Description

It seemed a good idea at the time. As there were several lecturers at the University of York who were interested in Jacques Lacan but found his prose almost unreadable, why not form a study group where we could unravel his revisionist psychoanalysis in a relaxed but erudite manner? Seven of us duly gathered in a corner of the Senior Common Room after lessons and began our collective reading. It was hardly the Vienna Circle. So varied were the interpretations of Lacan’s text that factions developed and the group quickly disintegrated in a cloud of recriminatory incomprehension.

No such fate has befallen the study group set up in 2012 to discuss the work of Pierre Bourdieu, the French critic of neoliberalism, whose massive scholarly output (37 books and more than 400 articles) was constantly, and readably, focused upon the manner in which the social order perpetuates itself by securing an acceptance of existing hierarchies. There is abundant evidence in this fine collection of essays by group members that they have gained hugely from their regular discussions.