Subjects of Objectivation. Exercises in Reflexive Socioanalysis

An examination of the unending secondary literature on Pierre Bourdieu (PB) should advocate caution in organizing a new special issue on his legacy. Besides the risk of adding yet another layer of exegetical commentaries to the vast body of work already out there (PB, after all, is frequently referenced as the world’s most cited social scientist), this caution is remarkably motivated by Bourdieusian reasons. PB warns at length against any easy way to accumulate symbolic capital, putting oneself forward in opposition to (or in alliance with) established figures; he identifies the real substance of many roaring declarations of originality and as many falsely revolutionary intellectual breaks, unmasking underlying strategies of position-taking; he also underscores the irrelevance of endless discussions about what authors really meant and who got them right or wrong; moreover, he endorses a pragmatic approach to classics, claiming that scholars have to be picky consumers of supposedly incompatible paradigms. Rather than undermining the concrete possibilities of doing sociology, this confirms a quite well-known insight: PB is particularly good to think with when considering such concrete possibilities, that is, when sociologists take the trouble to turn their professional gaze upon their own practice.