As a longtime philistine, I have always been attracted to Pierre Bourdieu's Distinction. His ideas there seemed to me to demystify the ideology of aesthetics, presenting taste as an expression of class status and power, with the relation to "beauty" or "the good" serving only as an alibi. On this view, the objects of taste are intrinsically worthless and gain meaning only in relation to other objects, functioning together like a clumsy language that can express only hierarchical gradations. "Art and cultural consumption are predisposed, consciously and deliberately or not, to fulfill a social function of legitimating social differences, Bourdieu claims in the introduction to
Methexis in darkness
Methexis in darkness
Methexis in darkness
As a longtime philistine, I have always been attracted to Pierre Bourdieu's Distinction. His ideas there seemed to me to demystify the ideology of aesthetics, presenting taste as an expression of class status and power, with the relation to "beauty" or "the good" serving only as an alibi. On this view, the objects of taste are intrinsically worthless and gain meaning only in relation to other objects, functioning together like a clumsy language that can express only hierarchical gradations. "Art and cultural consumption are predisposed, consciously and deliberately or not, to fulfill a social function of legitimating social differences, Bourdieu claims in the introduction to