bourdieu field of cultural production ch1and2

European Perspectives

A Series in Social Thought and Cultural Criticism

Lawrence D. K¡itzman, Editor

European Perspectives presents outstanding books by leading European thinkers. With

both classic and contemporary works, the series aims to shape the major intellectual

controversies ofour day and to facilitate the tasks ofhistorical understanding.

For a complete list of books in the series, see page 323.

The Field of CulturalProduction

Essays on Art and Litetature

Pierre Bourdieu

Edited and Introduced bY

Randal Jobnson

ì4.Columbia University Press

dominant confersr hand an affirma-their judgement oft it and ludge it. Inegitimate discoursetion of the value of:ntific knowledge ->ecific interests - is

ld of the producers; field to the very

d of the appropriatesocial history of the'tistic field) is one of:ience of art, because

rajor obstacles to theart of the full realityto suppose that thepable of consideringwithout an end', is

:ct of contemplation,:s and museums, andionals appointed tonbolically. Similarly,rtion' devoid of any:ed from a very early¡f 'art for art's sake';imate relation to the'eplicate the originalrr itself, without any

>e understood unless

are always liable torich establishes the

e work that is de-

reed social approval: conception of theI the virtuoso whicH, leads audiences tonemory - which has

avant-garde works,

The Field of Cultural Production 37

The educational system plays a decisive role in the generalized

imposition of the legitimate mode of consumption.-One reason for this is

thát the ideology of're-creation' and 'creative reading'supplies teachers

- lectores assig-ned to commentary on the canonical texts - with a

legitimate subsiitute for the ambition to act as auctores. This is seen

mäst clearly in the case of philosophy, where the emergence of-a body ofprofessional teachers *^r ãcco-panied by- the development of a would-

t. "utono*ous

science of the history of philosophy, and the propensity

ro read works in and for themselves (philosophy teachers thus tend to

identify philosophy with the history of philosophy, i.,.. with a pure

colnmentary on past works, which are thus invested with a role exactly ,,<opposite to thaiof suppliers of problems and instruments of thoughty' '- r

*ni.n they would fulfil^for original thinking)' 'Ø'Given that works of art exist as symbolic objects only if they are

known and recognized, that is, socially instituted as works of art and

received by speciators capable of knowing and recognizing them as

such, the sociólogy of art and literature has to take as its oblect not only

the material proãuction but also the symbolic production of the work'i.e. the prodúction of the value of the work or, which amounts to the

same thing, of belief in the value of the work. It therefore has to consider

as contrib-uting to production not only the direct producers of the workin its materiality lartist, writer, etc.) but also the producers of the

meaning and value of the work - critics, publishers, gallery directors and

the whóle set of agents whose combined efforts produce consumers

capable of knowing and recognizing the work of art as such, inpaìticular teachers (but also families, etc.). So it has to take into account

not only, as the social history of art usually does, the social conditions ofthe production of artists, art critics, deal :rs, patrons, etc., as revealed by

indùes such as social origin, education or qualifications, but also the

social conditions of the próduction of a set of objects socially constituted

as works of art, i.e. thé conditions of production of the field of social

agents (e.g. museums, galleries, a ne

aãd prodùce the value-of works ofunderstanding works of art as a m in

which all the !o*ett of the field, and all its

structure and functioning, are concentrated' (See Figure 1.)

THE FIELD OF CULTURAL PRODUCTION AND THE FIELD OF POWER

In figure 1, the literary and artistic field (3) is contained within the field

of pówer (2), while possessing a relarive autonomy with respect to it,especially as'iegards itr econoÃi. and political principles of hierarchiza-

38 The Field of Cultural Production

Figure 1

tion. It occupies a dominated position (at the ne!ative Pole) in this field,

which is itseif situated at the dominant pole of the field of class relations

The Field of Cultural Production 39

by the fact that the more autonomous it is, i.e. the more completely itfulfils its own logic as a field, the more it tends to suspend or reverse the

dominant principle of hierarchization; but also that, whatever its degree

of independence, it continues to be affected by the laws of the fieldwhich encompasses it, those of economic and political profit. The moreautonomous the field becomes, the more favourable the symbolic powerbalance is to the most âutonomous producers and the more clear-cut is

the division between the field of restricted production, in which the

producers produce for other producers, and the field of large-scale

production lla grande production), which is pymbolica" excluded and

discredited (this symbolically dominant definition is the one that the

historians of art and literature unconsciously adopt when they exclude

from their object of study writers and artists who produced for the

market and have often fallen into oblivion). Because it is a good measure

of the degree of autonomy, and therefore of presumed adherence to the

disinterested values which constitute the specific law of the field, the

degree of public success is no doubt the main differentiating factor. Butlack of success is not in itself a sign and guarantee of election, and poètes

mauditsr like 'successful playwrights', must take account of a secondary

differentiating factor whereby some poètes maudits may also be 'failedwriters' (even if exclusive reference to the first criterion can help them toavoid realizing it), while some box-office successes may be recognized,

at least in some sectors of the field, as genuine art.Thus, at least in the most perfectly autonomous sector of the field of

cultural production, where the only audience aimed at is other pro-

ducers (as with Symbolist poetry), the economy of practices is based, as

institutionalized cultural authority (the absence of any academic train-ing or consecration may be considered a virtue).

One would have to analyse in these terms the relations between writers or

structural homologies between the field of publishers or gallery directors

and the field of the corresponding artists or writers does indeed mean that


rhe former presenr properties close to those of the latter, and this favours

the relationihip of ìruit and belief which is the basis of an exploitation

ftetuppoting , i,igt degree of misrecognition on each side' Theseirn.r.'hàn,, iã the teãple' make their living by tricking the artist or writer

into taking rhe consequences of is oi her statutory professions of

disinterestedness.

This explains the inabilitY

grasp this anti-economy in e

down economic world. The I

those who enter it have an interest iprophecy, especially the prophecy of

Weber, demonstrates its authenticity

income, a heretical break with the prev

claim to authenticiry by its disintereste

no, ,n..n that thére is not an economic logic to this charismatic

economy based on the social mirac

tion other than the specifically aes

conditions for the indifference to ethe riskiest positions in the intellectt

for the caiacity to remain there over a long period without any

economic compensation.

The struggle for the Dominant Principle of Hierørchization

The literary or arrisric field is at all times the site of a struggle ben¡veen

,ü il principles of hierarchizadon: the heteronomous- pr!1cipf9'

i"uo"r"blå to th^ose who dominate the field economically and politically

mous principle (e.g. 'art for art's

ho are least endowed with sPecific

f indePendence from the economY,

electi,on and success as a sign of

er relations in this struggle depends

i Possessed bY the field, that is, the

extent to which it manages to impose its own norms and sanctions on

ä.-*f,"f. set of proàui.rr, including those who are closest to the

ã-å-i""ni pole of ih. fi.ld of power and therefore most responsive to

.*..i.,"t demands (i'e' the ,,'otih.t..onomous); this degree of autonomy

"".i., ."*iderab" from one period and one netional tradition to

"no,t.., and affects the whole sr;ucrure of the field. Everything seems to

in¿i."..'ttt"t it depends on the value which the specific capita.l of writers

and artists ,.p..r.nt, for the domi rant fractions' on the one hand in the


scientificiry, ignore the fact, which is more than scientifically attested,

that the definition of the writer (or artist, etc.) is an issue at stake in

and to win assent when he or she consecrates an author or a work - with

a preface, a favourable review, a prize, etc.).'whil.

it is true that every literary field is the site of a struggle over the

definition of the writer (a universal proposition), the fact remains that

scientific analysts, if they are not to make the mistake of universalizing

rhe particutar case, need to know that they will only ever_encounter

histórical definitions of the writer, corresponding to a pârticuler state of

effectively entered the sub-field of drama once it came under attack from

the accredited advocates of bourgeois theatre, who thus helped to

produce the recognition they sought to pre

pbes' came into existence as active elemen

and no longer just that of journalism

philosophers felt called upon to take issue with them.- The boundary of the field is a stake of struggles, and the social

scientist's task is not to draw a dividing line between the agents involved

in it by imposing a so-called operational definition, which is most likelyto be imposed on him by his own preiudices or PresuPPositions, but todescribe a state (long-lasting or temporary) of these struggles and

therefore of the frontier delimiting the territory held by the competing

The Field of Cuhurøl Production 43

agents. One could thus examine the characteristics of this boundary,which may or may not be institutionalized, that is to say, protected byconditions of entry that are tacitly and practically required (such as a

certain cultural capital) or explicitly codified and legally guaranteed (e.g.

all the forms of entrance examination aimed at ensuring a numerus

clausus).It would be found that one of the most significant properties ofthe field of cultural production, explaining its extreme dispersion and

the conflicts between rival principles of legitimacy, is the extremepermeability of its frontiers and, consequently, the extreme diversity ofthe 'posts' it offers, which defy any unilinear hierarchization. It is clear

from comparison that the field of cultural prôduction demands neitheras much inherited economic capital as the economic field nor as much

educational capital as the university sub-field or even sectors of the field

of power such as the top civil service - or even the field of the 'liberalprofessions'.16 However, précisely because it represents one of the

indeterminate sites in the social structure, which offer ill-defined posts,

waiting to be made rather than ready made, and therefore extremely

elastic and undemanding, and career paths which are themselves full ofuncertainty and extremely dispersed (unlike bureaucratic careers, such

as those offered by the university system), it attracts agents who differgreatly in their properties and dispositions but the most favoured ofwhom are sufficiently secure to be able to disdain a university career and

to take on the risks of an occupation which is not a 'job' (since it is

almost always combined with a private income or a 'bread-and-butter'

occupation).

The 'profession' of writer or artist is one of the least professionalized there

is, despite all the efforts of 'writers' associations', 'Pen Clubs', etc. This is

shown clearly by (inter alia) the problems which arise in classifying these

agents, who are able to exercise what they regard as their main occupation

only on condition that they have a secondary occupation which provides

their main income (problems very similar to those encountered in

classifying students).

The most disputed frontier of all is the one which separates the field ofcultural production and the field of power. It may be more or less clearlymarked in different periods, positions occupied in each field may be

more or less totally incompatible, moves from one universe to the othermore or less frequent and the overall distance between the correspond-ing populations more or less g¡eat (e.g. in terms of social origin,educational background, etc.).

272 Not¿s to pp. 17-25

lécriuain,IÌécriuaìn, esp. pp. 7-1 1.Homo Academicus, pp.pp.115-18.

the psychology of the author and (6) ticEffects', .in Philippe Desan, Priscilla dyGriswold, eds, Literature and Social oiChicago Press, 1989), pp.256-66 at de

the psychology of the author and (6) ticEffects', .in Philippe Desan, Priscilla dyGriswold, eds, Literature and Social oiGrrswold, eds, Literature and Social ofChicago Press, 1989), pp.256-66 at de

4243

44

45

46

Cambridge, Mass.:L p.774./zre (London, New

L. A. Montrose, 'The Poetics and Politics of Culrure', in Veeser, The NeutHistoricism, pp. 15-36 ar p. 77.

Limits of Local Knowledge', in Veeser, The Neut Historicism,pp-243J6;also essays by E. Fox-Genovese, R. Terdiman, Frank Lentricchia and JaneMarcus in the same volume.Perhaps the most compellinghas come from feminist crimale-dominated power reladiscussion of the debate overNon-canonical: A Critique of the Current Debate', ELH, 54:3 (Fall 1987),pp. 483-527.In the'Postscript' to Distinction, esp. pp. 494-5.P. Bourdieu and A. Darbel, with Dominique Schnapper, L'amour de I'art,les musées d'art et leur public (Parisz Minuit, 1966), rev. ed. L'amour d'art,les musées d'art européens et leur public (1969). Published in English asTbe Loue of Art: European Art Museums and tbeir Public, trans. CarolineBeanie and Nick Merriman (Cambridge: .Polity; Stanford: Stanford Uni-versity Press, 1990).Tbe Loue of Art, p. 14.Ibid., pp. 62-3.See, for example, P. Bourdieu, 'Cultural Reproduction and Social Repro-duction', in Knou.,ledge, Education and Cuhural Change: Papers in tbeSociology of Education, ed. Richard Brown (London: Tavistock, 7973),pp.7l-ll2 at p.73.Cited in Distinction, p. 490.Distinction, p. 7.

47

48

515253

4950

5455

3

456

Not¿s to PP.2941 273

1 THE FIELD OF CULTURAL PRODUCTION

(1968), pp. 9-40.Ibid., p. 29.

'Le oroblème des étudesThéòrie de Ia littératurer. 'Polysystem Theory',ilustian F ormalism (The

them by the dominant.

910

11t2

13

274 Not¿s to pp. 41-54

74 Thus, writers and artists who are 'second-rank' in terms of the specificcriteria may invoke populism and social art to impose their reign on the'leading intellectuals' who, as has happened in China and elsewhere, willprotest against the disparity berween the revolutionary ideal and thereality, i.e. the reign of functionaries devoted to the Party. See M. Godman,Literary Dissent in Communist China (Cambridge, Mass.: HarvardUniversity Press, 1967).

15 Throughout this passage, 'writer' can be replaced by 'artist', 'philosopher''intellectual', etc. The intensity of the struggle, and the degree to which ittakes visible, and therefore conscious, forms, no doubt vary according to

I to the rari ch genreeriods, i.e. f 'unfairexercise of explains

why the intellectual field, with the permanent threat of casual essayism, isone of the key areas in which to grasp the logic of the struggles whichpervade all fields.)

16 Only just over â third of the writers in the sample studied by Rémy Pontonhad had any higher education, whether or not it led to.a degree. See R.

lonton, 'Le champ littéraire de 1865 à 1905' (Paris: Ecole des HautesEtudes en Sciences Sociales, 1977), p.43. For the comparison between theliterary field and other fields, see C. Charle, 'Situation du champ littéraire',Littérature,44 (1981), pp. 8-20.

17 For an analysis of the play of homologies berween producers, intermedia-ries (newspapers and critics, gallery directors, publishers, etc.) and catego-ries of audience, see P. Bourdieu, 'The Production of Beliefl, ch. 2 in thisvolume.

18 See P. Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of tbe Judgement of Taste,trans. Richard Nice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984),

PP.379 This much in artistic

field en 'pure and ineach e opposi theatreand'middle brow' boulevard theatre).

20 See R. \ù1. Lee, [Jt pictura poesis: The Humanistic Tbeory of Painting (NewYork: W. W. Norton, 1967);F. Bologna, Dalle arte minori all' industtialdesign: storia di un' ìdealogia (Bari: Laterza, 1972).

2l See D. Gamboni, 'Redon écrivain et épistolier', Reuue d'art (1980),pp. 68-71, and 'Remarques sur la critique d'art, I'histoire de I'art et lechamp artistique à propos d'Odilon Redon', Reuue sußse d'art et

Théâtre d'art et de I'Oeuure was constituted 'both on the model of theThéâtre libte and against it (and Naturalism was "flayed on the stage of theThéâtre d'art")'. See B. Dort,'Vers un nouveau théâtre', in Histoirelittéraire de la France, vol. 5 (Paris: Editions Sociales, 1977), pp. 615, 619.

25

26

2728

29

Not¿s to PP. 5Ç-62 275

This ambiguity lies at the heart of studies in an history which claim tocharacteriä thL work - and the world view expressed in ii - in terms of thegroup which commissions and consumes, pays and receives.M. Faure, 'L'époque 1900 et la résurgence de mythe de Cythère', Lemouvetnent social,709 (7979), pp. 15-34.

14): contribu-al dissertation

mplaryexDression of a field-effect converted seen lnthil declaration of Zola's: 'Anyway at they

littéraire (Yanves: Thot, 1982),1891). In other words: I myself

turalism, i.e. of myself, which mY

philosophique', p. 82.cìepancy berween positional age andiditìes, with such futilities, at such a

oung people, all betweenn Niagara Falls! The factempry pretension!' (cited

re, p. 158).mtnulte (Paris: MasPero, 7970),

dentiry andr discontin-

ith the logic

specific to the struggles which char oppositionsfòrmed in the litera-f field cannot p whole socialfield - as was often'done in late ñi i.e. at a timewhen the opposition between the ge eneralized tothe whole liiËrary field. See R. Woh-I, (Cambridge,

Mass.: Harvard Universirv Press, 1979).V. Shklovsky, Sur la thèorie de la prose (Lausanne: L'Age d'Homme,79731, p.24.On t'Éá question of returns and Duchamp's approach to it, see 'TheProduction of Belief' (ch. 2 in this volume).The perception called Îor by a work produced in accordance with the logicof tÍre fiåld is a differeritial, distìnctive PercePtion' eftentive- to the

dif ferences, th e devi ation s f ro m y*, ;:i::"i1h" :'"""L f;i!r;," :::ion.ized producer, rew artprodìrced'by a sort of

This was said in so many words by a Symbolist Poet quest¡oned by Huret:in

"tt i"r.t, I consider'th. *o.si Symbolist pôet fai sup-e-rior to-any of

the writers enrolled under the banner of Naturalism' (Hurer, Enquêtesur l'éuolution littéraire, p.329). Another example, less forthright but

3031

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

276 Not¿s to pp. 62-4

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

51

52

50

Notes to pp. 66-7 277

E. de Goncourt and J. de Goncourt, Manette Salomon (Paris: Uniongénérale d'éditions, 1979), p.32.The solidarity which is built up, within anistic groups, between the richestand the poorest is one of the means which enable some impecunious artists

to carry on despite the u t.See M. Rogers,'The Ba : in M.C. Albrecht et al., eds, o York:

without actually forming a group. Gautier received Flaubert, Théodore de

Banville, the Goncourt brothers and Baudelaire at his Thursday dinnerparties. The rapprochement between Flaubert and Baudelaire stemmed

irom the near sìmultaneity of their early works and their trials. The

Goncourts and Flaubert much appreciated each other, and the former met

Bouillet at Flaubert's home. Théodore de Banville and Baudelaire were

long-standing friends. Louis Ménard, a close friend of Baudelaire, Banville

and Leconte de Lisle, became one of the intimates of Renan. Barbey

d'Aurevilly was one of Baudelaire's most ardent advocates. Whereas they

were close acquaintances, these writers were little seen in high society since

their high degree of professionalization limited their social intercourse (see

Cassagne, La Théorie de I'art pour I'art, pp. 130-4).'The Decadents did not mean to sueep aulay the past. They urged

'symbolistes et Décadentes, deux groupes littéraires parallèles', mimeo

(1982), p. 12 (emphasis added).

Ponton,-'Le champ littéraire de 1865 à 1905', pp.299ff; Jurt, 'Symbolistes

535455

5657

5859

6762636465

278 Not¿s to pp. 68-71

the grand, the tormented, the poignant, the pathetic . . . Those who spendthemselves in passion, in nervous agitation, will never write a booi of

Cited by Cassagne, ur I'art, p. 218.Ponton, 'Le ch-amp 05', pp.-69-70.An example of this Franèè, whose father's unusualposition as a Paristookseller enabled him to acquire a social capital and afamiliariry with the world of letters which compensated for his loweconomic and cultural capital.Ponton, 1865 à 1905', p. 57.P. Verno e',in Histoire littéraire de la France (Paris:ÉdidonsCited in

.98. Ton of oneterprise,have to

Schapiro, 'Courbet et l'imagerie populaire', p- 299.Ibid., p. 315ff.Ponton, 'Le champ littéraire de 1865 à 1905', p. 73.

who write for both boulevard theatre and vaudeville have characteristicsintermediate berween those of specialists in each genre.

60

66

Not¿s to pp.72-7 279

S. Mallarmé, 'La musique et les lettres', in (Paris:

Gallimard (Pléiade), 1945), p.647. On this ing putforward by Heinrich Merkl, see Jurt, 'Symboli

1

2

2 THE PRODUCTION OF BELIEF

traditional texts).i. ir ". "i.i¿.r,t,h"t

the art trader's guarantor role is particuìarly visible rn

;È; ä¡ã ;a painting, where the pu-rchaser's (the collector's) 'economic'

2

The Production of Belief:Contribution to an Economy of

Symbolic Goods

Once again, I don't like this word'entrepreneur',

Sven Nielsen, Chairman andManaging Director of Presses de

la Cité

In another area, I had the honour, if

H* :, x i'"ïiJ:i:',f:' i'.ï:å:'" åT u o r u -.,of Carlos Baker's translation ofHemingway.

Robert Laffont

The art business, a trade in things that have no price, belongs to the class

of practices in which the logic of the pre-capitalist economy lives on (as

it does, in another sphere, in the economy of exchanges between the

on disavowal of the 'economic' present to all forms of economism liesprecisely in the fac Practice -ãnd not merely in irtue of a

constant, collective and of thereal nature of the I

+ Translator's note: The tetms negation, denial and disavoutal are used to render the French

dénégation, which itself is used in a sense akin to that of Freud's Verneinøzg. See J. Laplancheand J. B. Pontalis, The Language of Psycbo-ana!srs (London: Hogarth Press, 1973), entry'Negation', pp.261-3.

Tbe Production of Belief 75

THE DISAVOWAL OF THE'ECONOMY'

In this economic universe, whose very functioning is defined by a

'refusal' of the 'commercial' which is in fact a collective disavowal ofcommercial interests and profits, the most 'anti-economic' and mostvisibly 'disinterested' behaviours, which in an 'economic' universewould be those most ruthlessly condemned, contain a form of economicrationality (even in the restricted sense) and in no way exclude theirauthors from even the 'economic'profits awaiting those who conform tothe law of this universe. In other words, alongside the pursuit of'economic'profit, whi ods business aò a businesslike any other, and no conomically'speaking (as

the best-informed, i.e. art dealers point out) and

9'-,tciis'^i

manager, the only legitimate accumulation consists in making a name

for oneself, a known, recognized neme' a capital of consecrationimplying a power to consecrate objects (with a tradema¡k or signature)or pérsõns (through publication, exhibition, etc') and therefore to give

value, the profits from this operation.The ion) is neither a real negation of the 'econo-

mic' in haunts the most'disinterested'practices, nor


by a practical mastery of the laws of the functioning of the field in whichcultural goods are produced and circulate, i.e. by an entirely improb-able, and in any case rarely achieved, combination of the realismimplying minor concessions to 'economic' necessities that are disavowedbui notienied and the conviction which excludes them.2 The fact thatthe disavowal of the 'economy' is neither a simple ideological mask nora complete repudiation of economic interest explains why, on the onehand, new producers whose only capital is their conviction can establishthemselves in the market by appealing to the values whereby thedominant figures accumulated their symbolic capital, and why, on theother hand, only those who can come to terms with the 'economic'constraints inscribed in this bad-faith economy can reaP the full'economic' profits of their symbolic capital.

WHO CREATES THE'CREATOR'?

The 'charismatic' ideology which is the ultimate basis of belief in thevalue of a work of art and which is therefore the basis of functioning ofthe field of production and circulation of cultural commodities, is

undoubtedly the main obstacle to a rigorous science of the production of

The Production of Belief 77

personally is, the more strongly he consecrates the work.3 The art traderis not just the agent who gives the work a commercial value by bringingit into a market; he is not just the representative, the impresario, who'defends the authors he loves'. He is the person who can proclaim thevalue of the author he defends (cf. the fiction of the catalogue or blurb)and above all 'invests his prestige' in the author's cause, acting as a'symbolic banker' who offers as security all the symbolic capital he hasaccumulated (which he is liable to forfeit if he backs a 'loser').4 Thisinvestment, of which the accompanying 'economic' investments arethemselves only a guarantee, is what brings the producer into the cycleof consecration. Entering the field of literature is not so much like goinginto religion as getting into a select club: the publisher is one of thoseprestigious sponsors (together with preface-writers and critics) whoeffusively recommend their candidate. Even clearer is the role of the artdealer, who literally has to 'introduce' the artist and his work into evermore select company (group exhibitions, one-man shows, prestigiouscollections, museums) and ever more sought-after places. But the law ofthis universe, whereby the less visible the investment, the more product-ive it is symbolically, means that promotion exercises, which in thebusiness world take the overt form of publicity, must here be euphe-mized. The art trader cannot serve his 'discovery'unless he applies all hisconviction, which rules out'sordidly commercial' manoeuvres, manipu-lation and the 'hard sell', in favour of the softer, more discreet forms of'public relations' (which are themselves a highly euphemized form ofpublicity)- receptions, society gatherings, and judiciously placed confi-dences.5

THE CIRCLE OF BELIEF

But in moving back from the'creator' to the'discoverer' or'creator ofthe creator', we have only displaced the initial question and we still haveto determine the source of the art-businessman's acknowledged powerto consecrate. The charismatic ideology has a ready-made answer: the'great' dealers, the 'great' publishers, are inspired talent-spotters who,guided by their disinterested, unreasoning passion for a work of art,have 'made' the painter or writer, or have helped him make himself, byencouraging him in difficult moments with the faith they had in him,guiding him with their advice and freeing him from materìal worries.6To ayoid an endless regress in the chain of causes, perhaps it is necessaryto ceese thinking in the logic, which a whole tradition encourages, of the'first beginning', which inevitably leads to faith in the'creator'. It is notsufficient to indicate, as people often do, that the 'discoverer' never


Y discovered' at least bY a. few -

field of production as a whole, i'e' wit;;hir':i;bi.; -

;" puulitttlt;,'said one of them, 'is his catalogue' - and

with those who do ""t "å¿ would or would not like to; in the

Place theirth a set of

asents who constitute 'connection nate to the

.f.d;#;,h;';l;' command' critics also

collaborate with the art trader in tthe reputation and, at least inworks. 'Discovering' the 'new t

eazine. academY, coterie, dealer orãf *h", are sometimes called 'Pe

lenobithevalgenerated.T

FAITH AND BAD FAITH

The source of the efficacy of all acts of consecration is the field itself, the

locus of the accumulateã social energy which the agents and institutions


es in which theY try to aPProPnateprevtousvalue of

erated in

o establish the value of this or that

mercenary compromises or calculat

that disavowal of the 'economy' is p

of the makers of works and the

interests or to conceal their strateg

ive screen between the artist and

them to the market and so Provunmaskings of the trutinterests, theY onlY have

'disinterestedness'. Onemiddle-men that, with a few illus

to recall the ideal, Painters an

calculating, obsessed with moneY

As for the artists, who cannot even

without confessing their self-interpr".eg :'ån:ïr:T,Jï;Ï:mically 'Ï:'-:":;::"^:ments. aft are adversaries in

äìiË"., who each abide by th' which demands the

;;;;;*ü of ¿ir..i-,,'"iier,".ío"s of personal interest, at least in its

;"Aiy ieconomic' iotÀ, ""¿

which hai every aPPearance of transcen-


dence although it is only the product of the cross-censorshíp weighingmore or less equally on each of those who impose it on all the others.

A similar mechanism operates when an unknown artist, withoutcredit or credibility, is turned into a known and recognized artist. Thestruggle to impose the dominant definition of art, i.e. to impose a style,embodied in a particular producer or group of producers, gives the workof art a value by putting it at stake, inside and outside the field ofproduction. Everyone can challenge his or her adversaries' claim todistinguish art from non-art without ever calling inro question thisfundamental claim. Precisely because of the conviction that good andbad painting exist, competitors can exclude each oth.er from the field ofpainting, thereby giving it the stakes and the motor without which itcould not function. And nothing better conceals the objective collusionwhich is the matrix of specifically artistic value than the conflictsthrough which it operates.

RITUAL SACRILEGE

This argument might be encountered by pointing to the attempts madewith increasing frequency in the 1960s, especially in the world ofpainting, to break the circle of belief. But it is all too obvious that theseritual acts of sacrilege, profanations which only ever scandalize thebelievers, are bound to become sacred in their turn and provide the basisfor a new belief. One thinks of Manzoni, with his tins of 'artist's shit',his magic pedestals which could turn any object placed on them into a

work of art, or his signatures on living people which made them obietsd'art; or Ben, with his many 'gestures' of provocation or derision such asexhibiting a piece of cardboard labelled 'unique copy' or a canvasbearing the words 'canvas 45 cm long'. Paradoxically, nothing moreclearly reveals the logic of the functioning of the artistic field than thefate of these apparently radical attempts at subversion. Because theyexpose the art of artistic creation to a mockery already annexed to theartistic tradition by Duchamp, they are immediately converted intoartistic'acts', recorded as such and thus consecrated and celebrated bythe makers of taste. Art cannot reveal the truth about art withoutsnatching it away again by turning the revelation into an artistic event.And it is significant, a contrario, that all attempts to call into questionthe field of artistic production, the logic of its functioning and thefunctions it performs, through the highly sublimated and ambiguousmeans of discourse or artistic 'acts' (e.g. Maciunas or Flynt) are no lessnecessarily bound to be condemned even by the most heterodoxguardians of artistic orthodoxy, because in refusing to play the game, to


challenge in accordance with the rules, i.e. artistically, their authors callinto question not a way of playing the game, but the game itself and thebelief which supporrs it. This is the oñe unforgivabie transgression.

COLLECTIVE MISRECOGNITION

The quasi-magical potency of the signature is nothing other than theto mobilize the symbolic energyle field, i.e. the faith in the game

the game itself. As Marcel Mauss

specific properries of the magician, ;:ï:'1ïi¿' #;;:;:ffi ji:and representations, but rather to discover the bases õf the ãollectivebelief or_, more precisely, the collectiue misrecognitron, collectivelyproduced and maintained, which is the source of the power the magicianappropriates. If it is 'impossible to understand magiè without the magicgroup', this is because the magician's power, of which the miracle of thesignature or personal trademark is merely an outstanding example, is auali d imp o stur e, a legitimate a buse of power, collectively-misrecognizedand so recognized. The artist who puts her name on a ready-madeãrticleand produces an object whose market price is incommeniurate with itscost of production is collectively mandated to perform a magic actwhich would be nothing without the whole tradition leading up to hergesture, and without the universe of celebrants and believers whò give itmeaning and value in terms of that tradition. The source of 'creãdve,power, the ineffable mctna or charisma celebrated by the tradition, neednot be sought anywhere other than in the field, i.e. in the system ofobjective relations which consrirure it, in the srruggles of which it is thesite and in the specific form of energy or capital which is generated there.

So it is both- true and untrue ro say that the commeicial value of awork of art is incommensurate with its cost of production. It is true ifone only takes account of the manufacture of the material object; it isnot true if one is referring to the production of the work of arr as asacred, consecrated object, the product of a vast operation of. socialalchemy. jointly conducted, with equal conviction ãnd very unequalprofits, by all the egenrs involved in the field of production, i.e. obscureartists and writers as well as'consecrated' masters, critics and publishersas well as authors, enthusiastic clients as well as convinced vendors.Theserare contributions, including the most obscure, which the partialmaterialism of economism ignores, and which only have to be takên intoaccount in order to see that the production of the work of art, i.e. of theartist, is no exception to the law of rhe conservation of social energy.s

82 The Field of Cultural Productron

THE ESTABLISHMENT AND THE CHALLENGERS

Because the fields of cultural production are universes of belief which

can only function in so far as theyproducts and the need for those Pihe denial of the ordinary Practicestake place within them are ultimarelation to the'economy'. The'zealots" whose only capitalìs their belief

in the principles of the bad-faith economy and who preach a return to

;-h.;;,í;' ihe absolute and intransigent renunciation of the early days,

cånde-n in the same breath the mérchants in the temple who bring

'commercial'pharisees whconsecrattonthe field. Thus the fundamental law

est in the disavowal of self-interest'mercial' and the 'non-commercial'

ive PrinciPle of most of the

*ïïì:i:li'::*x';l:'#:befween ,bourgeois' art and 'intellectual' ert, between 'traditio¡al' and

W"ni-g"rd.'Jrt, or, in Parisian terms, berween the'right bank' and the,i.f, ú"it'., while ihis opposition can change its su-bstantive content

ities in different fields, it remains

('commercial') production, i'e. be

itt. fi.td of producers or even the

based on denial of the 'economY' a

ignores or challenges the expectatio-rä., no other dJmand thaå the one it itself produces, but in the long

;;;*;;t: " production which secures sutcess and the corresponding

Orãii* Uy ad!sdng to "

p..-.*irting demand. The characteristics of the

io--"réi"t énr.rpiir. "nd

,h. charãcteristics of the cultural enterprise,

understood ", " -or. or less disavowed relation to the commercial

enterprise, are inseparable. The dimic'ionsiderations and to the aofficially recognized and identififield. Thus the oPPosition betw

Tbe Production of Belief 83

corresponds to the opposition berween ordinary entrepreneurs seekingimmediate economic profit and cultural entrepreneurs struggling toaccumulate specifically cultural capital, albeit at the cost of temporarilyrenouncing economic profit. As for the opposition which is made withinthe latter group between consecrated art and avant-garde arr, orbetween orthodoxy and heresy, it distinguishes bet'ween, on the onehand, those who dominate the field of production and the marketthrough the economic and symbolic capital they have been able toaccumulate in earlier struggles by virtue of a particularly successfulcombination of the contradictory capacities specifically demanded bythe law of the field, and, on the other hand, the newcomers, who haveand want no other audience than their competitors - establishedproducers whom their practice tends to discredit by imposing newproducts - or other newcomers with whom they vie in novelty.

Their position in the structure of simultaneously economic andsymbolic power relations which defines the field of production, i.e. inthe structure of the distribution of the specific capital (and of thecorresponding economic capital), governs the characteristics and strate-gies of the agents or institutions, through the intermediary of â practicalor conscious evaluation of the objective chances of profit. Those indominant positions operate essentially defensive strategies, designed toperpetuate the status quo by maintaining themselves and the principleson which their dominance is based. The world is as it should be, sincethey are on top and clearly deserve to be there; excellence thereforeconsists in being what one is, with reserve and understatement, urbanelyhinting at the immensity of one's means by the economy of one's means,refusing the assertive, attention-seeking strategies which expose thepretensions of the young pretenders. The dominant ar" drawn towardssilence, discretion and secrecy, and their orthodox discourse, which isonly ever wrung from them by the need to rectify the heresies of thenewcomers, is never more than the explicit affirmation of self-evidentprinciples which go without saying and would go better unsaid. 'Socialproblems' are social relations: they emerge from confrontation betweentwo groups, two systems of antagonistic interests and theses. In therelationship which constitutes them, the choice of the moment and sites

of battle is left to the initiative of the challengers, who break the silenceof the doxa and call into question the unproblematic, taken-for-grantedworld of the dominant groups. The dominated producers, for their part,in order to gain a foothold in the market, have to resort to subversivestraqegies which will eventually bring them the disavowed profits only ifthey succeed in overturning the hierarchy of the field without disturbingthe principles on which the field is based. Thus their revolutions are onlyever partial ones, which displace the censorships and transgress the


conventions but do so in the name of the same underlying principles.This is why the strategy par excellenc¿ is the 'return to the sources'which is the basis of all heretical subversion and all aesthetic revolu-tions, because it enables the insurgents to turn against the establishmentthe arms which they use to justify their domination, in particularasceticism, daring, ardour, rigour and disinterestedness. The strategy ofbeating the dominant groups at their own game by demanding that theyrespect the fundamental law of the field, a denial of the 'economy', canonly work if it manifests exemplary sincerity in its own denial.

Because they are based on a relation to culture which is necessarilyalso a relation to the 'economy' and the market, institutions producingand marketing cultural goods, whether in painting, literature, theatre orcinema, tend to be organized into structurally and functionally homolo-gous systems which also stand in a relation of structural homology withthe field of the fractions of the dominant class (from which the greaterpart of their clientele is drawn). This homology is most evident in thecase of the theatre. The opposition berween 'bourgeois theatre' and'avant-garde theatre', the equivalent of which can be found in paintingand in literature, and which functions as a principle of division wherebyauthors, works, styles and subjects can be classified practically, is rootedin reality. It is found both in the social characteristics of the audiencesof the different Paris theatres (age, occupation, place of residence,frequency of attendance, prices they are prepared to pay, etc.) and inthe - perfectly congruent - characteristics of the euthors performed(age, social origin, place of residence, lifestyle, etc.), the works andthe theatrical businesses themselves.

'High-brow' theatre in fact contrasts with 'middle-brow' theatre(théâtre de bouleuard) in all these respects at once. On one side, there arethe big subsidized theatres (Odéon, Théâtre de l'Est parisien, Théâtrenational populaire) and the few small left-bank theatres (Vieux Colom-bier, Montparnasse, Gaston Baty, etc.),10 which are risky undertakingsboth economically and culturally, always on the verge of bankruptcy,offering unconventional shows (as regards content and/or mise en scène)

at relatively low prices to e young, 'intellectual' audience (students,intellectuali, teachers). On the othèr side, there are the 'bourgeois'lltheatres (in order of intensity of the pertinent ProPerties: Gymnase,Théâtre de Paris, Antoine, Ambassadeurs, Ambigu, Michodière,Variétés), ordinary commercial businesses whose concern for economicprofitability forces them into extremely prudent cultural strategies'which take no risks and create none for their audiences, and offer showsthat have already succeeded (adaptations of British and American plays,revivals of middle-brow 'classics') or have been newly written inaccordance with tried and tested formulae. Their audience tends to be

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86 The Field of Cultural Productron

older, more'bourgeois' (executives, the professions, businesspeople),

and is prepared to pay high prices for shows of pure .entertainmentwhose êonuentions and staging correspond to an aesthetic that has not

changed for a century. Benveèn the 'poor theatre' which caters to the

domñrant-class fractions richest in cultural capital and poorest in

economic capital, and the 'rich theatre', which caters to the fractions

richest in ecänomic capital and pooresr (in relative terms) in culturalcapital, stand the classic theatres (Comédie

are neutral ground, since they draw their au

from all fractions of the dominant class

constituency with all rypes of theatre.l2 Their programmes -too are

neurral or áclectic: 'avanì-garde boulevard' (as the drama critic of. La

croix putit), represented b"y Anouilh, or the consecrated avant-garde.13

GAMES WITH MIRRORS

This structure is no new phenomenon. \ùøhen Françoise Dorin, in Le

Tournant, one of the greai boulevard successes, places_an avant-garde

author in typical vaudãville situarions, she is simpìy ¡ediscovering (anC

for the ,"-. r."tons) the same straregies which scribe used in L¿

inst Delacroix, Hugo and Berlioz: in 1836, to reassure

larmed by the outrages and excesses of the Romantics,

Oscar Rigaut, a poit famed for his funeral odes but

exposed as a hedonist, in short, a

boirgeois'grocers'.14Frãnçoise Dorin's play, which d

ole space of cultural Productionmindi, in the form of sYstems of

f perception, and in objective reality,

rhrough the mechanisms which pròd,r.é the complementary oppositions

bet*eãr, playwrights and their theatres, critics and their newspapers.

ih. pt"y itt.if offirr the conrrasring portraits of two theatres: on the one

haná, téchnical clarity and skill, g"ìeìy,lightness and frivolity,'t-ypicallyF..n.h' qualities; on the other, 'pretentiousness camouflaged under

ostentatious srarkness" 'a confidence-trick of presentation" hum-

ourlessness, portentous;ess and retentiousne¡s,.glgo.mY sp-eeches and

ã.."r, (." ti".k currain and a :affold certainly help . . .') In short,

ãir-"tittt, plays, speeches, epigrams that are 'courageously light',joyous, liuãly, uncomplicated, truè-to-life, as o-p-posed.to'thinking', i'e'

-ir.."61., téáious, problematic and obscure. 'We had a bounce in our

[essions, businesspeople),

rs of pure entertainmentan aesthetic that has not

:atre' which caters to the

capital and poorest in:h caters to the fractionselative terms) in culturalìrançaise, Atelier), whichence more or less equallynd share parts of theirelr programmes too are

ts the dram a critic of La¡nsecrated avant-garde. l3

.S

t Françoise Dorin, in Lees, places an avant-gârde

imply rediscovering (anC

¿hich Scribe used in Lø

:lioz: in 1836, to reassure

xcesses of the Romantics,for his funeral odes but

rers, ill-placed to call the

niddle-brow playwright'sarde playwright, can be

r demonstrates how the

: of cultural productionr the form of systems ofrnd in objective reality,mplementary oppositions:s and their newspapers.

f two theatres: on the one

ss and frivolity, 'typicallyness camouflaged underof presentation', hum-ss, gloomy speeches and

rinly help . . .') In short,tre'courageously Iight',pposed to 'thinking', i.e.

We had a bounce in our


backsides. They think with theirs. There is no overcoming this opposi-

tion, because it separates 'intellectuals' and 'bourgeois' even in the

inrerests they have most manifestly in common. All the contrâsrs which

Françoise Dorin and the 'bourgeois' critics mobilize in their judgements

on the theatre (in the form of oppositions between the 'black currain'

and the 'beautiful set', 'the wall well lit, well decorated', 'the actors wellwashed, well dressed'), and, indeed, in their whole world view, are

summed up in the opposition between la uie en noir and la uie en rose -dark thoughts and rose-coloured spectacles - which, as we shall see,

ultimately stems from two very different ways of denying the socialworld.ls

Faced with an object so clearly organized in accordance with the

canonical opposition, the critics, themselves distributed within the space

of the press in accordance with the structure which underlies the objectclassified and the classificatory system they apply to it, reproduce, in the

space of the judgements whereby they classify it and themselves, the

space within which they are themselves classified (a perfect circle fromwhich there is no escâpe except by objectifying it). In other words, the

different judgements expressed on Le Tournant vary, in their form and

content, according to the publication in which they appear, i.e. from thegreatest distance of the critic and his readership uis-à-uis the 'intellec-tual'world to the greatest distance uis-à-uis the play and its'bourgeois'audience and the smallest distance uis-à-uis the 'intellectual' world.l6

\íHAT THE PAPERS SAY: THE PLAY OF HOMOLOGY

The subtle shifts in meaning and style which, from L'Aurore to LeFigaro and from Le Figaro to L'Express, lead ro rhe neutral discourse ofLe Monde and thence to the (eloquent) silence of Le Nouuel Obserua-teur (see Table 2) can only be fully understood when one knows thatthey accompany a steady rise in the educational level of the readership(which, here as elsewhere, is a reliable indicator of the level oftransmission or supply of the corresponding messages), and a rise in rheproportion of those class fractions - public-sector executives andteachers - who not only read most in general but also differ from allother groups by a particularly high rate of readership of the papers withthe highest level of transmission (Le Monde and Le Nouuel Obserua-teur); and, conversely, a decline in the proportion of those fractions -big commercial and industrial employers - who not only read least ingeneral but also differ from other groups by a particularly high rate ofreadership of the papers with the lowest level of transmission (France-

Soir, L'Aurore). To put it more simply, the structured space of dis-

s-s

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spaces and the sPace

Let us now run thr

ô.1 N\o l--

!5ØaJgC ¿ (,uõ;i+u:l¡rolØ.=xçoJíACo"-aøØoãç9 ó-", TES.-.- u Yt G9? g sË I r" 1ã 3E E s U X e E i.3=:9 A.ç *--ã ì:;(!tri > òôo i ã o Y rv: L ç+.- u,: aoUiÊ.r!F\JFJ r¡r

exDerimental stimulr'leit' and from 'righ

st'cO\¡)È

'Cheeky Françoise

Marxist imelliégclïste' shows uo r

and vertiginous null

theatrical Productnotorious 'incommthe contemPorarYlowest aPPetites ofher ways and weari

ity. has the imPude

bedroom farces, to

This is a crime it wi

with cheerfulnesslasting successes. (

Situated at the falmost has to sPea

critic does not mln

does not hide his

the oPPonent's mol

as an ironic antlPhpresupposes and

criticism and his

based on homol

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lexcept the co e neutral Point in

ihi, uniu..t..r heatre is homolo-

gous with the are Produced and

itli.tr dissemi theatres and plays

about which they are formulated, these homologies and all the games

they allow being made possible by the homology between each of these

c¡\Èòl .ô

NN\o #r

spaces and the space of the dominant class.

Let us now run through the space of the judgements aroused by the

experimental stimulus of Françoise Dorin's play' moving from 'right' to'leÍt' and from 'right-bank' to 'left-bank'' First, L'Aurore:

This is a crime it will be difficult to forgive. Especially since she commits itwith cheerfulness and gaiety, using all the dreadful devices which make

lasting successes, (Gilbert Guille minaud, I" Aurore, 12 January 1973)'

Situated at the fringe of the intellectual field, at a point where he

almost has to speak as an outsider ('our intelligentsia'), the L'Aurorecritic does not mince his words (he calls a reactionâry a reâctionary) and

based on homology of position.

i' oo\oÈ

't.9o(., .ÉøO

nØàD:cc)

õ $?-Æ <¡.Ë=6OÈ!-o.= o. OFJ IL

)l'"r'

\IVANCE

:erm relationship between

f their readerships as a

ge each camp has of itsre of explanation, that is:ìetic or ethical choices by

e[d, by exposing cynical

'success at all costs, even

right-bank argument) or'ed on the left bank) of the

artial obiectifications ofall studies of the 'intellec-

:scribing as the product ofrost miraculous encounter

xist in the person of the

structural and functional

t's position in the field ofrdience in the field of the

riuains de seruice, whose

:s of the bourgeoisie, are

)y serve no one: they serve

l, in full unawareness ofrests, i.e. specific interests,

re 'interest' in a particulary associated with a certain

r in periods of crisis) has

implications, even in the

homologies, the practices

:ively autonomous field ofhe functions they fulfil in

ied by external functions,

:lic struggles among the

rg run at least, among the

r well only beca¡rse the

tellectual field and theirrss field is the basis of an

ciples as that required by

,eans that they most sin-

:he ideological interests of:sts as inteilectuals against

Tbe Production of Belief

their specific adversaries, the occupants of opposing positions in

field of production.zl

THE POWER TO CONVINCE

'sincerity' (which is one of the preconditions of symbolic efficacy) is

only possible - and only achieved - when there is a perfect and

immediate harmony between the expectations inscribed in the position

occupied (in a less consecrated universe, one would say 'the job

description') and the dispositions of the occupant. It is impossible to

understand how dispositions come to be adjusted to positions (so that

ân ns (all ser) or institutions,

ne Obser different Practicalco urlHu s (right-bank/left-

bank, private/subsidized), galleries, publishers, reviews, couturiers, etc.

- can function as classificatory schemes, which exist and signify only in

their mutual relations, and serve as landmarks or beacons. As is seen

more clearly in avant-garde painting than anywhere else, a practical

mastery of these markers, a sort of sense of social direction, is

indispensable in order to be able to navigate in a hierarchically

structured space in which movement is always fraught with the danger

of losing class, in which places - galleries, theatres, publishing houses -make all the difference (e.g. between 'commercial porn' and 'quality

eroticism') because these sites designate an audience which' on the basis

of the homology between the field of production and the field of

J

95

the

96 'l'he Field of Cultural Procluction

who have found their place in the structure work in the opposite way forthose who have strayed from their natural site . Avant-garde publishers

ancl the proclucers of best-sellers both agree that they would inevitably

come to grie f if they took it into their heads to publish works ob¡ectively

assigned to the opposite pole in the publishing universe: Minuitbest-sellers and Laffont nouueaux romans. Similarly, in accordance withthe law that one only ever preaches to the converted, a critic can only'influence' his readers in so far as they extend him this power because

they are structurally attuned to him in their view of the social world,their tastes and their whole habitus. Jean-Jacques Gautier gives a good

description of this elective affinity between the journalist, his paper and

his readers: a good Figaro editor, who has chosen himself and been

chosen through the same mechanisms, chooses a Figaro literary criticbecause 'he has the right tone for speaking to the readers of the paper',

because, witbout hauing deliherately tried, 'he naturally speaks the

language of Le !igaro, and is the paper's 'ideal reader'. 'lf tomorrow Istarted speaking the language of Les Temps Modernes, for example, or

Saintes Cbapelles des Lettres, people would no longer read me or

understand me, so they would not listen to me, because I would be

assuming a certain number of ideas or arguments which our readers

don't give a damn about.'23 To each position there correspond presup-

positions, a doxa, and the homology between the producers' positions

and their clients' is the precondition for this cornplicity, which is thatmuch more strongly required when fundamental values are involved, as

they are in the theatre . The fact that the choiccs whereby individuals join

groups or groups co-opt individuals are oriented by a practical mastery

of the laws of the field explains the frequent occurrence of the

miraculous agreement between objective structures and internalized

structures which enables the producers of cultural goocls to produce

objectively necessary and overdetermined discourses in full freedom and

slnce nty.The sinccrity in duplicity and euphemization which gives ideological

discourse its particular symbolic force derives, first, from the fact thatthe specific interests - relatively autonolnous with respect to class

interests - attached to a position in a specialized field cannot be satisfied

lcgitimately, and tlrerefore cfficiently, except at the cost of perfect

submission to the laws of the field (in this particular case, disavowal ofthc usual forrr of interest); and, second, from the fact that the homology

which exists between all fields of struggle organized on the basis of an

unequal distribution of a particular kind of capital means that the highly

censored and euphemized discourses and practices which are thus

produced by reference to 'pure', pure[y 'internal' ends are always

predisposecl to perform adclitional, external functions. They do so the

morc effectively the less aware they are of doing so, and when their

adjustment to dema

result of a strLrctural

-f Ht

The fundamental p

businesses and 'cult

characteristics of cul

offered. A firm is t

conversely, that m

and completely the

clemand, i.e. to pre-e

on the one hand, a

minimize risks by a

provided with mer

catching dustjacket

ensure a rapid retur

with built-in obsoles

cycle, based on acce

and above all on su

no market in the

presupposes high-r

ducts which rnay eit

as such, by the wei

cndorved with an e

material componellt

The uncertainty I

cultural goo,ìs can t

by Editions de Minprrz-e-winntng tro

copies distributed i

unsold copies), ac

avcrage). Robbe-G

oriy 746 copies in i

initial sales of the p

annual rate of gro

t964,19 per cent 1

Beckett's En øtte

years to reach I 0,

except 1963. From

form and by 1968

reached 64,897.

r the opposite way forrant-garde publishers

hey would inevitably

lish works objectivelyng universe: Minuity, in accordance with'ted, a critic can only

n this power because

'of the social world,Gautier gives a good

rnalist, his paper and

;en himself and been

Figaro literary criticreaders of the paper',

naturally speaks the

'ader'. 'lf tomorrow Irynes, for example, or, longer read me orbecause I would be

ts which our readers

e correspond presup-

producers' positions

rplicity, which is thatalues are involved, as

ereby individuals join

ry a practical mastery

t occurrence of the

rres and internalized'al goods to produce

es in full freedom and

hich gives ideological

st, from the fact thatvith respect to class

:ld cannot be satisfied

the cost of perfect

ar case, disavowal ofrct that the homolôgy

ed on the basis of an

means that the highly

ices which are thus

Lal' ends are always

ions. They do so the

3 so, and when their


adjustment to demand is not the product of conscious design but the

result of a structural correspondence.

THE LONG RUN AND THE SHORT RUN

The fundamental principle of the differences between 'commercial'

businesses and 'cultural' businesses is to be found once again in the

characteristics of cultural goods and of the market on which they are

offered. A firm is that much closer to the 'commercial' pole (and,

conversely, that much further from the 'cultural' pole), the more directly

and completely the products it offers corresponds to a pre-existent

demand, i.e. to pre-existent interests in pre-established forms. This gives,

on the one hand, a short production cycle, based on the concern to

minimize risks by adjusting in advance to the identifiable demand and

provided with marketing circuits and presentational devices (eye-

catching dustjackets, advertising, public relations, etc.) intended to

ensure a rapid return of profits through rapid circulation of products

with built-in obsolescence. On the other hand, there is a long production

cycle, based on acceptance of the risk inherent in cultural investments24

and above all on submission to the specific laws of the art trade. Having

no market in the present, this entirely future-oriented productionpresupposes high-risk investments tending to build up stocks of pro-ducts which may either relapse into the status of material objects (valued

as such, by the weight of paper) or rise to the status of cultural objects

endowed with an economic value incommensurate with the value of the

material components which go into producing them.25

The uncertainty and ramdomness characterizing the production ofcultural goods can be seen in the sales curves of three works published

by Editions de Minuit (Figure 3).26 Curve A represents the sales of a

prize-winning novel which, after a strong initial demand (of 6,143

copies distributed in 1959, 4,298 were sold by 1960 after deduction ofunsold copies), achieves low annual sales (seventy or so a yeâr on

average). Robbe-Grillet's La Jalousie (curve B), published in 1957, sold

only 746 copies in its first year and took four years to catch up with the

initial sales of the prize-winning novel (in 1960) but, thanks to a steady

annual rate of growth in sales (29 per cent a year average from 1.960 to1964,79 per cent 1964to 1968)had achieved a total of 29,462in1968.Beckett's En attendant Godot (curve C), published in L952, took fiveyears to reach 10,000 but grew at a fairly steady 20 per cent every year

except 1963. From this point the curve begins to take on an exponentialform and by 1968 (with an annual figure of 1.4,298) total sales hadreached 64,897.

¡'' -(,

I

104 'I'hc lìiclcl oí (iulrur.al Pnrclucirxr

\IAYS OII GIìO\øINCì OI,D

Tbe opposition betweer the two economies, that is to say, between tw<rrclationships to thc. 'ccorr{)''ry', can thus be scen u, '"r,, oppositionbetwcen two lifc c¡cl9¡ of thc crrrtu.ar p'ocluctio. trr,r.,r.rr,

"iwo cliffe-

rent ways in which firms, producers ancr products grou ord.at Tietrajectory lea_ding from th.e avant-garcle to consecration and thc trajec_tory leadìng fr'm the srnall firm tu-ih. '[rig, firrn are n-,uruuì! .*clusive.The small comlnercial firm has no rncorsecrared firm tha' thc big .com'er j:i:Cécil Saint-Laurent) has oi occupyin n rheconsecrated avant-gardc. In the .oi" n e solei1,"i ,:f::.i;l':[:lü'1.:;:nent d,ime; i ,äi:'[:::il::,:,."'"ïî,:lthc 'cc

cc o n o m v, rh e ch ro n o r. gi ca r o p p o s' iil5:ii.:ilï : : :a:*'.î:"",iå îf :old-established, rlre challcngc'ri ¿rnc rhc veterans) ,1.,. ou",rilgarde anclthe 'cltrssic', tcnds to.rnc.g. *itl.r the 'ecrn,rnic'

'pposition Lriween the

poor ancl thc rich (whoageing is alm.st inevita

car" and

tion of thc rclatio, to tl nsf'rma-

the 'ecoro¡ny, which is clenial ofbusiness

ancl the sizc of thc firr'..T'hc only defence against.growi.g olcl,is ar,efusal r' 'g* fat' through profits ancl for p.,iit, o .iur"r tJ.nte. th.clialectic of profit whi.-h, by ircr easi.¡3

'the iir.c of the fi.m a,r.r

consequently the ovcrhcacls,.irn¡roses a pùrsurt of profit th.u,,th larg..nra.rkers, leacling ro rhc dcvaluaiion .n,åil.d ,n

" ,ir-,o*

"iro;Jlr, <)

A firrn which enrers the phasc of cxproiting ,..rr',u'iåtJ curturalcapital rrns rwo cliffe rcrt ìcorornics iinrurr"i.,.n,,.,ry, ;;; orientecltowarcls.procluction, anrhors ard irnovation (in th. ."rá of Gallirnard,this is thc series cclitecl by Gc'rges r,ambrichs), ,rr. uil.,", ,owarclscxplcliti'g its resourccs aucì markcting its .,rnr..r"t.,i products (witrrscrics srrch as the Pléiacle cditions. ar_cl eipecia-lly Folio

"- íairr¡.1ris easy

to irnaginc the conrradicti.rs which reiurt fr,i,n ttr. i,r-,r-,1iái,uitiry ur

n are not alrcady turned towards

othcl publishcrs by

ragcd by tbe fact twhcn they appcar

'irrcotrgrutltts' e.g.

scrics.) It goes witfirnr's fouttcler may

proccss which is inbusittcsses.

'fhc differences

'big firms' ancl 'grea

that can be fcluncl,

ternporarily withouclevalr"red, and tl-re '

constantly growing

arxorìg the procluce

thc (biologically) yo

or 'outclated' autho

consccrated avalìt-

'IHlr

It is clear that the

youth can, once ag

thc 'econonry' whi'intellectuals' and a

their rnanner of d

tcprcsclltatlous as i'young' is lrornologgcois'seriousness o

ancl the 'intellectua

hand. The'bourgthc correspor-rc1ing

iclcntifics the 'intel

con-unon statlls as

wlrorn moncy ancl

Ilut the prioritychange ancl origirclationship bct

spc'cific law of ch

distinction whcreinevitably associat'rnarkccl a c1¿rte'c¡r


other publishers by the firm's prestige. (They may equally be discou-raged by the fact that the 'intelle :tual' series tend to pass unnoticedwhen they appear in lists in which they are 'out. of place' or even

'incongruóut; ..g. as an extreme case, Laffont's É,carts and Chønge

series.t It goes without saying that though the disappearance of thefirm's founãer may accelerate the process, it is not sufficient to explain aprocess which is inscribed in the logic of the development of culturalbusinesses.

The differences which separate the small avant-garde firms f¡om the

'big firms' and 'great publishers' have their equivalents in the differencesthat can be fouid, ámong the products, between the 'new' product,temporarily without'economic' value, the'old' pr9d,uct, irretrievablydevãlued, and the 'ancient' or 'classic' product, which has a constant orconstantly growing 'economic'value. One also finds similar differencesamong the !roducèrs, between the avant-garde, recruited mainly- amongthe (biologilally) young, without being limited ro a generation, 'finished'or'outdatid' authors or artists (wh r may be biologically young) and the

consecrated avant-garde, the'classics'.

THE CLASSICAL AND THE OLD-FASHIONED


neutralized.

BEING DIFFERENT


As the newcomers come into existence, i.e. accede to legitimate

difference, or even, for a certain time, exclusive legitimacy, they

necessarily push back into the past the consecrated _producers withwhom they äre compared, 'dating' their products and the taste of those

who remain attacheã to them. Thus the various galleries or publishinghouses, like the various arrists or writers, are distributed at every

moment according ro their artistic age, i.e. according ro the age of theirmode of arristic !roduction and the degree to which this generative

scheme, which is ãlso a scheme of perception and appreciation, has been

canonized and secularized. The field of the galleries reproduces izsyncbrony the history of artistic movements since the late nineteenth

.Lnt.rry. Éach major gallery was an avanr-garde gallery ar some time orother, and it is that rñuch more fa ous and that much more capable ofconsecrating (or, which amounts to the same thing, sells thatmuch more

dearly), thã more distant its floruit, the more widely known and

recogníred its 'brand' ('geometrical abstract' or 'American pop') butalso-the more it is encãpsulated in that 'brand' ('Durand-Ruel, the

Impressionist dealer'), in a pseudo-concePt which is also a destiny'

Àt .u..y momenr, in whichever field (the field of class struggles, the

field of thl dominanr class, the field of cultural production), the agents

and institutions involved in the game are at once contemPoraries and

out of phase. The field of the presént is iust d ofstruggles (as shown by the fact that a¡ a sent

.*"äly in so far as he or she is at stake) the

,.nr. 'of presence in the same Present' in e of

orhers, .ìirtr, in practice, only in the struggle which synchronizes

discoráant times (sõ rhat, as I hope ro show elsewhere, one of the maioreffects of great historical crises, of the event

date), is that they synchronize the times ostructural durations). But the struggle whichin the form of the confrontation of differenbecause the agents and groups it brings together are- not Plesent in the

same present.- One onl/ haõ to think -of a particular field (painting,

literature or the theatre) to see that the agents and institutions who

clash, objectively at least, through competition and conflict, are sepa-

,"t.d in tíme aná in rerms of time. One group, situated at the vanguard,

have no contemporaries with whom they exchange recognition (apart

from other auani-garde producers), and therefore no audience, except in

the future. The ot-her grcup, commonly called the 'conseryatives" only

recognize their contemporaries in the past. The temporal movement

resuiting from the "pp.át"n..

of a group capable of 'making history' by

establisñing an advãnced position induces a displacement of the struc-

ture of the-field of the preient, i.e. of the chronological hierarchy of the

108 The Field of Cultural Producuon

opposing positions in a given field (e.g. poP art, kinetic art and figurativeart). Each position is moved down one rung in the chronologicalhierarchy which is at the same time a social hierarchy. The avant-gardeis at every moment separated by an artistic generation (the gap betweentwo modes of artistic production) from the consecrated avant-garde,which is itself separated by another artistic generation from the avant-garde that was already consecrated at the moment it entered the field.This is why, in the space of the artistic field as in social sPace' distances

between styles or lifestyles are never better measured than in terms oftime.a5

The consecrated authors who dominate the field of production also

dominate the market; they are not only the most expensive or the mostprofitable but also the most readable and the most acceptable because

ihey have become part of 'general culture' through a process offamiliarization which may or may not have been accompanied byspecific teaching. This means that through them, the strategies directedagainst their domination always additionally hit the distinguishedconsume.s of their distinctive products. To bring a new producer' a newproduct and a new system of tastes on to the market at a given momentis to push the whole set of producers, products and systems of tastes intothe past. The process whereby the field of production becomes a

temporal structure also defines the temporal status of taste. Because the

diffèrent positions in the hierarchical space of the field of production(which cãn be equally well identified by the names of institutions,galleries, publishers and theatres or by the names of artists or schools)

ãre at theìame time tastes in a social hierarchy, every transformation ofthe structure of the field leads to a displacement of the structure oftastes, i.e. of the system of symbolic distinctions between groups.Oppositions homologous with those existing today between the taste ofavant-garde artists, the taste of intellectuals', advanced'bourgeois'tasteand prõvincial 'bourgeois' taste, which find their means of expression onnt"tÈets syrnbolized by the Sonnabend, Denise René and Durand-Ruelgalleries, would have been able to express themselves equally effectivelyin t945, when Denise René represented the avant-garde, or in 1875,when Durand-Ruel was in that position'

This model is particularly relevant nowadays, because owing to thenear-perfect unification of the artistic field and its history, each,artistic

".t *hich 'makes history' by introducing a new position into the field

'displaces' the whole series of previous artistic acts. Because the wholeseriès of pertinent events is practically present in the latest, in the sameway thatìhe six digits afteady dialled on the telephone are contained inthe seventh, an aesthetic act is irreducible to any other act in a differentplace in the series and the series itself tends towards uniqueness and


came back. Even the pre-Raphaelites aren't a rehash of the Roman-

tics.'46

irreducibilitY of tion to.r,

"pp."..d so is that

f thè ãrtist and artist's

work closer to that of the 'intellectual' and makes it more dependent

than ever on 'intellectual' commentaries. Whether as critics but also the


their practice, thanks to the combination of knowingness and naiïeté,

calculation and innocence, faith and bad faith that is required by

mandarin games, cultivated games with the inherited culture, whose

common feature is that they identify 'creation' with the introduction ofdeuiations lécarts], which only the initiated can perceive, with respect to

forms and formulae that are known to all. The emergence of this new

definition of the artist and his or her craft cannot be understood

independently of the transformations of the artistic field. The constitu-

tion of an unprecedented array of institutions for recording, preserving

and analysing works (reproductions, catalogues, art journals, museums

acquiring the most modern works, etc.), the growth in the personnel

employed, full-time or part-time, in the celebration of works of art, the

incieased circulation of works and artists, with great international

exhibitions and the increasing number of chains of galleries with

branches in many countries - all combine to favour the establishment of

an unprecedented relationship between t and the

work of art, analogous to that found in ions; to

such an extent that one has to be blind n about a

work is not a mere accompaniment, intended to assist its perception and

appreciation, but a stage in the production of the work, of its meaning

and value. But once again it is sufficient to quote Marcel Duchamp:

a. But to come back to your ready-mades, I thought that R.

Mutt, the signature on The Fountain, was the manufac-

turer's name. But in the article by Rosalind Krauss, I read:

'R. Mutt, a pun on the German, Armut, or Poverty'.'Poverty' would entirely change the meaning of Tbe Foun-

tain.

M.D. Rosalind Krauss? The redhead? It isn't that at all. You can

deny it. Mutt comes from Mott Works, the name of a big

firm that makes sanitary equipment. But Mott was too

close, so I made it Mutt, because there was a strip cartoon

in the papers in those days, Mutt and Jeff, everybody knew

it. So right from the start there was a resonance. Mun was

a fat little guy, and Jeff was tall and thin . . . I wanted a

different narne. And I added Richard . . . Richard is a good

name for a loo! You see, it's the opposite of poverty . . 'But not even that; just R. - R. Mun.

a. What possible interpretation is there of the Bicycle Wbeel?

Should one see it as the integration of movement into the

work of art? Or as a fundamental point of departure, like

the Chinese who invented the wheel?


M.D. That machine has no intention' excePt to get rid of the

appearance of a work of art. It was a whim, I didn't call it a

work of aft. I wanted to throw off the desire to creete

works of art. rù(/hy do works have to be static? The

thing - the bicycle wheel - came before the idea. Withoutany intentio nd dance about it, not at

all so as to nobodY has ever done itbefore me.' have never been sold.

solemnity of a book of PrinciPles.

535455

5657

5859

6762636465

278 Not¿s to pp. 68-71

the grand, the tormented, the poignant, the pathetic . . . Those who spendthemselves in passion, in nervous agitation, will never write a booi of

Cited by Cassagne, ur I'art, p. 218.Ponton, 'Le ch-amp 05', pp.-69-70.An example of this Franèè, whose father's unusualposition as a Paristookseller enabled him to acquire a social capital and afamiliariry with the world of letters which compensated for his loweconomic and cultural capital.Ponton, 1865 à 1905', p. 57.P. Verno e',in Histoire littéraire de la France (Paris:ÉdidonsCited in

.98. Ton of oneterprise,have to

Schapiro, 'Courbet et l'imagerie populaire', p- 299.Ibid., p. 315ff.Ponton, 'Le champ littéraire de 1865 à 1905', p. 73.

who write for both boulevard theatre and vaudeville have characteristicsintermediate berween those of specialists in each genre.

60

66

Not¿s to pp.72-7 279

S. Mallarmé, 'La musique et les lettres', in (Paris:

Gallimard (Pléiade), 1945), p.647. On this ing putforward by Heinrich Merkl, see Jurt, 'Symboli

1

2

2 THE PRODUCTION OF BELIEF

traditional texts).i. ir ". "i.i¿.r,t,h"t

the art trader's guarantor role is particuìarly visible rn

;È; ä¡ã ;a painting, where the pu-rchaser's (the collector's) 'economic'

280 Not¿s to pp. 77-81

10

Notes to PP. 82-6 281

11.

t2

13

282 Noú¿s to pp. 86-9

15 To give an idea of the power and salience of these raxonomies, oneexample will suffice: statistical study of class tastes shows that'intellectual'and 'bourgeois the oppositionbetween Goya fortunes of twoconcierge's dau ryants' quarters'and the other with a terrace',Françoise Dorin compares the first to a Goya, the second to a Renoir. See

F. Dorin, Le Tournant (Paris: Julliard,7973), p. 115.16 What is bought is not just a newspeper but also a generative principle

the basis of their opinion-generating principle.17 Analysis of

close to LequidistantSolr, wherethat Le Monde and the Nouuel Obseruateur constirute a final cluster.

18 Private-secto¡ executives, engineers and the professions are characterizedby a medium overall rate of readership and a distinctly higher rate ofreadership of Le Monde than businesspeople and industrialists. (Theprivate-sector executives remain closer to the industrialists by virrue oftheir quantity of lowJevel reading- France-Soir, L'Aurore - and also theirhigh rate of readership of financial, and business journals - Les Ecbos,

Nof¿s to PP.92-6 283

Information. Enter!rise - whereas the members of the professions are

;ió;;;; ;h; t.â.h.", by virtue of rheir rate of readership of the Nouuel

Obseruateur.)19 ittit

"ii áf cónciliation and compromise achieves the virtuosity of art for

not to s

sining nout themeans calbeit often tediousshe concludes - her'Boulevard' - but abecause for manY Yeers a master

at the crossroads of these two Pa

elds of cultural goods production as

aimed at distin"tion means that the

r haute couture 'creetions'or novels'

as instruments of distinction,etween the classes.

for their conformirY to their

clous.h.y;t. ¡,rtt things you feel ' ' '. I didn't

There are ptopL who sent things in' Ihaving a vague sens#' wåntrng to laJ*"y .". . It'J lots of little things' it's

the best in his categorY''

284 Not¿s to pp. 97-8

24 It is said that Jean-Jacques Nathan (Fernand Nathan), who is regarded as

being first and foremost a 'manager', defines publishing as 'a highlyspeculative trade'. The risks are indeed high and the chances of making a

profit when publishing a young writer are minute. A novel which does notsucceed may have a (short-term) life-span of less than three weeks; thenthere are the lost or damaged copies or those too soiled to be returned, andthose that do come back reduced to the state of worthless paper. In the case

of moderate short-term success, once the production costs, royalties anddistribution costs are deducted, about 20 per cent of the retail price is leftfor the publisher who has to offset the unsold copies, finance his stocks andpay his overheads and taxes. But when a book extends its career beyondthe first year and enters the backlist, it constitutes a financial 'flywheel'which provides the basis for forecasting and for a long-term investmentpolicy. \ùlhen the first edition has a be

reprinted at a considerably lower larincome (direct income and also DS,

paperback editions, television or film adaptations), which helps to financefurther more or less risky investments that may also eventually build up theback-list.

25 Because of the unequal lengths of the cycle of production it is rarelymeaningful to compare annual statements from different publishinghouses. The annual statement gives an increasingly incomplete picture of

cons constantly tends to appreciate.26 A fu ot appear on the diagram, ought to be added -

that a Godot whoòe career was over by the end ofin the red.

27 vestments, we must also include all theetcploit a back-list: new editions,

ons (for Gallimard, this is the Folio

economically ambrguous Posltron, because ot lts llnk wrth Les rresses de laCité), and the 'big'!ublishers, Laffont, Presses de la Cité and Hachette' theCité), and the'big' publishers, Laffont, Presses de la Cité and Hachette' theintermediate positions being occupied by firms like Flammarion (whereexperimental series coexist with specially commissioned collective works),Albin Michel and Calmann-Lévy, old, 'traditional' publishing houses, run

29

30

Not¿s to PP. 100-1 285

orize-winnins book.ili, i, 1... i".,i*t"Ay clearly in the theatre, where the classics market

(ìi;;';i;;i¿;f-";i.,..t'ât the iomédie Française) obevs quite specific rules

31

32

33

bç."ut. of its dependence on qhe ;d9c,afo1.l;t:t"l;ä;;;-; .pposiiion is found in all fields. Andi¿ de l"::9ït describes the

nnnnsirinn 'hi sees as characterizine the theatrical field, between theition 'he sees as characterizing the theatrical field, between .th.e.;;.o1.; ";d

the 'militants': iTheatre managers are people of alloDDosltron ne sees as cnaraclcfr¿urË' Lrrç rrrç¿rrrr4! uL¡st vçr"ev¡r -!¡;i,í.i";;;J.;

"ia ,tt. 'militants': iTh."tt. managers are people of all

*itt. fttäy h"u. on. thing in common; with each new,show, theyput an

34

sorts. rney nave onc urrlrH' lrr LUlrrrrlurri w¡rrr !4Lrr ¡¡çvv Jr¡vtrti"".ra-."í of money and tälent at risk on an unpredictable market. But the

286 Not¿s to pp. 101,-3

35

36

similarity stops there. Their motivations spring from very different ideolo-gies. For some, the theatre is a financial speculation like any other, morepicturesque perhaps, but giving rise ro the same cold-blooded strategymade up of the taking of options, calculated risks, liquidity problems,

exclusive rights, sometimes negotiated internationally. For others, it is the

vehicle of a message, or the tool of a mission. Sometimes a militant even

as to make failure a guarantee of qualiry, as the

olemical vision would have it: 'Nowadays, if youneed failures. Failure inspires confidence. Success is

suspect' (Dorin, Le Toumant, p.46).'Oh dear! All I do is reproduce what I see and hear, iust arranging it and

adapting it. Just my luck! What I see is always attrective, what I hear is

often funny, I live in luxury and champagne bubbles' (Dorin, Le Tournant,p.27). There is no need to evoke reproductive painting, nowadays

Nielsen to Orban, provide 'bourgeois' readers with alternative 'real-life'

exPenences.

In literature, as elsewhere, full-time producers (and, a fortiori, producers

for producers) are far from having a monopoly of production. Out of 100

people ì¡ Who's Who who have produced literary works, more thân a thirdare non-professionals (industrialists, 14 per cent; senior civil servants, I 1

per cent; doctors, 7 per cent, etc.) and the proportion of part-timeproducers is even greater in the areas of political writing (45 per cent) and

discoverer-publisher is always liable to see his

richer or more consecrated publishers, who offeration, their influence on prize juries, and also

publicity and better royalties.As opposed to the Sonnabend gallery, which brings together young (the

oldest is fifry) but already relatively recognized painters, and to the

Durand-Ruel gallery, whose painters are almost all dead and famous, the

Denise René gallery, which stands in that particular point in the space-timeof the artistic field in which the normally incompatible profits of the

avant-garde and of consecretion are momentarily superimposed, combinesa group of already strongly consecrated painters (abstract) with an

avant-garde or reâr avant-garde group (kinetic art) as if it had momentarily

37

38

39

40

41

Not¿s to PP. 104-6 287

managed to escape the dialectic of disdnction which sweeps schools away

42

43

44

288 Noú¿s to pp. 1.08-12

dustbins'or'Christo is packages'); and many concepts in literary or erristiccriticism are no more rhan a 'learned' designation of similar practicalgroupings (e.g. littérature obiectale Íor nouueau romctn, itself standing for'all the novelists published by Editions de Minuit').

prery"' (avant-garde painter, age thirty-five).46 Interview published in VH 107,3 (Autumn 1970), pp.55-61.47 That is why it would e rel

and the degree of acc t disdistinction leads to a to a(e.9., 'hyper-realism').

48 This played very fast and very'natu 'failure', who makes thesame kind of moves as everybody else, but out of phase, usually too late,

49 The next task would be to show the contribution the economy of works ofart, as a limiting case in which the mechanisms of negation and their effectsare more clearly seen (and not as an exception to the laws of economy),makes to the understanding of ordinary economic prectices, in which theneed to veil the naked truth of the transaction is also present to varyingdegrees (as is shown by the use made of a whole apparatus of symbolicagents).

3 THE MARKET OF SYMBOLIC GOODS

I 'Historically regarded,' observes Schücking, 'the publisher begins to play apart at the stage at which the patron disappears, in the eighteenth century'(with a transition period, in which the publisher was dependent onsubscriptions, which in turn largely depended on relations berween authorsand their patrons). There is no uncertainty about this among the poets.And indeed, publishing firms such as Dodsley in England or Cotta inGermany gradually became a source of authority. Schücking shows,similarly, that the influence of theatre managers (Drumaturgs) can be evengreater where, as in the case of Ono Brahm, 'an individual may help to

7

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Notes to pp. 113-16 289

will be used from now on as shorthand forscientific' (as in cultural consecration, legitimacy,

bourdieu field of cultural production ch1and2

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