Arendt and Bourdieu between Word and Deed

• Published in: Political theory Vol. 39; no. 3; pp. 352 - 377
• Main Author: Topper, Keith
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, CA Sage Publications 01.06.2011; SAGE Publications; SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
• Subjects: Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome; Activism; AIDS; Arendt, Hannah; Biomedical research; Bourdieu, Pierre; Bourdieu, Pierre (1930-2002); Case studies; Clinical trials; Conversation; Democracy; Dominance; Identity; Language; Linguistics; Philosophy; Philosophy of history. Social and political philosophy. Philosophy of law; Political activism; Political institutions; Political participation; Political philosophy; Political science theories; Political Sociology; Political speeches; Political violence; Politics; Power relations; Social and political philosophy; Speech; Speeches; AIDS; political institutions; power; Pierre Bourdieu; speech; Hannah Arendt; Activism; Language; Bourdieu (P.); Aids; Speech; Power; speech,AIDS; Arendt (H.)
• ISSN: 0090-5917; 1552-7476
• DOI: 10.1177/0090591711400028

This essay investigates questions about the relationship between language, speech, and democratic institutions by bringing into conversation Hannah Arendt's and Pierre Bourdieu's distinctive views of the politics of language and speech. First, I explicate Arendt's account of the connection between speech, action, and identity disclosure, as well as its role in her broad conception of political institutions. Next, I complicate this outlook by examining Bourdieu's political sociology of language, focusing on the ways that linguistic competences valorized in particular institutional settings operate as mechanisms of silencing, domination, and exclusion. Finally, I bring these approaches together by investigating political events—AIDS activism in the United States during the 1980s and early 1990s—that raise critical issues regarding the politics of language and speech within a specific institutional setting. By reading Arendt and Bourdieu together in the context of these events, one can develop a defensible account of the politics of speech in democratic theory and practice.