Bourdieusian Reflections on Language: Unavoidable Conditions of the Real Speech Situation

The main purpose of this paper is to shed light on Pierre Bourdieu’s conception of language. Although he has dedicated a significant part of his work to the study of language and even though his analysis of language has been extensively discussed in the literature, almost no attention has been paid to the factthat Bourdieu’s account of language is based on a number of ontological presuppositions, that is, on a set of universal assumptions about the very nature of language. This article aims to fill this gap in the literature by offering a detailed overview of 10 key features which, from a Bourdieusian point of view, can be regarded as inherent in language. On the basis of this enquiry,the study seeks todemonstrate that——contraryto commonbelief——there is not only a Bourdieusian sociology of language but also a Bourdieusian philosophy of language, which provides a useful theoretical framework for examining the unavoidable conditions of the real speech situation. The paper draws to a close by reflecting on the flaws and limitations of Bourdieu’s approach to language

A Reply to My Critics: The Critical Spirit of Bourdieusian Language

Drawing on my article “Bourdieusian reflections on language: Unavoidable conditions of the real speech situation”, this paper provides a detailed response to the above commentaries by Lisa Adkins, Bridget Fowler, Michael Grenfell, David Inglis, Hans-Herbert Kögler, Steph Lawler, William Outhwaite, Derek Robbins and Bryan S. Turner. The main purpose of this “Reply to my critics” is to reflect upon the most important issues raised by these commentators and thereby contribute to a more nuanced understanding of key questions arising from Bourdieu’s analysis of language

Unavoidable Idealizations and the Reality of Symbolic Power

After the publication of Simon Susen\u27s Bourdieusian reflections on language: Unavoidable conditions of the real speech situation , there can be no doubt about the centrality of language for Bourdieu\u27s reconstruction of practice. The crucial role of language should perhaps come as no surprise for a social theorist whose undeniable achievement consists in a rehabilitation of the role of culture within a post-Marxian framework. And yet, Susen\u27s analysis opens up a new challenge and a set of new questions regarding how exactly the mediation of reflexive agency and power-defined social contexts is to be understood. My comments will (1) re-situate Bourdieu\u27s language account in his overall theory, (2) reconstruct the failures of hermeneutic idealism, (3) revisit language after Bourdieu and Habermas and (4) suggest that attending to field-based dialogic practices can point towards a reconciliation of a normative with a power-oriented account of social agency. © 2013 Taylor & Francis

Reflexivity and globalization: Conditions and capabilities for a dialogical cosmopolitanism

This essay develops the core intuition that we need to transform the objective condition of globalization into a reflexive consciousness of a cosmopolitan connectedness. We require a cosmopolitan self-understanding that allows us to respond in a normatively guided way to objective processes that undermine the usual venues of political will formation. Since our global connectedness in terms of economic and political integration is ongoing and seemingly inevitable, we need a similarly inclusive and global approach to critically respond to the challenge of these unconstrained forces. The proposal is to develop a dialogical cosmopolitanism which is not based on a new meta-level of abstract universal norms, but grounded in agentive capabilities. Hermeneutic capabilities which comprise contextual perspective-taking are introduced, developing shared yet fallible norms, and critically reflecting on the power relations involved. These agent-based capabilities would allow the situated agents themselves to understand the objective forces that define current globalization and provide normative resources for a different, cosmopolitan globalization

Dialogue and community: The ethical claim of tradition

The essay reconstructs an ethical approach towards history. The hermeneutic insight into the requirement for a dialogical access to the meaning of history is shown to entail an ethical dimension. The central thesis is that tradition raises an existential claim towards the interpreter that requires a dialogical recognition of the other\u27s expressed perspectives. The essay develops this thesis via a concept of tradition as an intersubjective community based on dialogue, which is inspired by Hans-Georg Gadamer\u27s reflections on the intertwinement of dialogical interpretation, tradition, and the ethical recognition of the other. The Gadamerian concept of tradition will nevertheless be radically revised so as to be suitable for historical interpretation. Dialogical recognition will now reach beyond the textual claims of linguistically raised validity claims to include an existential openness towards the other\u27s fully situated life-projects and narratives. The argument culminates in the introduction of an existential claim that history entails, and from there establishes a thorough rejection and critique of interpretive objectivism as well as of interpretive presentism

The crisis of a hermeneutic ethic

The central question of the essay is: How is a hermeneutic ethic possible, given that its conditions of possibility may seem in crisis if explicit criteria for normative evaluation are rejected and the interpreting subject seems fully integrated into a process of open-ended contextual understanding. The emerging possibility of a situated ethos of dialogue, however, is challenged by the administrative and instrumental destruction of tradition. In response, a careful reinterpretation of Hans-Georg Gadamer\u27s claim that interpretation is per se ethical provides us with the normative ideal of dialogical openness. Yet Gadamer\u27s broad-brushed rejection of social-scientific research is replaced by the subtle proposal for a reflective co-operation between dialogical understanding and sociological thought. Now the social sciences and social theory either reconstruct empirical sources of the ethos of dialogue, or they deconstruct (via empirical analysis) the forces of discursive and social power that undermine the realization of our ethical potential. © 2014 Philosophy Today

Agency and the Other: On the intersubjective roots of self-identity

The essay argues that a systematic reconstruction of the intersubjective grounds of self-consciousness and self-identity will yield a complex non-reductive notion of agency. Core features of human agency include intentional causality, conscious understanding thereof, as well as the capacity to distinguish self-caused from externally caused phenomena. By analyzing how self-consciousness emerges from intersubjective perspective-taking and dialogue, a socially embedded and symbolically mediated notion of self-identity-one which is able to preserve the core features of human agency-becomes viable. G.H. Mead\u27s work serves as heuristic framework to articulate the extent to which the Other\u27s irreducible agency is constitutive of the self\u27s capacity to establish an identity, now understood as a socially situated narrative self-interpreting process. Self-identity reveals to be an essential open yet not fragmented dynamic, a socially situated yet agent-driven phenomenon, and ethically indebted to the Other as providing the essential gift of selfhood. © 2010 Elsevier Ltd