ABSTRACT
It is essential to work to translate an awareness of the Durkheimian inspira tion running throughout Bernstein’s work into a more complex understand ing of its precise nature. Analysing Bernstein’s links with Durkheim must not become a meaningless exercise of erudition, a kind of abstract scholas tics, particularly as Bernstein provides in his texts the means to avoid this type of dead end. In fact, in drawing together the variety of texts that con stitute Pedagogy, Symbolic Control and Identity, Bernstein demonstrates an extraordinary degree of reflexivity, particularly as he works to apply the very standards and categories for analysis he has developed to his own work as well to the critical commentaries to which this work has given rise. Bern stein is well aware that his work belongs to the field of symbolic control and therefore must be submitted to the same type of critical analysis as the object he writes about. Consequently, the “theoretical” approach of his work is not far removed from “empirical research” but, rather, constitutes a sort of gene alogical enquiry (an “enquiry” as it was considered by Hume, Locke and the most famous Anglo Saxon empiricists) into the nature of this well hidden, enigmatic, yet so powerfully concrete object: the nature of understanding which enables human beings to work and to move, the functions and the rules behind the ways we generate our own principles of classification and which make humans “continuous creators” of the world. This chapter presents the hypothesis that Bernstein fully understands that his work and various commentaries on it, and applications of it represent a pedagogical relationship and, as such, a struggle for control over the work, and that the “framing” of commentators – I am one of them – can alter the classification of the author or the relationship “between” him and us or others; it can modify the internal relationships present in his work. Bernstein has found in Durkheim something useful to preserve his own voice from the dangerous possibilities of such a denaturation. He is not dog matic; he does not submit to a doctrine. On the contrary, and particularly in Pedagogy, Symbolic Control and Identity, he works to demonstrate the renew ability of his concepts, how his theory can constantly be revised and submit ted to empirical tests. In this respect, Bernstein’s work is “open” and does not need a protective orthodoxy or a strong shelter. Yet, he wishes to pre serve the originality of his work even if this means that it is creatively trans formed (but not distorted) by other voices. Frequently, Bernstein presents his message positively as a message of emancipation, of “disruption”, or of change rather than as a message of reproduction. But (recognizing that we live in a world where the enemy can hide his or her hand) alternative inter pretations also exist and at times have presented Bernstein’s message as a conservative force that serves to attack free ones. Bernstein, throughout his career, has often had to face up to such accusa tions. His “restricted code”, for example, was classified (or, perhaps, reclassi fied) as representative of a sociocultural handicap or as a type of deficit theory.
To counter such distortions and, in the hope of ultimately avoiding them, Bernstein writes that: “My preference is to be as explicit as possible. Then at least my voice may be deconstructed” (2000, p. 126). By offering precise and consistent explication allowing for such deconstruction, Bernstein has sought to fend off what he believed were distortions of his work, diversions from the aims of his project. His use of Durkheim underpins his efforts to allow for what might be termed, then, “protective deconstruction”. He ties his theory to a Durkheimian ground in an attempt to resist distorting, particularly structuralist, framings (and, among those who could be grouped loosely as structuralist, Bernstein is concerned especially with the orientations of Bourdieu, the “great reproducer”). Bernstein admits, then, that there is something tactical (perhaps even opportunistic) in his relationship with Durkheim; but this is justified. In attempting to present the foundations for this justification, I do not seek here to identify “influences” or “filiations”; this would be a non productive work of erudition leading only to misinter pretation. Such an effort would lead inevitably to the sort of “heritage quar rels” already too common among sociologists. We work in what might be considered a “theatre of operations”, where alliances are formed, tools are borrowed and weapons are used. With this in mind, I wish to avoid an exer cise of classification; our hero has already undergone such exercises too often. Bernstein states that, if it must be classified (an exercise that constitutes “external evaluation” and that can be considered a form of symbolic control), his work is often perceived as a sort of “structuralism with strong Durkhe imian roots” (2000, p. 92). Such analysis and commentary separates the pro ductivity of Bernstein’s theory from the specific process of its creation, whose precisely inner opponents are sociological structuralisms of any sort. Bern stein specifies that concepts should not be used as theoretical “identifiers” (he gives the example of “subjectivity”, though “structure” or “code” could just as easily suffice here) because this type of identification and classification annihilates by reduction the operativity of the theory. Thus, it becomes immobilized and frozen. A theory which is not imprisoned by an identifying label remains open. In other words, it allows for free or mobile thinking. The interpretation I propose in this chapter, then, has nothing to do with a sociological “family romance”. I recognize, rather, that what is at stake is the construction (involving displacements and reshapings) of a problem; an affair involving disparate alliances and a fair amount of “sizing up”. So, what does Bernstein accomplish with his use of Durkheim? To gain a better insight we must return to the concepts of message and voice. Bernstein’s obstinacy in fighting against the misinterpretation of his work, against false portrayals of it (whether these portrayals are mistaken or whether they are conscious acts of betrayal cannot always be discerned), is striking. He purports that the message can transform the voice, that framing can transform dominant classi fications, that the form of transmission (the “manner”) can upset the legiti mate discourse (the “matter”, i.e. borders, as they determine the relations between contexts; the curriculum). But the capacity for subversion that
