Shanet Clark
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"Lem Billings" ? Who the heck is that?
This is good research guys. I think Tosh has something here. And Nancy has surprised me with the reference. I'm intrigued by this one.
Chris
LeMoyne Billings was one of John Kennedy's best friends and personal advisors.
He was a playboy and he acted as a godfather for Robert Kennedy's kids
after 1968. That Ford quote didn't (probably) come from RFK and JFK connected people, so the closer the sources in Heymann's book are to Ford, the more likely they are to be the source...
Tosh has reason to believe that Tom Downing knew about the Ford statement.
Tom Downing served in Congress until 1977 and died in 2001.
Here's a eulogy of Tom Downing I copy/pasted off the web.
Will continue to look into this leak...
(((((((((Floor Remarks of
Congressman Scott
Honoring the late Congressman Thomas N. Downing
November 15, 2001
Mr. Speaker, I rise today to join my colleagues in paying tribute to former Congressman Thomas N. Downing.
Tom represented Virginia's First Congressional District from 1959 to 1977. He represented part of what is now the First and Third Congressional Districts, and part, at one time, of the Second.
Tom began his public service career in the military. In 1940, he graduated from Virginia Military Institute. From 1942 to 1946, he served as the troop commander of the Mechanized Cavalry with Third United States Army and commanded the first troops in the Third Army to invade Germany. For his exemplary service involving the rescue of two of his men during a reconnaissance operation in Northern France, Tom was awarded the Silver Star. The
citation accompanying the Silver Star read in part ``Captain Downing, without hesitation, and with utter disregard for his personal safety, ran to the aid of his men among a hail of bullets.''
After his service in the military, Tom would return to school to earn his law degree from the University of Virginia. He practiced law in Hampton for 11 years and also served as a substitute judge of the municipal court for the City of Warwick prior to his election to the Eighty-sixth Congress in 1958. He would serve eight succeeding Congresses with little opposition. While in Congress he was a member of the Merchant Marine and Fisheries Committee and the Space Science and Technology Committee.
During his career in Congress, he represented the Commonwealth and the First Congressional District with distinction. He worked to ensure the future of Newport News Shipyard and was instrumental in the yard's acquisition of the North Yard for its expansion. As a senior lawmaker on the Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries, Tom had significant expertise in maritime issues and played a major role in crafting legislation.
On that Committee, he was a strong advocate of building a strong and modem U.S. Merchant Marine Service for this country's national security. Tom served as Chair of the Merchant Marine Subcommittee. As Chair, he presided over and helped to craft major legislation to overhaul and modernize the merchant marines. The Merchant Marine Act of 1970 was one of his signature pieces of legislation and was designed to renovate the American Merchant Navy by 1980.
In addition to his work on merchant marine issues on that Committee, he also played a prominent role in crafting legislation that sought to preserve the resources of our oceans and waterways. He played a leading role in the implementation of the Ocean-Dumping Convention and in extending U.S. fishing rights to the 200 mile limit bill. He also played a role in crafting the Deep Water Port Act as well as legislation on deep sea bed mining. At the time of his retirement from the House, one of his colleagues called him the ``premier expert on the problems of the Nation's maritime commerce and its commercial fisheries industry.''
As the Chairman of the NASA Oversight Subcommittee of the then Space Science and Technology Committee, his interests in scientific research made him a national leader of the space effort. On that Subcommittee, he also represented the interests of NASA Langley Research Center located in Hampton, Virginia.
Tom Downing also made a gift to future generations of Virginians and North Carolinians through his efforts to create the Assateague Island National Seashore Park and the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge.
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In the Ninety-Fourth Congress, his colleagues called upon him to chair the prominent Select Committee on Assassinations that launched new investigations into the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. He had been a leading critic of the Warren Commission and was the author of the 1976 legislation to reopen investigation into both cases. Even knowing of his retirement, his colleagues could think of no other Member who could have served in that post with his ability and integrity during the nation's time of turmoil.
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As the dean of the Virginia Delegation at the time, Tom Downing helped to set the tone and tradition of our delegation today. He consistently sought and achieved joint action by Members of the delegation, irrespective of party affiliation, to deal with matters affecting the entire State. Today, we still honor that tradition and work together as a delegation to speak with one voice for Virginia's interests.
Even after his lengthy service in Congress, Tom Downing continued his commitment to public service. He served on the Board of Visitors of the Virginia Military Institute from 1985 to 1993 and served as President of the Board of Directors of The Mariners' Museum.
Mr. Speaker, Tom Downing served in this body as a true statesman and Virginia gentleman. He was a good friend to everyone on the Virginia Peninsula and he will be sorely missed.
((shanet))
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Richard Hobbs, concidered by many including Carcano historian,Alexander Eichener, as a world authority on the Carcano rifle who after examination of CE-139/C2766 concluded it was in fact, a Moschettieri del Duce Carcano of Mussolini's Gardia del Duce, and not a cheap surplus field rifle that would be sold in a Chicago sporting goods store. [Note:] I believe there is an address and Phone# for Richard posted on Alexander Eichener's Carcano web-site.
With Regard, John Ritchson
John Ritchson
Thank you for participating.
This is about the third time I have come across the statement that the Serial #C2766 attributrd to Oswald on the 6th floor of the TBSD was not a cheap
sporting goods surplus rifle but in fact a Mussolini special from WWII.
Now some will say that this supports the lone gunman (since Oswald had
a better rifle than usually thought) but I am much more interested in
the possibility of falsification, re-serializing, secret CIA/old Nazi stock of guns,
the possibility of frame-ups, second ringer rifle with the same #, the question of how the El Duce piece got into the states, who had guns like these after WWII (answer: Dulles) etc.
Anyone have a comment on the odd paternity and provenance of the Lone Gun
which fired the Magic Bullet?
SHanet
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Walpole, Bute.
A report on passive smoking is currently being withheld by the government. According to the doctors who wrote the report, it clearly states that the evidence suggests a clear link between passive smoking and cancer. It also recommends a ban on smoking in public places like pubs and restaurants. It seems strange that this should happen at a time when the government is discussing the possible legislation on this matter.Could this be something to do with Tony Blair’s relationship with British American Tobacco (BAT). Four years ago documents were leaked to a national newspaper that showed that BAT was involved in selling cigarettes in a way that avoided paying taxes (smuggling). Stephen Byers, trade secretary, decided to launch an investigation into this scandal. This included the seizing of company files, and forcing employees to be questioned on oath.
Martin Broughton, head of BAT, asked to have a meeting with Byers. He refused. BAT responded by employing two former senior Department of Trade and Industry officials as consultants (Nicola Shears and Ray Mingay). These men then arranged a secret breakfast meeting with Tony Blair and Martin Broughton. Byers was also ordered to attend. Soon afterwards Byers dropped the idea of a public inquiry. Instead, a private inquiry was launched under Section 447 of the Companies Act.
When Ash (the anti-smoking pressure group) heard the news asked for a meeting with Blair and Byers. This idea was rejected. If the inquiry had produced a damaging report, it would have opened the door to lawsuits from foreign governments cheated of taxes.
It is now four years since the investigation under Section 447 took place. After questions were raised in the House of Commons, Patricia Hewitt, the new trade secretary, announced that the investigation found insufficient evidence for legal action. The report will not be published and so it is impossible to check the genuineness of the investigation.
Is Blair the most corrupt prime minister we have had since David Lloyd George?
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I am of the opinion that President Bush's failure to address the NAACP
was a signal sent to his white constituency that he was aligned with
them along racial lines.
Bush signalled his new intolerant, angry white christian right vote....they are out there, and the overall profile includes guns (yes) abortion (no) and private schools (federally funded)...the signal issues of gay church marriages, civil gay unions and civil gay marriages, in all its complexity, emerged as on of the
Cardinal Bellwether issues of the 2004 campaign,
dumbed down and conflated, with intolerance driving the debate.
Dan Carter says the Democrats need to compete strongly in the South, because
when pressed in the South, the intolerant crypto/neo GOP tend to play
the race card---and it backfires in the other electoral regions.
The loss of Ohio, West Virginia, Tennessee, this is a real realignment.
The New Deal, New Frontier, Great Society coalition is gone.
Albert Gore couldn't win Tennessee and John Kerry couldn't take West Virginia, Ohio or Indiana...Rural and suburban sprawl folks are conservative behind a
wartime president, and the above issues (and taxes).
The democrats are strong in the cities and Liberal northeast and west coast.
It strongly resembles 1860.
Shanet Clark Atlanta
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They interviewed David's corroborating witness. In the original, they named the other two men Christian David accused, but the men sued because they had alibis and witnesses, so an apology program was prepared where Sauveur Pironti and Roger Bocognoni gave their side of the story. All other broadcasts have a more ambiguous cut that is shown and this is the one that is released on DVD and video. This is what destroyed the credibility of TMWKK in the eyes of many. Well, that and the ludicrous sewer theory.
G
Members:
What is the deal with Christian David?
He was mentioned often a while back, but this is the first I've
heard of him on this Forum.
A related question:
What about the 1962 attempted hit on Charles DeGaulle in France?
Is there a tie-in?
Were similar Plans used for both ambushes?
Any overlapping characters?
I have heard rumors that David Ferrie hustled a French OAS
right wing paramilitary marksman out of the US to Mexico after
Dallas.
They often call the third "tramp" Frenchy...
Is their anything to the French Connection?
For instance have any french intelligence sources come forward?
(ps. I think any JFK morgue photos that were released have about as much
credibility as the alien autopsy film or Conan OBrien's photoshop pranks)
Shanet
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PR/security man Robert Bennett had ties to Hunt and CIA (see Hougan's Secret Agenda and Colodny's Silent Coup (Shanet)
Shanet, this being Sen Bennett the conservative from Utah?
Chris, I have wondered the same thing but never tracked it down.
They have similar agendas, age and profiles, but I am not sure they
are one and the same. This is a lame answer, but I'll look into it more.
Keep posting,
Shanet
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More on the Ford quote.
Since Ford, Phil Buchen and Arthur Schlesinger are prominently
missing from the exhaustive source references for that chapter,
they may have been the source for the quote if it was on deep background.
Buchen, especially would be a conduit for this type of information.
He was Ford's "Haldeman" Also press secretary Ron Nessen probably has some information about this.
Ramsey Clark is actually the strongest candidate for this leak, I believe.
Ford really slipped up when he mentioned classified CIA surveillance, a forward shot and Johnny Rosellie in one short statement.
The psych research ( I posted an Excerpt on the Chauncey Holt thread)
makes it very clear: People who are coached to lie, or make up lies,
do not accurately remember the actual event. They confuse the cover story details with the real events and statistically they remember fewer accurate details
and "remember" more false details when they are later asked to tell the truth.
The Psychologists call this self-generated misinformation (lying) or prompted misinformation (lying from a script). Eugene Brading/Braden was obviously
repeating a scripted story in his statement. Chauncey Holt was prompted to
lie back in the day, and his story is now corrupted---he may not remember how long he was in the rail yards and boxcar. So Tosh and Sergio may well have been
the Control Subjects, or un-prompted witnesses, for Tracy Barnes and William Harvey back in Miami at JMWAVE station...
Heymann's book is so richly documented (although the Ford slip is not specifically footnoted) that it is impossible to pass him off as anything less than
a rigorous and accurate historian. This little slip is very important and strongly supports Tosh's story...the government agencies responsible must be freaking out
now that their private witness (Tosh) has told his story publicly, and that
is the story of a South Knoll shooter, somewhere near the triple underpass.
As I stated in that thread, the Oswald fixation, the Zapruder point of view (POV)
the reasonable case for a Dallas Textile or County Records building ballistics angle,
the interest in the grassy knoll by witnesses and researchers---all this has distracted us from the possibility of a shooter in the "flat" that wide open range to
Kennedy's left. I remember looking at the Aftermath photos years ago and
saying "I wonder who was over on that far side of Dealey Plaza, maybe the
shots came from over there." Tosh says at least one shot did, and I believe him.
When you all are in Dallas later this month, I hope someone could take a
percussive instrument (like two short 2x4's) and crack them loudly from
the parking lot of South Dealey Plaza, while people discern if the sound is
"thrown" by natural acoustics (walls and buildings) to sound like it originates from somewhere else.
Thanks, Dawn and Tosh, but I must say John Simkin and Larry Hancock are way ahead of me in all this....but it is getting interesting around here...best wishes.
Shanet
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Wim
This is very curious.
Especially since they are all in a mathematical tie, exactly the same number of hits. They may be some sort of virus where they piggyback thru your system
to spam others, although I don't know too much about that process.
And the Websites themselves! Off shore banks and Italian Hotels?
Inexplicable.
your friend SHANET
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John
Quick note of support for your position and prerogative. The personal and inane side-tracks I have read on Lancer play right into the hands of reactionary authorities, by marginalizing all those who question authority as "quacks."
This JFK Forum, so far, has been well elevated above this, and reaped more consideration, as we (I believe) are taken seriously by open minded readers (who may choose not to join and participate). I have been abused only mildly on this forum, although I have seen some odd behavior here which drastically lowers our reputation if it is allowed to continue.
Like you, I try to maintain the tone we take in graduate seminars, open minded, critical of weakly supported cases, but generally collegial and supportive. None of the core group I respect the most here are at any risk of being censored, and I hope you do take steps to limit what can only be irrational, self-defeating and counter-productive participation.
Shanet Clark, US Senate/WR Hearst Scholar and Woodruff History Fellow, GSU
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Excellent Topic
Here in the States I have noticed and some of my colleagues agree
that the critical, unsparing historical approach is limited to a tiny readership and
Ivy League/private university discourse, while those that have an impact in the public mind, marketplace and popular trade history books (including school textbooks) have a nationalist gloss.
The ability to criticize the U.S. experience is structurally and culturally coded
and this is a big part of the Culture Wars and Political Gulf we see today in the US.
Textbooks, and most history professors/top teachers, have internalized the
race dimension. Prejudice, Jim Crow, an entirely unsatisfactory Reconstruction, Red-Lining (against bank investment in "black" neighborhoods), are all taught in
US undergraduate settings, and gender issues are fairly well expressed today.
But real critical, structural analysis of class issues are delivered only to graduates in the most rarefied environment. Although there is a strong dissenting voice in the counterculture and underground, it is often confounded by extremism,
ignorance and poorly grounded conspiracy theory.
Joseph Ellis, David McCullough, Gordon Wood and other top-tier historians drift steadily to the right as they mature, writing what amount to apologia for the Pantheon (Adams, Franklin, Washington) and these senior scholars often take an anti-republican pro Federalist View of the 1800 period. Such reactionary and less than critical work then reaps institutional, critical and market commercial rewards.
At the other end of the spectrum, radicals with critical ideas are swept up in
political identity studies, post-modern textual inanities and otherwise find refuge in highly academic work with little external or universal validity.
The bureacratese, the academicese language, the emphasis on tropes, synedoche, and all the trappings of the crit-lit cultural historian may gain
approval from IVY chairs and University publishers but have no impact
except to drive a reaction from the Christian Right Wing.
In Georgia we have disclaimers glued into science texts warning parents that the theory of evolution is only theory and other approaches to the rock record are legitimate.
No conclusions, just some observations...
I find myself when confronted by race/reaction or post modern verbalism
to re-iterate enlightened universal humanism and critical thought as a
paradigm broad enough to encompass such trends......
Shanet Clark, Suffering through Graduate School in Atlanta
I would like to start a new topic whose focus is more the classroom than a general exchange of opinion.In the history section we debated the problem in how far the way we teach history and the contents of our schoolbooks are tainted by nationalism.
Looking at politics textbooks I found that they even more than history books mainly deal with national politics especially when topics like government, parties, the legal system etc. are concerned.
For example German pupils learn all they need to know about the German political system, the legal system, our welfare state etc. British and American textbooks inform their students about their respective political and social systems and structures. Of course our students have to know, understand and analyse their own political systems but I think that it is also necessary that they learn about the political systems, culture, philosphy and theory of our neighbouring countries.
German Grammar school students get some information about the British and American system in their English lessons but of course language lessons are different from politics lessons and the students do not necessarily acquire a political understanding and do not always learn to assess the information they get politically.
I personally think that it is vital to create and enhace intercultural understanding among the young people and one way to do this might be e.g. comparing the different forms of democracy that have evolved and examining their historic roots, their implications and shortcomings (see debate "Do we still live in a democracy").
I think a good example of textbooks offering a global perspective of political and social phenomena are most of the books written for the citizenship lessons and textbooks concentrating on e.g. human rights.
Schoolbook authors for textbooks on classical "national" topics could learn from them.
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Very Interesting.
Good Community Intelligence Work.
1) Nancy
Thank you for the Post, that letter is definitely tied to what
we are on to here, a big hint, good work.
Also thank you for deleting---we all have to hold our
tongue, (and our nose) sometimes...
I stress the evidence and keep postings tight.
Tosh) I have been thinking about the motivation for your task.
As my Psych. research shows, people who lie (not you) about things
do not remember accurately, so even if JM/WAVE could de-brief the
ambush team, the shooters and radio people for example,
If these people were prompted to tell cover stories and thinking up lies
about what was going on, then their memory for accurate recall is
all screwed up...the psy.ops guys knew this and wanted YOU and Sergio
to tell them what really happened...so you were their eyes and ears,
whether or not they had other participant witnesses on site or not, capiche?
John) Very Important citations. Gerry Ford was not the brightest
pumpkin on the porch, but he was immensely loyal. The New Nixon
tapes (Kutler) show that Nixon wanted Ford to help him cover up Watergate
and this shows that Nixon considered Ford's Warren Commission work to be
an act of loyalty and covering up...he knows more than almost anyone,
and he's a limited intellect, so Ford is a great one to closely observe for slips, leaks and leads.
Their are quite a few sources named, so I'll comment more in the QUOTE BOX:
--Shanet--
Hi Tosh, thanks for the post. I do think its important that somebody try to some up with the source what you described in regard to C. David Heymann’s book, RFK: A Candid Biography of Robert F. Kennedy (1998). Hopefully somebody can come up with a copy and let us know - that would be a heck of a bombshell for a writer to throw into a book and not cite a source for it.I have the book in front of me. It appears on page 361. Unfortunately, Heymann does not provide notes. All he does it provide details of the research he carried out for that particular chapter. This is what he says:
Author interviews for this chapter were conducted with Jim Garrison, ((!!))
Jack Valenti, ((((TOP AIDE TO LBJ and Hollywood Executive)0000
Charles Spalding,
John H. Davis,
Stephen Birmingham, (("America's Secret Aristocracy", High placed sources)00
William Manchester, (((Conventional JFK /US Historian
Knew much more than he wrote, and Heymann used outtakes of Manchester)))
Theron Raines, ?
Charles Bartlett, ?
John Treanor, Jr., ?
Blair Clark, ?
Ken O'Donnell, ((((Kennedy Principle Aid, Probably not Ford source)))
Joan Braden, (braden?)
Coates Redman, ?
Andrew Oehmann, Jr., ?
Joe Dolan, ?
Lem Billings, ((((LBJ advisor?))))
John Nolan, ?
John Richard Reilly, ?
Red Fay,
George Christian, (LBJ aide who went over to Nixon, Knew of Pappas Greek crisis)
Theodore H. White, Conventional Historian, strong sources
Godfrey McHugh, ?
Larry O'Brien, ((((what's in his files?))))
Ramsey Clark, (Radical former Atty Gen., Strong Possible Source for Ford Quote)
LaVern Duffy, ?
Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr. (Democratic Insider, strong sources)
Oral histories consulted for this chapter: Robert F. Kennedy,
John McCone,
Edwin Guthman,
Charles BartAlett,
Clark Clifford,
George Christian,
George Burkley,
Harry McPherson (LBJ Library),
Homer Thornberry (LBJ Library),
Jack Valenti (LBJ Library),
Ken O'Donnell,
John Jay Hooker,
Charles Spalding,
McGeorge Bundy.
(((I seriously doubt if the Ford statement can be found in archived
oral histories of John McCone, McGeorge Bundy or Clark Clifford,
but they are great sources for context)))
Periodicals consulted for this chapter include USA Today,
Washington Post,
Dallas News,
Time,
Life,
Look,
The Realist. (Paul Krassner, Mae Brussell)
The following volumes were useful in the preparation of this chapter: John H.
Davis, Mafia Kingish: Carlos Marcello and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy; Manchester, The Death of a President and Controversy and Other Essays injournalism,1950-1975; Collier and Horowitz, The Kennedys; Stephen Birmingham, Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis; Paul B. Fay, Jr., The Pleasure of His Company; Lady Bird Johnson, A White House Diary; Schlesinger, RK; Heymann, A Woman Named Jackie; Stein and Plimpton, American Journey; Harrison Ramie, Growing Up Kennedy: The Third Wave Comes of Age; Clark Clifford, with Richard Holbrooke, Counsel to the President; Lyndon Baines Johnson, Vantage Point: Perspectives of the Presidency, 1963-1969.
(if it was previously published it must be here, the FOrd statement))))
Also reviewed for this chapter were recently released files from both the FBI and the Department of Justice, Criminal Division.
Regarding LBJ running for president in 1964: LBJ tapes (released July 1997), LBJ Library.
The current author had access to the outtakes of Paul B. Fay, Jr.'s The Pleasure of His Company, housed at Boston University Library's Rare Book and Manuscript Collection. The author similarly had access to the outtakes of William Manchester, The Death of a President, housed in the same collection. The latter were deposited at BU by Look magazine, which had acquired first-serial rights to The Death of a President. When Jackie initiated legal action, both Look and the book publisher (Harper & Row) agreed to excise segments of the manuscript. It is these segments that were made available to the current author.
Events in Dallas and aboard Air Force One: See Manchester, The Death of a President; Heymann, A Woman Named jackie.
Charles Spalding overhearing RFK weeping: See Schlesinger, RK, p. 658. Schlesinger's is a somewhat different version of this anecdote.
Jackie and RFK visit JFK's grave: See Manchester, The Death of a President, pp. 693-694.
"President Kennedy was more than just president": RFK papers, JFK Library.
"Bobby's just another lawyer": Schlesinger, RK, p. 664. "I was shocked by his appearance": Manchester, Controversy.
RFK's efforts to limit the investigation into JFK's death; his probable destruction of forensic materials: see John H. Davis, Mafia Kingfish, pp. 289-293.
RFK and J. Edgar Hoover following JFK's assassination: See Schlesinger, RK, pp. 678-680.
New Hampshire primary: See Schlesinger, RK, pp. 700-703, as well as Theodore H. White, The Making of the President, 1964.
RFK and LBJ meeting: See Schlesinger, RK, as well as Lyndon Johnson, Vantage Point.
ALSO Heymann may have talked to Ford himself or to Phil Buchen
and gotten this information first hand on deep background.
shanet
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Now that's a very good question.
James, Tosh, Wim, John, Tim....
what's the word, who is the big fat "Oswald"???
Shanet
I consider Mexico City Oswald to be one of the most critical areas requiring further research. It is of the upmost importance. Someone has got to be able to identify this guy. He clearly has a special ops look.
Tim
This is a guy with Nixon in Floridaback in 1969. Anthony Summers is very skeptical of this guy, even cryptic. He made a lot of gold and silver in inside deals by leaning on Nixon and Rebozo, and served some security function.
Is this man in the Mexico City
Russian Embassy photo identified as L.H. Oswald?
I think he is...add six years
Shanet
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Good thread.
Braden has always been a top suspect.
The fact that he and Larrie Florer tell the same lame story
indicts them both...the 11/22 statement signed by Braden
makes no sense, as Ron and Wim say. How can you walk down
Elm Street looking for a cab during the parade and not see anything.
He was up in the window shooting, or running a radio, or something.
But Like I said Before, Chauncy Holt just threw him in there, because Holt and the other two Tramps were in the boxcar until 2:30 and would have missed Braden
after the fact. Does Holt say he saw Braden before the shooting at say 12:00
What time were the Tramps photographed, I think Holt is stretching it with seeing Braden...but I think Braden is a major link to the tried and true Lamar Hunt/H.L. Hunt conspiracy theory...
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Ron
You are probably on to something.
Ford ran quite a bit of CIA material past his Vice President's special commission,
this could be the source of this attribution. Remember Colby spilled the beans and the Rockefeller and Church committees picked over the files released by Colby and otherwise leaked to Congress and journalists like Seymour Hersh.
But this sounds like direct Warren Commission material he suppressed, although he could have learned about it later.
shanet
Maybe Heymann is referring to suppression of reports by Ford's Rockefeller Commission. If the commission suppressed such reports, was Ford that closely involved?In any case, if what Heymann says is true, it's mystifying that Ford's admission escaped everyone's notice except Heymann's. For Heymann not to cite some source for his statement is pretty shoddy work.
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Agree about the importance of Pierre Bourdieu. I think it would be worth posting this in the Social Science section:
John,
I am posting a few short pieces from my files.
I invite everyone to submit comments and questions on
this piece on Pierre Bourdieu, and on the ATLANTA ZONING thread or
the new JOHN BROWNS RAID thread. This material may be helpful to students and teachers of US history, here and abroad................I am also posting on
the post-election George Bush and of course in the JFK debate. thanks.
Shanet Clark, Woodruff Fellow in history GSU atlanta
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In C. David Heymann’s book, RFK: A Candid Biography of Robert F. Kennedy (1998), he writes:
"In May 1997, Gerald Ford publicly admitted that in 1975, while president of the United States, he had suppressed certain FBI and CIA surveillance reports that indicated that JFK had been caught in a crossfire in Dallas, and that John Roselli and Carlos Marcello had orchestrated the assassination plot."
Does anyone else know about this?
John,
I've never heard of any of this, and I follow the Ford Presidential Library files
pretty closely, as you know...keep this thread alive. I will try to track
the whole statement down...this (if true) strongly supports our friend
Tosh Plumlee.
Note Ford purportedly mentions CIA surveillance reports and John Roselli, both
of which would have been prominent in the De-Briefing of Tosh and Sergio
at JM wave by Tracy Barnes and Wm. Harvey. The crossfire, if attributed to Ford,
Is a huge confirmation of a forward shooter, or shooters, and of course,
it brings Carlos Marcello back to top of the list...a warning, though, this
could be back up cover story for the original blown cover story (LHO)
Shanet
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I saw a thing on Charles Rogers.
Whether or not he was in on Dallas,
The simple fact that the government had people
like him and William Morgan on the payroll and ran Programs with them
I mean that is sick, where was the government oversight,
These violent criminals given secret tasks and set out as semi-official
hit men, very disturbing.
Have you all read the 1953 CIA assassination handbook on
frank olson project website?
Its got all the terminology, chase, lost, special jargon for "exec. action"
Ron I know you would appreciate it in understanding skanks like Rogers.
shanet
"Who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes?"Answer: My eyes and the evidence.
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Here are the percentages of the different groups who voted for Bush: Evangelical/Born Again (78), Protestant (59), Catholic (52), Jewish (25), Gun Ownership (63), Homosexuals (23), Trade Union Members (38), Married With Children (59), More than $200k (62), Less than $50k (43), White (58), Black (11), Men (55) and Women (48).
It is no coincidence that Bush did so well with the religious groups (except Jews who have a long record of holding liberal political views). People were asked: “What was the most important issue to you when voting?” as they left the polling booth. This was the result: Moral Values (22), Economy (20), Terrorism (19), Iraq (15), Healthcare (8), Taxes (5) and Education (4).
Other factors that need to be taken into consideration include the numbers who bothered to vote. A high percentage of the Evangelical/Born Again Christians decided to cast their vote (20.7m for Bush). Whereas other groups that overwhelmingly supported Kerry (Blacks and those living in poverty) had low turnout rates. This was especially true in the Deep South. Despite having a lot of blacks and people living in poverty, every state was won by Bush. The reason for this is the turnout rate.
It is highly unlikely that Christian groups will lose their faith during the next four years. In the past these groups abstained in large numbers (Bush did not have much of an impact on this in 2000).
To win in 2008 the Democrats have to find someone who is appealing to those Christians in the Deep South. If they don’t do that, they will be beaten by the Republican candidate who will definitely be chosen to represent these views.
Good Analysis John. You're so right to stress voter turnout and the need for the Democrats to win states in the south. Very much what we learned in Political Science, except that in the old days (20th Century) people voted UP/DOWN on the economy every four years, like a referendum... and the FDR coalition held, until the Reagan Years, and really, Clinton.
Where up until Gore Bush 2000, Voters every Four years would vote their pocketbook, now there is more to it: Moral Values, Terrorism, Iraq War.
These are inculcated, indoctrinated, Rhetorically co-erced "political" positions...It really is Nineteen Eighty-Four, where a round robin of wars dodge around the globe to keep defense and security at record levels.
With a Soviet Threat gone, whence our Peace Dividend, our Pax Returna? (ugh) When Bush's reactionary son came into the Oval Office, the United States was revered as a bellweather bond market, a fair referee of markets, and a liberally educated elite capable of communicating with other nations, other national elites.
But the economy of the US is now cursed with an international reputation of FIXERS of markets, of bond schemers and BUDGET BUSTERS.
Wm. CLinton balanced and managed the federal budget, while W. Bush blew record trillion dollar deficits and tinkered, family in Savings and Loans, money losing energy and sports deals, Enron, Halliburton, Brown and Root Kellogg, the Republicans are seen as fixers and manipulators... corrupt in ways the Democrats, with their civil polish and enlightened ways avoid.
2003 saw stock gains on the back of a de-valued dollar, that was a one-time quick fix...Bush's domestic plan centers on SLASHING the category of workers entitled to be paid overtime...every slacker jackass with a collar and tie is a manager, suitable to be paid a salary, with blind hours (48?60? 72 Hours? Whatever it takes, you're a manager, heres your $21,800 salary, manager).
Its the culture, without good Jobs oriented Democrats at the top, the elites that make desisions to eliminate 100,000 Jobs, like Jack Welch at GE, etc etc the board executives and chairmen who decide to fire by the thousand to see marginal stock value fluctuations and froth they can rake in....they run the GOP and the country...so we see Bush placing corporate lobbyists, hostile to environmental and workplace regulation in position to enforce the laws, which THEY PREFER NOT TO DO... and the Federal Judges are reviled as activists, unless they are Scalia school of law, where they Look at EPA and OSHA and say I PREFER NOT TO... with the exception of a few showtrials, MICROSOFT and MARTHA, the federal gov't is not interested in enforcing ANTI-TRUST LAW. That has been abandoned. the Conglomerates, i.e Martin Marietta Lockheed, Mobil/Exxon, the Dupont Consolidated, ITT and ICI won and are winning....
Shanet
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John Brown’s Trial: A Watershed Event In U.S. History
In October of 1859, John Brown, the notoriously violent abolitionist, led eighteen armed men, both black and white, on a raid of the little railroad town of Harpers Ferry, Virginia. His goal was to seize the Federal arsenal there and then lead a slave insurrection across the south. After a two-day standoff with local militia and Federal troops, in which ten of his men were shot or killed, John Brown was captured and put on trial in Virginia state court. He was found guilty and hanged.
John Brown’s activities in Harpers Ferry, Virginia in October of 1859 caused an unprecedented uproar in the United States and generated an immense volume of editorial analysis, comment and interpretation.1 The original Court Records of the case have been lost or scattered.2 They were partially restored in the 1930’s.3 The most complete records can be found in the Jefferson County (W.Va.) County Records Manuscripts Common Law Order Books #6 and #12 and Will Book #16.4 My analysis of the trial is based on a contemporary work that reports the entire trial in objective terms, and I will refer to this source as the “consensus” account.5 This corresponds to the Senate Report and Testimony in many particulars and presents no particular agenda.6
The insurrection and trial of John Brown spawned a complex historiography.7 Many of the works are strongly Pro-Brown, bordering on hagiography.8 Two examples show the extent of the apologia commonly expressed by militant abolitionists concerning John Brown. James Redpath entitled his chapters on the trial and execution “Among the Philistines” and “Victory over Death.” In addition, F.B. Sanborn dedicated his book to John Brown’s family.9 It is useful in understanding the period to compare these militant abolitionists’ editorial content to the public record of the Senate and the “consensus” account.
John Brown’s trial is filled with unusual circumstances. After seizing hostages and a Federal Armory on October the 16th and 17th John Brown was tried in Virginia State Circuit Court for treason, multiple first-degree murders and inciting an insurrection among Virginia slaves.10 The defense counsels were appointed by the court and expressed strong misgivings.11 The trial was definitely rushed, due to the recent insurrection and hysteria in the community.12 Brown attended the trial prone upon a cot, since he had suffered multiple saber wounds when captured.13 The appointed defense counsel admitted the fact of the crimes, shared in the outrage of the community, and apologized for defending Brown.14 The pace, presentation and mood of the court was unusual. Many legitimate objections were over-ruled in haste.15 The judgment would almost certainly be thrown out on appeal in today’s judicial system.
The trial took place in Charlestown, the county seat of Jefferson County, Virginia, the county where Harpers Ferry was located. Charlestown is now located in the extreme eastern panhandle of West Virginia, and is not to be confused with Charleston, W.Va., the State Capitol in central Kanawha County. Charlestown was named after Charles Washington, a relative of the President, and the trial courthouse is still standing.16
James Redpath’s pro-Brown account includes an inflammatory charge to the jurors by the judge, and this is not included in the “consensus” account. Since the direct quotes in Redpath usually correspond with quotations in the “consensus” and Senate accounts, we can reasonably credit Judge Richard Parker with these words:
I will not permit myself to give expression to any of those feelings which at once spring up in every breast when reflecting on the enormity of the guilt in which those are involved who invade by force a peaceful, unsuspecting portion of our common country, raise the standard of insurrection amongst us, and shoot down without mercy Virginia citizens defending Virginia soil against their invasion.17
The trial took just over a week, starting on Tuesday, 25 October 1859 and concluding on Wednesday, 2 November 1859. The jury took only forty-five minutes in finding John Brown guilty. Brown was executed within a month of conviction.18
The central witness in the trial was Colonel Lewis Washington, of President Washington’s family, who had been kidnapped out of his home and held hostage near the Federal Armory.19 His slaves were militarily “impressed” by Brown, but they took no active part in the insurrection. Other local witnesses testified to the seizure of the Federal Armory, the appearance of Virginia militia groups, and shootings on the railroad bridge. Other evidence described the U.S. Marines’ raid on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad engine house occupied by Brown and his men. U.S. Army Colonel Robert E. Lee and cavalry officer J.E.B Stuart led the Marine raid, and it freed the hostages and ended the standoff. Lee filed an affadavit to the court with his account of the Marine’s raid.20
The manuscript evidence was of particular interest to the judge and jury. Voluminous documents were found on the Maryland farm rented by John Brown under the alias Isaac Smith.21 These documents included a provisional constitution, which Brown and his officers had signed. These documents clinched the treason and pre-meditation charges against John Brown.22
Lawson Botts, a prominent Virginia attorney, was appointed to be the lead defense counsel, and George H. Hoyt, who arrived a few days later from Massachusetts, took a hesitant role in the closing days of the trial. Hoyt was hired to defend Brown by John W. Le Barnes, one of the so-called “Secret Six”--abolitionists who had given money to Brown in the past.23 Charles J. Faulkner and Charlestown mayor Thomas C. Green were also appointed to be defense counsels by Judge Parker, but they stepped down after John Brown expressed “no confidence” in them in open court.24
The defense had a difficult task, since Brown and his men had planned and carried out an insurrection, signed the provisional government charters, fired upon local, state and federal forces and caused five deaths.25 The defense’s stronger points are quite amplified in the apologia of Redpath, but are clear enough even in the “consensus” account. The defense first attacked the multiple count indictment and called for severance of the separate counts within this ‘all or nothing’ indictment.26 The defense repeatedly asked for more time to prepare a defense. Brown himself asked for a few days to recover from his wounds. Time was requested again when George Hoyt arrived. All these motions were denied.27 Unable to slow the trial on (appropriate) procedural grounds, and unable to get the unusual indictment thrown out, the defense stressed jurisdictional ambiguities and extenuating circumstances. The defense claimed that the Harpers Ferry Federal Armory was not on Virginia property, but since the murdered townspeople had died in the streets outside the perimeter of the Federal facility, this carried little weight with the jury. John Brown’s lack of official citizenship in Virginia was presented as a defense against treason against the State. The judge dispatched this claim by reference to “rights and responsibilities” and the overlapping citizenship requirements between the Federal union and the various states. John Brown, as a U.S. citizen, could be found guilty of treason against Virginia on the basis of his temporary residence there during the days of the insurrection.28
Three other substantive defense tactics failed. One claimed that since the insurrection was aimed at the U.S. government it could not be proved treason against Virginia. Since Brown and his men had fired upon Virginia troops, this point was mooted. Another defense claim must have pained John Brown upon his cot. His lawyers explained that since no slaves had joined the insurrection, the charge of leading a slave insurrection should be thrown out. The jury apparently did not favor this claim, either. Extenuating circumstances were claimed by the defense when they stressed that Colonel Washington and the other hostages were not harmed and were in fact protected by Brown during the siege. This claim was not persuasive as Colonel Washington had seen men die of gunshot wounds and had been confined for days. The final plea by the defense team for mercy concerned the circumstances surrounding the death of two of John Brown’s men, who were apparently fired upon and killed by the Virginia militia while under a flag of truce. The armed community surrounding the Arsenal did not hold their fire when Brown’s men emerged to parley. This incident is given great weight in Redpath, the militant abolitionist hagiography. It is not highlighted in the “consensus” account, but the incident is noticeable upon a close reading of the published testimony. If rebels under a flag of truce were fired upon, it was not a major issue to the judge and jury.29
Redpath, in his pro-abolitionist account of the trial, emphasizes one other event, which sheds light on the insurrection and the mob mentality of the beleaguered Harpers Ferry citizens’ militia. It seems that the Mayor of Harpers Ferry, Mr. Fontaine Beckham, had stood unarmed within sight of both the Arsenal’s rebels and the local militia. Brown or Brown’s men shot the Mayor in cold blood, and the crowd responded in a singular way. The citizen militia had captured William Thompson, one of Brown’s “privates,” earlier in the day, and upon Mayor Beckham’s murder this William Thompson was in turn murdered by Henry Hunter and thrown off of the Potomac River railroad bridge.30 Hunter admits this in the “consensus” account, and it is conveyed in considerably more detail in the Redpath account.31
The raid on Harpers Ferry and the subsequent trial of John Brown was a watershed event in American history. Brown was unrepentant, he gloried in his martyrdom and he was supported in his zeal by many abolitionists.32 The record shows a hurried, somewhat callous approach to the niceties and technicalities of jurisprudence. The judge repeatedly excuses the speed and severity of the trial, on the grounds that the Circuit session would soon end.33 No real attempt was made to put forth an insanity plea, although a letter to that effect was read in open court on the second day, and many people believed that congenital insanity was claimed as a defense. John Brown did not co-operate in this effort to claim an insanity defense, he said, “I look upon it as a miserable artifice and pretext . . . I view it with contempt . . . I reject, so far as possible, any attempt to interfere in my behalf on that score.”34
John Brown was hanged on 2 December 1859, at high noon. In his desire to be both a martyr and a prophet he predicted civil war in this final hand-written note that he passed to a supporter on his way out to the heavily protected field gallows:
Charlestown, Va. 2nd December, 1859. I John Brown am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land: will never be purged away; but with Blood. I had as I now think: vainly flattered myself that without very much bloodshed; it might be done.
The raid on Harpers Ferry foreshadows the Civil War in some counter-intuitive ways, and there is much irony in the subsequent events that took place in the region. In 1861, the South would present the provisional constitution, not the abolitionists of the North. The patriarchal, feudal militarism of Brown’s family and his “Army” was illustrative of the Southern slaveholders’ attitudes. The North was afraid of people like Brown, men of zeal who would entertain secession and rebellion for a political cause. Harpers Ferry and the larger nearby towns of Martinsburg and Winchester would change hands many, many times between the Confederacy and the Union.35 West Virginia would secede from the Confederacy, and take Jefferson County out of Virginia’s jurisdiction forever. Battles at Harpers Ferry would seriously obstruct R.E. Lee’s attempts to invade the North in both the Antietam and the Gettysburg campaigns. The area along the Shenandoah Valley would become the staging grounds for another religious and steely-eyed commander, Confederate General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson.36 Spies and treachery would rock the area throughout the war and Belle Boyd would become famous as a provocative double agent in the region, as a Civil War Matahari. Both Robert E. Lee and J.E.B. Stuart would resign their commissions in the U.S. Army in order to fight for a secessionist government of Virginia.37
Virginia Governor Henry A. Wise embodies these ironies and strange reversals. One of Brown’s most vocal and visible accusers during the trial and immediate aftermath, Wise had described Brown’s provisional force as “murderers, traitors, robbers, insurrectionists . . . wandering, malicious, unprovoked, felons,” and he pushed for the rapid trial and sentencing of Brown and his accomplices.38
Eighteen months later, on
17 April 1861 Henry Wise reported to the Virginia Secession Convention, “(Virginian) armed forces are now moving upon Harpers Ferry to capture the arms there in the Arsenal for the public defense, and there will be a fight or a foot-race between volunteers of Virginia and Federal troops before the sun sets.” On 1 June 1861 Wise would tell people in Richmond “Get a spear, a lance. Take a lesson from John Brown, manufacture your blades from old iron.”39
The raid on Harpers Ferry and the trial of John Brown is a fascinating series of events. The high emotions, the gore, the righteousness claimed by both sides, all these are highly compelling. By sacrificing his own (and other innocent people’s) lives to the cause of slave emancipation in the pivotal year of 1859, John Brown would align himself in segments of the public mind with Presidents Lincoln and Grant. By leading an irregular rebellion and forming a provisional government he foreshadows the Confederate American experience as well. The trial of John Brown in Virginia’s state court system in 1859 shows us a man who perceived himself to be above the law being hastily prosecuted by a community inflamed by ideological, racial and territorial conflicts.
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PROBLEMATICS OF PIERRE BOURDIEU 1930-2002:
CULTURAL CAPITAL, CLASS, LEISURE AND THE
IMPLICATIONS FOR AMERICAN SOCIAL STUDIES
Sociology, the science (or study) of contemporary human group behavior, is an oft-maligned discipline. Dismissed as hopelessly left or worse, as irrelevant, Sociology is perceived as a recent upstart among the sciences, and only a minor player in the humanities, arts and sciences. The situation is rather the inverse, however. Pierre Bourdieu, although contributing important theories, concepts and ideas to the fields of linguistics, philosophy, politics and history was first and foremost a working sociologist; Pierre Bourdieu may be the greatest thinker of the late 20th century, and by this I mean he is the senior contemporary of Edward Said, Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Noam Chomsky, Fernand Braudel, and Michel Foucault.
Whereas structures are pre-formative, constraining determinants, post-structural theory is liberational, open to human innovation, self-direction, agency, etc. Thus a dialectical materialist and structural social philosophy has given way to a post-modern and post-structural critical theory corrosive of sustained social inequities. Thus the pitiful, limited, but self-empowering existential will has returned, inside its new Bourdieuian cultural economy, its habitus and field. Whereas capitalism and globalization (neo-liberal globalism) is highly structural, contemporary social theorists have returned to a more nuanced and transactional analysis, which once again gives substantial credit to human agency, contingency, enlightened self-interest and moral value choice. Existential free will is back as pessimistic materialists grumble and adapt, favoring Bourdieu’s most structural and determining aspects.
The Bourdieu Thought System
To problematize Bourdieu, several things must happen simultaneously. His theories and terms have been studied, rebuked and enthusiastically twisted, and the core Bourdieu philosophy is a problem—I will try to give a consensual account and highlight the major rebukes and assaults that the critics have launched against him. Another problematic is the various impacts of Bourdieu’s approach, or theory. The sociologist’s cannon of texts, Bourdieu’s own and his critics, form a system, a structure, an intelligence ready to analyze, with interior logic and compelling rationales, where schools, workplaces, social spaces, families, history, psychological assumptions, linguistic and anthropological models are all vehicles of gain within the cultural exchange of a market, the new theory’s “cultural economy.”
His tint (or taint) is etched, now, in thought, in practice, in discourse. Of this range we will focus on the educational structures and the new sociology which informs family rearing, aspirations and theories of development. Certainly a major problem of Bourdieu theory, to thoughtful critics, is over-determinism. Second, his convertible cultural ‘Capital’ analogy is debatable. Thirdly, general questions are addressed to his theory of “misrecognized symbolic violence.” This part of his approach sees him at his farthest ‘left’ and in his most sweepingly critical mode, and I mean critical in its newer theoretical sense. This approach to schooling is sweeping, fearless, exhaustive and corrosively deconstructive.
Bourdieu, Class and Marx
Bourdieu specifically disavowed being Marxist, although his penetration into social philosophy meant that a great many powerful 20th century social theorists adopted and approved his theories. He was Marxist by adoption and general acclaim, so to speak, and many casual readers and harried graduate students probably find a general Marxism inherent in a universal theory of social and cultural capital. This core analogy has branded Bourdieu, unfairly, with a red capital ‘K.’ Bourdieu probably moved to a more conservative position over time as his generational habitus (if not his field) would suggest (although as a media savvy French public intellectual he was well known late in his life for consistently opposing neo-liberal globalization).
Certainly these are the bundle of problems inside the intelligence system that is the Bourdieu approach to society; its level of old-style Marxian thought, the extent of his determinism and his naiveté vis a vis “symbolic violence” are three principle problems.
Broadly, the class structure, free will and the nature of human political relations are the triple problematic of Bourdieu’s new sociological model.
Power, the question of the nature of individual agency in the social world and the ideas of class and capital are all under review and post-modernists have only been able to engross parts of Bourdieu, as do liberals and moderate thinkers. Conservatives have no use for Bourdieu as he exposes (or proposes?) deep structural power imbalances and methods of elite reproduction of advantages (in ways they had always suspected sociologists of doing). In fact, liberational transformation, the very stuff of the new critical theory and philosophical Marxism (as opposed to post 1917 militant national communism)—the project of unmasking hidden social imbalances and oppressive routines, which sociologists and political scientists focused on in the 20th century, reached its zenith in the Bourdieu mentality. Not really Marxist, but relying on class differences and a capital market analogy, Bourdieu transcended dialectical materialism and elevated the discourse to a more subtle and nuanced level.
Most interesting is the calm comprehensiveness of Bourdieu, which straddles and encompasses previously polarized theories and concepts, he shed light on dark ideational spaces. For example, the field and habitus theory fully allows for the sociologists’ inherent need to see heavy social influences in individuals’ behavior, and he shows the potentials and limits of people’s general range of actions, without denying human agency and freedom to act. The habitus is only the arrangement of controlling (limiting) factors, within the mutually legitimized field and habitus the individual is relatively free and often acts unpredictably. Most properly, to those who accused him of over-determinism, Bourdieu would contend, ‘I am not talking about the individual; I am talking about the behavior off the large numbers, the statistically significant populations.’ In other words Bourdieu was writing about class—a chronic structural problem to many, a merit-denying fiction to others. Bourdieu knew more about class than anyone else at the turn of the millennia, his Distinction and the supporting books and articles show a mastery of class variations and manifestations unmatched by anyone else, a colossal mentation upon strata, doxy, consciousness, reproduction and identity (in their theoretical senses). So only in the broadest sense can it be said that Bourdieu followed the reductionist class approach of the Victorian thinker, Karl Marx.
The Style and Impact of Bourdieu
Stylistically, Bourdieu’s language has caused some difficulty, but I find it tolerable in translation. His asides are logically related to the main clauses and the level of the detail and articulation are only equal to the fineness of his fluent discrimination. His uplifting and eye-opening scientific literary style is an inherent standing argument for free will, independent moral action, human agency and intellectual production. While my reading of Foucault, Adorno and Derrida are often slowed by obscurant and meandering digression, Bourdieu retains clarity, thematic focus and sharpness in all but the rare passages. Even his transcribed spontaneous phrases are variegated in cohesive and compelling subtlety—although this clarity I perceive is not always so clear to his critics, interpreters and fellow sociologists. I would say Bourdieu is less bluntly materialist than Marx and has a more complex, yet compelling concept of ideation and social conflict than Hegel. Bourdieu is commonly said to be the heir to Weber and Durkheim. What the new model of ‘cultural capital’ has done is to raise the social values and the values of mental or spiritual feelings of Weberian well-being (satisfactory self-placement in class rank) to the level of (roughly) the pound sterling.
If fields engage the energy of dominated fractions of the dominant majority, in other words, if intellectuals, philanthropists and policy makers are engaged full time in these competitive games for limited and ritualized totemic rewards, programmatic bestowals and calibrated affirmations, then this non-material, non-physical, non-pound sterling resource—Bourdieu’s cultural capital—must be of a value somehow equable to the obvious, gross economic value system, the material base, Kapital. And here is Bourdieu’s greatest achievement. The language of cultural capital runs parallel to, is linked to, and is obviously related to wealth, but cultural capital has a somewhat different distribution, a varied concentration, and an ambiguous overall relation to tangible wealth. Far from being a callous offer of inane sophistry to the less well off, Bourdieu theory critically assails, but objectively validates, the status seeking dominated fraction of the dominant minority; it offers cynics and critics an unflinching look inside the logic of merit, bureaucracy and wealth-influenced upper middle class passages. Bourdieu, ever the conscientious social scientist, describes rather than prescribes; he validates and raises questions about class behavior and reproduction of elite advantages via amassed cultural capital. I will state here what many think, but what few sociologists will state aloud, i.e., “We read Bourdieu with pride, we internalize his jargon and world view and we feel empowered, elevated—we know, cynically, we are amassing cultural capital, we even know that the Machiavellian mastery of Bourdieu theory is enhancing our cultural capital, our self-esteem, our symbolic status, importance and distinction.” Bourdieu’s work suggests this line of thought, a post-modern aspect, a self-referencing and ironic awareness of the oppressive nature of one’s own self-interested lifestyle and language choices. The intellectual is faced with an awkward paradox, where contemporary social theory critically empowers one, and may hold the capacity to transform the individual and society, but in the status system of the cultural capital exchange market (the site of reproduction) the practicing intellectual forms a defensive coalition with wealth and capital systems to legitimate the oppressive and deplorable status quo. Is this problematic? We must see that it is.
The Plongeur and the Professor
It is important to remember that advances in one’s recognized mental wealth, one’s cultural capital, must be based on distinct structural machinations of the rewards-giving group within one’s field—not on one’s own independent learning, like deeply reading, for example.
The plongeur who has read Proust, Erich Fromme, Marx, Derrida, Foucault and the great sociologists is still a plongeur, while a Ph.D., Chair and Society President, who may not have read as widely or as incisively as the plongeur, is still the Chair. The Chair has amassed the cultural capital (along with Weberian self-esteem and other intangibles) from the institutions, the field of organized competitive endeavor he inhabits. The Toynbee-reading plongeur has more cultural capital than the ‘tabloids and porno’ reading plongeur, but only a limited trickle of cultural capital can be independently garnered, to get culturally “wealthy” one must interact with others in the field one has entered, buffets, boards, clubs, auctions, journals, etc., must be employed. Sadly the Foucault-mastering plongeur is not only relegated to the lower working economic class, but to the “literate tavern employee” cultural field, i.e., oblivion.
Of course a plongeur washing dishes forty hours a week has to devote more marginal time to reading than the lecturer, subsidized graduate student or the sabbaticalist doctor of letters. Leisure is the key to cultural distinction (both subjectively and objectively) and here Thorstein Veblen is the precursor to the new economic model.
A Night at the Opera: The Paradox of Class and Wealth
Whether hierarchically stratified according to the Cohen model or ordinally numbered in the Cambridge ranking system, the social classes offend one another and commit symbolic violence to one another and to those below.
The chauffeured executive’s younger, third, “trophy” wife gamely apes the coiffed symphony board dames, while the classically literate patron disdains the downtown banker and all the above ignore the proletariat on the sidewalk beyond the lobby of the opera house. As certainly as these lower, middle and upper classes know there own net assets and debts, they know their rank in the world of “culture.” This is undoubtedly what Emile Durkheim would call a social fact. Stepping into the lobby, the banker may think, “One more board museum appointment and one more fund-raiser for the college and I will surpass So-and-so, although I will never match the worth What’s-his-name, I am light-years beyond the slovenly You-know-who.” Here You-know-who may be a wealthy classmate, one economically stratospheric but without foundations, degrees or honorary board memberships—or more likely, there is rough parity of their economic levels, and this cultural capital is the deciding factor in the sum of “class status.”
Since this is the knowledge interior to the mind, and manifest in social behavior, certainly the reality of an encompassing value system of cultural capital is “true” or a social fact. Does this approach devalue class tensions? Probably. Does it weaken the contrast of economic of economic class distinctions—yes, because the distinctions are weakened “out there” or “in reality” by the encroachments on oligarchic cultural hegemony by savvy cultural actors in their fields, behaving within their habitus.
Does all this ignore or minimize chronic economic disparities? Again, yes, probably because that is not the social issue Bourdieu addressed. By exposing to other intellectuals, in somewhat convoluted French, this system of domination, reproduction and one-upmanship in their competitive arena, Bourdieu acts to transform, empower and liberate—mentally if not politically or financially—all who can appreciate his thought system, his new intelligence system. Which is to say those who most need the theory, the less educated and advantaged masses, are unable to sup upon wry Bourdieu. Thus intellectuals, with their personal investment in the institutions and assumptions of their fields and habiti, are the only receivers attuned to the Bourdieu frequency. Bullwinkle, Gilligan and Jerry Springer all reach mass markets multiplied many times over the numbers of Bourdieu readers. The working and middle and professional and high elite classes (with the exception of some graduate level social scientists) are utterly blind to the linguistic, psychological and philosophical keys to their own liberation. Meanwhile the intellectuals, the gate keepers and symbolic assailants active in the competitive cultural market are forced to read about their own bourgeois clannishness, their pecking orders, arbitrary self-promoting aesthetics and snobby aggrandizement methods.
The paradox and central irony (the big problematic) of Bourdieu is that the ones he speaks to, he doesn’t speak for, and the ones he speaks for, he doesn’t speak to…and it is likely to stay this way for some time. In the 21st century, in a postmodern period, intellectuals will continue to read Bourdieu with deflated jadedness and hidden pride, while most everyone else (highly literate plongeurs excepted) will watch Springer and remain quite ignorant of reproduced advantage, the limitations due to habitus, the cruel generational machinations in various cultural fields and the misrecognition of the symbolic violence they have suffered.
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John,
I think it is an interesting point that several of the Dallas participants may have been sent into hostile territory on virtual suicide missions. Cuesta and Diaz Garcia are examples; Felipe Vidal Santiago is another.
(quote by)
James
THANK YOU John and James:
John I am reading the hot links you post, they are one of my
principle sources of information.
Fabian Escalante, Eladio Del Valle, Herminio Diaz Garcia and Tony Cuestra
on Spartacus...but I'm trying to keep it all straight.
James also thank you for clarifying the missions,
and yes, thematically, it is very
significant that covert high risk plans continued for these
Cuban exiles to engage in say, 1966.
This would show an ongoing top level co-ordination, from a higher level...
David Ferrie was in the middle of all this, so garrison was onto something.
I Get RON'S point on the other thing:
If Brading/Braden was in custody soon after the shootings, then
Chauncey Holt, being Perp-walked thru Dealy at two thirty or three pm,
wouldn't have seen him...
his two photos match up pretty well, braden had a funny lower lip/chin...but when was it taken? Holt says he and Harrelson were in the Train Car for hours...
What's the deal with Gerry Hemmings?
He's in the photos of Dealey Plaza and was active in Interpen, is that right?
Thanks
Shanet
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Poor Tony Cuestra. Let me get this straight. He gets a bunch of Cuban anti-Castro mercenaries, including two future Watergate burglars, Eugenio Martininez and Virgilio Ganzales, to sneak into Castro's Cuba to extract an asset with information about
Cuba's strategic arms situation. This was Operation Tilt? William Pawley.
So after one (or more?) get killed on the commando raid inside Cuba, Tony Cuestra attempts suicide in Castro's prison and blinds himself. Before he gets out he tells General Francisco (sp) that he and Herminio Diaz Garcia were in on the JFK murder. Castro's government calls a press conference in the Bahamas in 1994 to give out this story, after Cuestra died...and Operation Tilt featured Torres and Gerry Hemmings, and was related to Alpha 66 programs and onrunning exile pressure activities RFK and JFK broke up in 1963....
Is that the story?
Shanet
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In his book "Race and the Shaping of 20th Century Atlanta,"
Ronald H. Bayor investigates the planned segregation of blacks from whites in Atlanta. The book shows that residential zoning and planning decisions were made by a combination of bankers, developers, white Atlanta City Planners and federal highway and mortgage officials. The white Atlanta civic planning councils never seriously considered providing decent housing for blacks, except on occasion in reaction to black expansion. The official reaction was a segregated housing policy strategy, a racist attempt at limiting legitimate black family aspirations to home ownership.
The intensity of Georgia’s Jim Crow apartheid movement, as documented in Anderson’s “Eugene Talmadge: Wild Man of Sugar Creek” and Brattain’s “Politics of Whiteness,” is shown here to be the critical factor in the spatial, political, educational, health, commerce and residential shaping of Georgia’s largest urban agglomerate, greater metropolitan Atlanta. These changes occurred through the mid twentieth century period, contemporaneous with the rise of the automotive age. Bayor’s evaluation of regional planning and city zoning supports the apartheid theory.
We will look at the various forces of white reaction that Bayor exposes in this interpretive narrative of Atlanta urban history. The story begins with blacks streaming into the city during the Civil War and Reconstruction era from 1861 to 1876, when refugees of slavery and war, economically desperate blacks, concentrated onto the industrial fringes of downtown Atlanta on unclaimed bottomland and were scattered throughout white Atlanta in servants’ quarters and shanties.
Zoning was the structural framework of the city segregation policies towards black housing needs in the 20th century. Proper and appropriate zoning should limit industrial expansion to selected areas, identify and unite greenspaces, enforce the status quo as far as dwelling densities, etc. Atlanta’s government zoning bastardized this process to serve a Jim Crow apartheid vision and strategy. By 1913 (just thirty seven years after the end of Radical Reconstruction) segregation and racial zoning laws affecting access to services and residential choices were on the books in Atlanta. Bayor records the twenty-year legal struggle between the Atlanta civil planners’ intransigence and their repeated judicial reversals. Elected city officials with their paid planners and planning commissions brought about the series of race-based Atlanta zoning laws of 1913-1931 and judges did not always uphold the city’s growing body of segregation codicils.
Racial segregation, or apartheid continued into the late 20th century under myriad forms and artifices. Road placement and conscious abandonment were two main levers of the white native-born Protestant reaction to the growth of African American Atlanta. Black residential expansion was directed towards existing black enclaves, often unsuccessfully. Heavy-handed tactics such as leaving north/south streets unfinished were often used to limit Black housing growth, by turning services against blacks. Atlanta attracted national opprobrium for its Peyton Road ‘Wall,’ an actual barrier between the white and Black ends of the public right of way, Peyton Road. Bayor carefully reconstructs the repeated attempts to build racially inspired expressways and fenced parkways, by the Atlanta civic boards. Although many of these projects failed to be built, many other road decisions like the I-20 West placement, did permanent and irretrievable damage to white, black and co-existing communities. A white man who grew up in the West End has told me that the neighborhood was much more vibrant, cohesive and flourishing before Interstate 20 truncated its matrix. He indicated that race and class tensions were raised and the quality of life declined after the freeway was built through the West End. Grant Park and East Atlanta suffered similar declines due to the placement of I-20, which Baylor shows to be typical of the racial barrier road placement strategy of white Atlanta city planners. These expensive and counter-economic strategies failed, of course, as I-20 did not keep Blacks out of the southern West End.
What technological innovation triggered the property struggle that Bayor documents? By World War One, the automobile replaced streetcar and horse conveyances, technologies of the late 19th century. This change is essential for the evolution of today’s American cities and it impacted Atlanta in various important ways. First, the auto culture allowed Black and white middle class workers and professionals to venture farther afield to work on a daily basis -- it allowed them to commute. (We can assume that the working class in this period is limited to pedestrian and public transportation.) White middle class and professional workers preferred to move north into the garden suburbs of Morningside and Druid Hills and into the desirable Buckhead and Sandy Springs areas north of the city. “White Flight” is the usual term for this northern and northeastern migration of moneyed white elites from Atlanta. Blacks in the middle class also tended to expand outward from the crowded south central and Auburn city districts, moving into the West End where Heman Perry had built the first black automotive suburb. Bayor makes clear, with graphic evidence and documentation that black homeownership and Black economic equity did not stand still for these systematic restrictions. Large swaths of “white” Atlanta were lost to the newly automotive blacks’ aspirations and purchasing power.
Bayors use of contemporary documentation to prove the systemic apartheid strategy is impressive. Only the Lochner Report itself matches the 1922-zoning map in importance. A logical reaction to a close study of the official 1922 Atlanta Zone Map would be to ask, “just where exactly are the blacks supposed to live?” White family residential areas are generously drawn, both spacious and contiguous to each other. Black potential housing areas are circumscribed, isolated and in less desirable areas. The critical category in the map’s legend is neither the black nor the white residential areas, but the overly generous land allowance to non-residential industrial areas. These lower cost tracts, directly adjacent to existing black housing, are reserved and off-limits to all residential development. Without the opportunity to purchase, improve and dwell within these nearby zones, black housing was limited to a few painful choices, and crowded urban tenement slums were a direct result of industrial and white residential zoning reservations. Nevertheless, many black middle class homebuyers were able to leapfrog and penetrate into the white-owned neighborhoods to the southwest and southeast of the central business district.
Comprehensive city planning -- as distinct from zoning -- impacted on black communities, and on Atlanta in general, for the worse. The racial aspect of Atlanta’s road placement strategy, as well as the building of expensive walls, fences and the consciously counter-productive abandonment of roads has been outlined above. The influx of federal urban renewal funds to white segregationists in city government caused wholesale obliteration of black housing in Atlanta. Slums, often the most neglected part of the urban services system, and the areas ‘red-lined’ by white bankers for generations, were bulldozed and destroyed under a system of comprehensive city planning. Federal ‘urban renewal’ spending brought wholesale destruction to many U.S. cities, as did the placement of Federal highways of the post-war era, and Atlanta is typical of these serious dislocations. With poor Blacks concentrated in the south central ghetto, this area was an immediate target of the federal urban renewal process and bloc grant federal spending programs. The Atlanta Civic Center (UGA Alumni Hall) and Fulton Stadium areas were cleared with no good faith attempt to replace the destroyed black residences. Comprehensive city planning was definitely prejudicial to African American Atlanta and this corrosion of black housing stock continued into the late 1990’s with blacks disproportionately displaced for the new Olympic facilities. Comprehensive urban planning was also harmonious with segregation strategies when it came to annexation and expansion of the city’s jurisdiction. Mayor Hartsfield was successful in engrossing Druid Hills and Buckhead into Atlanta, forestalling a black electoral majority for a few years. Subsequent attempts at expansion of the civic borders into the northeast were failures -- and the attempt polarized the city, activating the black voting bloc so feared by the pre-1974 white city officials.
In the 20th century blacks faced a hostile Atlanta dominated by white elites. Parks, schools and public attractions were denied to them or only offered in separate and unequal facilities. Roads would end, fences and physical assaults would be endured, bank loans were denied and opportunities for black Atlantans were generally squashed or diminished. Bayor’s careful and exhaustive quantitative and qualitative investigation into many primary documents and contemporary secondary sources allows us to clearly see an issue that was regularly clouded by denial, silence and misunderstandings at the time. Race and the Shaping of 20th Century Atlanta is a companion piece to Thomas J. Sugrue’s 1998 Bancroft Award winning The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit. Sugrue identifies many of the same policies as Bayor and makes it clear that “redlining” was a federally sponsored policy: “Like every other black section of Detroit, the West Side was marked “D” or “Red” on the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation appraisal maps of Detroit, flagging the area as unsuitable for Federal loans or subsidies (Sugrue, page 38).” I quote this because it shows ‘red-lining’ to be not a private business decision, but a public policy supported by federal offices in the post-war era. When one compares Bayor’s analysis of Atlanta with Sugrue’s analysis of events in Detroit, it becomes hard to resist the conclusion that the non-violent political leadership of Dr. Martin Luther King almost single-handedly prevented massive urban rioting in Atlanta over these many grievances.
The attempted apartheid of Atlanta was a product of local elected officials, state, federal and city urban planners and financial elites. Bayor’s incisive and exhaustive research clearly shows the importance of race to the spatial shaping of the city of Atlanta as it appears today, with a 90% statistical correlation of segregation in residential housing. Atlanta is now more strictly segregated by race than it was in 1940. Whites and Blacks experienced and enjoyed wholly different Atlanta’s in the 20th century, and as lunch counters became legally integrated, housing, in general, did not.
Shanet Clark, GSU ATLANTA
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PROBLEMATICS OF PIERRE BOURDIEU
Introduction
Sociology, the science (or study) of contemporary human group behavior, is an oft-maligned discipline. Dismissed as hopelessly left or worse, as irrelevant, Sociology is perceived as a recent upstart among the sciences, and only a minor player in the humanities, arts and sciences. The situation is rather the inverse, however. Pierre Bourdieu, although contributing important theories, concepts and ideas to the fields of linguistics, philosophy, politics and history was first and foremost a working sociologist; Pierre Bourdieu may be the greatest thinker of the late 20th century, and by this I mean he is the senior contemporary of Edward Said, Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Noam Chomsky, Fernand Braudel, and Michel Foucault.
Whereas structures are pre-formative, constraining determinants, post-structural theory is liberational, open to human innovation, self-direction, agency, etc. Thus a dialectical materialist and structural social philosophy has given way to a post-modern and post-structural critical theory corrosive of sustained social inequities. Thus the pitiful, limited, but self-empowering existential will has returned, inside its new Bourdieuian cultural economy, its habitus and field. Whereas capitalism and globalization (neo-liberal globalism) is highly structural, contemporary social theorists have returned to a more nuanced and transactional analysis, which once again gives substantial credit to human agency, contingency, enlightened self-interest and moral value choice. Existential free will is back as pessimistic materialists grumble and adapt, favoring Bourdieu’s most structural and determining aspects.
The Bourdieu Thought System
To problematize Bourdieu, several things must happen simultaneously. His theories and terms have been studied, rebuked and enthusiastically twisted, and the core Bourdieu philosophy is a problem—I will try to give a consensual account and highlight the major rebukes and assaults that the critics have launched against him. Another problematic is the various impacts of Bourdieu’s approach, or theory. The sociologist’s cannon of texts, Bourdieu’s own and his critics, form a system, a structure, an intelligence ready to analyze, with interior logic and compelling rationales, where schools, workplaces, social spaces, families, history, psychological assumptions, linguistic and anthropological models are all vehicles of gain within the cultural exchange of a market, the new theory’s “cultural economy.”
His tint (or taint) is etched, now, in thought, in practice, in discourse. Of this range we will focus on the educational structures and the new sociology which informs family rearing, aspirations and theories of development. Certainly a major problem of Bourdieu theory, to thoughtful critics, is over-determinism. Second, his convertible cultural ‘Capital’ analogy is debatable. Thirdly, general questions are addressed to his theory of “misrecognized symbolic violence.” This part of his approach sees him at his farthest ‘left’ and in his most sweepingly critical mode, and I mean critical in its newer theoretical sense. This approach to schooling is sweeping, fearless, exhaustive and corrosively deconstructive.
Bourdieu, Class and Marx
Bourdieu specifically disavowed being Marxist, although his penetration into social philosophy meant that a great many powerful 20th century social theorists adopted and approved his theories. He was Marxist by adoption and general acclaim, so to speak, and many casual readers and harried graduate students probably find a general Marxism inherent in a universal theory of social and cultural capital. This core analogy has branded Bourdieu, unfairly, with a red capital ‘K.’ Bourdieu probably moved to a more conservative position over time as his generational habitus (if not his field) would suggest (although as a media savvy French public intellectual he was well known late in his life for consistently opposing neo-liberal globalization).
Certainly these are the bundle of problems inside the intelligence system that is the Bourdieu approach to society; its level of old-style Marxian thought, the extent of his determinism and his naiveté vis a vis “symbolic violence” are three principle problems.
Broadly, the class structure, free will and the nature of human political relations are the triple problematic of Bourdieu’s new sociological model.
Power, the question of the nature of individual agency in the social world and the ideas of class and capital are all under review and post-modernists have only been able to engross parts of Bourdieu, as do liberals and moderate thinkers. Conservatives have no use for Bourdieu as he exposes (or proposes?) deep structural power imbalances and methods of elite reproduction of advantages (in ways they had always suspected sociologists of doing). In fact, liberational transformation, the very stuff of the new critical theory and philosophical Marxism (as opposed to post 1917 militant national communism)—the project of unmasking hidden social imbalances and oppressive routines, which sociologists and political scientists focused on in the 20th century, reached its zenith in the Bourdieu mentality. Not really Marxist, but relying on class differences and a capital market analogy, Bourdieu transcended dialectical materialism and elevated the discourse to a more subtle and nuanced level.
Most interesting is the calm comprehensiveness of Bourdieu, which straddles and encompasses previously polarized theories and concepts, he shed light on dark ideational spaces. For example, the field and habitus theory fully allows for the sociologists’ inherent need to see heavy social influences in individuals’ behavior, and he shows the potentials and limits of people’s general range of actions, without denying human agency and freedom to act. The habitus is only the arrangement of controlling (limiting) factors, within the mutually legitimized field and habitus the individual is relatively free and often acts unpredictably. Most properly, to those who accused him of over-determinism, Bourdieu would contend, ‘I am not talking about the individual; I am talking about the behavior off the large numbers, the statistically significant populations.’ In other words Bourdieu was writing about class—a chronic structural problem to many, a merit-denying fiction to others. Bourdieu knew more about class than anyone else at the turn of the millennia, his Distinction and the supporting books and articles show a mastery of class variations and manifestations unmatched by anyone else, a colossal mentation upon strata, doxy, consciousness, reproduction and identity (in their theoretical senses). So only in the broadest sense can it be said that Bourdieu followed the reductionist class approach of the Victorian thinker, Karl Marx.
The Style and Impact of Bourdieu
Stylistically, Bourdieu’s language has caused some difficulty, but I find it tolerable in translation. His asides are logically related to the main clauses and the level of the detail and articulation are only equal to the fineness of his fluent discrimination. His uplifting and eye-opening scientific literary style is an inherent standing argument for free will, independent moral action, human agency and intellectual production. While my reading of Foucault, Adorno and Derrida are often slowed by obscurant and meandering digression, Bourdieu retains clarity, thematic focus and sharpness in all but the rare passages. Even his transcribed spontaneous phrases are variegated in cohesive and compelling subtlety—although this clarity I perceive is not always so clear to his critics, interpreters and fellow sociologists. I would say Bourdieu is less bluntly materialist than Marx and has a more complex, yet compelling concept of ideation and social conflict than Hegel. Bourdieu is commonly said to be the heir to Weber and Durkheim. What the new model of ‘cultural capital’ has done is to raise the social values and the values of mental or spiritual feelings of Weberian well-being (satisfactory self-placement in class rank) to the level of (roughly) the pound sterling.
If fields engage the energy of dominated fractions of the dominant majority, in other words, if intellectuals, philanthropists and policy makers are engaged full time in these competitive games for limited and ritualized totemic rewards, programmatic bestowals and calibrated affirmations, then this non-material, non-physical, non-pound sterling resource—Bourdieu’s cultural capital—must be of a value somehow equable to the obvious, gross economic value system, the material base, Kapital. And here is Bourdieu’s greatest achievement. The language of cultural capital runs parallel to, is linked to, and is obviously related to wealth, but cultural capital has a somewhat different distribution, a varied concentration, and an ambiguous overall relation to tangible wealth. Far from being a callous offer of inane sophistry to the less well off, Bourdieu theory critically assails, but objectively validates, the status seeking dominated fraction of the dominant minority; it offers cynics and critics an unflinching look inside the logic of merit, bureaucracy and wealth-influenced upper middle class passages. Bourdieu, ever the conscientious social scientist, describes rather than prescribes; he validates and raises questions about class behavior and reproduction of elite advantages via amassed cultural capital. I will state here what many think, but what few sociologists will state aloud, i.e., “We read Bourdieu with pride, we internalize his jargon and world view and we feel empowered, elevated—we know, cynically, we are amassing cultural capital, we even know that the Machiavellian mastery of Bourdieu theory is enhancing our cultural capital, our self-esteem, our symbolic status, importance and distinction.” Bourdieu’s work suggests this line of thought, a post-modern aspect, a self-referencing and ironic awareness of the oppressive nature of one’s own self-interested lifestyle and language choices. The intellectual is faced with an awkward paradox, where contemporary social theory critically empowers one, and may hold the capacity to transform the individual and society, but in the status system of the cultural capital exchange market (the site of reproduction) the practicing intellectual forms a defensive coalition with wealth and capital systems to legitimate the oppressive and deplorable status quo. Is this problematic? We must see that it is.
The Plongeur and the Professor
It is important to remember that advances in one’s recognized mental wealth, one’s cultural capital, must be based on distinct structural machinations of the rewards-giving group within one’s field—not on one’s own independent learning, like deeply reading, for example.
The plongeur who has read Proust, Erich Fromme, Marx, Derrida, Foucault and the great sociologists is still a plongeur, while a Ph.D., Chair and Society President, who may not have read as widely or as incisively as the plongeur, is still the Chair. The Chair has amassed the cultural capital (along with Weberian self-esteem and other intangibles) from the institutions, the field of organized competitive endeavor he inhabits. The Toynbee-reading plongeur has more cultural capital than the ‘tabloids and porno’ reading plongeur, but only a limited trickle of cultural capital can be independently garnered, to get culturally “wealthy” one must interact with others in the field one has entered, buffets, boards, clubs, auctions, journals, etc., must be employed. Sadly the Foucault-mastering plongeur is not only relegated to the lower working economic class, but to the “literate tavern employee” cultural field, i.e., oblivion.
Of course a plongeur washing dishes forty hours a week has to devote more marginal time to reading than the lecturer, subsidized graduate student or the sabbaticalist doctor of letters. Leisure is the key to cultural distinction (both subjectively and objectively) and here Thorstein Veblen is the precursor to the new economic model.
A Night at the Opera: The Paradox of Class and Wealth
Whether hierarchically stratified according to the Cohen model or ordinally numbered in the Cambridge ranking system, the social classes offend one another and commit symbolic violence to one another and to those below.
The chauffeured executive’s younger, third, “trophy” wife gamely apes the coiffed symphony board dames, while the classically literate patron disdains the downtown banker and all the above ignore the proletariat on the sidewalk beyond the lobby of the opera house. As certainly as these lower, middle and upper classes know there own net assets and debts, they know their rank in the world of “culture.” This is undoubtedly what Emile Durkheim would call a social fact. Stepping into the lobby, the banker may think, “One more board museum appointment and one more fund-raiser for the college and I will surpass So-and-so, although I will never match the worth What’s-his-name, I am light-years beyond the slovenly You-know-who.” Here You-know-who may be a wealthy classmate, one economically stratospheric but without foundations, degrees or honorary board memberships—or more likely, there is rough parity of their economic levels, and this cultural capital is the deciding factor in the sum of “class status.”
Since this is the knowledge interior to the mind, and manifest in social behavior, certainly the reality of an encompassing value system of cultural capital is “true” or a social fact. Does this approach devalue class tensions? Probably. Does it weaken the contrast of economic of economic class distinctions—yes, because the distinctions are weakened “out there” or “in reality” by the encroachments on oligarchic cultural hegemony by savvy cultural actors in their fields, behaving within their habitus.
Does all this ignore or minimize chronic economic disparities? Again, yes, probably because that is not the social issue Bourdieu addressed. By exposing to other intellectuals, in somewhat convoluted French, this system of domination, reproduction and one-upmanship in their competitive arena, Bourdieu acts to transform, empower and liberate—mentally if not politically or financially—all who can appreciate his thought system, his new intelligence system. Which is to say those who most need the theory, the less educated and advantaged masses, are unable to sup upon wry Bourdieu. Thus intellectuals, with their personal investment in the institutions and assumptions of their fields and habiti, are the only receivers attuned to the Bourdieu frequency. Bullwinkle, Gilligan and Jerry Springer all reach mass markets multiplied many times over the numbers of Bourdieu readers. The working and middle and professional and high elite classes (with the exception of some graduate level social scientists) are utterly blind to the linguistic, psychological and philosophical keys to their own liberation. Meanwhile the intellectuals, the gate keepers and symbolic assailants active in the competitive cultural market are forced to read about their own bourgeois clannishness, their pecking orders, arbitrary self-promoting aesthetics and snobby aggrandizement methods.
The paradox and central irony (the big problematic) of Bourdieu is that the ones he speaks to, he doesn’t speak for, and the ones he speaks for, he doesn’t speak to…and it is likely to stay this way for some time. In the 21st century, in a postmodern period, intellectuals will continue to read Bourdieu with deflated jadedness and hidden pride, while most everyone else (highly literate plongeurs excepted) will watch Springer and remain quite ignorant of reproduced advantage, the limitations due to habitus, the cruel generational machinations in various cultural fields and the misrecognition of the symbolic violence in the structures.
Torture in Iraq
in Political Debates
Posted
Alberto Gonzales is Bush's choice for Attorney General!
Three things come immediately to mind---
One- Gonzales wrote the secret memos rolling back the
Geneva Conventions and allowing Foreign Detainees
to be held indefinitely without charges, etc...
He is the author of the Guantanamo/Abu Ghraib rationalizations...
Cheney put him up to it and he bypassed Colin Powell and Condi Rice while he constructed these new Imperial Presidential Powers...
Two-The Pentagon legal brass can't stand him!
He also went around them on these Geneva Convention violation charters,
and the top Army lawyers are saying things like "the common man should never
see the United States Armed forces as torturers"
and "We never wanted these new relaxed interrogation rules"
So now I am lined up with the legal team at the Pentagon against
the new AG...Talk about strange bedfellows in politics!
Three- The guy isn't competent, he is just a white house aide,
like John Dean was...Alberto Gonzales is totally unprepared to
manage all the Federal Prosecutors in the U.S. ...at least
John Ashcroft had been state governor of Missouri...
I am really shocked by this....
Bush probably wouldn't have won this close election if he had come clean
two weeks ago and said he was going to put GONZALES in charge of
the Justice Department....
Can I stay with one of you guys for about the next four years,
I hear Wales is nice....
Shanet Clark