Sovversione cognitiva e trasformazione sociopolitica. Sull’(in)attualità di alcune tesi bourdieusiane

Abstract

The essay discusses some of the theses developed by Pierre Bourdieu on the themes of socio-political transformations closely connected to the process of cognitive and thus symbolic subversion. In particular, we focus on writings relating to the religious field, which in some ways serves as the matrix of the political field, and on interventions focusing on the limits and conditions of effectiveness of political action, dating back to the 1970s and 1980s. They were taken up and continuously refined by Bourdieu in subsequent works. Then, according to recent (re)readings, it is illustrated how the Bourdieusian approach is widely characterised by reflections on the conditions that make change of the existing order possible (to which his analyses on systemic reproduction are subordinate). Subsequently, particular attention was paid to the theoretical (and practical) short-circuits that would emerge from the persuasive Bourdieusian theory of the practice and incorporation of domination, which, in spite of its premises and unlike Marx, would lead Bourdieu to entrust the linguistic-discursive dimension, and the word of the sociologist as a modern figure of the heresiarch, with radical political change. The conclusions we draw highlight a more complex trajectory with respect to this last evaluation, which sees in the political commitment of the late Bourdieu, closely linked to his scientific rigour, a fruitful and (in)current concrete exemplification of his theoretical postulates.