Eternalising the Arbitrary.: The profane legacy of Pierre Bourdieu

Abstract

The death of Pierre Bourdieu in 2002 had the effect of bringing new light to his work both in the academic field and with regard to research in the social sciences. In this context, this article takes on the critical question of knowing what to do beyond Bourdieu in a perspective that aims at deepening and. Reconstructing his project, refusing the alternative of placing him behind a pane as suitably catalogued and dissected the path chosen by the author is to locate in Bourdieu the basic principle of his work: revealing the eternal as arbitrary. The impulse provided by refocusing this basic principle leads to the logic and focalizing of a productive critique of Bourdieu's perspective, as well as to the locus of both the force and the weakness of his work The article begins by exploring the nature of the project of going beyond Bourdieu, emphasizing potential problems In the final part of the article, the author asks how the last works of Basil Bernstein – almost universally ignored in the present discussions that unite both these theoreticians – can illustrate the way for the resolution of such problems and, in this way, how the intelectual project that Bourdieu started can be developed.