Sketch for a Self-Analysis

128 Pages·2008·10.94 MB·English

by  Pierre Bourdieu

Sketch for a Self-Analysis
PIERRE BOURDIEU
Translated by
RICHARD NICE
The University of Chicago Press
Chicago and London

This is not an autobiography
Pierre Bourdieu

Contents
Publisher's Note to the French Edition ix
Sketch for a Self-Analysis i
Index i14

Publisher's Note to
the French Edition
A sociological analysis excluding psychology,
except for some moods.
Pierre Bourdieu, preparatory notes
This text, which Pierre Bourdieu wrote between October
and December 2001 - but which he had worked and
reflected on for several years, wondering in particular what
form it should take - was conceived, starting from his last
lecture at the College de France, as a new (extended and
reworked) version of the last chapter of Science of Science
and Reflexivity} And, to mark clearly the continuity
between the two texts, he gave them the same title: 'Sketch
for a self-analysis'. He had decided that the book should
first be published in Germany" and, although he envisaged
reworking it for the French edition, we have chosen to
publish the German version, only adding some biblio
graphical notes for the explicit references.
Just as he had made his entry to the College de France
with a very reflexive 'Lecture on the lecture','" so Pierre
I Science of Science and Reflexivity (Cambridge: Polity, 2004).
II Ein So{iologischer Selbstversuch (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 2002).
jii Lecon sur la lecon (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1982), trans, as
'A lecture on the lecture', in In Other Words: Essays towards a
Reflexive Sociology (Cambridge: Polity, 1990), pp. 177-98.
Publisher s Note to the French Edition
Bourdieu decided to deliver his last lecture by subjecting
himself, as if as a final challenge, to the exercise of reflexivity
that he had defined throughout his life as a researcher as one
of the necessary preliminaries to scientific research.
He knew that to take himself as his object exposed him to
the risk not only of being accused of self-indulgence, but
also of giving weapons to all those who only wait for an
opportunity to deny the scientific character of his socio
logy - precisely on the grounds of his own position and his
trajectory - and who do not see that the exercise of reflex
ivity was built up over a long time as an instrument of sci-
entificity. In this supremely paradoxical project, it was much
less a question of an ostentatious gesture ('to summon
the reader to ask himself why he is reading this', Pierre
Bourdieu wrote in his preparatory notes) than of an entirely
original undertaking that would finallyb ring the researcher
into conformity with his conception of scientific truth, a will
to give a kind of ultimate guarantee of the scientific charac
ter of the propositions set out throughout his whole oeuvre,
by means of a very controlled return upon himself ('I place
the most objective analysis at the service of what is most
subjective,' he also wrote, commenting on this text).
It is clear now that he was right to fear the ill-use that
could be made of it. In one of the early versions he wrote:
'This is not an autobiography. That genre is forbidden to
me not only because I have identified and denounced the
biographical illusion; it is also profoundly antipathetic to
me, and the aversion mingled with fear that has led me to
discourage several "biographers" is inspired by reasons
that I think legitimate.'
December 2003
Sketch for a Self-Analysis
I
do not intend to indulge in the genre of autobiography,
which I have often enough described as both con
ventional and illusory. I would simply like to try to
gather together and present some elements for a self-
socioanalysis. I do not conceal my apprehensions, which
go far beyond the habitual fear of being misunderstood. I
have indeed the feeling that, particularly on account of the
scale of my path through social space and the practical
incompatibility of the social worlds that it links without
reconciling them, I cannot wager - being far from sure of
achieving it myself with the instruments of sociology —
that the reader will be able to bring to bear on the experi
ences that I shall be led to evoke, the gaze that, in my view,
is the appropriate one.
In adopting the point of view of the analyst I oblige
(and authorize) myself to retain all the features that are
pertinent from the point of view of sociology, in other
words necessary for sociological explanation and under
standing, and only those. But, far from seeking to produce
thereby, as one might fear, an effect of closure, by impos
ing my interpretation, 1 intend to subject that experience,
set out as honestly as possible, to critical confrontation, as
if it were any other object. I am well aware that, analysed
in that perspective, and as is appropriate all cases, in