Jazz, Hip Hop Etc.

[kellner@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu]

Perhaps we should be talking about a "musical field" in
> the way that Bourdieu talks about "artistic" and other fields. Then all
of these  fine-grained attempts to delimit what we should accept as "good"
and "bad" music can be seen as power struggles across class lines to define
what is to count as naturally "good" and "bad" music. I believe others may
> have said similar things, but I was wondering what (if anything) might 
be
> gained by introducing Bourdieu's work?
> 
> Any thoughts?
> 
> Kevin D. Haggerty
> University of British Columbia

Scott replies
"Well, that WOULD be a good idea, but for one problem. If we talk about a
"criticism field" we can easily see that Bourdieu is implicated in a
struggle along class lines to define what good theory is, which leaves
us powerless, since we are also implicated, to know whether he's full of
shit or not."

Please reply; in regard to jazz, hop-hop, or any cultural form, one wants
something like a sociological context, a criticism field, to discuss the
phenomenon. Adorno does NOT engage in purely formalist analysis, of the
aesthetic complexity or radicalism of a work, but engages in more
multidimensional analysis.
Anyway, Kevin might explain in more detail the relevance of Bourdieu's
concept of a "criticism field" and how it might help out in the
discussions of jazz, hip-hop, etc.

Douglas Kellner, Dept of Philosophy, Univ of Texas, Austin, TX 78712
kellner@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu  fax: 512 471-4806
Web sites: Postmodern theory= http://ccwf.cc.utexas.edu/~kellner/pm/pm.html
Critical theory= http://www.uta.edu/english/dab/illuminations/