engagement with real world cinema audiences, and the complexities involved in approaching these audiences. Reflexive sociology demands this engagement, given that its fundamental principles derive from Bourdieus empirical work and constant attempt to realise the conditions necessary for reflexive objectivity. Indeed, the discipline of film studies requires the reflexive attitude for survival; given the continuing struggle between the disciplines within the humanities to impose a dominant principle of hierarchization and the very real impact this struggle has upon the everyday practices typical of academia (particularly in Australia), reflexivity is a necessary exercise in an intellectual world increasingly subject to the breathless faddism of postmodern theorization and the devaluation of traditional cultural fields as generally occurs under economic rationalism. The reflexive program is, of course, not without its limitations. Situatedness, and the point of view it embodies, can never be obliterated by the reflexive method - only objectively interrogated and, with ongoing vigilance, recognised as constantly framing ones practices. This intellectual wariness is not enough to entirely counteract common interest and the practice of symbolic violence, but Bourdieu indeed never suggests this to be possible. Perpetual reflection upon field determination is not an attempt to abolish interest, for to simply exist (i.e. to be socially recognised) in social space is, for Bourdieu, to differ, to be different,475 and thus engage in interested practices that contribute to differentiation. Rather, Bourdieu attempts to establish reflexivity as a precondition to responsible academic practice (i.e. responsible representation of the realities of the social world) and, subsequently, profitable academic practice (in the sense of reflexivity being recognised as an attractive [i.e. distinctive] property in intellectual fields and thus exhibiting some measure of capital value). However, whilst reflexivity (as theorized by Bourdieu) is thus situated as fundamentally important to exposing the assumptions of scholastic vision that guide the practices of objectification typical of academia, in practice it may induce a closed loop of endless reflection upon the reflexive capabilities of the researcher, hampering proper engagement with the object of study and, to some degree, compromising the effectiveness of research. Whilst insisting that reflexive analysis commence with a ruthlessly objective understanding of the position of the researcher, as is derived from mapping the nature of a specific social position, the dispositions associated with that position,

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and the position-takings that may be deemed to result from it, Bourdieu complicates matters somewhat by including throughout his own works a degree of autobiographical detail in order to (presumably) give nuance to his reflexive musings.476 This play between rigorous objectivity and subtle subjectivity belies to some degree Bourdieus stated intentions, opening the door to the possibility of slander masquerading as scientific inquiry, and suggesting the potential of reflexive practice to function as a conduit for symbolic violence. More significantly, it indicates the degree to which reflexive procedure remains unclear in practice (hampering the establishment of reflexivity as a systematic course of action to be followed in research), and therefore jeopardising the ability of reflexive study to be replicated and thus taken up broadly across intellectual fields. Indeed, the need for a systematic outlining of reflexivity in step-by-step terms bears greatly upon the theory of comprehension as outlined in The Weight of the World, where the construction of a theoretical equivalent of practical knowledge (in order to comprehend the situatedness of the object under study) is dependent upon a researcher thoroughly identifying, and thereby controlling, differing points of view of, and relationships to, the world. Whilst Bourdieu understands comprehension (as manifested in conversational analysis) to allow one to improvise on the spot, in the urgency of the interview, strategies of self-presentation and adaptive responses, encouragement and opportune questions, etc., so as to help respondents deliver up their truth or, rather, to be delivered of it,477 the ability to improvise requires a mastery of the conditions specific to the interview, a (successful) mapping of the objects situated position and a thorough objectification of the researchers own situated position. But Bourdieu does not provide enough practical instruction to assist the reflexive researcher in definitively separating the corporeal impulses, responses and habits of thought that necessarily frame their conduct within the research relationship from those generated by their theoretical construction of the objects practical sense. Indeed, one assumes that the ability to be thoroughly reflexive in the manner Bourdieu requires is dependent upon the existence of fields where reflexivity is a recognised and valued practice, thus inclining agents to pursue it - but the thorough embedding of the scholastic viewpoint in intellectual fields suggests this to be an aim of the future rather than a possibility in the present. The overall benefits of a Bourdieusian analysis of cinematic experience, however, far outweigh the problems of enacting the reflexive method in research practice (problems at least somewhat
Pierre Bourdieu, Practical Reason (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1998a), 9. Bourdieus postscript to Chapter One of Pascalian Meditations (titled Impersonal Confessions) is one such example; indeed, Bourdieu has referred to his work as a sort of autobiography. See Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), 33, and Pierre Bourdieu and Terry Eagleton, Doxa and Common Life, New Left Review, no.191 (1992): 117, respectively. 477 Pierre Bourdieu et al., The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999), 621.
476 475

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attributable to the infancy of the method) - given that to engage in reflexive sociology is to approach the problem of cinematic experience in terms of the legitimation of various knowledge formations and corresponding hierarchical orders across contemporary society. Through Bourdieu, the continuing existence of film studies as a discipline may be provisionally attributed to the drive for symbolic distinction and differentiation amongst the newer classes which, as a result of dispositions inculcated through either educated cultural capital (and accompanying upwardly mobile aspirations) or inherited economic capital (but diminishing cultural capital), primes these classes to aspire to lifestyles that are deemed to embody dominant class aesthetics. Reflexive sociology therefore allows the field of film studies to be interrogated not only to reveal the structural conditions informing a proposed area of study, but also how the legitimated practices within its borders contribute to the confirmation or denial of a symbolic position in the broader social world. To be situated within the field of film studies is thus to occupy a position with respect to ongoing symbolic struggle, both within the field and out; it is to exist in an arena increasingly functioning as a means to practice cultural differentiation and distinction, in terms of being financially viable, openly visible in the popular media and accessible to a new student body, but facing the erosion of traditional standards of knowledge production and legitimation in the face of increasingly heteronomous logic. Without the insights enabled by this particular sociological worldview, a non-reflexive investigation of cinematic experience is necessarily trapped within the terms of recognition and appreciation historically underpinning the field of film studies; it can offer neither a confident understanding of cinematic exchange in its lived, practical experience nor an account of the habits of thought that necessarily shape unreflexive knowledge production. As Bourdieu tirelessly states:

Someone who has incorporated the structures of the field (of a particular game) finds his place there immediately, without having to deliberate, and brings out, without even thinking about it, things to be done (business, pragmata) and to be done the right way, action plans inscribed like a watermark in the situation, as objective potentialities, urgencies, which orient his practice without being constituted as norms or imperatives clearly defined by and for consciousness and will.478

Future reflexive film study therefore necessarily depends upon adequate resolution of the tensions in Bourdieus work, particularly the disproportionate attention that is given to the theory of reflexive distance whilst the procedure for sustaining reflexivity in practice (through the
478

Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), 143.

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comprehension implicit in conservational analysis) remains ill defined. The fashioning of a general, workable procedure for attaining comprehension (attained, one assumes, through rigorous fieldwork) would allow cinematic experience to be properly rendered in an appropriately reflexive form, as the site where a properly predisposed and habituated social actor attempts to maximize his or her capital. The benefits for the field of film studies (as a discipline) in adopting reflexive sociology have already been outlined; however, for actors subject to the knowledge productions issuing from this field (whether they be field participants or objects of study) Bourdieusian reflexive understanding also confronts the circulation of symbolic violence in all its varied (and, most damagingly) embodied forms. As Bourdieu himself states:

As sceptical as one may be about the social efficacy of the sociological message, one has to acknowledge the effect it can have in allowing those who suffer to find out that their suffering can be imputed to social causes and thus to feel exonerated; and in making generally known the social origin, collectively hidden, of unhappiness in all its forms, including the most intimate, the most secret.479

The residual effects of practicing reflexive sociology are therefore to be promoted on par with the intellectual benefits, for if reflexive understanding is to achieve the status of common currency within intellectual universes, it must appeal to the habitual inclinations of this dominated fraction of the dominant class (i.e. their historical tendency to sympathise with subordinate social groups however much Bourdieu criticises the authenticity of this affiliation). To practice reflexive film study, therefore, is to engage in an academic undertaking thoroughly attentive to ones place in the world and the determinations that that situatedness necessarily imposes upon others. It is a full recognition of both the benefits and limits of ones thoughts and practices, demanding a resigned sociological acceptance of the never-ending divisions we make of the world in being situated, interested actors. Indeed, as Bourdieu continually laboured to reveal: What today presents itself as self-evident, established, settled once and for all, beyond discussion, has not always been so and only gradually imposed itself as such.480
479

Pierre Bourdieu et al., The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999), 629. 480 Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000), 174.

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Articles.

1. Allen, Chris, Bourdieus Habitus, Social Class and the Worlds of Visually Impaired Children, Urban Studies Vol. 41, no. 3 (2004). 2. Allen, Robert C., From exhibition to reception: reflections on the audience in film history, Screen 31:4 (1990). 3. Astruc, Alexandre, The birth of a new avant-garde: la camera-stylo, Ecran Francais 144, 30 March 1948. 4. Bennett, Bruce, Misrecognizing Film Studies, Film Philosophy 4, no. 5 (2000). 5. Blewitt, John, Film, ideology and Bourdieus critique of public taste, British Journal of Aesthetics 33 (4) (1993). 6. Bordwell, David, Lowering the Stakes: Prospects for a Historical Poetics of Cinema, Iris 1, no. 1 (1983). 7. Bordwell, David, Adventures in the Highlands of Theory, Screen 29, no. 1 (1988). 8. Bordwell, David, A Case for Cognitivism, Iris 9, Spring (1989). 9. Bourdieu, Pierre, The scholastic point of view, Cultural Anthropology Vol. 5, no. 4 (1990). 10. Bourdieu, Pierre and Eagleton, Terry, Doxa and Common Life, New Left Review 191 (1992). 11. Britton, Andrew The Philosophy of the Pigeonhole: Wisconsin Formalism and The Classical Style, Cineaction! 15, Winter (1988-89). 12. Campbell, Duncan and Millar, Stuart, Hollywood takes aim at the pirates, The Sunday Age (The Guardian), March 10, 2002. 13. Carroll, Noel, The Future of Allusion: Hollywood in the Seventies and Beyond, October, Summer (1981). 14. Clinton, Alan, Review: How A Film Theory Got Lost and Other Mysteries of Cultural Studies, Reconstruction 3, no. 3 (2003). 15. Copjex, Joan, The Orthopsychic Subject: Film Theory and the Reception of Lacan, October 49 (Summer, 1989). 16. Gunning, Tom, The Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant-Garde; Wide Angle Vol. 8, nos. 3-4 (1986).

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17. Gunning, Tom, Now You See It, Now You Dont: The Temporality of the Cinema of Attractions, The Velvet Light Trap 32, Fall (1993). 18. Haralovich, Mary Beth, The Social History of Film: Heterogeniety and Mediation, Wide Angle Vol. 8, no. 2 (1987). 19. Holt, Douglas B., Does Cultural Capital Structure American Consumption?, Journal of Consumer Research Vol. 25, Issue 1 (1998). 20. Jayamanne, Laleen and Rutherford, Anne, The Future of Cinema Studies in the Age of Global Media: Aesthetics, Spectatorship & Public Spheres, UTS Review Vol. 5, no. 1 (1999). 21. Jenkins, Richard, (Review of) Sociology in Question, Sociological Review, Vol. 43 Issue 1 (1995). 22. King, Barry, The Classical Hollywood Cinema: A Review by Barry King, Screen 27, no. 6 (1986). 23. King, Barry, A Reply to Bordwell, Staiger and Thompson, Screen 29, no. 1 (1988). 24. Lindh, Gunnel and Dahlin, Einar, A Swedish Perspective on the importance of Bourdieus Theories for Career Counseling, Journal of Employment Counseling Vol. 37, Issue 4 (2000). 25. Misson, Ray, Non Print, No Problem, Ken George (ed), V.C.E. English (VATE Occasional Paper) no. 3 (1995). 26. Moi, Toril, Appropriating Bourdieu: Feminist Theory and Pierre Bourdieus Sociology of Culture, New Literary History, Vol. 22, no. 4 (1991). 27. Penley, Constance, Feminism, Film Theory, and the Bachelor Machines, M/F no. 10 (1985). 28. Petro, Patrice, Reception Theories and the Avant-Garde, Wide Angle Vol. 8, no. 1 (1987). 29. Radway, Janice, Reception Study: Ethnography and the Problems of Dispersed Audiences and Nomadic Subjectivities, Cultural Studies 2, no. 3 (1998). 30. Robbins, Derek, The Practical Importance of Bourdieus Analysis of Higher Education, Studies in Higher Education Vol. 18, no.2 (1993).

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31. Schirato, Tony and Webb, Jen, Bourdieus Concept of Reflexivity as Metaliteracy, Cultural Studies 17, 3/4 (2003). 32. Stabile, Carol A. and Morooka, Junya, Between Two Evils, I Refuse to Choose the Lesser, Cultural Studies 17 (2003). 33. Stadler, Harold A., The Spectacle of Theory: An Historical Speculation, Wide Angle Vol. 8, no. 1 (1987). 34. Staiger, Janet, The Handmaiden of Villainy: methods and problems in studying the historical reception of a film, Wide Angle 8, no. 1 (1986). 35. Sterne, Jonathan, Bourdieu, Technique and Technology, Cultural Studies 17, 3/4 (2003). 36. Sulkenen, Pekka, Society Made Visible - On the Cultural Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, Acta Sociologica 25, no.2 (1982). 37. Swartz, David, From critical sociology to public intellectual: Pierre Bourdieu and politics, Theory and Society Vol. 32, Issue 5 (2003). 38. Thompson, Kristin, Wisconsin Project or Kings Projection?, Screen 29, no.1 (1988). 39. Wacquant, Loic J.D., Towards a Reflexive Sociology: A Workshop with Pierre Bourdieu, Sociological Theory, Vol. 7 (1989). 40. Wood, Robin Wood, Questions of Value, Cineaction 62 (2003).

Articles from electronic journals/online.

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Bordwell, David, Studying Cinema, David Bordwells Website on Cinema, Internet address:

www.geocities.com/david_bordwell/studying.htm