ABSTRACT
This chapter draws on the in-depth posthumous transcripts of lectures given in ‘Sur L’État’ (2012). Topics and themes include evaluation of different theoretical positions with regards to the state and its constitutive role in the foundation of social institutions and their relative ‘symbolic power’. The nature of the state is further explored in terms of the populace as a whole and its influence in shaping what is ‘thinkable and unthinkable’, even for intellectualist critiques of it. The latter issue again also implies ‘intellectual knowledge’ and thus is a further critical part of Bourdieusian reflexivity, and is therefore central to his metanoia. The chapter goes on to discuss these issues with respect to contemporary France and other national contexts. It is exemplified with reference to Bourdieu’s final large-scale anthropology of France – La misère du monde (1993) in which he offers a critical ethnography of French society under neoliberal economics. The coverage also deals with ‘forms of resistance’ to its pernicious effects: firstly, in terms of political and social activism; secondly, in breaking with orthodox ways of thinking the world itself.
