Literary field

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The theory of the literary field is a summary of the scientific publications by the French cultural sociologist Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002) on all questions that deal with the sociology of literature and its specific issues. Bourdieu's major work in the sociology of literature, Les règles de l'art. Genèse et structure du champ litteraire , which combines all the knowledge gained to date in a monograph, dates from 1992 and has been in German translation since 1999 under the title The rules of art. Genesis and structure of the literary field . It deals with the development and autonomization of the literary field in France in the 19th century and in recent years has also received a positive response in German-language literary studies, especially in Romance and German studies , and has led to follow-up research and further developments.

Title page of Bourdieu's major work on the theory of the literary field

Basics

Central elements of Bourdieu's theory of the literary field are habitus and field theory , capital theory , the concept of relative autonomy and the theory of social space . There are complex relationships and interactions between these theoretical building blocks, which in their entirety provide a model of the functioning of the literary industry, which can be applied to all stages of development of modern literary communication and has meanwhile established and established itself as an independent literary method.

Social space and capital

With the help of the concept of social space, the structure of the distribution of social resources that appear invisible at first glance should be empirically and statistically recorded. Bourdieu conceives of the most important of those social resources as economic capital , i.e. personal property with monetary value or financial capital in the broadest sense, cultural capital , i.e. individual, officially approved or merely internalized educational stocks , social capital , i.e. friendship relationships and interpersonal relationships, and finally as symbolic capital , d. H. as the reputation or collective recognition of a certain social actor and his other capital resources by a larger number of actors who perceive and judge him and who are involved in the same field. The strategies of the actors, i. H. In the literary field, for example, the style of the literary works chosen by an author, both in terms of style and material, are significantly influenced by their disposal over the types of capital . There is a tendency, in the case of a relatively low socio-economic status, to have a tendency towards the dominant mainstream, i. H. to take a position directed against the currently prevailing orthodoxy, which Bourdieu characterizes with the neutrally intended term "heresy".

With regard to the modern literary field of France, which since the middle of the 19th century has been thought of as a sub-area of ​​related and competing social actions that has been fairly independent from outside, Bourdieu further distinguishes three non-geographical or non-physical spatial concepts: the space of positions , the Space of Possibilities and Space of Works .

The space of positions records the social situation of all actors involved in the literary field on the basis of their capital structure, i. H. with regard to their disposal over the above-mentioned forms of capital and the resulting position in society, which he regards as a class society . The space of positions can be represented as a two-dimensional coordinate system, the y-axis of which indicates the sum of all capital of an actor, while the x-axis only refers to the proportional relationship between the economic and cultural capital reserves of the same actor, so that 'wealthy rather than educated 'Actors can be distinguished from' educated rather than wealthy 'actors. The space of the positions is not conceived as a rigid structure, but as a highly dynamic, historically changeable network of interactional relationships, which is why Bourdieu can also be attributed to post-structuralism .

As a room of works Bourdieu refers to those discursive sphere in which the literary works that are regarded as artistic position or comments, communicate in a more or less public area. Literary works of art can be categorized and systematized according to thematic and stylistic differences, depending on the research interest, whereby here, too, one is dealing with a highly dynamic structure.

Structural homology between the space of positions and the space of works

The central theorem of the theory of the literary field is the assumption that about between the space of positions and the space of the work space of possibilities mediated structural homology exists. This means that the relative social distances between the authors are similar to the relative distances in terms of the content and form of the works. Depending on how the social situation of a certain literary producer, which can be read from the above-mentioned forms of capital, is shaped at a certain point in time, there are certain constraints that limit the spectrum of possible moves in the area of ​​possibilities, but also opportunities with regard to the specific thematic or stylistic design of literary products, which can therefore be of an economic, cultural, social and / or symbolic nature. These constraints and opportunities, which are stored in the space of possibilities, are perceived through the habitus structures of the acting actors, which include collectively shared, class-specific experiences as well as individual experiences in a system of relatively permanent dispositions, but do not strictly determine which artistic possibility of action is one in the literary one Field committed actor decides.

Relative autonomy of the literary field

Another core element of the theory of the literary field can be seen in Bourdieu's conception of relative autonomy. In the course of the 19th century, the French literary field fought for itself to a certain extent to be independent from external economic, political, religious and institutional constraints, of which no one can foresee how long this will last. There are also different degrees of autonomy within the literary field.

Thus, at the artistic pole of the literary field, which is roughly congruent with the concept of high-altitude literature , the focus of interest is not primarily economic profit, but literary fame or, as Bourdieu puts it, specifically literary symbolic capital, whereby the actors consider this denial more secular In many cases, they can only make profits because they are financially independent and do not have to live from their literary production. Accordingly, the economic profit maximization logic of the economy is practically inoperative and the degree of autonomy is correspondingly high. At the other pole of the field, the sub-field of mass production, it is not literary mastery and the recognition of the specialist public that count, but only circulation figures and profit statistics. Accordingly, the authors will submit to the public's taste and write what readers can most easily consume and most likely buy. Thus, the literary field in this area, which corresponds almost exactly to the more common term of trivial literature , gives up a large part of its independence in favor of the economic profit maximization logic and thus bends outside claims so that the original literary strategies of the cultural producers in this sector are economically reshaped. In this area, literature is no longer written according to purely aesthetic standards, but its nature is dictated primarily by mass taste, which of course influences the choice of material as well as the formal design of the literary works.

See also

literature

  • Pierre Bourdieu: On the sociology of symbolic forms (= Suhrkamp-Taschenbuch Wissenschaft 107). Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1970, ISBN 3-518-27707-3 .
  • Pierre Bourdieu: The subtle differences . Critique of social judgment. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1982, ISBN 3-518-57625-9 .
  • Pierre Bourdieu: The intellectuals and the power. Edited by Irene Dölling . VSA-Verlag, Hamburg 1991, ISBN 3-87975-563-9 .
  • Pierre Bourdieu: Questions and Answers (= Edition Suhrkamp 1547 = NF 547). Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1992, ISBN 3-518-11547-2 .
  • Pierre Bourdieu: Sociological Questions (= Edition Suhrkamp 1872 = NF 872). Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1993, ISBN 3-518-11872-2 .
  • Pierre Bourdieu: The Field of Cultural Production. Essays on Art and Literature. Columbia University Press, New York City NY 1993, ISBN 0-231-08286-X .
  • Pierre Bourdieu: Practical Reason. On the theory of action (= Edition Suhrkamp 1985 = NF 985). Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1998, ISBN 3-518-11985-0 .
  • Pierre Bourdieu, The rules of art. Genesis and structure of the literary field. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1999.

Secondary literature

  • Gerhard Fröhlich, Boike Rehbein (ed.): Bourdieu manual. Life - work - effect. Metzler, Stuttgart et al. 2009, ISBN 978-3-476-02235-6 .
  • Verena Holler: Fields of Literature. A study of the sociology of literature based on the example of Robert Menasse (= European university publications. Series 1: German language and literature. Vol. 1861). Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main et al. 2003, ISBN 3-631-50884-0 .
  • Markus Joch, Norbert Christian Wolf (ed.): Text and field. Bourdieu in literary practice (= studies and texts on the social history of literature. Vol. 108). Niemeyer, Tübingen 2005, ISBN 3-484-35108-X .
  • Markus Joch: Sociology of Literature / Field Theory. In: Jost Schneider (Hrsg.): History of methods in German studies. de Gruyter, Berlin et al. 2009, ISBN 978-3-11-018880-6 , pp. 385-420.
  • Joseph Jurt , The literary field. Pierre Bourdieu's concept in theory and practice. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1995, ISBN 3-534-11573-2 .
  • Tilmann Köppe, Simone Winko : Newer literary theories . An introduction. Metzler, Stuttgart et al. 2008, ISBN 978-3-476-02059-8 .
  • Christine Magerski : The constitution of the literary field in Germany after 1871. Berlin modernism, literary criticism and the beginnings of literary sociology (= studies and texts on the social history of literature. Vol. 101). Niemeyer, Tübingen 2004, ISBN 3-484-35101-2 .
  • Gregor Ohlerich: Socialist worlds of thought. Model of a literary field of the Soviet Zone / GDR 1945 to 1953 (= problems of poetry. Vol. 36). Universitätsverlag Winter, Heidelberg 2005, ISBN 3-8253-5078-9 .
  • Louis Pinto, Franz Schultheis (Ed.): Forays through the literary field (= Édition Discours. Vol. 4). UVK, Universitäts-Verlag Konstanz, Konstanz 1997, ISBN 3-87940-493-3 .
  • Michael Pollak: Vienna 1900. A broken identity (= Édition Discours. Vol. 6). UVK, Universitäts-Verlag Konstanz, Konstanz 1997, ISBN 3-87940-534-4 .
  • Rakefet Sela-Sheffy: Literary Dynamics and Culture Education. On the construction of the repertoire of German literature at the end of the 18th century (= Tel-Aviv University. Series of publications by the Institute for German History. Vol. 21). Bleicher, Gerlingen 1999, ISBN 3-88350-467-X .
  • Heribert Tommek: JMR Lenz. Socio-analysis of a literary career. Synchron, Wissenschafts-Verlag der Authors, Heidelberg 2003, ISBN 3-935025-29-7 (at the same time: Berlin, Free University, dissertation, 2000).