Habitus Enhanced

Ah, Habitus, that great confusing word from Pierre Bourdieu's Outline of a Theory of Practice. At the beginning of the semester, I wrote that my habitus in relation to writing has mostly been of my experience growing up in a household of five boys (myself being the oldest) and of playing games outside with our imagination, and how that has fueled my desire to write fantasy novels. Two and a half months later, I now see that my writing habitus is so much more than that. Not only has it expanded tremendously over the course of Intercultural Collaborations, but I now see that it was always more than I thought. I believe that this class has helped me broaden both my habitus, as well as expand my view on my previously existing habitus.

This semester has really been the perfect mix of classes for me, taking The Particular is the Universal, Short Story Writing and Exploring Asian Popular Culture. Through my short story class, as well as the previous classes in my major of creative writing, I can now look back at some of the smaller stories that I have crafted over the last two years. While my preference has always been long-form fantasy, my short stories have often been about people who are in a place of isolation and exploring how they deal with that. I am, as most people would likely be able to guess, a highly introverted and reserved person by nature. This habitus that I have experienced throughout my life has inspired these pieces, as my writing contends with the question of how people deal with isolation. It has only been through considering my personal habitus and some of the shorter stories that I have been able to realise this. Of course, this is just one aspect of my habitus that inspires my writing. There are also many others, including my experience with terminal illness, religion and family.

As for broadening my habitus, The Particular is the Universal and Exploring Asian Popular Culture has had a significant impact on me as a writer. Asia has never really been something that I have thought about before, so it was highly rewarding and enlightening to take two classes that involved studying the complicated continent. Throughout the semester I have realised that one way to expand our habitus is through research. I have experienced this out of both classes, as I have researched popular culture trends in Asia and gained a better understanding of the continent and its complexity, as well as through my studies of Hong Kong in order to get a better understanding of the city for my final creative piece for Cha. It is impossible for people to experience everything the world has to offer in person, but we can see through the eyes of somebody else, mainly through reading and photographs. It is a great time we live in, where so much information is accessible to us through the internet. It can be so easy to expand our understanding of the world and our habitus in the modern age, and I think sometimes we take that for granted. Stephen King said that reading is like telepathy, and we have so much that we can read now without even having to get out our chairs and go to a library. Words and photos are a direct link to another time and place. We can experience it almost as if we were there ourselves.

Even better than reading, however, is interviewing, as I have discovered. For my final creative piece, I conducted an interview with Natalie, a student at HKBU in Hong Kong. A previous post covers that interview in more detail, but the experience was highly rewarding. By having access to somebody who lives in the place I would go on to write about, I was able to get a true understanding of Hong Kong without having to spend the money to go there. I was able to experience its business through her eyes, by simply asking some questions and having a conversation with her. Similarly, I asked my father a few questions about the city and its public transport system, as he had been there recently, and he helped me to understand what he had already experienced, allowing me to borrow from his habitus. Earlier in the semester, my interview with Jacinta helped me to understand what her habitus was like, and hence expanding my own in turn. It helped me to understand the struggles of a single mother, working two jobs that they don't particularly enjoy. Somebody who is just so busy with everything, but all they want out of life is to give the best they can to their quickly growing child. All of these interviews helped me broaden my habitus and make me more comfortable writing in ways I never would have imagined before.

I feel that over the course of the semester my habitus has expanded dramatically, through several different means. Not only has my understanding of my previous habitus grown, but I have also learned about new aspects of the world through several interviews, as well as extensive research. It has allowed me to see the world through the eyes of other people, a skill that is without value in a world that can often be apathetic to others.