CONTRIBUTI / 8 / Emma Barettoni
Notes for a thought of discontinuity starting with Bourdieu and Spinoza
To explain the reproduction rather than the change, the continuity rather than the discontinuity: this is one of the most often addressed criticism of Bourdieu’s system. Such criticism refers in particular to his theory of habitus in its intertwining with that of symbolic violence. The intent of this article is not only to show how the relationship between the concepts of habitus and discontinuity in Bourdieu’s thought is genetic, but also and above all to test, in the light of this relationship, the critical resonance that such a concept has in the contemporary world. In particular, it will be compared with the anthropological model of flexibility, hegemonic in debates on identity in the social sciences and in European regulations on education, paying attention to the way in which such discourses articulate the relationship between time and experience. The concept of habitus will be conceived, in the relationship with some figures of Spinozian thought, of as a radical alternative to this model.
