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Transcending the transcendental: Towards a constructive critical theorysociology

Bruno FrèreUniversity of Liège

Daniel JasterEureka College

Abstract

This article calls for a rethinking of critical sociology. The popular Bourdieusian paradigm effectively highlighted how domination persists, but its negative foundation removes the voices of actors by privileging sociological knowledge as capable of identifying transcendental categories of thought. Latourian critical theory arose in opposition to this privileging, but underplayed the roles of domination and power dynamics, and thus critique. We propose a perspective that evades the transcendental perspective which relies on pure negation but allows critique; a more positive critical sociology. This alternative perspective is founded on processualist, phenomenological, pragmatic, and utopian perspectives, which levels the distinction between social scientists and social actors. Focusing on process, not privileged knowledge of transcendental truths, emphasizes actors’ own critical capacities: critical scholars do not dominate, but help actors build better worlds based on their own perspectives and pasts. Thus, critical sociology does not negate actors, reducing them to unconscious reifiers, but recognizes that people utilize their pasts to challenge power structures and create better futures based on their imaginations.

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Introduction

This article calls for critical theory sociology to be reinvented for the 21st century. Doing

so is, of course, a matter of identifying the forms that of domination takes under contemporary

conditions; but it is also a matter of identifying the levers means of emancipation – even already-

existing emancipated actions – without remaining content to pin our hopes on them for an

uncertain future. Indeed, focusing on the French Bourdieusian tradition and the Latourian

reaction, we try to demonstrate the precise extent to which critical theory sociology for Bourdieu,

inspired by the first Francfurt School, has assigned social actors reified kind of livesto alienation

and reification, deniedying them actors access tothe opportunity to build an emancipated

existence. A better world Such an existence – which is seen as highly improbable; – will only

trulybe possible for future generations, following the rupture that occurs when the dominated

finally take up the critique suggested by critical scholars, especially intellectuals in general land

sociologist in particularsociologists. Moreover, economic domination is maintained by a cultural

propensity that affects all human activities. It produces an indoctrination and a conditioning

through which man becomes one-dimensional, according to Marcuse’s still-famous expression.

The individual wallows in unceasing servitude reinforced by a false consciousness that seeks

satisfaction in the goods of consumption. The importance that Bourdieu attributes to social and

cultural domination is largely inspired by the idea of alienation as defined by Marx and

reinterpreted by Francfurt School. But, alienation’s mechanisms are no longer conscious, and the

global culture industry’s manipulation now includes the subjugation of desire. Of course, work

would have to be done to determine whether the insights of this first Frankfurt School’s. This

paper does not claim to do this; it focuses on the heart of French sociology inspired by Bourdieu,

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The French branch of critical theory does not differ of its german influence in its definition

of the mechanisms of social domination. Here, the dominated unconsciously reproduce the

structures of the social order – precisely those structures that subordinate them to the dominants.

They accept the conditions created for them without seeking to rebel against a system that

impoverishes not just their work but also their soul and their creativity. Worse: the ability to

reproduce this system – which is, so to speak, lodged in their class consciousness – generates in

them a desire to surrender themselves up to mass consumption or even to glorify the dominant

values.

Critical Ultimately, Bourdieu took up the project that the Frankfurt School had begun: the

elucidation of the symbolic violence that leads to acceptance of the established order. To this end

he introduces the concept of habitus. This group of principles, which generate and organise

actors’ practices and representations of the world, determines social actors without them being

conscious of this. When they claim that they are free, they are in fact relying on the misleading

evidence of their embodied social categories. For Bourdieu – as for Horkheimer and Adorno –

economic dispossession is reinforced by cultural dispossession, and emancipation is only

conceivable once the social categories that undermine the dominated’s ability to understand the

world are unveiled. Ssociological discourse must thus expose the illusions tricks of common

sense that can interfere in with scholarly critical production .

In the first section of this paper, we will show that the popular Bourdieusian approach for

Bourdieu since the task of this production is the elucidationexposes of how the symbolic

violence which makes the reflexions of common sense reflectsfitting the established order.

Here,,; to this end it throws light on the laws that direct the least privileged without their

knowledge critical sociology is the practice of the sociological gesture consist in a deep diving

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under this common sense to highlight its social determinations. Then . IIn this a second section

paper we show we engage with a reaction to this perspective, the constructivism of will try to

prove the pragmatic and constructivist argument of Latour, who argues that saying that Bourdieu

has the audacity to does takeclaim a God’s kind of God point of view (Latour, 2005: 32-33). We

will do this by taking the time of going deep within the Bourdieu’s work, what Latour and other

constructivists rarely do. Doing so wWe argue that Bourdieusian critique comes not from above

like will, but a show less a transcendent God, but from the deep; thana

transcendantaltranscendental God., a God from the deep : The Bourdieusian critic is the one who

claims is able to place himself oneself beneathunder the conscious of actor actors’ consciousness,

to see his social-transcendantaltranscendental condition of perception and representation.

Bourdieu is a Kantian idealist. The problem with this approach is that actors who wish to be

emancipated we point in Bourdieu’s work is that if actors want to emancipate themselves, they

havemust first to reach this and we do not think that idealism is sufficiënt for critical theory

transcendental point of view, self-reflecting in an effort to purify oneself interminably which

meant “to undertake a preliminary self-analysis in a effort to identify any tacit presuppositions he

might be harbouring, and this to plunge into an infinite regression aimed at strippig his work of

all impurity”, to become more free (Boltanski,1990 [2012]: 23). In this sense, In the Bourdieu’s

thought emancipation remains nigh-unreachablea phantasm as, a word for a future unreachable

since actors will never have finish to deconstructing the social determinations of theirhis

thought:, they can never what is necessary to begin to build a new world through freer actions.

But our intentions should not be mistaken. Even if our constructivist argument share

common points withDespite the parallels with Latour, we do not abandon the goal of critical

sociology as he does the better enemy of Bourdieu within French sociological theory, we won’t

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give up “ the dream of critical sociology” (Latour, 2005 : 139). We do not are not going to deny

the existence of symbolic domination, and social alienation, or social order. The They are more

widespread than ever, and the struggle against them must remain resolute. Bourdieusian critical

tradition is precious since it allows us to not take the world for granted and to explain articulate a

discourse about why we don’t feel confortablecomfortable in it. In this sense we will remain

closer to Boltanski, within the French “pragmatic” school of thought. The suggestion of a

constructive critique aims to resolve the problem of exploring domination within pragmatic

sociology, notably French pragmatismwould like to contribute to solve one of the hot problem of

the contemporary social theory pointed-out by the later : how to introduce the word

“domination” within pragmatic sociology (Boltanski and Basaure, 2011, p. 274).?

“Critique”, that Latour condemns, remains useful as long as exist domination in the world

between social classes, genders or cultural identities/minorities. In other words, for a long time

and probably forever. But wWhat wWe reject first is the idealist position that grants the

sociologist a monopoly of over towards legitimate critique, and which always dismissinges

actor’s present actions as unaware of their real social conditions and indelibly stained by, always

smeared by a dark and negative conception of what we inherit from our past and culturesthe past

of or cultures and societies. According to this position, only sociologists alone is able tocan

identify people’s reified practices, since the sociological perspective takes into account his point

of view do not suffer anymore from the polluting structures that various social pollutions that

distort common sense. Second, what we reject Bourdieu’s is the Hegelian tendency of

Bourdieu’s though whichto only engage in reduces critique to a negative critique, that only

consist in the neéantisation (self-annihilation) of what social actors are by only focusing on what

can be understood as , thanks to their “bad” social influences (Sartre, 1993 [1943]).

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According to this position, it is these figures alone who are capable of identifying and

critiqueing people’s reified practices, since their points of view do not suffer from the various

social pollutions that distort common sense. We propose a new dimension in critical theory. How

to reconcile make possible a critiquecal stance about the social order while trusting people;

avoiding the requirement towhich would consist also in something else than reach

transcendental conditions of possibility of our social worldof our though to negate them ? In a

third section, wWe developpropose an alternative new dimension in critical theorsociology, one

which which would beis constructive as well as deconstructive. Because in some way if we

imagine a state in which the Bourdieu’s phantasma is achieved, once we will have deconstruct all

the social determinations which lead people to reproduce social order, how are we going to build

something new ? To critique be critic would also means to look in the world for practices that

can should be described as non-reified or alienated practices in the world. This requiresd to

highlight the oft-neglected positive forgotten potential of some bBourdieusian concepts which

have always been understood negatively. But this also requiresy..

Our approach searching for to grape accounts outside of the critical tradition, which has a

history of negative analysis. In the two last sections of this paper we will takes take the original

step of utilizing a synthesizes of processual accounts of phenomenology, such as American

pragmatism, phenomenology on the one hand , and Blochian utopianism on the other. These

approaches allow us, in a single expression, to reconcile the ideas of emancipatory practices to

suggest a form of critique which recognizes everyday people’s ability to criticize their world and

practicesthe opportunity to poeple to , utilizing their own critiques negate some bad states of the

world (or of their own practices) that reach but towards the future and the idea of already

emancipated practiceswhich also give them the opportunity to take profit of this negation to

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build on othergalvanise elements of their pasts and cultures to create something bettersome

interesting aspects in some other states of the world (or in their own practices), inspired by past

heritages. Without a transition between these two states it proves extremely difficult to consider

new forms ofThis helps critical sociology to take more seriously actions against take seriously

social resistances to domination instead of doubtingrather than to suspect, them and to also

understanding them as new forms of social life rather than to confine them to reification of the

social order at the negation of a social order by constant negation. The reason for this is simple:

a philosophical representation of the passive human being, unaware of and reified by domination

– from which only certain artists or sociologists can escape because their point of view hovers

above the fray – cannot effectively study original initiatives deliberately constructed by

everyday actors against contemporary power structures.

Lay people generally use a process that is similar to the scientist: testing, examining,

inferring, and then modifying our beliefs. In this process their understandings of reality are

influenced by their goals and visions of better ways for the world to be. Their phenomenal

experience is fluid and in crisis moments (such as a revolt) they reevaluate circumstances of their

actions, using new knowledge to transform their understandings of the past. Bloch’s

epistemology focus on the process through which people regularly try to improve the world

around them. His will allow us to formulate a form of critique that is positive rather than

negative;A constructive critique which would complete negative critique is rooted in

contingency , and in what actors already do to emancipate themselves from the social order they

themselves suspect in their past experiences and in which memories or social inspirations they

draw from to build new experiences. This constructive positive critique is fomulated by an

utopian consciousness, the reflective process through which actors regularly improve upon their

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critiques of the world they experience. Becoming utopist, tThe critical scholar doesn’t just

critique and highlight injustices:some ways of being:, she encourages actors to continue to find

build and live better other ways of being, of constructing society positively, but in the

contingency and the fragility of a present situation new aggregation turned toward the

emancipation in acts rather than in the comfort of an exclusive study negation of social

categories inscribed in actors’ minds, coming from the past and structuring the present

experiences in objective, organized and structured wayalways supposed to structure the present

experience in a sad ways.

1. Doubting unconscious actors, identifying the real

The idea that the dominated reproduce the conditions of their own domination is at the

heart of the critical sociological tradition of which Bourdieu is a figurehead. For example,

Bourdieu (1984: 389) wrote:One of the key thoughts in critical tradition is that “Every

hierarchical relationship draws part of the legitimacy that the dominated themselves grant it from

a confused perception that is based on the opposition between ‘education’ and ignorance.”

(Bourdieu 1984 [1979]: 389). Contrary to Renault’s (2012) claims, These lines clearly echo The

Dialectic of Enlightenment:

[...] just as the ruled have always taken the morality dispensed to them by the rulers more

seriously than the rulers themselves, the defrauded masses today cling to the myth of success still

more ardently than the successful. They, too, have their aspirations. They insist unwaveringly on

the ideology by which they are enslaved. (Adorno and Horkheimer 2013, p.106).

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Bourdieu, contra what some critical scholars says (Renault, 2012), openly acknowledges draws

inspiration from the inspiration that he draws from the Frankfurt School of critique and,

especially from Adorno:

“What the relation to ‘mass’ […] (and a fortiori ‘elite’) cultural products reproduces,

reactivates and reinforces is not (only) the monotony of the production line or office but

the social relation which underlies working-class experience of the world, whereby his

labour and the product of his labour, opus proprium […](owned piece of work [author’s

Note]), present themselves to the worker as opus alienum […](alienated piece of work

[author’s Note]), alienated labour. […]Dispossession is never more totally misrecognized,

and therefore tacitly recognized, than when, with progress of automation, economic

dispossession is combined with cultural dispossession, which provides the best apparent

justification for economic dispossession. Lacking the internalized cultural capital which is

the pre-condition for correct appropriation (according to the legitimate definition) of the

cultural capital objectified in technical objects, ordinary workers are dominated by the

machines and instruments which they serve rather than use, and by those who possess the

legitimate i.e., theoretical, means of dominating them.” (Bourdieu 1984 [1979]: 386-387;,

on Adorno and Bourdieu see Susen, 2011; Gartman, 2012)

In other words, iMf mass culture (Hollywood, reality TV, advertising, etc.) imposes its

ideology on such a scale and unconsciously, it is because the dominated do not possess the

cultural capital which would allows them not only to distinguish themselves in relation to this

ideology, but also toand produce it to their advantage like, as the dominant do. To combat

actors’ this tendency of actors to reproduce dominant systems through non-reflexive action,

Bourdieu argues that sociology’s epistemology should focus on revealing all of these reflexive

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presuppositions and denounce this acceptance of the established order contained in ordinary

language. The task of the sociologist as that of the intellectual who takes care not to “consecrate

the obvious facts of common sense” (Bourdieu, Chamboredon and Passeron 1991 [1973]: 7854).

This is not a relativist position: Bourdieu argues against relativism, reiterating that the

principal difficulty for sociology, as a science, is to confront the obstinacy of the common sense

shared by the dominant and dominated alike. But sociology’s scientifically objective

understanding of the social world is hindered even as it becomes more scientific: destined to be

challenged by naïve actors who do not wish to challenge their preconceived notions (Bourdieu

2004 [2002]: 88). These notions are embedded in ordinary language. It bears all the hallmarks of

symbolic violence, carrying representations that favorfavour the dominant. The prereflexive

presuppositions that agents use to construct their discourse about the world is precisely what the

sociologist must distrust (Bourdieu, 1982).

The sociologist must therefore arm themselves against “the semi-scholarly grammar of

practices bequeathed by common sense” so their own thought is not polluted. Actors’

rationalizations of their practices are not truly scientific, but products of the dominant ideology

“The rationalisations that actors inevitably produce when they are invited to take a perspective

on their practice that is no longer that of action without being that of scientific interpretation”,

can only demonstrate the strict reproduction of the dominant ideology (Bourdieu 2000, p.3068 &

p.306308, own translation).

2. Conscious and unconscious

These “spontaneous theories” carried by ordinary language are, remain, in reality,

subordinated to practical functions; assigned by habitus– those that habitus assigns them. The

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individual who analyses their actions in terms of choice does nothing other than mobilize the

preconception of “freedom” in order toto justify themselves. Scientists The sociologist scientist

who uses this illusory freedom to develop a critical sociology merely allows themselves to be

contaminated by a liberal but ossified social philosophy of freedom instead of giving this act a

sociological explanation. Thus, one must The first task, in this pessimist anthropology, is to steer

clear of this ordinary explanation inherent in common sense and to examine the extent to which

this act is only the product of dominant schemes and modes of representation inscribed in a

habitus (Frère 2008: 47-49Susen, 2007: 253). It is through this habitus that the dominant modes

of being serve as a model for dominated modes of being, unbeknownst to without the dominated

noticing this. For example, the petit bourgeois’ every actions expresses – however clumsily – the

unconscious desire to copy the practices of the genuinely dominant to mask their working class

origins (e.g. Accardo 2009).

Bourdieu’s use of the distinction between conscious and unconscious is revealing. We

could stop at the suggestion that, because “habitus is not something mental”, it is situated

“beyond the conscious/unconscious distinction,” escaping any approach that subjects it to this

dichotomy (Bouveresse 1995, p.583). But Bourdieu explicitly assigns habitus’ mechanisms the

fact remains that it is well and truly to the sphere of the non-conscious: that Bourdieu assigns the

play of habitus. He explicitly states that it functions “without presupposing a conscious aiming at

ends or an express mastery of the operations necessary in order to attain them” (Bourdieu 1990

[1980], p.53). The justification someone is likely to give of their practice thus becomes

supplementary to their real motives, rooted which reside in a habitus which that only the

sociologist can bring to light via to refusinge it as expression of domination and alienation. It is

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no accident that a petit-bourgeoispetit bourgeois is more at ease at a football match than at the

preview of a contemporary art exhibition. Everyone plays the game without realizing it.

The only effective reality is that of the habitus, which weaves the truth of action behind the

scenes, beneath our illusions. SOf course, social science must incorporate common sense

experiences into its definitions of social phenomena (Bourdieu 1990 [1980]: 135)., but But it

only does thisonly when it has protected itself against everyday preconceptions , which do not

influence, but are instead made by,produced by the habitus (Bourdieu 1990 [1980]: 135;

Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, pp.19-46).. Common sense must always be the object of

sociological suspicion and rejection, sparking a “critical rupture with its tangible self-evidences,

indisputable at first sight, which strongly tend to give to an illusory representation all the

appearances of being grounded in reality” (Bourdieu 2000: 181). Ordinary consciousness is

reified, false consciousness, alienated by the unconscious work of habitus.

Bourdieu is uncompromising when it comes to the foundation of his epistemology: “the

social sciences have to win all that they say against the received ideas that are carried along in

ordinary language […]. To try to disrupt verbal automatisms does not mean artificially creating a

distinguished difference that sets the layman at a distance; it means breaking with the social

philosophy that is inscribed in spontaneous discourse” (Bourdieu 1993 [1984]: 20). He never

recants his faith in a rupture with common sense. He reiterates that “rigorous knowledge almost

always presupposes a more or less striking rupture (…) with the evidence of accepted belief –

usually identified with common sense” (Bourdieu 1999 [1993], p.627). Sociology must question

“all the preconstructions, all the presuppositions” to which it risks exposing itself, and which are

the product of “social agents [who] do not innately possess a science of what they do” and what

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they are (Bourdieu 1999 [1993], p.627). Laypeople’s largely do not notice the tacit rules that

govern their practices with complete impunity; produced by a habitus unaware of itself.

32. Transcendentalism

Bourdieu’s brand of sociology makes special demands for reflexivity if critical scholars

intend on seeing the truth of the social world. He is careful to note that oObjective science

requires the sociologist to above all understand their one’s own socio-cognitive and historical

position. To “carry out the scientific project in the social sciences” and “bring to light what is

‘the hidden’ par excellence, what escapes the gaze of science because it is hidden in the very

gaze of the scientist, the transcendental unconscious, one has to historicize the subject of

historicization, to objectify the subject of the objectification, that is, the historical

transcendental, the objectification of which is the precondition for the access of science to self-

awareness […].” (Bourdieu 2004 [2001]: 86; see also p. 78).

The sociologist must primarily objectify herself as the person who objectifies social facts

and social positions of which actors are not aware. The sociologist is the person who aims “at

objectivating the transcendental unconscious that the knowing subject unknowingly invests in

acts of knowledge or, to put in another way, his habitus as a historical transcendental – which

can be said to be a priori inasmuch as it is a structured structure produced by a whole series of

common or individual learning processes” (Bourdieu 2004 [2001]: 78).

As he admits, this is a sociologizing of Kantian transcendental idealism. In Bourdieusian

sociology, as in Kantian idealism, we can “entitle transcendental all knowledge which is

occupied not so much with objects as with the [social] mode of our knowledge of objects in so

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far as this mode of knowledge is to be possible a priori. A system of such concepts might be

entitled transcendental philosophy [sociology]” (Kant 2003, p.59 (B25); our additions in

brackets). By “transcendental”, Kant means that through which knowledge is possible. The

transcendental categories of understanding that condition all thought, detectable via philosophy

and which philosophical work allows us to discover (see Kant 2003, pp. 113-114 (A80)),

become, for Bourdieu, social transcendental categories of the possibility of thought, detectable

via sociologywhich sociological work allows us to discover (habitus, mental social schemas,

predispositions, etc.). More precisely, he seeks to shed light on the socio-transcendental

conditions of the possibility of knowledge whichthat condition the judgements people make

about their everyday lives. These judgements are truncated from the scientific perspective, since

they convey a highly-situatedhighly situated point of view.

After reflexive self-analysis, After having completed her own socio-analysis, the

sociologist will be able tocan identifytell the truth about social relations. Locating her own

perspective makes her capable of comprehending the perspectives of other actors. Which thus:

precisely defines one of the tasks of science, as the objectivation of the space of

points of view from a new point of view, which only scientific work, armed with

theoretical and technical instruments (such as the geometrical analysis of data), enables one

to take – this point of view on all points of view being, according to Leibniz, the point of

view of god, the only one capable of producing the ‘geometrical of all perspectives’, the

geometric locus of all points of view, in both senses of the term, that is to say, of all

positions and all position-takings, which science can only indefinitely approach and which

remains, in terms of another geometrical metaphor, borrowed from Kant this time, a focus

imaginarius , a (provisionally) inaccessible limit. (Bourdieu 2004 [2001]: 95).

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TEquivalent to absolute freedom, this absolute point of view is of course not accessible itself, but

the Bourdieusian sociologist (the one who did his own socio-analysis) is the one who gets

closest to it (Bourdieu: 2004: 92). He is not above individual consciousness, but below them,

able to highlight to negate their sociological conditions of emergence.

This socio-analytic ambition classifies Bourdieu as a classical thinker (Laval 2018 : ,

p.256). To paraphrase, fFor Bourdieu, common sense can only be “thought of negatively, or

more precisely as a censorship and a concealment of an objective truth” (Laval 2018: 184-185).

Like Marcuse, he borrows the concept of “denial” from Freud to name that reaction of rejection

by the dominated and the dominants whose actions and visions of the social world the analyst

(psychoanalyst or sociologist) comes along and explains.

Our analysis here is thus an epistemological one. What we question is the position

Bourdieu grants to the sociologist, which he himself likens to that of an omniscient God, the only

one capable of objectifying the transcendental unconscious that conditions the perspective of the

point of view of the one he calls the agent,” a point of view which is unaware of being a point of

view and is experienced in the illusion of absoluteness” (Bourdieu 2004 [2001]: 116). He is not

above individual consciousness, but below them, able to highlight to negate their sociological

conditions of emergence.

Theory becomes logically unfalsifiable and the field of science (sociology) becomes a

“historical site where trans-historical truths are produced” (Bourdieu 2004 [2001]: 69). It will

never be questioned by actors caught in the bondage of the dominant ideology, subjected to

various forms of symbolic violence and unknowingly playing the game of a social order. Nor

will it ever be contested by other theoretical approaches. Those who demand other analyses are

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inevitably lesser scientists having not carried out their own socio-analysis. By not joining the

search for an underlying truth beneath the thought and actions of deluded actors, researchers only

prove that they remain alongside them actors in the pre-reflexive obscurity of false

consciousness. As a consequence, cCooperation with the actors – who are incapable of grasping

what they are trapped in – can only be subject to condemnation, since it is complicit in validating

what it ought to denounce.

4. Sociology as a transcendental analytic

Bourdieu thus places the sociologist in the transcendental position, confiscates the

transcendental positiond from the philosopher, granting it to the sociologist. He advocates

liberation from philosophical language in favor of a sociological language that is equally

innocent of all “ordinary” vocabulary replete with the biased representations of common sense.

With common language now relegated to the rank of misleading presuppositions, only it is

sociological analysis can free usthat we must mobilize in order to expand our freedom. Like the

psychoanalyst, the sociologist must set about “translating the unconscious into the conscious”

(Freudd outline of psychoanalysis 1961, p.433;. see alsoOn Bourdieu’s Freudian inspiration :

Fourny, 2000; Steinmetz, 2006; Darmond, 2016). He must help the actor to elevate himself to the

level of the truth of his practices. Only the sociologist can aspire to perform this unveiling, as the

actor will engender a distortion of his experience whenever he wants to pass “from the world

where he lives” to “the world where he thinks” (Bourdieu PASCALIAN2000 [1997]: , p.144 52;

see also Bourdieu 2000 [1997]: 121– CHECK).1 To take up his metaphor, wWe could say that

sociological explanation is akin to a higher court overruling the lower court of everyday actors 1 Sociology, « by endeavouring to instensify awarness of the limits that thought owes to its social conditions of production and to destroy the illusion of the absence of limits or of freedom from all determinations which leaves thought defenceless against these determinations, it aims to offer the possibility of a real freedom with respect to the determinations that it reveals » (Bourdieu, 2000 [1997] : , p. 121).

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according to Bourdieu is “‘a court of higher instance’ with authority to overrule the judgment of

the lower court. RR” (Wittgenstein 2007, p.44).

Bourdieu invites us to bracketput common language –produced unreflectively by habitus –

in brackets, otherwiselest we run “the risk of mistaking objects pre-constructed in and by

ordinary language for data” (Bourdieu, Chamboredon and Passeron 1991 [1973]: 2011, p.21).

We must constantly be vigilant with regard toregarding “even the most purified schemes…

whenever they have a structural affinity with ordinary-language schemes” (1991 [1973]ibid.:

p.24). Suspicion must always be deployed in order to uncover the true meanings of social facts.

Truly scientific sociological language is that which resists contamination by common sense.. It is

beyond those prejudices and summary representations that betray our habitus, which the

sociologist must burrow through in order to reach an interpretation that is necessarily different to

that given by the authors of these social facts. Bourdieu situates reason that is free from the

social – that which the critical sociologist is closest to – beyond what is expressed by common

sense. Sociological thought is a transcendental analytic (Kant 2003, p.102 [(B89]) sq), a body of

thought that determines the conditions of possibility of all thought.

5 Bourdieusian emancipation

By leading us towards a continued asceticism when faced with the language of common

sense and its presuppositions, Bourdieu wants to show that “rationality can only be defined as a

battle, ever renewing, against the prescientific mindset, against false evidence” « la rationalité

ne peut se définir que comme un combat, toujours à recommencer, contre la mentalité

préscientifique, contre l'évidence trompeuse » (Latour, 1989, p. 12 FIND TRANSLATION

– SCIENCE IN ACTION). If unconscious social schema govern our activity via the

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intermediary of a kind of incarnated and unreflective reason – which can only be expressed in an

alienated and reified language, stuffed full of presuppositions – then how can we think about

emancipation? Is it not eradicated by the habitus?

Bourdieu’s response to this is easy to discern in his refutation of the causalist role we

sometimes want to give the habitus. The habitus is a vehicle for emancipation because it allows

us to perpetually produce the negative proof of how it constrains us. It is not habitus itself that

permits emancipation, but rather the ceaseless and infinite task of its reflexive control. Shedding

light on the laws “that unconsciously direct us extends the domain of freedom” (Bourdieu

1984b, p.45 – SOCIOLOGY IN QUESTION).

In a certain sense, habitus allows for freedom precisely because it is freedom’s eternal

limit. Bourdieu seems to argue that digging deep into our knowledge of how we are determined,

is the path towards disalienation from our representations of the world which conform to the

established order. Like Lévinas (1978: 197) freedom only exists for Bourdieu because it is a

finite freedom. Whatever I might do to increase it, I will always be confronted by practical

reason, by pre-reflexive schemes. These will not only determine my action; they will also have

an influence on my rationalization of this action through preconceptions and presuppositions that

very likely fit the dominant ideology. But I can experience the exhilarating feeling of what

freedom might be each time I decode the elements of the habitus that directs me in the world.

Freedom in itself only exists as a promise denied. I imagine what it must feel like every time I

experience the barriers that surround it and decide to push them back. In sum, I am not free from

anything except from wanting to fight against the limits of my freedom.

The Bourdieusian sociologist develops the tools for further expanding freedom’s reach in

the walls erected by the habitus. She is endowed with the ability to identify and explain the

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incorporated social schema that govern practices. She provides actors with the theoretical

knowledge of what directs them. She claims control over the disalienation and the destruction of

all our presuppositions.

The sociologist is thus not above individual consciousness, but below it, able to highlight

to negate their sociological conditions of emergence. This Bourdieu’s sociology is a theory of the

depths:: the sociologist’s language is correct insofar as it still has not been polluted by that

stratum of prejudices that threatens it at every moment. Sociological sociological

knowledgelanguage is situated, so to speak, “beneath” ordinary language. Habitus covers over

the free anthropological substrate of people, and only the Bourdieusian can excavate deeply

enough to recover it. Capable of unveiling the extent to which common sense is subject to verbal

approximations, the sociologist is better immunized against presuppositions and received ideas.

She is pure because she is freer from the restrictions inherent to common sense. Habitus – the

individualized social, as Bourdieu likes to reiterate – is the condition of every practice and every

logic, whatever their interaction or their mutual interpenetration. Habitus covers over the free

anthropological substrate of people, and only the Bourdieusian can excavate deeply enough to

recover it. She is the one who, Bourdieu confesses, is most capable of objectifying actors’

transcendental unconscious by getting closer to the perspective of all perspectives;: the

perspective of God. By leading us with Bachelard or Canguilhem, towards a continued

asceticism when faced with the language of common sense and its presuppositions, Bourdieu

wants to show that “rationality can only be defined as a battle, ever renewing, against the

prescientific mindset, against false evidence” (Latour, 1989, p. 12, we translateour translation).

If unconscious social schemas govern our activity via the intermediary of a kind of incarnated

and unreflective reason – which can only be expressed in an alienated and reified language,

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stuffed full of presuppositions – then how can we think about social change and creativity ?

Despite its emphasis on perpetual critique, Bourdieusian sociology seems to lack the ability to

recognize how culture not only limits, but can also transform

In the Bourdieu’s sociolology “ the notion of critique at stake lacks both normative and

transformational force. From the vantage point of the methodology of critical theory,

Bourdieusian critical sociology offers an inadequate account of culture as a domain of

interpretation and in which is contained normative structures and ideas which can have a

transformational impact depending of how they are evoked” (Delanty, 2011: 80; Sewell 1992).

63. Towards the other Janus face2 of critique3 another process

The transcendentalism embedded within the dominant Bourdieusian perspective in

critical theorysociology, illustrated here through the Bourdieusian approach, has a significant

effect on understandings of emancipation. However , the belief that someone with privileged

knowledge can help enlighten others poses a problem for those who wish to help emancipate

social actors. The Bourdieusian sociologist seems akin to Socrates in the Meno, guiding the

young boy to the correct answer as a means of illustrating that we all know the Ideal forms, just

unconsciously; the philosopher helps make the unconscious conscious, reconnecting to a

transcendental consciousness free of determination. Substitute the Ideal with the social, and the

philosopher with the sociologist, and you have a claim similar to Bourdieu. Social actors are

2 . Latour, 1987 : 4.3 Latour, 1987 : 4.

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dupes unconsciously reproducing existing social systems. They need sociologists to help them

recognize societal injustices.

We contend that its abilitythe Bourdieusian approach does nothas limited skills to emancipate is

limited because it cannotlacks encouragement of actors to recognize and actualize their innate

agency. The reliance on the transcendental analytic habitus concept maintains a sense of

oligarchy, albeit under the direction of the enlightened savior whom the masses must trust for

their own good; perhaps a cultural bourgeoisie (Gouldner 1979). It is not positive: it does not

help social actors illustrate that they belong in society, capable of and encouraged to , even

encouraged to, communicate with all in the commons, to change the society, a more positive

conception of emancipation (Rancière 2007[1992]: 48). Within the Bourdieusian perspective,

tThere is an embedded sense of self-superiority.. Reflexivity is not humility: tThere is the

assumption that we know better than actors how the world works; reflexivity is not humility.

We offer an alternative perspective. We do not start from doubting actors, Such a belief

implicitly establishes yet another system of inequality, despite the good intentions of establishing

equalities for “anyone who starts out from distrust, who assumes inequality and proposes to

reduce it, can only succeed in setting up a hierarchy of inequalities, a hierarchy of priorities, a

hierarchy of intelligences - and will reproduce inequality ad infinitum” (Rancière 2007[1992]:

52). Some have access to the transcendental level;, some need help. And pPotential societal

changes rely on a in society are conditioned by the tiny public who, following sociologists, will

realize, and then negate, all their unconscious predisposition which are reproduceing the social

order. . Instead, we level the relationship between scientists and actors: recognizing that each has

similar biases and ways of exploring and explaining the world: scientists are merely more refined

in our process.

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We do not wish to jettison all of Bourdieu’s perspective. He joins the ranks of Foucault

and Derrida because his deconstruction powerfully illustrates the existence of social, economic,

and symbolic domination However there is a crucial assumption within the Bourdieu’s work

which make his critical and deconstructivist perspective as precious as the one of Foucault or

Derrida in the French intellectual tradition (Benatouïl, 1999a, p. 284) : social, economic and

most of all symbolic dominations exist. We agree that critical sociology engages with social

problems and can play a political role In this sense we share the assumption that the vocation of

critical sociology is to “assess social problems and to play a political role” (Benatouïl, 1999a, p.

312, 1999b, p. 389). But to suggest a way for emancipation means if we want to suggest new

way for emancipation, we have first to recognize that sociological categories of thought on how

domination works through which domination works can be reached by anyone everyone in

everyday life depending of circumstances., oOtherwise, only a select few people, following

bourdieusian sociologist cancould emancipate themselves; a new hierarchy. Critiquec is

accessible to everyone and does not depend of the privileged access to an unconscious

transcendental categories. Additionally, Secondw we must also have to find a way to analyse

people’s actions which does not overemphasize would not consist in a research of reproduction

(of the social order: one must be critical but also emphasize the creation of something better) but

of creation while remaining critical.

Let us address our first point. The disregard for common sense, reduced to false

consciousness over unconscious predispositions, and the idea that the role of sociologist was to

unveil and to denounce the later to access to social trues were probably at the center of the

critique addressed in common by the main scholars of the pragmatic school of sociology against

the critical tradition in social sciences in France (Latour, 1993 [1989]: 44-45). To remain focused

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on the false consciousness and on the reproduction of the social order through people’

predispositions leads to “under-estimat[ing]e the effects of the circulation of sociological

discourses in society and their re-appropriation/re-interpretation by actors – which is rather

problematic in the case of a sociology that claims reflexivity. These repercussive effects of

sociology in the social world are especially important in contemporary societies on account of

the fact in particular, of the enhanced role of secondary and university education (not to mention

the role of the media), which leads social actors to seize on explanatory schemas and languages

derived from social science and to enlist them in their daily interactions” (Boltanski 2011

[2009] : 21, see also Boltanski, 2012 [1990], 18 and 84). This phenomenon of

re-appropriation/re-interpretation is understandable as the “double hermeneutic” phenomenon of

(Giddens (1986) has been illustrated repeatedly:. Uunder-class people are conscious of the

symbolic violence they are endure,ing even without the lights of sociologists’ inputsts (Viguier

2019), as evidenced by social critiques levied in cultural industry is strongly criticized in several

free software associations (Depoorter 2019), like economic domination is criticized inthe

solidarity economy (Frère, 2019), and the petit-bourgeois way of life in the ZAD of Notre-

Dames-Des-Landes ZAD (Bull 2019).

To Moreover, and this is our second point, equating positivistic sciencescientific

practices with objective and inaccessible truths, as some continue to defenders of with Bourdieu

do (see for instancee.g. Jain, 2013, p. 105, Atkinson, 2019: 10), leads tocan ignore how much

common sense itself uses in itself to follows the structure of scientific way of thinking. As

Boltanski and Thevenot Though not formally trained, everyday people act like scientists, testing

the world around them (Boltanski and Thévenot 2006[1991]: 54)showed in their famous On

justification; “in every day life, (…) like scientists, ordinary people never stop suspecting,

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wondering, and submitting the world to tests” (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006[1991]: 54). There

exist some situations where “actors exhibit their action and unfold it verbally. On such occasions,

they seek to generalize and to constitute facts by means of language, and as they do so they use

language in a way that approaches that of sciences” (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006[1991]: 356).

The With the pragmatic turn in sociology is built on this assumption, the intellectual’s

role begins to assume a different way of working, making it much more respectful ofwith people

and ordinary life (Frère and jJaster, 2019)8). Contra much critical sociology, As it was suggested

in a famous French article in a time when it was more common to talk of ANT (actor network

theory) than pragmatism,pragmatic sociology does not not consist in negateing the content of

common sense, but in a work of translates actors’ understandingsion (Callon, 1986). The craft of

a sociology which aim to translate is to clarify controversies in which people are arguing in

public live.

Instead of defining agents by means of stable transcendental attributes which must be

cleansedhas to be flush out, endowing them with tendencies “that are inscribed in the body and

capable of generating objective unconscious intentions ([…]), the sociology of translation shows

how actor develop discourses about these action, how they shape their action into a plot (Ricoeur

calls this ‘emplotment) ([...] ) We take their arguments seriously, along with the proof they offer,

we do not attempt to diminish or disqualify them by contrasting them with a more powerful

interpretation. We are attentive to the way in which the actors themselves construct reports that

are coherent and that aim for objectivity and generality” (Boltanski, 2012 [1990] : 29-30). But

contra ethnomethodology, which is however a great influence here, tThe idea of translation is not

only to reproduce strictly what actors say in other words. It is also utilize sociological knowledge

to to take profit of the specific resources that the sociologist can bring in the collective to help

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itactors to find theirits own coherence in the public space. Clarifying is also

consolidatinggathering. In consists “in going back to the argumentative chain to utterances of

higher generality in the sense that they are acceptable to unspecified actors and their validity no

longer depends on the contingent dimensions of the situation. By resorting to clarification,

researchers bring together a greater number of relations than those included in the utterance”

(Boltanski, 2012 [1990] :32).

In the same “French pragmatic tradition”, built against Bourdieu, Latour helps us to give

to critique a constructivist element to this traditionturn. Militantly against Bourdieusian critique

(Latour 2004: 229),Rejecting totally Bourdieu once again and rejecting “critique” in the classical

sense of the word4, Latour argues that has critiques do not deconstruct, but construct. The goal is

not to upend those we study, but to help clarify ideas with the full recognition that social reality

is a fragile and contingent construction, and must be treated with respect and caution (Latour

2004: 246)given a new sense to this : “The critic is not the one who debunks, but the one who

assembles. The critic is not the one who lifts the rugs from under the feet of the na ̈ıve believers,

but the one who offers the participants arenas in which to gather. The critic is not the one who

alternates haphazardly be- tween antifetishism and positivism like the drunk iconoclast drawn by

Goya, but the one for whom, if something is constructed, then it means it is fragile and thus in

great need of care and caution » (2004: 246). More recently,

4 . In his famous paper”Why has Critique Run out of Steam” Latour compares the structure of Bourdieu’s critical sociology with the structure of the conspirasistconspiracist theory : “In both cases you have to learn to become suspicious of everything people say because of course we all know that they live in the thralls of a complete illusion of their real motives. Then after disbelief has struck and explanation is requested for what is really going on, in both cases again it is the same appeal to power ful agents hidden in the dark, acting always consistently, continuously, relentlessly. Of course, we in the academy like to use more elevated causes – society, discourse knowledge-slash-power, fields of forces, empires, capitalism, while conspiracists like to portray a miserable bunch of greedy people with dark intents, but I find something troublingly similar in the structure of the explanation” (Latour 2004: 229).

26

If this constructivist argument has never been applied to critique anymore even in his last

writing in which he turned yet a bit Marxist (2017), Latour (2017) helps us suggests what could

be calleda constructive critique. Constructive criticism is when that which the sociologist

engages in whenever he or she is involved in a collective, alongside other people, utilizes with

his or her armadarepertoire of knowledges and specific tools alongside, not above, people. In

their commitment to the world in which they live, sociologists contribute to the formatting of

social constructions and aggregates at the same time as they study them (see also Boltanski 2012

[1990]: 32). He brings them to life and endures over time simply because he seeks to show them

through description (see also Boltanski 2012 [1990]: 32), to present them in the public space

using a specific language, that of science, which carries with it specific knowledge that is

certainly constructed but is also extremely robust, since it has been tested and shared by groups

of scientists on many occasions.

In such a perspective, society has no mode of existence. It is always what needs to be

explained; it does not explain and not what explains. To do social sciences from a constructivist

point of view is to start from collectives (in the plural) that are in the process of being formed,

integrating controversy instead of starting from pre-formed collective structuresfor example to

integrate a controversy rather than starting from a collective being (in the singular) that has

already been formed (Latour, 2013: 353 and 401).

Per Latour, Bourdieusian thought washes away the specificity of the social world. There is

no context, no separation of the social from other realities, no social forces to explain social

phenomena unexplainable by structure, etc. The Bourdieusian perspective operates as if actors

know what they are doing, even if they don’t satisfactorily explain it to researchers (Latour 2005:

4-5)Such a perspective must replace the Broudieu’s school of thought argues Latour. « It claims

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that there is nothing specific to social order; that there is no social dimension of any sort, no

‘social context’, no distinct do- main of reality to which the label ‘social’ or ‘society’ could be

attributed; that no ‘social force’ is available to ‘explain’ the residual features other domains

cannot account for; that members know very well what they are doing even if they don’t

articulate it to the satisfaction of the observers (…) this second school of thought could use as its

slogan what Mrs Thatcher famously exclaimed (but for very different reasons!): ‘There is no

such a thing as a society (2005 : 4-5). WHere we must understand that society does not exist as a

ready-made whole. Is is simply what people are always in the making:. It is simply what is

constantly being built up by the associations that the actors are involved in. There is no

preexisting social force.

ButCompelling. But Latour Latour by saying so throws the baby out with the bath water.

By rRejecting the idea of any "pre-existing social force", he also rejects all the Bourdieusian

concepts such as habitus, the idea of social dispositions, or schemasthought schemes. Certainly,

heLatour saw that these were not a priori categories which unconsciously give rigid forms to

perception and reflection. There is no "hidden", a "deep dark below” (2004: 229) that is only

accessible through a transcendental approach (Latour 2004: 229). But by tTotally rejecting

dispensing with these concepts , Latour gives the impressionfeeling that humans build society by

aggregating from nothing. It is as if we lived and thinkought in a kind of permanent tabula

rasa;"clean slate" (table-rase???) and that people will never resortrefer to schemes of thought

from their social and reflexive trajectoriespasts. In the Latour’s works, the actors associate and

build the “social” ex-nihilo.

Yet people Not only can therecognize and engage presence withof the past be reflected

by everyone, butand it can also be seen asbe a positive resource for changing society. Social

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forces can be a positive influence on how people engage with their social dispositions; they are

no not necessarily negative or necessary to negate. Maintaining the use of such notion than

hHabitus, dispositions, or and social schemas es can also help people, who today borrow widely

from science in general and sociological reflection in particular, to transform society. Increased

reflexivity does not mean just being able to identify what structures one’s thoughts, experiences,

and actions: it also means being better able to think critically about how things must change in

order to make the world more reflective of our better imaginaryBeing able to have the same

precautious care attitude regarding “facts” which constitute her own past. They will then be

armed to better qualify the experiences background in which they draw to change the world.

This leads to our second critique of Latour: his promotion of a “flat concept of society”

dismisses dynamics of domination within societal organizationAnd here lies the second problem

in Latour's thinking: refusing to accept that there exists something like a social order in which

some actors have a dominant position and others a dominated position, leads him to promote “

flat concept of society” (Guggenheim and, Potthast, 2011, p. 163). Because society is always

what thousand and thousand aggregations of actors are constructing all over the world, “change

is permanent”. We have swung from one extreme to another: In short with Bourdieu, nothing

never changes; but with Latour, everything changes everywhere, and all the time. Sso much that

we can never consider that some kind of social stabilized spaces, with power hierarchies, do not

exists in which actors can have dominant or dominated positions. We just have to go deeper in

the description of each aggregation for itself. As it wa underlined by some schoolars, the

Latour’s desire to describe on the same flat level any kind of aggregation/association/assemblage

on the same level, always digging deeper into description of aggregations themselves,, implies

no stable power dynamicsleads to ignore power relationships such has for instance the massive

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collection of SUV owners (supported by the cars and oils industries, media advertising, etc.) and

the tiny and minoritarian association of ecologists which would like to critique them (Keller,

2017: 62; Puig de la Bellacasa, 2017: 48).

While we agree that critical theory must move beyond Bourdieusian transcendentalism,

the Latourian model overcorrects. In an attempt to reconcile critique with pragmatism (Boltanski,

2011 [2011]; Susen, 2014, 2015; Nachi, 2014), wThat’s why we also suggest to conservinge the

very central aim of Bourdieusian sociology : to deconstruction of domination, but with. But we

do this by adding its missing second face : a constructive emphasisapproach, which recognizing

take profit of the Latourian ’s challenge of descriptive assemblage (Savage, 2009). In some way

this attempt can be also understood as an answer to the call of reconciling critique and

pragmatism (Boltanski, 2011 [2011] ; Susen, 2014, 2015 ; Nachi, 2014)

This perspective is based on aTo accomplish this, suggest the first building blocks of such

approach, we draw from need a handful of schools of thought which will help us to nuance

several concepts, synthesized into one approach. First is what can be called the processual

perspective, with a heavy emphasis on represented by Henri Bergson and Maurice Merleau-

Ponty. Second, is the related pragmatist perspective, particularly that of American pragmatismts

such as John Dewey, William James, and George Herbert Mead. FinallyLastly is the utopian

perspective of Ernst Bloch, which has many parallels with these other two schools of thought.

TTogether, these perspectivesy highlight how the lived experience is less static than

Bourdieu indicates: more dynamic and fluid (Abbott 2016). This makes claims to stable,

transcendental categories somewhat problematic, particularly for critical scholars claiming to

know more about injustice and possible ways forward than other social actors. In an attempt to

understand this experience, we impose artificial categories on it; it is all an artifact. But try to

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understand it we do, and lay people generally use a process that is similar to the scientist: testing,

examining, inferring, and then modifying our beliefs.

In this process ourIn our representations and actions, oOur understandings and actions of

reality are influenced by our perception of our past and our culture, our goalsgoals, and visions

of better ways for the world to be. IActors, both lay and scientific, are already critical. In this

sense, there is a hint of utopianism in our understandings of the social world. But utopianism

doesn’t always follow a strict teleology. As we better understand the world, our understandings

of what happened, and what can happen in the future, changes. There is no clear, set better to

perceive: critique changes as our social world changes. Repeat ad infinitum.

4. A processual construction of the present rooted in critique

We begin with the processualist theorists because they focus on one of the fundamental

elements of social life: the individual’s phenomenal encounter with the lived world. The

phenomenal experience is fluid. When we experience our world, we constantly balance a yet-

unrealized future and a fluid past in our present. However, in our desire to understand our world,

we freeze this experience in moments of time; categories of our habitus. Though these categories

are necessarily alien from our experience, we find them useful in helping us to act here and now,

changing or confirming to change our way of lifeve or to confirm it (Boltanski, 2011). There are

many circumstances in the social life when during which we better predict the unknown future,

analyse and what try to understand what our social experiences. This can as well as help us

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solidify our understandings of the past, an oft believed necessary condition for establishing

causal, and thus predictive, relationships (Bergson 2011[1913]: 101, 196; Boltanski 2011;

Merleau-Ponty 2012[1945]: 277-278, 380-381, 438-442).

Our experiences are thus influenced by the habitus categories dispositions which we have

created. Being social creatures, we are taught to act and think in certain ways. So far, this

parallels is similar to Bourdieu’s transcendentalism. How we think and act is necessarily

influenced by our socialization; our dispositions (habitus); our pasts. Indeed, actors’

contemporary perceptions and understandings are interwoven with our memories (Bergson

1959[1896]: 53-54). We Bourdieu was probably right to say that we cannot thus erase or bracket

our biographies and socializations from our understandings., as tThese very frameworks

influence how we understand the world. Nevertheless, But we can also consciously, by our

ordinary communications with other, take inspiration and of them to resculptrepurpose them for

action and change instead of rather than negate them via ordinary communications.

But thisThe temporal relationship is not as static as it appears., Bourdieu recognizes this,

but his theory underspecifies how transformations occur. The past is actualized in the present as

memory only through reference to our contemporary moment, what Bergson conceives as an

upwelling of the past towards the present (Bergson 1959[1896]: 53-54, 128, 236; Merleau-Ponty

2012[1945]: 277-278, 438-442). Bergson calls this an upwelling of the past towards the present,

but Merleau-Ponty, influenced by Bergson used to consider that Bergson had a crucial influence

on his own thought (Heidsieck, 1971: 35),. He helps to sociologize this spiritualized and

subjectivized concept which is ineed too deeplyh rooted in an spiritualised and subjectivised

perspective (Halbwachs (1935 [1925]: 123, and 370). We don’t normally think in social

categories and analysis, but during moments of crisis, when understandings become unsettled,

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our “preconscious relations to class […] that had until then been merely lived [are transformed]

into conscious decisions; tacit commitment becomes explicit. But it appears to itself as if it

preexisted the decision” (Merleau-Ponty 2012[1945]: 381). Notice the unconscious abidance

with social categories

In the texts contained in In Praise of Philosophy, Signs, or The Prose of the World,

Merleau-Ponty prefigures clearly leads the way for Bourdieu’s critical sociology, as he conceives

of our entanglement with the world in general and our ineluctable situatedness in our bodies as

‘cultural’. (see also Boltanski 2003(By the way, this is the ‘place of culture’ on which Boltanski

insists in his pragmatic writings : 2003). This view is based on the assumption that “‘the unity of

culture extends above the limits of an individual life the same kind of envelope that captures in

advance all the moments in that life, at the instant of its institution or its birth”’ (Merleau-Ponty,

1960a: 111). Like In this, he prefigures clearly Bourdieu, he by refusesing to see “‘in the mind

the guarantee of unity which is already there when we perceive”’ the world and the meaning that

one’s culture (one’s social universe) has deposited as sediment (ibid.). But contra Bourdieu he

does not won’t pretend that reflection on about the socio-cultural frame of perception depends of

a kind sociological transcendental cleaning.5.

The conception of Merleau-Ponty’s conception is much more optimistic. Through the

action of culture, in a certain sense, one inhabits he says, I inhabit lives that are not one’s

ownmine. , because tThe significations that the objects in the world take on for me are the

significations that were forged by those who “‘preceded my present”’ (Merleau-Ponty, 1960a:

111).i This present becomes what Merleau-Ponty calls the social-mien (‘social-mine)’ (social-

5 . In Réponses. Pour une Anthropologie Réflexive,Bourdieu and Wacquant referencequoting Merleau-Ponty, Bourdieu and Wacquant defininge habitus “as intrinsic corporality pre-objective contact between subject and object so as to reproduce the body as a source of practical intentionality, as a source of signification […] rooted and the pre-objective level of experience (Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992: 27). But they don’t underline that for Merleau-Ponty, artist as, ultimately, common people can have a post-objective understandings of this practical intentionality without transcendental and sociological work.

33

mien); that is to say, the raw material of my being-in-the-world that I will then be able to sculpt

(Frère, 2005: 248).

Throughout At various points in his work, one can it is possible to see a nod in the

direction of sociology – a discipline he was one of the few philosophers to believe in at that

time.(see Bourdieu 1987: 15). ii He describes, for example, a social fact not as a ‘massive reality’

(clearly directed at Durkheimian objectivism) but as ‘embedded in the deepest part of the

individual’ (1960c: 123-142). Every life has ‘a social atmosphere’ which precedes and

conditions the reflexive gaze we can turn on it. One is I am immersed in the world before

becoming aware of the world. It is true. But the self I’m is also constantly the most capable of

one who is able to reflecting on this significance in the most relevant way since one is I’m the

only one to have had experienced the cultural and social world in the waysense oneI doesid.

Merleau-Ponty put this as follows: ‘When I awake in me the consciousness of this social-mine

(social-mien), it is my whole past that I am able to conceive of […], all the convergent and

discordant action of the historical community that is effectively given to me in my living present’

(Merleau-Ponty, 1960b: 12). We shouldcan call this one’s say in “my common sense”. Then

IOne can then start to seek for personspeople who share the same social-minemien, in other

words, the same common sense, thanas oneselfI. It is important to keep in mind Merleau-Ponty’s

insistence on the empowering nature of the social-mienThis : was best expressed in Merleau-

Ponty’s later writings: ‘[…] the body overflows into a world of which he carries the schemata

[...] which continuously provokes in him a thousand wonders’ (Merleau-Ponty, 1960a: 108). It is

important to keep in mind Merleau-Ponty’s insistence on the empowering nature of the social-

mien. It develops on a daily agency through the subject’s constant exposure to the social world.

The habitus, understood in the light of Merleau-Ponty’s work, allows us to envisage an active

34

and plural actor for who habitus is not frozen in time (Lahire, 2010 [1998]) as, at the same time,

likely to behave in accordance with social learnings.

Because the work of Merleau-Ponty’s was interrupted by his sudden and unexpected

death meant that , this atmosphere, thisthe social-mine (social-mien), ‘has found no name in any

philosophy’, (according to Claude Lefort 1978: page?). It did, however, emerge in sociology. In

moving from a philosophy to a sociology), the being-in-the-world – the social-mine (social-

mien) – can be understood as is called habitus. The habitus, understood in light of Merleau-

Ponty’s work, allows us to envisage an active and plural actor for whom habitus is not frozen in

time as, at the same time, likely to behave in accordance with social learnings (Lahire, 2010

[1998]). But during the Bourdieusianis trajectorytranslation removes , it losed all itsthe positive

and pro-active dimension. As a schema and disposition, iIt became, as the idea of schems and

disposition, a kindg of transcendeantal category of perception to be negated, lacking creative

agentic potential that we have to reflect to negate rather than to create.

This was best expressed in Merleau-Ponty’s later writings: ‘[…] the body overflows into

a world of which he carries the schemata [...] which continuously provokes in him a thousand

wonders’ (Merleau-Ponty, 1960a: 108). It is important to keep in mind Merleau-Ponty’s

insistence on the empowering nature of the social-mien. It develops on a daily agency through

the subject’s constant exposure to the social world. The habitus, understood in the light of

Merleau-Ponty’s work, allows us to envisage an active and plural actor for who habitus is not

frozen in time (Lahire, 2010 [1998]) as, at the same time, likely to behave in accordance with

social learnings.

35

Of course, Bourdieu periodically in some parts of Bourdieu’s writings, it is possible to

find references to the idea of anotes that habitus creates that, although it is socially constructed,

is equipped with the capacity to act upon the social world. In fact, sSuch a view portrays the

relationship between habitus and the social world as a relationship of mutual and continuous

transformation. Yet, we also need to recognise that, in most parts of his writings, Bourdieu has,

to a largely extent, neglectsed the existence – and, consequently, the signnificance – of the

creative and transformative nature of habitusdimension. Such a deterministic concception of

habitus portrays actors as heteronomous entities condemned by their common sense to reproduce

tthe social conditions of their domination, leaded by their common sense. This – somewhhat

fatalistic – perspective is particularly seductive when studying the situation of the working

classes in advanced societies. For, aTccording to this view, these classes ‘learn’ to like watching

television, rather than reading books, and they ‘learn’ to disengage from, rather than engage

with, politics; in short, they ‘learn’ to accept their alienation.

Importantly, we need to account for the fact that the existence of ‘social determinations’

and the existence of ‘cultural complexityrichness’ are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

Socially complex individuals are aware of their multifaceted main elements of their cultural

identities and even less so of their creative capacity that allows them to ‘invent’ themselves and

the world by which they find themselves situated. Merleau-Ponty uses the example of a painter

to show how the ‘being-in-the-world ’ is a source of creativity. In L’œil et l’esprit (1964; in

English: The Eye and the Mind), hHe writes that ‘the painter lends his body to the world in order

to put himself in painting’ and that he thereby makes himself the ‘echo’ (Merleau-Ponty, 1964:

16-22). But ithe does it with a specific transformative touch which transform it, and this touch

36

cominges from the way he has learned painting and the artistico-social and cultural surrounding

which has buildbuilt his social-mien.

This has important implications for a more constructive version of critique: In short : in a

constructive way of envisioning critique : we are all capable can be all considered as people able

toof assemblinge ourtheir social-mien in the aim to change the social order fromin which we are

emerged. The constructively critical sociologist here would have in charge to translate this

attempt to aggregatei andon by illuminateunlighting common senses which contributors

inheritateinherit from the past and share about the past to change the future.

: this seems to be similar to Bourdieu. However, there is a key distinction. One could also

interpret this to mean that we apply social categories after the fact. During moments of

uncertainty, we reevaluate our circumstances, and use that new knowledge to transform our

understandings of the past. We can see elements of this interpretation in his later analysis of

political activism, where he notes that “revolt is not, then, the product of objective conditions,

but conversely it is the decision made by the worker to desire the revolution that turns him into a

proletarian. [...] One might conclude from this that history has no sense by itself, it has the sense

we give it through our will” (Merleau-Ponty 2012[1945]: 468). Our desires for a different future

help produce these moments of uncertainty, where we reevaluate our social conditions; critique.

And, contrary to someone under control by their habitus, many people often want to live in

different ways.

These perspectives highlight the hubris inhow the claiming that sociological

critiquecritique for the sociologist can consists inin phenomenologically bracketing her one’s

experiences to gain access to the purportedly transcendental, truer understandings of social

37

reality is somewhat hubristic. Even the language we use to express our sociological analysis, as

sociologists, comes from our past and has cultural connotations. Based on these insights, how

can we realistically claim to bracket our pasts heritages and categories and our future desires

when claiming to recognize the transcendental subject lying beneathunder our social

determinationsthese? As sociologists, we seem to be no different from other actors in our

inability to separate ourselves from the social, which makes sense since the self and the social

are consubstantial (Mead 1962[1934]). Dispositions of the “sense” share in common can also be

fruitful and sociologist can galvanize some in the social aggregation that has provoked its

recognition by people (didn’t people who went to live in the Z.A.D of Notre-Dame-Des-Landes

share a way of live in common against the kind of live represented by the airport project ?). As

sociologists, wWe seem to be no different from other actors in our inability to separate ourselves

from the social, which makes sense since the self and the social are consubstantial (Mead

1962[1934]).

Second, we see that when the sociologist proclaims to see the transcendental social

conditions of thought of members of society, utilizing their power as a scholar as a means of

verifying their claims, they influence how social actors understand the world. The artifacts

created to make a fluid experience more static can be used to reorder our understandings of the

past and influence our present actions towards the future (see also Latour 2005). Some are social;

some biographical. Bourdieusian critical scholars risk imposing their own temporalities (pasts,

desires for the future) on social actors under the guise of a truth. Social actors thus risk adopting

not a truer understanding of society, but instead someone else’s understandings. This is not a far-

fetched concept: psychological studies have shown that we can indeed have other notions placed

38

in our minds, altering our memories and understandings of a situation, perhaps most famously by

Festinger and Carlsmith (1959).

The phenomenological is emphasis on perspectivism and the fluidity of our

understandings of the past and present, and how these capacities both structure and provide

creative agency, based on future desires illustrates the need to recognize that social actors have,

and act on, innate critical capacities. We now turn to American pragmatisms to build a new

critical foundation.has many similarities with the processual perspectives discussed here, but in

particular we We focus on two emphases which help us build a more positive constructive

critical approach: moments of uncertainty, when past understandings no longer work, and the

way that desires for the future influence our understandings of the past and present.

5. An utopian construction of the future rooted in critique

Within the broader American pragmatic paradigm, people are not unconscious actors who

are incapable of understanding their social world and their social constitution without help. Quite

the opposite: the perspective holds human agency, creativity, and inquisitiveness as central

themes. Like Bourdieu, pragmatists recognize a generally conservative trend in how people think

and act. However, this attempt to retain past understandings dispositions and practices

understandings is not unconscious, nor as stable as the Bourdieusian approach generally

indicates. While As Dewey notes, we tend to follow habit when acting,. Yet “Habit does not

preclude the use of thought, but it determines the channels within which it operates. [...] We

dream beyond the limits of use and wont, but only rarely does reveryrevelry become a source of

acts which break bounds [...]” (Dewey 1981: 630). This would seem to fit with a Bourdieusian

39

perspective: actors rarely think consciously about what they are doing, perpetuating inequalities.

However, this is not what Dewey indicates there. It is not that people do not, or cannot, imagine

otherwise or critique: it is that such desires rarely produce revolutionary actions.

This is because there is a more gradual, piecemeal theory of change within the pragmatic

understanding of thought and action. LikeAs in the Merleau-Ponty’s artistthought, hHumans are

conscious and creative in the way of artists. This is particularly evident during indeterminate

periods, moments in time when our habitus understandings does not help us understand or solve

the problems we encounter (Dewey 1957[1920]: 141), similar to Merleau-Ponty). Actors are then

freer to re-evaluate how they understand and act within the world; to reimaginepicture it in a

slightly differently way. During these moments, actors become more reflexive, and must

critically examine their past understandings in light ofbased on new information and experiences,

to synchronize their understandings across their temporalities (Dewey 1981: 221; Joas 1997: 82).

Like processualists, pragmatists note that actors can change their understandings of the past to fit

with their new experiences., meaning that nNew ideas can be applied to old experiences:; there is

no guaranteed stability in our understandings of the social (Jaster 2019; James 1978: 35). Here

again we can refer to can see the useful dimension of the “social-mien” redefinition of hHabitus :

we can seeklook for some rarely mobilised predispositions from our social heritage to create

something new, just like the contemporaneous “petit bourgeois” who finally decides to change

his/her habitude of a polluting S.U.V to ride a bike after having learned from some ecological

citizen aggregation/association he decided to be involved in.

As we show, iIIn this way, actors are much like scientists. These moments of uncertainty

are somewhat common:People regularly encounter moments when their understandings of how

the world works do not match their past experiences, prompting. They actors to regularly prod,

40

explore, and reexamine the social world are saying in common American and French pragmatists

(Boltanski and Thévenot 2006[1991]: 37; Dewey 1981: 175-193; James 1978: 34-35). They

make incremental changes to their understandings, with major revolutions in thought and critique

rarely happening; only rarely, once past understandings can no longer be accommodated to fit

new data. Sociologists of knowledge may recognize this process: it is quite like similar to Kuhn’s

(2012[1962]) description of scientific revolutions. Radical change can occur without having to

identify transcendental categories of thought cleansed of the socialThis is why people can

radically and fully change without without keeping any transcendental identity quest or any kind

of socialysocially free substratum.

Significantly, this implies that what it means to have a true thought is based not

necessarily on objective criteria, but on what works for social actors (James 1978). If a theory or

understanding works, as in it is correct more often than it is incorrect, then it makes sense to

believe that it is true. It may need to be modified later, of course; in all likelihood it must be.

Regardless, beliefs and the actions associated with them are retained as long as they seem to

regularly, somewhat accurately, predict or explain outcomes.

Notably, how we examine the world is not separate from our desires; how we want the

world to be. Dewey (1981: 139-141, 406-407) effectively argued that oOur goals influence what

we consider to be data, how we analyze it, and how we then assess which actions to take (Dewey

1981: 139-141, 406-407). Mead also highlighted ,not only how pPresent reflexivity allowxs us to

engage with deal with our dispositions and but also how our future hopes influenced our actions

and understanding in the present (Joas 1997: 129-131; Mead 1956: 313-314). More

contemporary psychological theories like just-world theory and motivated reasoning offer

41

evidence for this phenomena, be it through just-world theory, motivated reasoning, or dissonance

theory (Hafer and Bègue 2005; Hart et al 2009).

Again, the parallels with Merleau-Ponty arise. And here again we find Merleau-Ponty.

He agrees to note that during moments of uncertainty, we reevaluate our circumstances, and use

that new knowledge to transform our understandings of the past. We can see elements of this

interpretation in his later analysis of political activism, where he notes that “revolt is not, then,

the product of objective conditions, but conversely it is the decision made by the worker to desire

the revolution that turns him into a proletarian. [...] One might conclude from this that history has

no sense by itself, it has the sense we give it through our will” (Merleau-Ponty 2012[1945]: 468).

It is evident all the time which Merleau-Ponty evoke the way how the slave Toussaint

Louverture utilized convokes his knowledge of the French revolution and his own experience of

a beginning of something like freedom to galvanise a his misfortune fellows (compagnons

d’infortune???) to revolt against slavery (see for instancee.g. Merleau-Ponty 1960; 2000). Our

desires for a different futures help produce these moments of uncertainty, where we re-evaluate

our social conditions; critique. And, contrary to a highly structuring habitussomeone under

control by their negative habitus, many people often want to live in different ways, inventing

futures inspired by some positive past experiences. Obama or Mandela was totally conscious of

the symbolic violence lived by black people but on the other hand he also took inspiration in the

black movement their relatives (or himself) were involved in to develop wills to trust presidency

and becoming first black presidents.

While science can help us guard against our biases, it does not make us immune: our

understandings are still rooted in our understandings of the past and desires for the future. Put

more pragmatically, social scientists, much like other social actors, will believe to be true things

42

that work within their understandings of the world. Digging deep to find the transcendental

perspectives that influence our thoughts and actions is perhaps nothing more than an exploration

of what the sociologist finds to be true based on her own experiences and knowledge; it is not a

purer reflection of the social.

Social scientists are thus much like other social actors in terms of their method of

understanding the social world. Our understandings are still rooted in our understandings of the

past and desires for the future. We will believe to be true things that work within their

understandings of the world. Lacking With the differences somewhat leveled, and sociologists

losing thethe privileged skills to perceive social-transcendental categories with which one can

which trouble the actors’ judgements, how can we effectively critique? What is a critical

sociologist to do when she finds actors who are critically engageing with the social world,

though not in as systematic a fashion as she is trained? To answer this question, andquestion and

complete our alternative the alternative approach to Bourdieusian critical sociology, we turn to

Ernst Bloch. AsWhile the processual theoriesy of Merleau-Ponty and pragmatists and Bergson

have helped us make negative Bourdieusian concepts into something positiveto turn some

“negative” Bourdieusian concept into somenthing positive, Bloch’s processualism helps us to

combine elements of domination with both, what we keep from the “domination” theory of

Bourdieu and some kind of Latourian constructivism

The Bloch utopianism remains in a kind of negative critical tradition, but he restores it to

poeple rather than to reserve it to the transcendental point of view of the sociologist.

Though somewhat transcendental on account of his Marxist perspective, Bloch’s

epistemology is less rooted in seeing the underlying social categories than focused on the

process through which people regularly try to improve the world around them thanks to . His is a

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form of critique that is positive constructive rather than negative; rooted in hope, rather thannot

fear (Bloch 1986[1959]a: 75). This hope is based on a recognition, like pragmatists, that utopian

consciousness is not defined by its knowledge free from social determinations, but rather by the

process through which actors regularly improve upon their critiques of the world they

experience.

Bloch’s critical theory is built on a highly unstable, critically reflexive foundation.

Actors, at least those with utopian consciousness, are already well awareaware of the injustices

around them. In their actions, they challenge society to be better (Bloch 1986[1959]a: 315).

However, utopia cannot be achieved, for every time a new, better world is created, cracks appear.

Indeed, the perfect state cannot be attained, as “there is something in the subject-factor of

Realization itself which has never realized itself. The subject-factor of lending existence is itself

not yet here, it is not predicated, job objectified, not realized; ultimately, this is what is

announced in the darkness of the lived moment” (Bloch 1986[1959]a: 300, emphasis in original).

This should not discourage the critical actor, however. Much like how pragmatists note

that actors learn from their tinkering to further improve their knowledge, Bloch argues that a

continual process of learning from past attempts, critiquing, and improving constitutes utopian

consciousness is built on a steady foundation of learning from past attempts, critiquing,

improving, and beginning the process anew (Bloch 1986[1959]a: 188). Bergson often referred to

this "pressure that the past exerts on consciousness" and defined freedom as the ability to

increasingly retain the past (retension) and to formalise his/her future (pretension in order to

increasingly influence the course of events (Vieillard-Baron, 2000: 59) . More specifically, the

social actor is one "who has control over his future only because he is able to give himself a

certain perspective on his past" (Hyppolite, 1993: 479). Thus, contra Latour, when he/she joins

44

forces with others toone forms a collective, as Latour would say, they doone does not do so from

nowhere. He/sheOne does it from an experience that he/sheone shares with others of their social-

mind-set, a dough of a flesh of the world whose contours they themselves are collectively

kneaded and whose contours they themselves intend to modify . This is how society has

improved through time, and will continue through the future (Bloch 1986[1959]b). The utopian

consciousness can spring belongs tofrom the common sense of everybody and is improved all

live long by the aggregation of people who want to improve the world and realise that they

sharehave common pasts, habits, or ideas from inherited by past experiences or influences that

they want to improve to change the world.

Thus, from a Blochian perspective, social actors have regularly learned that their better

worlds do not always work perfectly, and thus they have constantly tinkered with them.

Additionally, aAs we tinker, we learn, and consequently our understandings and dispositions toof

perceive of the world in an way or another constantlyperception change. We try to make a better

world and learn how it falls short, but also learn new ways that it can be improved; flaws that we

hadn’t seen before. We can see this in the French May 1968 movement, which helped eliminate

many of the hierarchical, patrimonial, and ossified elements within the French economy, but

paradoxically unleashed the perils and precarity of contemporary dynamic capitalism (Boltanski

and Chiapello 2005). This constructive process is reflexive;, critical;, processual;, dynamic, and

pragmatic;, uncertain; and fragile. Most importantly, in this perspective, the critical scholar

doesn’t just critique and highlight injustices: she joins accompanies critiques of actors who are

gatheringcritique on a specific subject, encourages actors them to continue to find build better

ways of being, of constructing society; to continually develop their own critical capacities and

moral visions.

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Conclusion

In a transcendental perspective, the social scientist is tasked with negating actors’ beliefs

to illustrate just how confined their perspectives are, subsuming everyday actors underneath their

authority. Our proposed alternative perspective levels the distinction between these parties.

Scientists and everyday actors are all engaged in a steady process of understanding the social

world. Both can utilize dispositions and knowledge from their past to change things. The

difference between the two is a question of refinement, not qualitatively different perspectives.

Here, critical sociology does not show actors the true forms instead of the shadows on the wall of

the cave. Constructive critique emphasizes actors’ innate capacity to critique and construct. We

help actors refine their ability to tease apart their various lifeworlds and dominant systems

(Habermas 1989) and examine the degree to which 1) these systems are consistent with one

another, and 2) these systems are acceptable to actors and how they think the world ‘works’, how

they want the world to work and how they are making it working differently.

The Bourdieusian approach quashes actors’ potential because it is exclusively negative:

always doubting, assuming the worst in people. Critical sociologists must disrupt somewhat

stable fields to help foment change. We What can we take from these perspectives, now that their

specific contributions have been highlighted? The social scientist and the actor are not

categorically different, but merely by degree as suggest both, American and French pragmatists.

Because we cannot fully extricate the social from the self, the self from the social, nor our pasts,

presents and desired futures from our abilities to gather and process information. For this reason,

claims about the ability to see the transcendental through careful analysis should be taken with

caution.

46

However, critical capacities are not tied to just these instances of crisis (indeterminate

periods). Many actors want a different world and can already recognize the flaws and moral

pitfalls associated with how social life is contemporaneously organized and enacted. Some are

better able to act, others less capable. Regardless, there is the potential to create change that was

missing in the Bourdieu’s theory but within a certain dominant social order which was dismissed

by Latour : the historical record is rife with elements showing that people have made meaningful,

fundamental changes to how power and resources are distributed in this order, though perhaps

not as radical as many would wish. Changes are tiny by tey reconfigure the flesh of the world

wich is mainly structured by dominants agregations/associations/assemblages (such as “the

state”, the market”, the American government, the IMF, the world bank, etc) definitely stronger

than challengers.

The Bourdieusian approach quashes this potential because. iIt is exclusively negative:

always doubting, assuming the worst in people. People are stuck playing a cultural game of

dominate or be dominated. The task of the critical sociologist is to disrupt somewhat stable fields

to help foment change. Our proposed perspective emphasize is more positivesuggest construction

overabove negation., One must choosing not to always doubt, but rather to foster and encourage

those who are already resisting and to describe the forms of lifve they are already democratically

building together (Latour), consciously trying consciously to avoid old forms of as much as

possible domination (Bourdieu). Actors’ understandings and actions are taken as the starting

point of a dialogue between the scientist and the actor to better understand actors’ intents and

worldviews. Sociologist is himself involved in the organization he’s describing, assumesing that

she’s co-constructing the world with people, trying to translate this co-construction to reinforce it

as an aggregation which can change a bit of social order.

47

We do not wish to condemn Bourdieusian thought to the dustbin of dead theories. We

merely want to abandon the transcendental dimension of critique under certain conditions: no a

priori categories which must be refused, but historically and contingent habitus and conditions of

thought which can be criticised or galvanized. Actors have utopian visions. They can reframe the

contours of the world like Cezanne painting the mountain Sainte Victoire (Merleau-Ponty1964).

When understood as the social-mien, habitus becomes an innovative resource.

Thus, the process, not the telos or goal, is what makes critical sociology: we should

emphasize that in our perspective by avoiding proclamations of knowledge of truer, more just

ways of being. Claims to see the transcendental through careful analysis should be taken with

caution. To proclaim that science knows better because it is scientific is faulty (not to mention

tautological); science has a more refined epistemological process but is not categorically

different from other empirically based theorizing (Haack 2009: 187-188). We cannot rely on

pure sociology for a purer judgment, rid of empirical determinations; why should we rely on

sociologists for emancipation and critique?

In short, critical scholars can improve the world , reinforcing the emancipation of others,

through helping actors refine their already existing critical capacities. Indeed, aSuch a processual

approach challenges many common understandings of morality and injustice associated with the

more standard, more static sociological approaches that emphasizes social forms (Abbott 2016:

233-252). By focusing on the social construction process, not the vision, we evade the

presumptions of moral superiority. Indeed, a processual approach challenges many common

understandings of morality and injustice associated with the more standard, more static

sociological approach that emphasizes social forms (Abbott 2016: 233-252). We just have

48

training than most social actors to more quickly identify when our goals do not match our

findings and when our thoughts are contradictory. We are more efficient in changing the world,

not necessarily more correct.

Conclusion Contrary to a transcendental perspective, which can subsume other social actors under the

social scientist, the alternative perspective outlined here places scientists/actors on a level

playing field. We are all engaged in a steady process of understanding the social world, and

changing it thanks so disposition and knowledge we have learned in our past. The difference

between the scientist and the social actor is a question of refinement, not qualitatively different

perspectives. The purpose of critical sociology is not to show actors the true forms instead of the

shadows on the wall of the cave. We Constructive critique emphasize wants to emphasis their

own innate capacity to critique and construct by joining their own aggregations. We help actors

be more refined in their ability to tease apart their various lifeworlds and dominent systems

(Habermas 1989) and examine the degree to which 1) these systems are consistent with one

another, and 2) these systems are acceptable to actors and how they think the world ‘works’, or,

more radically, how they want the world to work and how they are making it working differently

regarding what they want to galvanize in their cultural heritage. The process, not the telos or

goal, is what makes critical sociology: we should emphasize that in our perspective by avoiding

proclamations of knowledge of truer, more just ways of being.

Some may protest, noting how our levelinglevelling of the distinction between the scientist and

the social actor means implies that we cannot distinguish different critical claims. We supposedly

They may charge that we equate the critiques of the reformist, the socialist, and the Nazi as

equally just or true, derived since they do heritate from the past in different but symmetrical

49

perspectives from different pasts.. However, the broader pragmatic perspective can critique, even

with a levelling of actors and social researchersthis is not the case (e.g. Haack 2009; Misak

2000). Reality can challenge our interpretations, making them weaker (Barthes et al., 2013, p.

199). It is empirically obvious that Indeed, contra Latour constructivism, and in some way,

following in that way this other od French pragmatist who is Boltanski, we conserve from

Bourdieu and critical sociology the very idea of domination. Social, financial and cultural

hhierarchies exist. Some have more capitals than others. While we cannot know better than

actors which understandings or dispositions are Truer bettertruest about the social world, we can

indeed distinguish better and worse claims depending of theiractors’ positionssituation in the

social order. People who are dominated underin social systems the Nazi ideology (Judes,

opponents etc.) or in the neoliberal trend (self-entrepreneurs, Deliveroo workers, etc) are often

quite aware of their domination how much they are dominated and they can try to resist to these

ideologies. As sociologists, we can join them in their believes about what would be a better

social order and help to give form toat their claims and proposals for better ways of being. To

study a group n aggregation, in the sense of Latour, it is alsocan mean to recognizinge our shared

concerns with its members what we care in common (Hache, 2013; ) and what are the matters of

concern (Latour, 2005). But we do this while recognizing that we are constructing together a

critical stance in a broader social (unfair) structure. And tThis common critique will be much

more powerful if we do not constantly dismiss claims derived from past experiences, but instead

are able to draw collectively from them past experiences what to focus on how we want to build

for the futurewe want to galvanize for the future, as in the case of Toussaint Louverture evoked

by Merleau-Ponty.

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The hermeneutics of suspicion should not be the default perspective for all critical

engagements with the social world. To do this, we turn to Susan Haack’s argument thathelps is

to integrate critique and the pragmatic epistemological symmetrisation one cannot be both a

critical scholar and a hold a conventionalist epistemological position, which indicates that we

cannot judge other claims to truth outside of the epistemological system in which those claims

are made. The reason is, to be critical is to believe that a system is better or worse; how can one

know which claims or systems are more justified? Why argue for changes if you don’t believe

there is a better system? As she repeatedly notes: to believe p is to hold that p is true. We need an

epistemological grounding if we are to proclaim to be critical scholars (Haack 2009: 249-253).

What is Haack’s solution to the problem posed by our alternative perspective to critical

theory? As she highlights, foundationalist , coherentist, and conventionalist epistemologies, such

as the transcendental perspective of Bourdieu, have significant problems associated with them.

She argues for a middle ground approach, a foundherentist one. Systems and claims are more

likely to be truth indicative if they are 1) rooted in empirical evidence, either externally

examined or introspective. Reality can resist, to our interpretations, making them weaker

(Barthes et al., 2013, p. 199) (, and 2) fit coherently with other justified beliefs. She explains this

using the analogy of a crossword puzzle: whether a response to a clue is correct (true) is based

both on one’s fidelity to the original clue but also on the network of other clues which make the

broader puzzle (Latour, 1987). Of course, like a crossword puzzle, one can realize that one’s

responses are incorrect, given other clues; as such, this system does not proclaim to know the

absolute Truth, but it allows scholars a chance to judge other knowledge claims without the

presumption of anythat other knowledge are false because structured by fixe transcendental

categories (Haack 2009: 117-139, 274, 282-283). To proclaim that science knows better because

51

it is scientific is faulty (not to mention tautological); science has a more refined epistemological

process, but is not categorically different from other empirically based theorizing (Haack 2009:

187-188)6. In her words:

[...] science has a distinguished epistemic standing, but not a privileged one. By our

standards of empirical evidence it has been [...] a pretty successful cognitive endeavor. But it is

fallible, revisable, incomplete, imperfect; and in judging where it has succeeded and where it has

failed, in what areas and at what times it is epistemically better and in what worse, we appeal to

standards which are not internal to, not simply set by, science.” (Haack 2009: 188)

We cannot rely on pure sociology to judge what would be a “pure” judgment rid of

empirical determinations; why should we rely on sociologists for emancipation and critique?

Of course, one should not interpret our argument to be that we should abandon a

Bourdieusian approach wholeheartedly. One should always be wary of throwing the baby out

with the bathwater. We merely want to abandon the transcendental dimension of critique under

certain conditions: no a priori categories like habituswhich would have to be refused, but

historically and contingent habitus and conditions of thought which sometimes have to be

criticised but some time to be galvanized, allowing actors to follow utopian visions. They can

reframe the contours of the world as Merleau-Ponty said when he was talking about Cezanne,

painting the mountain Sainte Victoire thanks to his his cultural artistic background (1964).

Understood as richfull “social-mien”, habitus can also be an innovative resource. We admit that

there are instances where our approach falls short, and where Bourdieusians can more effectively

6 . In her words:

[...] science has a distinguished epistemic standing, but not a privileged one. By our standards of empirical evidence it has been [...] a pretty successful cognitive endeavor. But it is fallible, revisable, incomplete, imperfect; and in judging where it has succeeded and where it has failed, in what areas and at what times it is epistemically better and in what worse, we appeal to standards which are not internal to, not simply set by, science.” (Haack 2009: 188)

52

engage in critical projects. For example, our approach does not work well with actors who act in

bad faith, or those who seem to resist any sort of edification or attempts to change the social

system; uncritical actors or those who seem to be hopelessly consumed by what is unfortunately

labeled as false consciousness. In these cases, Bourdieusian sociology provides a more effective

toolkit, for it treats bad-faith actors less naively and can explain why some might not wish to

critique society despite recognizing injustices.

But what of actors who do critique, though perhaps they offer perspectives that differ

from the sociologist? How can the critical social scientist engage with these actors in a way that

retains fidelity with our proposed alternative foundation for critical sociology? Far from

beginning from a hermeneutics of suspicionW, we should instead respect that social actors have

critical capacities and nurture this empowerment, helping them further refine and actualize their

critiques. On the other hand, while we symmetrize actors and sociological skills within an

aggregation which aim to implement changes in the world (regarding what we care in our

heritages or not), In this sense, our processually pragmatic critical approach fits with Latour

(2017), though we still think that domination exists. Like With Latour, processualists, and

pragmatists and Haack, we symmetrize positions from an epistemological point of view. but

contra Latour,But we do not symmetrise the position of each actor in society as if all actors were

equal;, in a flat world without power dynamicsand with the same amount of power.

A sociologist, we can choose to be concerned with dominated positions. Sociology is

itself a democratic game, a process through which oligarchization over public life is challenged

(Rancière, 2014[2005]). Rather than dismissing actors and showing themactors why their

critiques are rooted in supposed illusions, structured by socio-transcendental categories, scholars

can help dominated groups publicize their critiques and their own representation of symbolic

53

domination. RecogniRecognizing and assertingtion of people’s capacities to critique and explain

the social world as sociological actors themselves, cognizant of concepts like capitalism, power,

and domination, empowers them by asserting their voice in the debate about how society should

be organized (Blokker 2014). They can better It can also empower them to use their “social-

mien” to create something new from their marginalized thanks to their minored or ignored (by

dominant ideologies) dispositions. By lLevelling the judgments of actors and social scientists

forces, scholars are forced to reflexively engage in with our attempts to foment change. Turning

a more critical constructive/critique eye upon ourselves, and what we think together is moral,

helps us embody an ethics of fragility and contingency, a recognition that we are collectively

limited in our understandings like other actorsby our habitus but also, in the same time,

empowered by it (Corcuff, 2002, 2012; Frère, 2004). This perspective helps us realize the cracks

that people create in the dominant system (Holloway 2010), or the real utopias they are trying to

create (Wright 2010). A transcendental point of view makes it easy to minimize these elements

as alienation due to over immersion in common sense, reducing people to objective reproducers

of the established order. One can lead without dominating, challenging power systems through

irony and through empowering actors to collectively take charge themselves; without us.

This perspective thus helps scholars become better able to see the various ways people

already resist domination. It helps us realize the cracks that people create in the dominant system

(Holloway 2010), or the real utopias they are trying to create (Wright 2010). A transcendental

point of view makes it easy to minimize these elements for the sake of illustrating how alienated

people immerged in their common sense are, reduced to objective reproducers of the established

order. But this transcendentalism, entrusted to a God from the depth, obfuscates the

emancipatory spaces that people build, however meager they may seem, because of one’s focus

54

on extrapolation, testifying that fields and social belonging always co-opts them. We cannot

always maintain the epistemological break between the scientist and the social actor if we hope

to create a truly liberating form of social inquiry. And we can’t just assume that the sociological

task is over once we have negate the influences of the past. We also have to find what in this

collective past is not that disgusting to build the future.

55

56

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ii On this point, see esp. Bourdieu (1987: 15).