Habitus Clivé: Aesthetics and Politics in the Work of Pierre Bourdieu

Toward the end of the sketch for a self-analysis that he wrote shortly before his death, Pierre Bourdieu said that his was a divided habitus-a habitus clivas a consequence of the contradictions he experienced in coming from lowly social origins to achieve high scholarly distinction (Esquisse 127). This seems entirely plausible. Indeed, in this respect, Bourdieu might be seen as an ideal type for a generation that experienced similar kinds of social and cultural dislocation as the price of educational and occupational advancement. Yet the claim stands in sharp contrast to what Bourdieu had to say elsewhere about the concept of the habitus as a set of regulative principles organizing practices of cultural consumption. For here Bourdieu usually insisted on the unity of the habitus. This construction of the habitus is central to the analytical architecture of Bourdieu's Distinction. It constitutes the key conceptual hinge through which analyses at the level of the individual and that of classes are integrated within the social space of lifestyles and through which the operation of cultural capital across different fields is mediated. If, therefore, the unity of the habitus is shown to be unsustainable, other aspects of Bourdieu's approach in this study are also called into question.