Postcolonial Metacriticism — The ‘Second Wave’

Abstract

If we are to introduce the work of Pierre Bourdieu to our discussion of Irish postcolonial studies it is worth keeping in mind Toril Moi’s concluding remarks to her 1997 essay, ‘The Challenge of the Particular Case: Bourdieu’s Sociology of Culture and Literary Criticism’. Moi states:

Even the most cursory account of Bourdieu must try to apply its insights to a concrete case, or it will fail to grasp Bourdieu’s intellectual project. One should not exaggerate Bourdieu’s intellectual debt to Wittgenstein. Yet Bourdieu is Wittgensteinian in the sense that he knows his theories make no sense outside the language games to which they belong. If we remove Bourdieu’s concepts from every specific context of significant use, we will never be able to do anything interesting, or even remotely relevant, with them. (1997: 508)

In this instance Moi throws light on two of the most important aspects of Bourdieu’s critical methodology. Firstly, Moi gestures towards Bourdieu’s insistence that a theoretical framework that is neglectful of practical applications or responsibilities is simply impotent. Theoretical posturing is anathema to Bourdieu’s engaged sociological analyses, but it is also undermined by Bourdieu in his numerous metacritical responses to ‘theory’ as an academic and intellectual phenomenon. Secondly, Moi notes the co-implication of all social constituencies in a hierarchically structured symbolic economy. With more than a hint of neo-Marxist thought implicit in his work, Bourdieu highlights the mechanics of social and cultural capital, which are mediated through various, but implicated, linguistic economies.