On Habitus
This is a writing prompt that I have struggled with for the better part of a week. What is habitus? It doesn't help that Pierre Bourdieu's Outline of a Theory of Practice is deliberately written to be difficult to understand. But after contending with this question, I think I am starting to get the idea.
Our habitus is always changing. Every moment that we experience defines us, either consciously or subconsciously. Our habitus is the amalgamation of those moments. It is largely shaped by the culture and customs that surround us. In a way, we all have an impact on each other's habitus. What happens around us changes the way that we see the world, for better or worse.
My own habitus as a writer is somewhat difficult to contend with. Having spent the vast majority of my writing life (the five years in which I have had a strong enough passion for writing to seek a career out of it) writing long form fantasy, I don't feel as if I have reflected my own habitus in my writing. But my stories had to have come from somewhere. I suppose I write of characters with difficult relationships with their siblings. While my own relationships with my four brothers have always been strong, sibling rivalry and conflict is a part of my personal habitus. Perhaps my desire to write fantasy stories stems from all the days I spent playing outside with my brothers, games such as Star Wars with our toy lightsabers and imagining that we had powers of electricity and fire. There's something about transforming the world into a place that is entirely different, through the imagination, that has always appealed to me.
Despite mentioning in the first tutorial for The Particular is the Universal that my most valuable lesson learned while travelling was experiencing things in person, the world is simply too large to see and do everything. We can expand our habitus all we want through personal experiences, but the fact is that we will never know what it is like to experience somebody else's habitus to perfection. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to understand it at all. In addition to expanding my own habitus, I need to empathise and reflect on the experiences of others. This can be done through reading, obviously, but also through effective communication with people who have had different experiences, often ones I could never share. That is what I most hope to get out of this course.
Our habitus is always changing. Every moment that we experience defines us, either consciously or subconsciously. Our habitus is the amalgamation of those moments. It is largely shaped by the culture and customs that surround us. In a way, we all have an impact on each other's habitus. What happens around us changes the way that we see the world, for better or worse.
My own habitus as a writer is somewhat difficult to contend with. Having spent the vast majority of my writing life (the five years in which I have had a strong enough passion for writing to seek a career out of it) writing long form fantasy, I don't feel as if I have reflected my own habitus in my writing. But my stories had to have come from somewhere. I suppose I write of characters with difficult relationships with their siblings. While my own relationships with my four brothers have always been strong, sibling rivalry and conflict is a part of my personal habitus. Perhaps my desire to write fantasy stories stems from all the days I spent playing outside with my brothers, games such as Star Wars with our toy lightsabers and imagining that we had powers of electricity and fire. There's something about transforming the world into a place that is entirely different, through the imagination, that has always appealed to me.
Despite mentioning in the first tutorial for The Particular is the Universal that my most valuable lesson learned while travelling was experiencing things in person, the world is simply too large to see and do everything. We can expand our habitus all we want through personal experiences, but the fact is that we will never know what it is like to experience somebody else's habitus to perfection. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to understand it at all. In addition to expanding my own habitus, I need to empathise and reflect on the experiences of others. This can be done through reading, obviously, but also through effective communication with people who have had different experiences, often ones I could never share. That is what I most hope to get out of this course.
Comments
Post a Comment