ABSTRACT
If Chapter 6 dealt with ‘cultural consumption’, the focus of Chapter 7 is ‘cultural production’ – namely, the fields of artists and writers themselves. The discussion first provides a basis for understanding the literary field as instantiated by writers of fiction. Bourdieu’s in-depth study of Flaubert is used to show how creativity emerges in trans-historical contexts, implicating the structures of society and the individual identity components existent within them. The case of the Pre-Impressionist painter Manet is then used to broaden the discussion with a comparative contrast. Reference is made to Bourdieu’s various writings of the fields of cultural reproduction, as well as transcripts of his leçons on this artist at the Collège de France. Issues of the avant-garde, artistic autonomy, relations to the state and the role of intellectuals within cultural networks offer a means of understanding sentient data in their social provenance. What is gained in this discussion is further brought to Bourdieu’s work itself and the critical aspect of reflexivity within it. Kant, and others, are again used to suggest the limits of objective knowledge within subject-grounded discourses and what needs to be undertaken to develop this new ‘gaze’, or ‘way of knowing/ seeing’.
