The Spatial Logic of Social Struggle by Fogle Nikolaus;

Author:Fogle, Nikolaus;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2011-04-13T04:00:00+00:00

Synoptic and Narrative Illusions

By way of conclusion, I would like to return to the table and flow-chart presented above. I briefly mentioned above that these diagrams run the risk of perpetuating the synoptic illusion because they represent as synchronous processes that are only realized in practice. The addition of temporal indicators (arrows) in the flow-chart does not go far enough in eliminating this error, since the time of practice is radically different from the time of the timeline or the chronometer. What’s more, they both represent as separate and distinct categories that are in practice blurred and continuous. Like Bourdieu’s synoptic diagram of oppositions in the Kabyle society, which had the effect of covering up the “similarity in difference” that related the sets of oppositions to one another, the above chart covers up the fact that, in practice, there is no strict differentiation between social space and physical space, as well as the fact that it is only objectivist meta-analysis that posits a distinction between subjectivist and objectivist points of view. If diagrammatic representations do not preserve the structures of practice, however, then neither do narrative representations. The processes presented in the last two sections, namely the transmission of physical space into social space and the translation of social space into physical space, cannot finally be regarded as separate processes. In practice, they overlap completely, not only because they occur simultaneously, but also because, at the level of the habitus, the distinction between the social and the physical in terms of which we have organized our narratives does not exist. The absence of this distinction is, as mentioned above, the condition for the habitus’ ability to function as an analogical operator between social and physical structures. What the narratives do preserve, however, is the irreversibility of practical processes, which is what makes the history of the system embodied in the habitus effective upon the prevailing structures of the moment. Irreversibility is the form of temporality appropriate to practice. Moreover, even the objectivist moment of research must accurately represent processes whose progression is governed by their irreversibility, such as the concentration and dispersal of social classes and housing types.

Nonetheless, momentarily separating the two “directions” of the dialectic reveals similarities and differences in the two processes. In general, both directions are characterized by a naturalized encounter between the habitus and a pre-structured space, followed by the expression of that habitus in the individual’s behavior. Only at the level of the total population can the expression of habitus be observed to produce a differentiated social or physical space. The key differences between the two directions are the different modes of mediation through which collective action structures space. Social space, on the one hand, is differentiated by the individual agents’ selection of articles of taste, levels of behavioral refinement, the choice of occupation, and so on. In Bourdieu’s discussions of this process, a considerable role is given to the function of the habitus, although it is clear that the material conditions that give rise to the habitus, and which provide the habitus with its context, cannot be ignored.

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