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This book is about the claims of Cultural Theory as a particular kind of intellectual ethos or discipline. The book argues that Cultural Theory is best seen, at least in its 'modern' form, as an ethical discipline. As such, it should be seen as a form of inquiry governed by the guiding idea of the cultivation of critical autonomy and, as such, is designed as much to change what we are in our relations to ourselves as to describe the world as it is in particular 'positive' ways. The content of the book develops this argument through critical readings of three canonical writers, namely Theodor Adorno, Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu. A final chapter contrasts the ethical idea of modern Cultural Theory developed here with its postmodern derivations, which, it is argued, have taken both a more positivist and even more moralistic form.
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The structure of modern cultural theory Thomas Osborne
Manchester University Press Manchester and New York distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave Macmillan
Copyright © Thomas Osborne 2008 The right of Thomas Osborne to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9NR, UK and Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk Distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave Macmillan, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA Distributed exclusively in Canada by UBC Press, University of British Columbia, 2029 West Mall, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z2 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for
ISBN 978 0 7190 7823 1 hardback
First published 2008 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Typeset by Action Publishing Technology Ltd, Gloucester Printed in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire
For Abigail, Harry and Miranda
Contents
Preface and acknowledgements Introduction
page viii 1
1 Culture – an antinomical view
14
2 Adorno as educator
35
3 Foucault and the ethics of subjectivity
67
4 Bourdieu, ethics and reflexivity
103
5 A note on postmodern cultural theory
140
Conclusion
154
Index
165
Preface and acknowledgements
This little book is about the scope and structure of modern cultural theory. The argument is that modern cultural theory is – or perhaps was – a critical and ultimately ethical enterprise as opposed to just an ‘epistemic’ one. The implications of this and whether or not it should matter – or should have mattered – will, hopefully, become clear over the course of the argument. Whether the book should be seen as an obituary for modern cultural theory or an attempt at a renewal of it is best left to the reader’s judgement. Aside from its status as an argument, the book is, at least after the introduction and chapter one, fairly straightforward commentary – designed as it was initially for a postgraduate student audience. It focuses on the work, in the main, of Theodor Adorno, Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu. Seasoned experts on these thinkers will not find anything, except perhaps errors, to shake them out of any epistemological slumbers they may be in. Nor does the book seek to say everything about these three, not even everything about what they have to say about culture, but only seeks to be selective in relation to its specific argument. Given that the book is not written by a dedicated specialist on any of its chosen trio, it is all the more necessary to acknowledge – in addition