My French is very rusty, but this is what I make of Derrida’s remarks at the death of Bourdieu (from Le Monde, Jan 25, 2002; preserved here):
He was a very old friend, with whom I have shared so much! Our friendship was always an intense relationship, very rich, strained, sometimes, difficult, it’s true. I was thunderstruck by the news. We met in khâgne at Louis le Grand in 1949, then we both went to the École Normale; he wasn’t a sociologist then, we were talking about philosophy, especially Leibniz and Heidegger.Then we found ourselves back in Algeria, where I was fulfilling my service requirement, he was making his debut as a sociologist. But our exchanges really began again toward the end of the Sixties, when he set about his project of recasting sociology by beginning his work that incorporated philosophy, to produce a “sociology of sociology.” He was one of the great and original figures in the whole world, in contemporary sociology.
His aim was to take account of all the fields of social activity, including the intellectual fields, and including his own. This “hypercritical” construction, around one of his favorite words, “to objectify” (to analyse and render objective that which is at work in every untheorized practice) was at the heart of his approach, and was in fact its prize. We had our debates, and disagreements, about his approach to the field of philosophy, but we often found ourselves working side by side in militant politics, particularly relative to the situation of immigrants. Among our common efforts was the foudning of the Parliament of Writers in Strassburg, 1994. From 1995 on, the engaged intellectual that he always was took on his social battles for radical policies more-or-less alone. I felt close enough at least to what inspired him, even if we didn’t take the same actions and if our ways of approaching matters were unlike. But I lose a witness and an irreplaceable friend.
Corrections and refinements welcome; Alex has already improved it, though not as much as if I’d taken all his advice.
Posted by AKMA at October 9, 2004 11:34 PM | TrackBack