Practice as Presence: Reading Bourdieu Against the Grain

Abstract

This paper presents a critique of Pierre Bourdieu's Outline of a Theory of Practice (1986) using some of the deconstructive strategies associated with the work of Jacques Derrida. It is argued that the derivative nature of theoretical accounts of practice extends to all manifestations of social action. Bourdieu cannot provide an account of the subject's reflection upon his activity without slipping into the language of the rule. The habitus, as a symbolic construct, extends the domain of signification infinitely: there is no strategy or improvisation which is not inscribed in this play of representations. As such, practice can never serve as a ground for discourse.