Lecture Notes: Critical Thinking, Otis, Feb 2008

INTRO:

Who am I? researcher, academic, educater/support staffer, dj, contract expert

Why should you care? Rational/critical thought leads to decision making in your best interests

“Art for Art’s sake”, anybody ever heard this phrase? What does it mean? What is the
opposite?

“The work of art is an object which exists as such only by virtue of the (collective) belief which knows and acknowledges it as a work of art” (p. 317)

* ‘Universalize access to the universal’; reflexivity


THE CRITIC:

“Money for money’s sake” – ‘business is business’, ‘business as usual’

Fields: "A field is a structured social space, a field of forces, a force field. It contains people who dominate and others who are dominated. Constant, permanent relationships of inequality operate inside this space, which at the same time becomes a space in which the various actors struggle for the transformation or preservation of the field. All the individuals in this universe bring to the competition all the (relative) power at their disposal. It is this power that defines their position in the field and, as a result, their strategies." (p. 40, On Television); place, poles, game. “There is no other criterion of membership of a field than the objective fact of producing effects within it.” (p. 323)

Diagram: money, legitimate physical violence, cultural production

The field of class relations, or economic production: dominant vs. dominated (owners vs. slaves)

The field of power: (temporal vs. symbolic)

The field of cultural production: (autonomous vs. heteronymous)

Dual hierarchies; as one approaches the dominant end of the field of cultural production one approaches the dominated end of the field of power. Thus one is immersed in dual hierarchies with opposing structures. “The struggle in the field of cultural production over the imposition of the legitimate mode of cultural production is inseparable from the struggle within the dominant class (with the opposition between ‘artists’ and ‘bourgeois’) to impose the dominant principle of domination (i.e., ultimately, the definition of human accomplishment).” (p. 322)

THE POINT: REFLEXIVITY

Tool in science – how the observer (researcher) changes/affects observation (research), research strategies, bias

Can make cultural production complicated/diverse

Rationality can lead to confidence, self-esteem, decisions in one’s own best interest (self interestedness)

This can lead to complications (disinterestedness vs. self-interest)

Regardless, the most information/evidence leads to decisions based in reality; i.e., making decision out of ignorance, partially determined (over-determined) vs. making informed, rational, critical decisions in one’s own self-interest (and one’s class interests – solidarity vs. cronyism or “In order words [sic], by obeying the logic of the objective competition between mutually exclusive positions within the field, the various categories of producers tend to supply products adjusted to the expectations of the various positions in the field of power, but without any conscious striving for such adjustment.” p. 326)

* The field of science is at the dominated end of field of power (Chris Rodgers), just like the field of cultural production. Who and what is where is a matter for further research, but they are not without relation.

MINI-BIB

The Field of Cultural Production

Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste

Outline of A Theory of Practice

The Logic of Practice

On Television