2 Short Answer Essay Questions

2. 0 4 THE CONSUMER SOCIETY READER

personally. For this is the basis of award of the instinct of workmanship,- and that instinct is the court of final appeal in any question of economic truth or adequacy. It is a question as to the award rendered by passionate common sense. The question is, therefore, not whether, under the existing circumstances of individual habit and social custom, a given expenditure conduces to the particular consumer's gratification or peace of mind; but whether, aside from acquired tastes and from the canons of usage and conventional decency, its result is a net gain in comfort or in the fulness of life. Customary expenditure must be classed under the head of waste in so far as the custom on which it rests is traceable to the habit of making an invidious pecuniary comparison-in so far as it is conceived that it could not have become customary and prescriptive without the backing of this principle of pecuniary reputability or relative economic success.

It is obviously not necessary that a given object of expenditure should be exclusively wasteful in order to come in under the category of con- spicuous waste. An article may be useful and wasteful both, and its utility to the consumer may be made up of use and waste in the most varying proportions. Consumable goods, and even productive goods, generally show the two elements in combination, as constituents of their utility; although, in a general way, the element of waste tends to pre- dominate in articles of consumption, while the contrary is true of articles designed for productive use. Even in articles which appear at first glance to serve for pure ostentation only, it is always possible to detect the presence of some, at least ostensible, useful purpose; and on the other hand, even in special machinery and tools contrived for some particular industrial process, as well as in the rudest appliances of human industry, the traces of conspicuous waste, or at least of the habit of ostentation, usually become evident on a close scrutiny. It would be hazardous to assert that a useful purpose is ever absent from the utility of any article or of any service, however obviously its prime purpose and chief element is conspicuous waste; and it would be only less hazardous to assert of any primarily useful product that the element of waste is in no way concerned in its value, immediately or remotely.

12 Pierre Bourdieu

"THE AESTHETIC SENSE AS THE SENSE OF DISTINCTION" (1979; translation 19 84)

The aesthetic disposition is one dimension of a distant, self-assured relation to the world and to others which presupposes objective assurance and distance. It is one manifestation of the system of dispo- sitions produced by the social conditionings associated with a particular class of conditions of existence when they take the paradoxical form of the greatest freedom conceivable, at a given moment, with respect to the constraints of economic necessity. But it is also a distinctive expres- sion of a privileged position in social space whose distinctive value is objectively established in its relationship to expressions generated from different conditions. Like every sort of taste, it unites and separates. Being the product of the conditionings associated with a particular class of conditions of existence, it unites all those who are the product of similar conditions while distinguishing them from all others. And it dis- tinguishes in an essential way, since taste is the basis of all that one has-people and things-and all that one is for others, whereby one classifies oneself and is classified by others.

Tastes (i.e., manifested preferences) are the practical affirmation of an inevitable difference. It is no accident that, when they have to be justi- fied, they are asserted purely negatively, by the refusal of other tastes. I In matters of taste, more than anywhere else, all determination is ne-

and tastes are perhaps first and foremost distastes, disgust pro- voked by horror or visceral intolerance ("sick-making") of the tastes of others. "De gustibus non est disputandum": not because "taus les gouts sont dans la nature," but because each taste feels itself to be natural- and so it almost is, being a habitus-which amounts to rejecting others as unnatural and therefore vicious. Aesthetic intolerance can be terribly violent. Aversion to different life-styles is perhaps one of the strongest barriers between the classes; class endogamy is evidence of this. The most intolerable thing for those who regard themselves as the possessors of legitimate culture is the sacrilegious reuniting of tastes which taste

"."'.11, tloi dictates shall be separated. This means that the games of artists and aesthetes and their struggles for the monopoly of artistic legitimacy are

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loOO THE CONSUMER SOCIETY READER

less innocent than they seem. At stake in every struggle over art there c is also the imposition of an art of living, that is, the transmutation of an arbitrary way of living into the legitimate way of life which casts every other way of living into arbitrariness.; The artist's life-style. is always a challenge thrown at the bourgeois life-style, which it seeks to condemn as unreal and even absurd, by a sort of practical demonstra- tion of the emptiness of the values and powers it pursues. The neutral- izing relation to the world which defines dle aesthetic disposition potentially implies a subversion of the spirit of seriousness required by bourgeois investments. Like the visibly ethical judgments of those who lack the means to make art the basis of dleir art of living, to see the world and other people through literary reminiscences and pictorial ref- erences, the "pure" and purely aesthetic judgments of the artist and the aesthete spring from the dispositions of an ethos;4 but because of 'tp.e _ legitimacy which they command so long as their relationship to the dis- positions and interests of a group defined by strong cultural capital and weak economic capital remains unrecognized, they provide a sort:of absolute reference point in the necessarily endless play of mutually self':' relativizing tastes. By a paradoxical reversal, dley thereby help to imate the bourgeois claim to "natural distinction" as difference made absolute.

Objectively and subjectively aesthetic stances adopted in matters like cosmetics, clodling or home decoration are opportunities to experience or assert one's position in social space, as a rank to be upheld or a distance to be kept. It goes without saying that the social classes are not equally inclined and prepared to enter this game of refusal and coun- terrefusal; and that the strategies aimed at transforming the basic dis ... positions of a life-style into a system of aesthetic principles, objective differences into elective distinctions, passive options (constituted exeer ... nally by the logic of the distinctive relationships) into conscious, elective choices are in fact reserved for members of the dominant class, indeed the very top bourgeoisie, and for artists, who as the inventors and pro" fessionals of the "stylization of life" are alone able to make their art of living one of dIe fine arts. By contrast, the entry of the petite into the game of distinction is marked, inter alia, by the anxiety of exposing ones'elf to classification by offering to the taste of others such infallible indices of personal taste as clothes or furniture, even a simple pair of armchairs, as in one of Nathalie Sarraute's novels. As for the working classes, perhaps their sole function in the system of aesthetic positions is to serve as a foil, a negative reference point, in relation to which all aesthetics define themselves, by successive negations. s Ignoring or ignorant of manner and style, the "aesthetic" (in itself) of the working classes and culturally most deprived fractions of the middle classes fines as "nice," "pretty," "lovely" (rather than "beautiful") things that are already defined as such in the "aesthetic" of calendars and postcards:

THE AESTHETCC SENSE AS THE SENSE OF DISTCNCTCON lo07

a sunset, a lirtle girl playing with a cat, a folk dance, an old master, a first communion, a children's procession. The striving toward distinction comes in with petit-bourgeois aestheticism, which delights in all the cheap substitutes for chic objects and practices-driftwood and painted pebbles, cane and raffia, "art" handicrafts and art photography.

This aestheticism defines itself against the "aesthetic" of the working classes, refusing their favorite subjects, the themes of "views," such as mountain landscapes, sunsets and woods, or souvenir photos, such as the first communion, the monument or the old master (see diagram I). In photography, this taste prefers objects that are close to those of the popular aesthetic but semi-neutralized by more or less explicit reference to a pictorial tradition or by a visible stylistic intention combining the human picturesque (weaver at his loom, tramps quarreling, folk dance) with gratuitous form (pebbles, rope, tree bark).

It is significant dlat this middle-brow art par excellence finds one of its preferred subjects in one of the spectacles most characteristic of middle-brow culture (along with the circus, light opera and bull-fights), the folk dance (which is particularly appreciated by skilled workers and foremen, junior executives, clerical and commercial employees) (C.S. VII). Like the photographic recording of the social picturesque, whose populist objectivism distances dIe lower classes by constituting them as an object of contemplation or even commiseration or indignation, the spectacle of the "people" making a spectacle of itself, as in folk dancing, is an opportunity to experience the relationship of distant proximity, in the form of the idealized vision purveyed by aesthetic realism and po- pulist nostalgia, which is a basic element in the relationship of the petite bourgeoisie to the working or peasant classes and their traditions. But this middle-brow aestheticism in turn serves as a foil to the most alert members of the new middle-class fractions, who reject its favored sub- jects, and to the secondary teachers whose aestheticism (the aestheticism of consumers, since they are relatively infrequent practitioners of pho- tography and the other arts) purports to be able to treat any object aesthetically, with the exception of those so constituted by the middle- brow art of the petite bourgeoisie (such as the weaver and the folk dance, which are deemed merely "interesting").6 These would-be aes- thetes demonstrate by their distinctive refusals that they possess the practical mastery of the relationships between objects and groups which is the basis of all judgments of the type "<;::a fait" ("It looks ...") ("<;::a fait petit-bourgeois," "<;::a fait nouveau riche," etc.), without being able to go so far as to ascribe beauty to the most marked objects of the popular aesthetic (first communion) or the petit-bourgeois aesthetic (mother and child, folk dance) which the relations of structural prox- imity spontaneously lead them to detest.

Explicit aesthetic choices are in fact often constituted in opposition to the choices of the groups closest in social space, with whom the

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THE AESTHETIC SENSE AS THE SENSE OF DISTINCTION 2.09

competition is most direct and most immediate, and more precisely, no doubt, in relation to those choices most clearly marked by the intention { (perceived as pretension) of marking distinction vis-a-vis lower groups,

"" such as, for intellectuals, the primary teachers' Brassens, Jean Ferrat or§] ·1 ::a i ... Ferre. Thus 'the song, as a cultural property which (like photography) ',1:1 la .s is almost universally accessible and genuinely common (since hardly 8,g ; a i i -:- i 13 -e 111

anyone is not exposed at one moment or another to the "successes" of s II iii j '6ll..lS POUlJa tJ1 the day), calls for particular vigilance from those who intend to mark their difference. The intellectuals, artists and higher-education teachers

CIl seem to hesitate between systematic refusal of what can only be, at best, a middle-brow art, and a selective acceptance which manifests the uni- E gI3J e § " ] Ii '§ versality of their culture and their aesthetic disposition.' For their part, .... 'B

'1:1" ::I 1 J11 8. ... ... tl L11e. the employers and professionals, who have little interest in the "intel- i-8 j J " i :s i ! h: j j B 1 lectual" song, indicate their distance from ordinary songs by rejecting '" III with disgust the most popular and most "vulgar" singers, such as Lesiii 'bi. oS .8 1 I § '5 j I j

Compagnons de la Chanson, Mireille Madlieu, Adamo or Sheila, and tl s making an exception for the oldest and most consecrated singers (like

j .g,. Edith Piaf or Charles Trenet) or those closest to operetta and bel canto . ;; f.... !i _ But it is the middle classes who find in song (as in photography) an

opportunity to manifest their artistic pretension by refusing the favorite Ii /I: IS til8. 'B J 8 il i -:i 1=!.,fA .c singers of the working classes, such as Mireille Mathieu, Adamo, I:lIl " iE-i'i t e Charles Aznavour or Tino Rossi, and declaring their preference for the :!l Fi a-crgi11! singers who endeavour to dignify this "minor" genre. That is why the

'0 '" primary teachers distinguish themselves most clearly from the other frac- &b tions of the petite bourgeoisie in this area, where, more easily than in5 f =.8[ rs the domain of legitimate art, they can invest their academic dispositions IS ,1; • and assert their own taste in the choice of singers who offer populist 0 e -1!l '§8,05 poetry in the primary-school tradition, such as Jacques Douai or Bras-\1 e• H ,Q £ IS 5 ri ... 13 '0.1. S-rse. ",111.<:1 sens (who was on the syllabus of the Saint-Cloud entrance examination .£l ii1>!-6 .<•.I'6 a few years agol. s •.,,)I:,el §l:1i!i oa1'i

,Q5 i IfI j f1 ;e:l 01 Ul_..2 '6ll II: '0 tl ¢l IS til . It may also be assumed that the affirmation of the omnipotence of 'J:! the aesthetic gaze found among higher-education teachers, the group ·8

most inclined to say that all the objects mentioned could make a beau-fi'5 as

{:i$=€ I'B tiful photograph and to profess their recognition of modern art or of - .'P. .,.i i f = ! I ,j'j",il ..s .!. the artistic status of the photograph, stems much more from a self-'B § distinguishing intention than from a true aesthetic universalism. This . 1:l. .s ,Q e 11 ! "y-- j '.!;i:U fIJ i '" .", 'tI >. '" "'.<:I has not escaped dIe most knowing avant-garde producers, who carry ... fl 0 '+of "'111 -:u )J;j'r,.. 13

til /I: S ;:. (J SS:.':lO -:=<U u ii 0 sufficient authority to challenge, if need be, the very dogma of the om-t:i'!i. ]i :9 OJ ',1:1 a r.1' g = O{,jO,ii(l}.,Q nipotence of art,9 and are in a position to recognize this faith as a de-.-\.

"'" Ii: fensive maneuver to avoid self-exposure by reckless refusals: "Who

Ii! ;2··:' would say this: 'When I look at a picture, I'm not interested in what it is _ i'l represents'? Nowadays, the sort of people who don't know much about s,!o! I art. Saying that is typical of someone who hasn't any idea about art. ::E-5

. (I Twenty years ago, I'm not even sure that twenty years ago the abstract 'A:f.' r

painters would have said that; I don't think so. It's exactly what a guy {4Y:

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2.IO THE CONSUMER SOCIETY READER

says when he hasn't a clue: 'I'm not one ,of these old fogies, I know what counts is whether it's pretty' " (avant-garde painter, age 35). They alone, at aU events, can afford the audacious imposture of refusing all refusals by recuperating, ill parody or sublimation, the very objects re- fused by the lower-degree aesdteticism. The "rehabilitation" of "vulgar" objects is more risky, but, also more "profitable," the smaller the dis- tance in social space or time, and the "horrors" of popular kitsch are easier to "recuperate" than those of petit-bourgeois imitation, just .as the "abominations" of bourgeois taste can begin to be found "amusing" when they are sufficiendy dated to' cease to be "compromising."

The artist agrees with the "bourgeois" in one respect: he prefers naiv- ety to: '; The essential merit of the "common people" is that they have none of the pretensions to art (or power) which inspire the ambitions of the ,"petit' bourgeois." Their indifference tacitly ac- knowledges the monopoly. That is why, in the mythology of artists and intellectuals, whose outflanking and double-negating strategies times lead them back to "popular" tastes and opinions, the "people" so often playa role not unlike that of the peasantry in the conservative ideologies of the declining aristocracy.

ENDNOTES r. Two examples, chosen from among hundreds, bur paradigmatic, of explicit

use of the scheme "something other than": "La Fiancee du pirate is one of those very true French films that are really satirical, really funny, because it does not resort to the carefully defused, prudently inoffensive comedy one finds in La Grande \'adreuille and Ie Petit Baiglzeur . ... In short, it IS some- thing other than the dreary hackwork of boulevard farce" U. L. Bory, Le Nouvel Observateur) 8 December 1969: italics mine). "Through distance, or at [east, dlcough difterence, to endeavour to present a text on pictorial mo- dernity other than the hackneyed banalities of a certain style 07 art criticism. Between verbose aphasia, the textual transcription of picrures. endamations of recognition, and the works of specialized aesthetics, perhal?s marking some- of dIe ways in which conceptual, theoretical work gets to gnps with contem- porary production" (G. Gassiot-Talabot et al., Figurations 1960- 1973 [Paris, Union generale des editions, 19731. p. 7; italics mine).

2.. This essential negativity, which is part of the very logic of the constitution of taste and its change, explains why, as Gambrich points out, "the temlinol- ogy of art history was so larliely built on words dena ring some principle of exclusion. Most movements m art erect some new taboo, some new negative principle, such as the banishing from painting by the impressionists of all 'anecdotal' elements. The positive slogans and shibboleths which we read in artists' or critics' manifestos past or present are usually much less well de- fined" (E. H. Gombrich, News and Form: Studies in the Art of the Renais- sance [London, New York, Phaidon Press, I966J, p. 89).

3· This is seen clearly in the case of the theater, which touches more directly and more overtly on the implicit or explicit principles of the art of living. Especially in the case of comedy, it presul?Poses common values or interests or, more precisely, a complicity and connIvance based on immediate assent to the same self-evident propositions, dIose of the doxa, dIe totality of opin- ions accepted at the level of pre-reflective belief. (This explains why the insti- tutions supplying the products, and the products themselves, are more sharply differentiated m the theater than in any other art.)

THE AESTHETlC SENSE AS THE SENSE OF DISTINCTlON 2.11 4. For an analysis of "art for art's sake" as the expression of the artistic life-

style, see P. Bourdieu, "L'invention de la vie d'artiste," Actes, 2. (1975), 67- 93·

5. This is true despite the apparent exception in which some artists return to certain popular ,Preferences, which haC! a totally different meaning in a cul- tural configuranon dominated by choices which for them would be quite im- probable or even impossible. These returns to the "popular" style, which often pass for a return to the "people" are detennined not by any genuine relationship to tbe working classes, who are generally spumed-even in ide- alization, which is a form of refusal-but by the internal relations of the field of artistic production or the field of the dominant class. (This point has a general validity, and one would need to examine what the writings of in- tellectuals on the working classes owe to the specific interests of intellectuals in struggles in which what is at stake, if not the people, is the legitimacy conferred, in certain conditions, by appearing as dIe spokesman for popular interests. )

6. It is in dlese two categories that we encounter the most marked refusal of souvenir photos ("Souvenir photos are stupid and banal"; "The main point of a photo is to preserve the images of those one loves"), of realism in paint- ing (" A beautiful picture should reproduce what is beautiful in nature'" or in photography ("For a ehotograph to be good, you just have to be ab e to recognize what it shows), and die most resolute assertion of faith in mod- em painting (in refusal of the opinion: "Modern painting is just slapped on anyhow ..... 1.

7. One of the major limitations imfosed by tbe list of pre.formed choices is that it does not bring out these conflicts" and the strategies aimed at get- ting around them. A respondent who has, "against the chosen Geor- ges Brassens or Jacques Douai might have been able to mdicate his refusal of song, while showing his "open-mindedness," by citing (with an implicit rede- finition) something by Kurt Weill or an ola Neap,olitan song. (The France- Musique radio pro&ram of "personal selections, ' "Le concert egoiste," is very revealing in thIS respect.)

8. Saint-Cloud: second to ENS me d'Ulm in the hierarchy of the Ecoles norma- les superieures (translator).

9. This dogma is still recognized and professed in less advanced sectors of the field of artistic production, as this typical declaration shows: "However, I will say that these paintings by Gaston Planet are totally incomprehensible: I wiU say that I like tbem to be so. Not enigmatic. But entirely mute. Without points of reference. Without distractions" (Paul Rossi, Gaston Planet cata- logue).

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