On the footsteps of dissimulation: a study about the new figures of ideology in the perspectives of Claude Lefort and Pierre Bourdieu

Author(s)

Martha Gabrielly Coletto Costa

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD)
• Defense date: 2015-01-30

Examining board members

Marilena de Souza Chaui; Sylvia Gemignani Garcia; Renata Schlumberger Schevisbiski

• Advisor: Marilena de Souza Chaui

Abstract

This work is structured, in a broad sense, as an attempt to understand the modes of domination characteristic of modern societies. It is in this perspective that we take into account the classical notion of ideology, as it was critically developed by Karl Marx. This term points out the social process of production of ideas, values and representations within capitalist societies, whose function consists in hiding and legitimizing the divisions of a social order. Our aim is to follow the developments of this debate in the French philosophical scene of the twentieth century, choosing two important contributions in particular: one provided by the philosopher Claude Lefort, another by the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu. Although located in different fields, Bourdieu and Lefort\'s works converge towards a reformulation of the bases from which the ideological phenomena are conceived, by enlarging the analytical perspectives and casting a new light on them. In a constant critical relationship with the Marxism, the lefortian trajectory allows us to follow the historical movement of a thought, which seeks to apprehend the rise as well as the specificities, forms and transformations of ideology in modern societies. The work of Bourdieu, in turn, unveils and characterizes the modern way of domination conceived as a symbolic violence; it is a phenomenon based on the agreement objectively orchestrated between social structures and the cognitive structures of agents. Involving and overcoming the notion of ideology, the concept of symbolic violence becomes effective when the agents participate in the domination. They give it a recognition based on ignorance of the mechanisms by which social order is produced, reproduced and legitimized. Considering the heritages and distances of the two thinkers with reference to a tradition inaugurated by Marx, we try to reflect on the scope of the main concepts that they leaved us: ideology as a refusal of historicity, of conflict and of political indeterminacy in Lefort, and as a set of practices and styles of life grounded in symbolic domination in Bourdieu. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 11/14900-8 - In the footsteps of dissimulation: ideology and school. a study from Claude Lefort and Pierre Bourdieu
• Grantee: Martha Gabrielly Coletto Costa
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master