[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
cannot eliminate, and not merely the scene of an elucidation. Would it thus come down to the
"docta ignorantia" claimed to be knowledgeable without knowing it precisely because it
knows only too well what it does not and cannot say?
((61))
Chapter V. The Arts of Theory
A PARTICULAR PROBLEM arises when, instead of being a discourse on other discourses,
as is usually the case, theory has to advance over an area where there are no longer any
discourses. There is a sudden unevenness of terrain: the ground on which verbal language
rests begins to fail. The theorizing operation finds itself at the limits of the terrain where it
normally functions, like an automobile at the edge of a cliff. Beyond and below lies the ocean.
Foucault and Bourdieu situate their enterprise on this edge by articulating a discourse on non-
discursive practices. They are not the first to do so. Without going back to ancient times, we
can say that since Kant every theoretical effort has had to give a more or less direct
explanation of its relationship to this non-discursive activity, to this immense "remainder"
constituted by the part of human experience that has not been tamed and symbolized in
language. An individual science can avoid this direct confrontation. It grants itself a priori the
conditions that allow it to encounter things only in its own limited field where it can
"verbalize" them. It lies in wait for them in the gridwork of models and hypotheses where it
can "make them talk," and this interrogatory apparatus, like a hunter's trap, transforms their
wordless silence into "answers," and hence into language: this is called experimentation.'
Theoretical questioning, on the contrary, does not forget, cannot forget that in addition to the
relationship of these scientific discourses to one another, there is also their common relation
with what they have taken care to exclude from their field in order to constitute it. It is linked
to the pullulation of that which does not speak (does not yet speak?) and which takes the
shape (among others) of "ordinary" practices. It is the memory of this "remainder. " It is the
Antigone of what is not acceptable within the scientific jurisdiction. It constantly brings this
unforgettable element back into the scientific places where technical constraints make it
"politically" (methodologically, and in theory, provisionally) necessary to forget it. How
((62))
does it succeed in doing this? By what brilliant strokes or through what ruses? that is the
question.
Cut-out and turn-over: a recipe for theory
We must return to the works of Foucault and Bourdieu. Although they are both important,
there is an obvious difference between them, and that in itself is a reason for paying attention
to them on the threshold of an essay that does not claim to be a history of theories concerning
practices. These two monuments situate a field of research, standing almost at its two poles.
Nevertheless, however distant they may be from each other, the two bodies of work seem to
be constructed by means of the same procedures. The same operational schema can be
observed in both, in spite of the difference in the materials used, the problematics involved,
and the perspectives opened up. We seem to have here two variants of a "way of making" the
theory of practices. Like a way of cooking, this "way" can be exercised in different
circumstances and with heterogeneous interests; it has its tricks of the trade and its good or
bad players; it also allows one to score points. Using the imperatives that punctuate the steps
in a recipe, we could say that this theorizing operation consists of two moments: first, cut out;
then turn over. First an "ethnological" isolation; then a logical inversion.
The first move cuts out certain practices from an undefined fabric, in such a way as to treat
them as a separate population, forming a coherent whole but foreign to the place in which the
theory is produced. Thus we have Foucault's "panoptic" procedures, isolated within a
multitude, or Bourdieu's "strategies," localized among the inhabitants of Bearn or Kabylia. In
that way, they receive an ethnological form. Moreover, in both cases, the genre (Foucault) or
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]