Bourdieu - The Rules of Art (Chapter 1)

THE CONQUEST OF AUTONOMY in THE RULES OF ART: GENESIS AND STRUCTURE OF THE LITERARY FIELD, trans. Susan Emanuel, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995

In the first chapter to his The Rules of Art: Genesis and Structure of the Literary Field (trans. Susan Emanuel, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995), Bourdieu starts off laying out the dynamics of an emerging (literary) field as the sociopolitical forms of domination have changed in the late 19^th century. Through this mapping, he aims to better understand or display the social conditions of this literary transformation, as a result of which literature was constituted as “a world apart, subject to its own laws,” particularly in the works of people like Baudelaire and Flaubert (the latter's L'education Sentimentale was the subject matter of the introductory chapter). This chapter thus stands in a central position in Bourdieu's attempt to challenge the argument of the disconnect between society and literature as a pure art that does not lend itself to social analysis.

A structural subordination

With the appearance of the bourgeois, whom Bourdieu describes to be a self-made man, “an uncultured parvenu” with poor taste, artists and writers found themselves subjected to a new power field that sought to establish an artistic field in line with its vision of the world, one that is “profoundly hostile to intellectual things triumph within the whole society.” As the more easily readable and immediately entertaining feuilleton (serialized novel) replaced the more metaphorical and difficult-to-interpret poem as the most sought-after form of literature by the bourgeois, the aristocratic salon culture of the previous century (which either established links through direct financial dependence or provided other types of protection through the artist's allegiance) gave way to what Bourdieu terms a “structural subordination,” where artists had to respond to a market dynamic where artistic value was determined through either sales value or positions secured within the field of journalism, or subscription to a value system dictated by the above-mentioned bourgeois tastes. In other words, accumulation of economic capital had become very difficult if not impossible for an artist outside these predetermined conditions. While the salon culture continued to provide an alternative, albeit weak, to these conditions, it was very much “stained” by, and rendered secondary to the requirements of a bourgeois market. It is thus within this framework that Bourdieu locates Flaubert and Baudelaire as the proponents of “pure art,” which he does not at all see as a politically detached form of art, but to the contrary, one that responds and reacts to this new order through its refusal to submit to these new dynamics. What thus seems to be challenging for such rebels is not only the necessity for an already existing economic capital that would allow them to operate independently of the market but also the difficulty to obtain what Bourdieu calls the symbolic capital (accumulated prestige, celebrity, consecration and honor) as the prize-giving or recognition-providing institutions were increasingly becoming connected to (and often dependent on) the political ruling class.

Questions that can be addressed to this particular sub-section:

- Wasn't the salon of the 18^th century subject to similar hierarchy of tastes as far as who is paying is concerned? Is Bourdieu romanticizing the past a bit here?