Pierre Bourdieu. “The Market
of Symbolic Goods.”
From The Field of Cultural
Production.
Summary by Sarah K. Wilson
The Logic
of the Process of Autonomization
Slowly, “symbolic goods” --
artistic and intellectual capital -- have become entities in and of themselves
instead of possessions of the upper class, church, and state. No longer must one be an upper class
person to be able to possess “symbolic goods.” (Anthologies help allow this!)
Bourdieu claims that this separation occured with 1) the “growth
of a public of potential consumers”; 2) “increasing social diversity”;
3) “a competing principle of legitimacy”; 4) “an ever-growing
. . . corps of producers and merchants of symbolic goods”; and 5) multiplication
and diversification of diversification of agencies of consecration placed
in a situation of competition for cultural legitimacy."
Artists
and intellectuals have become “autonomous,” free from the demands
of the state and church and able to create what they choose. However, this is largely a formal
freedom, for in many ways, artists and intellectuals are compelled to create
work that satisfies the demands of the public in order to sell.
The
Structure and Functioning of the Field of Restricted Production
In order to become autonomous, artists
had to choose to embrace “indifference and rejection towards to buying
and reading public, i.e. towards the ‘bourgeois’” (115) and
instead choose to create for the smaller group of producers and merchants of
cultural goods. With this step,
critics take a new role: “providing a ‘creative’
interpretation for the benefit of the ‘creators’” (116). The new critics felt unqualified to
judge art and rather “placed [themselves] at the service of the
artist” (116).
Artists
separate from the demands of the public, then, should be wary of
“successful” work because it should not appeal to the
unintellectual, unartistic general public (116). Personal experience became a popular subject for art;
originality and novelty became important qualities of art because these
qualities were what attracted attention from critics and comment from other
artists by which the artist himself is defined (117-18). (I think here of the modern writers,
particularly James Joyce and Ezra Pound who were obssessed with the need to
“Make it new!”--Pound.)
The Field
of Instances of Reproduction and Consecration
Several institutions are responsible
for consecrating and preserving symbolic goods and creating people able to
reproduce such goods. Museums, for
one, determine and consecrate “great art” (121). Educational institutions (particularly
at a university level) are responsible largely for creating producers for the
next generation by teaching them the qualities of great art (121); to
accomplish this, schools also choose what art to teach. Great art that is taught is thus
preserved, consecrated (122).
There is lag time, of course, between the production of great art and
its consecration which creates strained relationships between schools and
producers (124). Still, schools
are essential to the reproduction and consecration of great art (123).
Relations
Between the Field of Restricted Production and the Field of Large-Scale
Production
“[T]he
product of the system of large-scale production” Bourdieu calls
“middle-brow art” or “l’art moyen” (average art)
“because these works are entirely defined by their public”
(125). They are defined by the
reaction of the mass public (e.g. television). They are concerned with “investment
profitability” (126).
Bourdieu says that middle-brow art “is characterized by tried and
proven techniques and an oscillation between plagiarism and parody most often
linked with either indifference or conservatism” (128). Often middle-brow art is merely
borrowing from older avant-garde techniques (129). Middle-brow art finds itself in opposition to
“intellectual art” and often feels the need to rationalize its
credibility (130).
Positions
and Position-Takings
There are different “positions,” different artistic levels and merchants and producers fall different levels. These levels then predetermine the art in some ways because the producer is catering the art to a certain level and because the merchant is producing art at a certain level which is known to the critics and the public.