Going dark with Agent Bauer.
A very important announcement.
Like my husband Jack Bauer “I’m going dark” i.e. I am taking leave from the “commercial world of work” to write. It’s all agreed and I have a timeline and everything. This means I am going to be holed up in my office, chained to my desk, with only Miumiu cat & various melancholy play-lists for company. No day time TV for me. No sir. Until recently I watched TV through a high def projector and it was fantastic for getting out of the habit of daytime TV. I can’t afford curtains and the light in the south-facing lounge bleached the image on the wall out. The projector went with the long suffering b.f, so I am reduced to ye ordinary olde worlde TV at the mo, but I don’t feel the urge to watch vets in practice on holiday under the hammer. As yet. Plus I have Sky+ one of the greatest innovations of the modern world.
I factored in 2 days of organization/procrastinations and as part of that I went to the library this morning to pick up a copy of Bourdieus’ Distinction.
WTF?
This is a text that was fundamental to my M.A dissertation. This is a text I have read and re-read several times over the last decade in order to be able to complete my own bachelors, and later help undergraduates enjoy his wisdom in their first year of basic media studies.
Seriously? I mean seriously. Distinction is one of, if not the most impenetrable books I have ever tried to read. Good lord, how did Pierre get so famous? Talk about over convoluted, complicated, drawn out phrasing why don’t you. I am wondering if it will do to actually admit this in my own work. Dare I say it? Bourdieu for christsake SPIT IT OUT.
Here’s a snippet from page 101. He says class and social condition “conceals the structure of the symbolic space marked out by whole sets of the structured practices, all the distinct and distinctive lifestyles which are defined objectively and sometime subjectively in and through their mutual relationship”.
I won’t translate because this is a blog post and not a seminar tutorial nor my actual
thesis, which by the way I should be writing instead of this. And I’m gonna in a minute.
Here is a picture of Bourdieu first.
I think he has gotten away with it for so long because in the indices of academic attractiveness he is a little bit dishy. ( Note academia differs from outside world, because in academia people look funny)
Back to going dark, which is what I want to talk about. Apologies in advance if I go quiet on here or if the nature of the posts become totally fruit loop loony la la. I was thinking of changing the name of the blog to the unstable ramblings of a troubled mind as I suspect for a short while it is going to be more of a stream of consciousness slash diary of a PhD. I am also well aware of the long historical tradition of thinkers going completely ga-ga when writing up. Marx turned into a total arsehole, Wittgenstien apparently went to live in a cave for 10 years and Althusser murdered his wife.
What of me?
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