Metanoia: Bourdieu, Foucault, and postmodern sillinesses
“The eye and the things it perceives communicate through the same Logos...” — Michel Foucault
“Look for the self-referential point – that is where the problem is likely to be” — John Gall
In his work Misere du Monde Bourdieu describes several techniques which he feels are useful methodologies concerning gathering data about how humans view the world. In his analysis of these methodologies which included primarily interviews, surveys, and observations he concluded that the entire question of data gathering and encoding in this area is so open to potential bias, that it becomes largely a wasted effort. Borrowing from physics, he reinterprets Heisenberg to say that the investigator interjects bias merely by looking at data:
"... the investigator contributes to create the conditions of the appearance of an extra-ordinary speech, which could never not have been held, and which, however, was already there, awaiting its conditions of actualisation" — Pierre Bourdieu
At another point, he suggests “active and methodical listening”, a variation of Foucault’s “intelligent gaze” to often be preferable to the more common non-directed (and presumably somewhat more objective), questionnaire. Although in footnotes in his ’Comprenre’, Bourdieu does cover some of the problems and challenges faced in encoding from transcriptions, overall he seems largely uninterested in the topic. He seems to feel that ’active listening’ like ’intelligent gaze’ is rather more useful than the scientific method.
This approach to research is largely anathema to the scientific method, particularly as used by other social researchers such as Levi-Strauss and Garfinkel. Yet it is in harmony with the approach of philosophers such as Foucault, Jaspers, or the existential views of Kierkegaard, Merleau-Ponty, and of course, Sartre. That is to say, there is an underlying belief by these philosophers that the built-in intelligence of the observer is sufficient to draw valid conclusions. To stretch a point, one might even say these writers are in effect proposing the validity of doxa studying itself.
Or said more formally, there is an implicit rejection of a priori fact in favour of self-generated meaning.
There is however some suggestion of a methodology proposed for proceeding from structural analysis. For example Boudieu early in his career made considerable use of frequency distributions and statistics in his studies of education and the French university. Later in life though he seems to have rejected this approach. It is my impression that his and others’ preferred methodology is simply that the interviewer or data collector be consistent, and use metanoia - a sort of intelligent gaze from high above - to transcribe data. I do not deny the utility of this, but do question the objectivity. It seems to me that Bourdieu (and other similar writers - Foucault immediately springs to mind), are implicitly guided by Winograd’s well known statement concerning self-referent research, and thereby subject to their own doxa of observation and conclusion:
“Knowledge is guided by interest to know and by the person who produces it” — Terry Winograd
Here of course Winograd as a mathematician, linguistics, and AI researcher is speaking of particular (i.e. personal) knowledge. That is, great care must be taken in drawing universals from particulars which are demonstrably subjective. This is not to indicate that such conclusions may be erroneous, but rather to indicate that they must be considered more descriptive or constructivist rather than as truths stemming from an experimental ontology. Objectivity in the common sense is for researchers in the tradition of metanoia, servitude to subjectivity. Consider for example Bourdieu’s statement:
"... the concern to control his discourse, that is the reception of his discourse, imposes on the sociologist a scientific rhetoric which is not necessarily a rhetoric of scientificity: he needs to inculcate a scientific reading, rather than belief in the scientificity of what is being read--except in so far as the latter is one of the tacit conditions of a scientific reading" — Pierre Bourdieu
In this one cannot help but feel a substitution of the term ’philosophy’, ’curriculum study’, or indeed ’metanoia’ for his ’scientificity’ and ’scientific’ would give equal objection to his own methodological predilections. At any rate, I fee there are two obvious critisicms which can be made here: 1) a general lack of rigour and consistency, and 2) the assumption that a wise all seeing observer is sufficient to acquire and interpret observation is patently false.
As an interesting aside, mathematical formulae can be self-referential as well. In Tupper’s famous self-referential formula for example mathematical expressions evaluated for some constant N as pixels graphed in two dimensions, actually reproduce a visual copy of the formula itself. But unlike Foucault’s ’contribution’ self-referential formulae have some real-world validity - they be used in certain encryption algorithms for example. Such algorithms are not breakable by normal methods, and are almost immune to brute force attack.
At any rate, the lack of rigour or consistency, the assumption that a wise all seeing observer is sufficient to acquire and interpret observation, has generally not been well received amongst those well versed in the sciences.
This of course is the old argument of absolutist realism versus historic relativism (ie. social construct apply to science as much as to anything else). What rot!
Real science is not antithetical to relativism. Any attempt to hammer this false epistemological divide is... illconceived. Holding mathematical or logical principles as dealing more with absolute truth than say, post-modern truisms, arises IMHO from both a misunderstanding of mathematics (which has many relativistic views - n-valued logics anyone?) and of postmodernism itself (which has many absolutist views - Friere for example).
But let us pretend for a moment that this divide does exist. And so we can consider ethnomethodologists, who also approach the same subject matter as Bourdieu. But rather than embrace the Strauss-like idea of a superior mind with a superior view being able to tease out information objectively, the ethnomethodologist attempts a logical enquiry into how human conduct operated in real-time. He minimises the theorising or stipulative operationalization of a Bourdieu or Foucault, opting rather for a detailed logical analysis of human conduct and circumstance.
Hence as habitus study can be thought to be highlighting the invisible ground of socially standardised practise within a disciple, H. Garfinkle and subsequent ethnomethodologists sought to extract the “seen but unnoticed” background to human behaviour through experimental and replicable observation. Such ethnomethodologists as Sacks, and Lynch wonderful work in elucidating the ethnomethodology of natural sciences, particularly neurobiology exemplify an excellence and verifiability which is IMHO missing from Bourdieu’s philosophical approach to such study.
Be that as it may, my point is that ethnomethodologists and philosophers such as Foucault and Bourdieu clearly indicate that there is an unseen, experimentally elucidatable, background to many human activities. For example, there may be underlying properties of conversational exchange. Certainly this is a theme found throughout much of AI research in language, morphological language theory, several transformational grammars, and much of psycholinguists. Garfinkle was one of the first to elucidate his thesis with concrete experimentation.
He asked his students to engage someone they knew well in conversation and to imagine and act on the assumption that what the other person was saying was directed by ulterior and hidden motivations. And that these where in fact the real motives behind what the interviewee was saying.In other words, students were to portray a deliberate distrust. Naturally enough, students reported that there where many hurt feelings amongst the experimental subjects.
The idea was that there exists a strong relationship between common understandings during human conversational interactions and social affects. For example in the above experiment, Garfinkle hypothesised that shared background knowledge (in this case exemplified by trust), is hidden and unstated, but may be experimentally shown to exist when the rules that govern its existence are violated. Garfield called this a ’common understanding’, which existed entirely in the character of actions which are in compliance, and may be demonstrated to exist by deliberate actions which are not in compliance (note the difference here from Bourdieu’s formulations regarding the same subject matter).
In other words, both the philosophical approach of Bourdieu et al and the approach of ethnomethodologists and their intellectual progeny in sociology and psychology believed that there was a background knowledge which was societally institutionalised, such that its practitioners viewed it as common sense knowledge and behaviour – something that everyone knows but which seldom enters overt discourse. This they called the ground upon which all other social activity was based.
But the approach to studying this was very different. Bourdieu believed that it could best be studied by a superior person adopting Foucault’s intelligent gaze; ethnomethodologists felt it best to develop more objective non-experimenter based techniques. The former approach may be fun, but it is only the latter I would suggest, which is replicable. Lack of replicability in studying a given quasar explosion is fine; lack of it when studying and philosophising over human activity is not.
Finally, it is worth taking a moment to consider the vagueness in the writing of some postmodernists of the ’intelligent gaze’ persuasion. Kimball and his students have argued that despite prodigious written output by the best know names in habitus/doxa study, there are proportionally few novel ideas. And those few which are relatively new, are couched in purposefully vague language.
I agree. Moreover I would tentatively suggest that the voluminous output and often circumlocutory language, have perhaps combined to create a mini-industry for academics who have have built careers on interpreting the ideas of proponents of ’intelligent gaze’. Just look at those who write about Foucault’s ideas. Good grief - everyone with a different opinion, teasing out meaning from Foucault’s writings, building their careers upon interpretation... perhaps they ll without necessarily saying anything new or substantive, or proving their arguments with recognized experimental methodology.
Perhaps you will agree that unfortunately there are those in the literature and academia who use the periphrasis of say postmodernism, as an excuse for their own interpretive embellishments. From their high perches in the empyrean of academe they find no methodological difficulty in issuing declarative statements concerning the habitus of a society or group from which they have distanced themselves, or in which they have never participated. And moreover a discoursing upon a scientific methodology they in which they have never participated and so clearly do not understant.
For example, on can surmise to whom the following quotation applies:
"Postmodern thinkers unabashedly claim the right to concoct their own personal definitions of reality and falsehood, of truth and lie. Sometimes, this is just silly—as when they insist that things like one’s sex or the laws of physics are just ’social constructs’. Other times, this becomes a dangerous license for disruptive propaganda or sociopathic behaviour.” — Karl Zinsmeister
I concur - postmodernist relativism is the ideal tool of the
propagandist. Once can see the results of emphasising such relativism in the abrogation of truth (colloquially termed ’truthiness’) by the war mongers of several nations.
Camille Paglia is particular telling in her criticism of Foucault and other ’intelligent gaze’ proponents:
“The supposedly innovative ideas for which his gullible acolytes feverishly hail him were in fact borrowed from a variety of familiar sources, from Friedrich Nietzsche, Emile Durkheim and Martin Heidegger to Americans such as sociologist Erving Goffman.” — Camille Paglia
Her feeling is that many academics have become lazy in approaching questions relating to habitus and doxa. To paraphrase her arguments, they accept the writings of Foucault and Bourdieu’s followers as metaphors for learning. The result of such acceptance has created a hidden curriculum for students wherein disagreement with the greatness or the theories of these writers is seen as a travesty. Sigh.
Such is the common lot of academics. Post modern thought is IMHO largely new words for old ideas.
. Although in footnotes in his ’Comprenre’, Bourdieu does cover some of the problems and challenges faced in encoding from transcriptions, overall he seems largely uninterested in the topic. He seems to feel that ’active listening’ like ’intelligent gaze’ is rather more useful than the scientific method.
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