Bourdieu and aesthetics

Dennis Robert Redmond dredmond at efn.org
Wed Apr 24 19:23:51 PDT 2002


On Wed, 24 Apr 2002, Heer, Jeet (National Post) wrote:


> Can you be a cultural materialist and still have
> value judgements on aesthetics?

It depends on what you mean by value judgements. If this means moral categories, the answer is no, because Marxism is more complex than any morality or ethical system. If you mean, whether some texts are better than others, the answer is yes -- in fact, the labor of critique is all about determining *why* a given work of art is (or isn't) adequate to its historical period.

Editors and agents are the tip of the Bourdieusian iceberg -- one would also have to talk about the entire literary field of Canada, the international habitus of English-speaking countries, and what specific innovations Munro is bringing to the table.

-- Dennis



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