> The idea of cultural capital certainly describes what's going on here. My > only problem with Bourdieu is that he casts it all in Marxish terms, when > it is really not necessary. Snobbery and mandarinism have been around > forever. Can't remember the name of the film, but a few years ago there was > this French flick about an educated son of a peasant who arrives in > pre-revolutionary Paris in the 1760s. He finds that the way to advance in > court society was through verbal duels with aristocrats, who have mastered > the art of witty "bon mots". He finds that he excels at this and works his > way up the social ladder, until he is accepted by the top ranks. When he is > finally at the mountain-top of the social elite, he realizes that they are > basically shallow and worthless. He goes back to the countryside and > dedicates himself to clearing swamps, so peasants won't get malaria. Can't > say I've been to the mountain-top of academic Marxism, but what I've seen > up there from the lower plateaus pretty much inspires me to go in the > opposite direction. Barkley just sent me private mail telling me that the > acceptance rate for these obscure academic journals is between 10 and 15 > percent, so I shouldn't get discouraged. I told him that I never had any > intention of breaking into the inner sanctum. Prior to this misadventure > with CNS, just about everything I've written appeared on a mailing list > first. That's the way I like it. No idiotic rejection letters. God, I know > why all this turns my stomach. It makes me feel like I'm back in high > school again. I was ready to join the trenchcoat militia last night after > getting O'Connor's rambling missive. That Louis Proyect mentions this movie, which I dont' know, illuminates a key issue in this whole thread. For it looks that that movie might have been based on Diderot's *Rameau's Nephew*, which Hegel's Phenomenology discusses under the dialectic of the "groundless self". The way Hegel uses this story is not exactly as Louis remembers it in this movie, but some important connections (to the this thread) might be mentioned. Rameau's nephew, who is main character of the story, makes his living teaching to various wealthy aristocatic families. He is an intellectual who thinks that, unlike the nobles, he is a "true", sincere person in that he relies only who on his own creativity and talents. But Hegel shows, through this character, that intellectuals are as much a part of the patronage system and the groundless "heroism of flattery" as the aristocrats. The intellectual may claim he is concerned with "higher things" but this is simply the *vanity* of the pure self who does not realize the extent to which he is mediated by the social world he inhabits....and so goes this dialectic.
