Literary Field and the Question of Method – Revisited

Jaroslava Gajdosova

doi:10.18778/1733-8077.4.2.04

Authors

Jaroslava Gajdosova New School for Social Research, USA

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/1733-8077.4.2.04

Keywords:

Field theory, Literary sociology, Literary history, Husserlian phenomenology, Collective identity, Collective memory, Critical sociology

Abstract

Field theory is one of the most efficient and influential analytical schemes in the critical sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, which he consistently developed in his model of literary field. The analytical reliability of the model derives from the way in which Bourdieu combines the structural category of “field” with the phenomenological categories of “doxa” and “habitus”. This article argues that Bourdieu’s selective application of the two phenomenological categories produces a static structural model of literary field where all processes are explained in causal and deterministic terms. The article further seeks to present an alternative reading of the same categories within a discursive model where the processes in literary field and the motivations of its agents are driven by field’s discourses rather than by its rigid structures.

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Author Biography

Jaroslava Gajdosova, New School for Social Research, USA

Jaroslava Gajdosova is a Sociology PhD student at the New School for Social Research. Her current research focuses on narrative, memory, and identity in German postwar literature. Its focal point is the narrative of German guilt, its limits vis-à-vis the culturally pluralistic society, and the need of its forgetting as a way toward a more integrative framework for social interaction. Her theoretical interests include the application of critical, poststructural, and phenomenological theories to qualitative research models.

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